Tips for making your computer run faster for patch 7.3!

[Kokolums]

I run WoW on a toaster.

Its a win 7 laptop that's 3 years old. I've never updated Windows 7. I've never updated a single driver. I don't run the graphics card. WoW plays smoothly on low settings everywhere. Raids are smooth. I draw anywhere from 30-60 fps and its no problem at all. So, here are some tips on how I configure WoW for this laptop.

1. SET Sound_NumChannels "16" in your Config.wtf file

This is a hidden setting. As it turns out, anything above 16 eats up resources like crazy. But if you try to set this in-game, it won't let you. It can ONLY be set in the file. Not even running a script command in-game will work. So close WoW, open your config.wtf file, and change the setting of this parameter to 16. Save and close and restart WoW. You will know it has worked if you open your settings in game and the number of channels is set to "custom". That's a hidden setting. BE WARNED Blizzard resets this to at least 24 if not higher with EVERY patch! You must remodify your config.wtf folder with every patch!

2. DBM is EVIL!

Deadly Boss Mods is a wow addon and it is EVIL! What it does it OVERRIDE your number of sound channels setting. It will automatically put it BACK to 24 or jack it up to 64! If you choose to run with DBM, you MUST edit the code to prevent it from doing this! You go into your DBM-core folder, open DBM-core.lua, amd edit out the following code:

if soundChannels < 64 then
SetCVar ("Sound_NumChannels", 64)
end

This bit of code is truly EVIL! It will needlessly jack up your sound channels and can destroy your game performance. 3 lines of code to ruin your life! To edit it out, put two dash lines in front of each line so it looks like this:

--if soundChannels < 64 then
--SetCVar ("Sound_NumChannels", 64)
--end

Now DBM will behave itself. My DBM runs perfectly fine with those lines edited out. But if you run standard DBM on a low end computer it will jack up your sound channels all the way up to 64 and leave them there. You could be needlessly suffering from FPS issues because of DBM. DBM. Is. Evil. it is the most evil addon out there.

3. When you start up WoW, open task manager, right click on WoW-64.exe, go to Set Piority and set it high. (Don't ever use Realtime). Also, if you have anything else running (which you shouldn't), set those items to low. I notice some slightly better performance with this.

4. we're going to make a batch file using VBS. Open notepad and type this in if your RAM is 4GB:

FreeMem=Space(409600000)

and save as boost.vbs

Open up another notepad and type this in:

mystring=(80000000)

Save as boost2.vbs

Sometimes it helps performance to shut down WoW and restart, but you won't have to if you have these two match files on your desktop. If your computer ever starts slowing down, just run them both and it'll speed back up. I've done it countless times and it never fails.

5. Make sure your wow settings are set back down to low where you had them before the patch. Blizzard actually rests EVERYTHING with each patch, so if you are playing on low, you could be back to medium graphic settings when logging in to 7.3 Blizzard doesn't tell you this. Blizzard tells you nothing. It would be nice to get a small warning that the settings got changed. But no, you get nothing.

6. For windows 7, follow the instructions in my signature for creating a Readyboost USB stick. It can dramatically boost performance. I won't cover it again, its fairly detailed.

7. Buy a USB sound card and use that over what's in your laptop. I've gotten a performance boost from using an external card built into a USB stick over what's in my laptop. They are cheap and actually can make a difference.

[starkey]

Always wondered why my sound channels kept resetting back to 64, thanks for the DBM tip.

[Najnaj]

DBM is noting compared to damage meters in case you didn't know. It eats more resources than the whole game sometimes.

[FuxieDK]

I asked author of DBM about sound channels in DBM. Apparently BW does exactly the same.
--> https://twitter.com/fuxiedk/status/903136901581955072

[Flutterguy]

People have issues this patch? Haven't noticed anything weird.

[MysticalOS]

The cpu difference on sound channels is minuscule at best, and that it's not just DBM that does that BTW. ALL boss mods do.

The issue is if users are at 24 sound channels, addon sound ducking is far more likely to occur. If you play with SFX turned on especially, you might not hear any sounds from DBM (or weak auras or other mods) if there are already 24 concurrent sound effects happening in game.

Now for a while, blizzard had set addons at top priority, so no matter what the game would duck sound effects before addons. But they changed it back to addons being lowest priority in warlords. So you will definitely lose addon sounds at 24 channels if you play with SFX on, especially in larger raid sizes (30 mans, LFR, world bosses).

I'd like to see proof sound channels are eating up your resources, because I've benchmarked it and even talked with developers about it. the difference is TINy compared to other stuff. As user above said, a simple damage meter runs circles around a few extra sounds. there are many other things that ACTUALLy effect your performance.

[Kokolums]

The cpu difference on sound channels is minuscule at best, and that it's not just DBM that does that BTW. ALL boss mods do.

The issue is if users are at 24 sound channels, addon sound ducking is far more likely to occur. If you play with SFX turned on especially, you might not hear any sounds from DBM (or weak auras or other mods) if there are already 24 concurrent sound effects happening in game.

Now for a while, blizzard had set addons at top priority, so no matter what the game would duck sound effects before addons. But they changed it back to addons being lowest priority in warlords. So you will definitely lose addon sounds at 24 channels if you play with SFX on, especially in larger raid sizes (30 mans, LFR, world bosses).

I'd like to see proof sound channels are eating up your resources, because I've benchmarked it and even talked with developers about it. the difference is TINy compared to other stuff. As user above said, a simple damage meter runs circles around a few extra sounds. there are many other things that ACTUALLy effect your performance.

I have skada on. If soundchannels are at 64, my computer gags in Dalaran. if I set sound channels to 16, Dalaran is smooth. Skada doesn't affect my computer performance at ALL.

- - - Updated - - -

The cpu difference on sound channels is minuscule at best, and that it's not just DBM that does that BTW. ALL boss mods do.

The issue is if users are at 24 sound channels, addon sound ducking is far more likely to occur. If you play with SFX turned on especially, you might not hear any sounds from DBM (or weak auras or other mods) if there are already 24 concurrent sound effects happening in game.

Now for a while, blizzard had set addons at top priority, so no matter what the game would duck sound effects before addons. But they changed it back to addons being lowest priority in warlords. So you will definitely lose addon sounds at 24 channels if you play with SFX on, especially in larger raid sizes (30 mans, LFR, world bosses).

I'd like to see proof sound channels are eating up your resources, because I've benchmarked it and even talked with developers about it. the difference is TINy compared to other stuff. As user above said, a simple damage meter runs circles around a few extra sounds. there are many other things that ACTUALLy effect your performance.

I run at 16 sound channels and have never noticed any loss of addon sounds in DBM. And even if there was, that is like a thousand times more preferable to having the game run choppy and slowly.

All I can say is that, for whatever reason, sound is horrifically optimized in wow, and it is the sound system that grinds your computer to a halt more than the graphics. Its been this way since at least Wrath. I mean I was first noticing it back then by using sound tricks to boost performance.

Its just yet another one of those things I've complained about for years but never gets fixed. I have a pretty big list of major issues that never get fixed.

- - - Updated - - -

I think ive covered everything i do. I Actually run quite a few addons but its no problem.

[starkey]

Updating DBM via the curse client do i need to edit the file every time i update it?

[Kokolums]

Updating DBM via the curse client do i need to edit the file every time i update it?

Yup. /10char