Low FPS on World of Warcraft

[Dreijer]

Wow is terribly single core cpu bound. On a multicore system it only uses 2-3% of the second core. I have a phenom II 955 and wow was finally "fast" at 3.7ghz I had to overclock but its nothing on the phenom BE to do, just a bios setting.

I would also turn down draw distance a notch and see if that helps.. obviously, i don't think it is the puter because as you said, other games run fine, but having an I7 that i tried wow on for about a year i had the same problem, until i got it over 3.0gz it just didn't seem worth the money. Computer is now my wife's pc

Actually I have no idea how to overclock, so quite stuck in the middle with you.

[Oni]

Turn OFF your SHADOWS. I have a great comp. and soon has I turn the shadows on, I get like 3-5 fps, just as most of people do. It has nothing to do with your computer, it's a game problem.

[mahaa]

Wow is terribly single core cpu bound. On a multicore system it only uses 2-3% of the second core. I have a phenom II 955 and wow was finally "fast" at 3.7ghz I had to overclock but its nothing on the phenom BE to do, just a bios setting.

I would also turn down draw distance a notch and see if that helps.. obviously, i don't think it is the puter because as you said, other games run fine, but having an I7 that i tried wow on for about a year i had the same problem, until i got it over 3.0gz it just didn't seem worth the money. Computer is now my wife's pc

What are you talking about? I have the PII 955 BE as well and the stock speed is above 3 ghz already.. secondly even without oc I had with ultra settings/max shadows ~200 fps everywhere, ~50+ in Raids and ~40 fps in full Dalaran with my old 8800gtx.
By the way I'm getting a HD 4870, is ATI still crap in wow?

[Dreijer]

Bump

[f311]

CPU is the problem.. its a monster of a CPU for games that can use all cores but for WoW 2.66ghz won't get you much.. Overclock it to 3.0 or faster and you should be able to enjoy the game.

Outside of that, just make sure you run up to date drivers for ati..

Also, do as others have said, just disable shadows period.. that will be a big boost.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...px?i=3704&p=13

According to that, the 2nd best ranked one is 2.66Ghz..

anyways on topic your best bet is to just work with blizzard via forums I think.

[Pitchkart]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...px?i=3704&p=13

According to that, the 2nd best ranked one is 2.66Ghz..

anyways on topic your best bet is to just work with blizzard via forums I think.

I've seen mixed responses about this. Some people say the CPU doesn't do much, some people (including a blue post I've seen) say that WoW relies on the CPU.

I've personally seen the CPU make a huge difference. Dropping about .44 or so in ghz dropped my framerate by someplace in the double digits. Same graphics card.
It's possible that the motherboard also had something to do with it, however...

[degobyan]

Hi,

World of Warcraft doesn't really support multi-core CPU's, you can optimize the game to work over those cores but as for a performance difference between a Quad-Core and an i7 which is a also a quad-core CPU (Extreme models have 6 physical cores and if you have Hyper-Threading enabled you will have 8 cores as this option allows 2 threads per core)

Remember that World of Warcraft is over 5 years old, it was in development long before that and long before the advent of multiple cores.

You can optimise World of Warcraft to use all of the cores, it may offer some improvement. with the game closed down locate your WTF\config.wtf and modify the following line from the value it is set at to 85 as show below.

SET processAffinityMask "85"

^ Quoted from blizz employee on thread asking same question

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....04111229&sid=1

[nanaki]

Actually I have no idea how to overclock, so quite stuck in the middle with you.

Aye, in Wintergrasp my computer turns into a slideshow. I run some places at 60+ consistent FPS, except for Dalaran, wintergrasp, and Borean Tundra, in that order of severity.
In Dalaran I disconnect outright sometimes midload, and sometimes am stuck waiting several minutes on a frozen screen. In Wintergrasp I have issues with 2-3FPS and oftentimes just hear the sounds of me dying, not knowing what happened. In Borean Tundra I just suffer from severe Clip and FPS issues.
If anyone would like to chime in as to wtf is wrong, and perhaps some advice on how to overclock.
If it means anything, on the first pull of every dungeon, raid, and instance I'm always hit with a lag spike, then it smooths out after the pull.

[Keosen]

WoW it's a CPU limited game, even a mediocre card can run it smoothly with 60+ fps but may you get bottleneck due to old or slow CPU.

[nanaki]

WoW it's a CPU limited game, even a mediocre card can run it smoothly with 60+ fps but may you get bottleneck due to old or slow CPU.

60+ is a consistent conservative estimate, I can numbers up into the 90s regularly, but I'd prefer to low end.

[Philenia]

You fresh installed wow on the PC or copied it of your old PC? i had the same problem wen i went from vista to windows 7 i had about 100 FPS in IF (i vista) and i went to 20FPS=S i reinstalled my game and it worked fine again. i copied it first.

[Dreijer]

You fresh installed wow on the PC or copied it of your old PC? i had the same problem wen i went from vista to windows 7 i had about 100 FPS in IF (i vista) and i went to 20FPS=S i reinstalled my game and it worked fine again. i copied it first.

I installed it.

[Cilraaz]

Dreijer, I would suggest setting the affinity mask to 85 as degobyan stated.

Do you know anyone who is familiar with overclocking and that you would trust with your system? I would not want to give directions on overclocking over a forum, as too much of it is "feel". The i7 CPUs can be tremendously overclocked with no extra cooling systems needed. If you were to have your CPU overclocked to about 3.2GHz (which your chip should do without thinking twice), you would also gain some performance.

[Dreijer]

Dreijer, I would suggest setting the affinity mask to 85 as degobyan stated.

Do you know anyone who is familiar with overclocking and that you would trust with your system? I would not want to give directions on overclocking over a forum, as too much of it is "feel". The i7 CPUs can be tremendously overclocked with no extra cooling systems needed. If you were to have your CPU overclocked to about 3.2GHz (which your chip should do without thinking twice), you would also gain some performance.

Yeah, I can ask my uncle.
Thanks.

[Frozenbeef]

yea but what monitor/resolution do you play with

1920 x 1080

[Nodja]

You do not need to overclock your CPU. It will not fix anything. You already have a CPU that can, in only 1 core, do more operations per second than what wow was initially designed for.

Don't be fooled by people that say x GHz isn't enough for wow. GHz is a technical term for how many cycles a microchip runs per second. However certain microchips are more efficient than others. To simplify, certain CPUs might take 10 cycles to do a multiplication, others might take 15. (values are not real world numbers). If you want to compare different CPUs with different architectures, use FLOPS instead.

We need to isolate the problem. If you say that it runs other games fine, then I'll assume it's a wow isolated problem.
- Copy your world of warcraft folder to your desktop, or somewhere else where you have write permissions.
- In the folder you just copied, delete the WTF, cache and Interface folders.
- Run wow.exe, and login as usual.
- Press ctrl+shift+esc, this should open task manager. Here, under the Processes tab locate wow.exe
- Right click on wow.exe and select set affinity. Note how many options are selected and which ones.
- Select all CPUs and click OK. Check if wow performance has improved, if not try to set affinity on one core at a time.

Come back and tell us which options were selected and if wow performance improved or not.
If it did improve, close wow. Go into your WTF folder and open config.wtf with a text editor.
Search for Set ProcessAffinityMask="3" and change the 3 (or whatever value was there) to a 84.

[Dreijer]

You do not need to overclock your CPU. It will not fix anything. You already have a CPU that can, in only 1 core, do more operations per second than what wow was initially designed for.

Don't be fooled by people that say x GHz isn't enough for wow. GHz is a technical term for how many cycles a microchip runs per second. However certain microchips are more efficient than others. To simplify, certain CPUs might take 10 cycles to do a multiplication, others might take 15. (values are not real world numbers). If you want to compare different CPUs with different architectures, use FLOPS instead.

We need to isolate the problem. If you say that it runs other games fine, then I'll assume it's a wow isolated problem.
- Copy your world of warcraft folder to your desktop, or somewhere else where you have write permissions.
- In the folder you just copied, delete the WTF, cache and Interface folders.
- Run wow.exe, and login as usual.
- Press ctrl+shift+esc, this should open task manager. Here, under the Processes tab locate wow.exe
- Right click on wow.exe and select set affinity. Note how many options are selected and which ones.


- Select all CPUs and click OK. Check if wow performance has improved, if not try to set affinity on one core at a time.

Come back and tell us which options were selected and if wow performance improved or not.
If it did improve, close wow. Go into your WTF folder and open config.wtf with a text editor.
Search for Set ProcessAffinityMask="3" and change the 3 (or whatever value was there) to a 84.

I'll do that as soon as I've cooked my dinner, and if it works, hallelujah.

Bumping back when I've tried.

[Dreijer]

You do not need to overclock your CPU. It will not fix anything. You already have a CPU that can, in only 1 core, do more operations per second than what wow was initially designed for.

Don't be fooled by people that say x GHz isn't enough for wow. GHz is a technical term for how many cycles a microchip runs per second. However certain microchips are more efficient than others. To simplify, certain CPUs might take 10 cycles to do a multiplication, others might take 15. (values are not real world numbers). If you want to compare different CPUs with different architectures, use FLOPS instead.

We need to isolate the problem. If you say that it runs other games fine, then I'll assume it's a wow isolated problem.
- Copy your world of warcraft folder to your desktop, or somewhere else where you have write permissions.
- In the folder you just copied, delete the WTF, cache and Interface folders.
- Run wow.exe, and login as usual.
- Press ctrl+shift+esc, this should open task manager. Here, under the Processes tab locate wow.exe
- Right click on wow.exe and select set affinity. Note how many options are selected and which ones.




- Select all CPUs and click OK. Check if wow performance has improved, if not try to set affinity on one core at a time.

Come back and tell us which options were selected and if wow performance improved or not.
If it did improve, close wow. Go into your WTF folder and open config.wtf with a text editor.
Search for Set ProcessAffinityMask="3" and change the 3 (or whatever value was there) to a 84.

No difference at all.
Thanks though


WHAT

Suddenly it went up to 150 on maximum, but then dropped down to 20 again.
I made the UI-size the smallest, then it went up to 150, but then I closed the window and it got down to 20.

[Nodja]

Download this, http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php and run it. Start wow aswell and login.
In the first tab, under Clocks what does it say in Core Speed?

[Dreijer]

Download this, http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php and run it. Start wow aswell and login.
In the first tab, under Clocks what does it say in Core Speed?

2809.6MHz