FPS Drops in WoW - needs a client reset to resolve

[Deleted]

Now, this is something weird that has happened to me lately (past ~10 days) and I've tried multiple things to solve it; ever so randomly my FPS drops to 30-35 and stays there until I restart the client. It doesn't matter if I stand in the middle of Orgrimmar or look up into the sky; it's 30-35 FPS all the time, everywhere. The only thing that resolves the issue is to restart the client altogether.

My computer is in my signature. I'm running WoW at max (ultra) at 1080 (windowed) with a moderate amount of addons. I've have Firefox 4 (1-2 tabs, Youtube, mmo-champ, guild forum), Fraps (not recording, only to check FPS) and some other stuff like iTunes running when this have happened. Fraps and iTunes haven't been running necessarily every time it has happened though. Usually I'm anywhere around 70-180 fps in raids/org.

My first thought was an addon, but after giving it some thought it seems unreasonable. I tried disabling all addons but since the issue pops up completely at random it's hard to tell. I haven't been able to replicate the issue with addons disabled, but have only tried for ~an hour and since it has happened maybe 8 times in the past 10 days it's hard to tell.

Could it be some cache file being corrupt? Another gamefile being corrupt? I'd like to try and avoid a clean install because.. well.. hassle.


Greatly appreciate any help,
/Marest

[Rendhammer]

Myself and many others have had this problem as well, although ours was limited strictly to entering combat where FPS would drop to almost unplayable levels. We thought it was addons as well but turned out not to be the case. I searched the WoW Technical forums for known issues and reported bugs and I believe the solution involved me deleting a few savedvariables files and a few config files within your folders for specific characters.

I don't remember which ones exactly so I suggest you look it up on the WoW tech forums. The basic idea was that as addons and WoW updates, older file versions are left in your install mucking things up and causing instabilities when those addons and the client needs to retrieve data. Deleting a few files fixed the problem for myself and my friend instantly.

This only happened on ONE character for each of us, as a side note. Leading me to further believe old files still existing within those characters data folders were indeed the problem.

[Deleted]

first question i would ask:
is it only wow? did u test some other games?

got similar problems too, in 3.3. i read a lot, could not solve it, got angry and reinstalled everything (from windows to wow).
it helped.

[Nerio]

You might want to check your temps when this happens, maybe things are getting a little hot.

[Deleted]

I've played many other games the past weeks (Mass Effect 2, Witcher 2, MW2, Black Ops, GTA IV, Far Cry 2, Dirt 3, etc), none have showed this type of constant fps drop. It can be stable around 130 fps, flying around in Orgrimmar. Then suddenly it dimps down to 34 and stays there and doesn't change no matter what I do (logout doesn't help). Only thing that seems to fix the issue is a complete restart of the game/client.

---------- Post added 2011-06-19 at 11:32 PM ----------

You might want to check your temps when this happens, maybe things are getting a little hot.

Doubt it. CPU at 47c and GPU at 61c when I play WoW in raids.

[Deleted]

One thing you might want to check, which is the most amusing and frustrating bug, is whether you've got any tooltips visible in Windows, particularly related to pragrams on the taskbar. Whenever one pops up, it'll bring 3D Performance way down.

Hm, that sounds plausible but unlikely. This has only happened the past week or so though - and that's bothering me a bit. I did do a /combatlog a few raids ago and is the only thing I can think of "doing" before this started happening. Oh, and there was also some Windows update happening some 13 days ago I believe.
Anyway, please elaborate - what exactly are these "tooltips"? Are you talking about the miniature windows that pop up whenever you hover over something in the taskbar?

[Deleted]

Hi. Does the software teamspeak was launched ? I had a bug with teamspeak who drop the average fps.

[Deleted]

Precisly those, although it's more common that slowdown occurs when it's the little yellow tooltips indicating the applications title/name. That bug has haunted me for several years, much to the point i built my UI's around them so if i ever move my mouse to the bottom of the screen, it won't be to interact with the game itself.

Alright, this does seem very plausible. As I recall, every time this happened it was after a tab out of WoW, to check either Firefox or to change music. I got a question though: When you experience this, does the framerate stay "locked"? For me, it is a constant 34 fps - no more, no less.

I'll google around a bit and see if I seem to find similar issues. It actually doesn't bother me that much, but a client restart is a bit of a hassle I guess.

[Deleted]

Hm, I'll look into that. Was fiddling with the settings a while ago, so might actually be that the client locks in on the "background fps" limit.. I have mine set to about 1/4th of the slider.