FPS Improves after WTF Folder Deleted

[Prag]

I use ElvUI and a few other addons, and after a few months I notice my FPS starts slowly dropping. Once I delete my WTF folder and start over with the same addons, my FPS jumps right back up. Just wondering why this happens, and if there's anyway to prevent them from dropping in the first place - outside of not using any addons.

I appreciate any insight and suggestions. Thank you!

(Small edit: I'm not blaming ElvUI for doing anything wrong, I'm guessing it's just bloat from addons like WeakAuras etc. So please no "ELVUI IS DEVIL KILL KILL")

[Sephiracle]

I don't know what's included in that ui, but it sounds like some addon might be storing a large amount of information which causes the cpu to do more work, which causes fps to drop.

[vesseblah]

Damage meters and auction addons are the usual suspects. Either of those could be collecting and processing hundreds of megabytes of collected data in the WTF folder which will slow you down in older computer for sure.

[Xuvial]

WoW slowly takes more and more memory the longer you run it due to storing more and more textures and addon data in RAM, it can inflate to pretty huge sizes.

Check your addon memory usage, does it increase too? What does it start off at on a fresh start and what do you end up with? Some addons can increase the size quite heavily. I suppose your PC specs will help a bit too, especially your resolution

I don't think deleting the WTF folder does anything, the fact that you're closing and restarting WoW is what's making the difference in FPS due to the memory dump. Obviously the best way to test is - you guessed it - play without addons and see if you experience the same issues. If the FPS drops go away, then you need to selectively enable addons and test out which is the culprit.

Oh and ELVUI IS DEVIL KILL IT jks :P

[caninepawprints]

Like Seph said, if the UI is storing information over time as you play the game, it's going to use more and more memory, which is going to make your FPS drop. By deleting it, you erased all that saved data, so your FPS shot up again.

Find out what specific addon in the pack is doing it and turn it off. In fact, turn off any of them that you don't need.

[Prag]

It gets to about 18.85mb in a 5man party, in combat. I'm not sure how that measures up in terms of high or low memory usage. ElvUI itself is only ~2mb.

[Drunkenvalley]

WoW slowly takes more and more memory the longer you run it due to storing more and more textures and addon data in RAM, it can inflate to pretty huge sizes.

This wouldn't really have accomplished anything but soak up RAM though. <<;

[refire]

It gets to about 18.85mb in a 5man party, in combat. I'm not sure how that measures up in terms of high or low memory usage. ElvUI itself is only ~2mb.

From only my personal experience that seems like a whole lot. I'm at around 6.8mb in a raid with disabling all my config options, that jumps up about 2 megs if they're all enabled. I don't run with a meter though because I check live parsing for individual things that could be checked on the meter which is a huge memory saver. Make sure things aren't leaking as well. I was using grid mana bars and they were leaking very badly. I don't know what addons you use but there is a chance it's leaking.

[vesseblah]

Memory usage of addons is a joke spread by people with inadequate computers. Sure you need to turn everything lower when playing on a toaster, but using modern computer it does not make any difference whatsoever if the addon memory usage is 10meg or 100meg.

Things like recount or any other damage meters is what you want to turn off on crap computer, but it's not only because of the memory usage, it's all the statistical math going on to create the graphs it does that actually slows you down in a 5+ years old computer.

[Prag]

Memory usage of addons is a joke spread by people with inadequate computers. Sure you need to turn everything lower when playing on a toaster, but using modern computer it does not make any difference whatsoever if the addon memory usage is 10meg or 100meg.

Things like recount or any other damage meters is what you want to turn off on crap computer, but it's not only because of the memory usage, it's all the statistical math going on to create the graphs it does that actually slows you down in a 5+ years old computer.

I don't run Recount, so I don't have the graphs going.

I'm not having any "technical problems" per se. I just noticed a 5-10 FPS improvement after I deleted my WTF and started fresh. I'm just trying to narrow down what specifically I should be keeping clean to not have the ups and downs at all.

[Deleted]

lol... My memory usage for addons is like, 70MB at min...

[vesseblah]

I just noticed a 5-10 FPS improvement after I deleted my WTF and started fresh. I'm just trying to narrow down what specifically I should be keeping clean to not have the ups and downs at all.

You have any auction addon? Or quest helper style addons?

Both 4.1 and 4.2 patch broke addons, and 4.3 will do it again, many players have broken addons installed at the moment without knowing it.

[zox]

From only my personal experience that seems like a whole lot. I'm at around 6.8mb in a raid with disabling all my config options, that jumps up about 2 megs if they're all enabled. I don't run with a meter though because I check live parsing for individual things that could be checked on the meter which is a huge memory saver. Make sure things aren't leaking as well. I was using grid mana bars and they were leaking very badly. I don't know what addons you use but there is a chance it's leaking.

19 megs is very little actually. Recount can hog up a lot of memory in large raids/spamming battlegrounds. It's easy enough to just clear the data whenever it gets too much.

[Nitrax]

I ran an addon that "auto marked" mobs, it behaved in that way, lowered FPS substantially even on an ok computer.

[Deleted]

I thought there was a cap on how much memory WoW was allowed? Didn't they up the cap ~recently'ish?

As already pointed out, memory is not a problem on a somewhat decent computer. It's only really old a baaad computers that suffer as they can't provide enough (which isn't much )


Sounds like you have a database building up. Think of something that collects and/or stores. It could be anything from where you herb to an addon storing bugs. You can also, instead of deleting your WTF when you feel like it's time, move it to another place. When you get around that time again you can mitchmatch the folders sizes (hard work I know, but you will know for sure).

I tried downloading ElvUI package but it's all just a bunch of TukUI nonsense to me, i.e. no folders with actual addons :P

[Djinni]

19 megs is very little actually. Recount can hog up a lot of memory in large raids/spamming battlegrounds. It's easy enough to just clear the data whenever it gets too much.

Lol...
My recount is currently sitting at 23MiB :P
Auc-Advanced at 62MiB

My total addon usage is 180MiB...
I have 60fps (capped with v-sync because I'm playing in windowed mode) and 19ms latency :P (Which actually is 19ms now that I've fixed it)
When in Fullscreen I get 100-120FPS (120Hz screen) Also with V-Sync.

[Prag]

Thanks guys for the responses. I'll look into which addon might be hoarding data and try to keep it trim.

[vesseblah]

Thanks guys for the responses. I'll look into which addon might be hoarding data and try to keep it trim.

The big files will most likely be in
WoW\WTF\Account\<youraccountname>\<yourrealmname>\<yourcharactername>\SavedVariables
That's where all character-specific data is. Another possible place is
WoW\WTF\Account\<youraccountname>\SavedVariables
which has all data shared between your characters.

Notice that deleting anything from those places may lead into addons reseting their settings, and changing anything manually with notepad from the wtf files can cause addons to stop loading or in the worst case WoW crashing with #132 error.