System:
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
RAM: 32 GB DDR4
Motherboard: ASUS Z270
Resolution: 1440p
In Retail WoW, I can run graphics preset 10 with ray tracing disabled. Even in busy areas with numerous players and NPCs around, my GPU usage generally sits around 50 to 70%.
In WoW Forever Beta, using comparable graphics settings, GPU usage jumps to a sustained 98 to 100%, including in relatively quiet areas.
Secondary Lighting appears to have a particularly large performance impact. Higher settings push my GTX 1080 to nearly constant 100% utilization. Reducing Secondary Lighting to “Fair” brings GPU usage down significantly, closer to roughly 60 to 75%.
SSAO also has a substantial performance cost in Forever compared with my experience in Retail. I have had to disable SSAO entirely to reduce GPU utilization.
The “Optional GPU Features” setting is another significant factor. In Retail I can leave this enabled without an issue, while enabling it in Forever increases GPU usage by approximately 10% on my system.
To get WoW Forever to approximately the same GPU utilization I experience while running Retail at preset 10, I currently have to:
Secondary Lighting: Fair
SSAO: Disabled
Optional GPU Features: Disabled
Ray Tracing: Disabled
I understand that Forever introduces new graphical features and that some increase in GPU requirements is expected. However, the current performance difference appears disproportionate to the visual difference between Retail and Forever.
On the same hardware, Retail can run at maximum or near-maximum settings while maintaining substantially lower GPU utilization. Forever requires several major graphical features to be reduced or disabled just to achieve similar GPU utilization.
Please investigate GPU optimization, particularly Secondary Lighting, SSAO, and Optional GPU Features. The performance cost of these settings currently seems unusually high compared with Retail.