So uh, from what I can gather, it is something related to cooooding? Or something like that? I remember earlier in this post someone mentioned perhaps there’s something not being read right when it comes to in-game data.
Also for the d0mb, sm00th brain like me, would that problem be easy to fix or is it really a lost cause?
Very nice break down, this is exactly what I was referring to earlier with instruction sets. I suspect this is the cause, and why the fx series is now listed as minimum spec.
Adding my name to this lot as well, really hope this gets a fix.
AMD Phenom II X6 1065T Processor (6 CPUs), ~2.9GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
Looks like I’m running the King of Boomer builds, Athlon x2 and Radeon HD 7750 at what I consider to be comfortable fps. Didn’t think anything besides upgrading my gpu would be needed, this is unexpected.
I have some savings and I’m planning to buy a decent home gym machine, this is quite a dilemma now.
Also adding in running an amd phenom II and although I’m below minimum spec I went from a recommended 4 setting to now being recommended at a 5 setting, but only hair and eyes are affected.
Oh and the reason old Intel CPUs don’t have this issue?
they run AVX instruction sets.
THIS. Texture rendering should be done on the GPU and NOT the CPU. It seems like Blizz either accidentally (or maybe intentionally?) dumped that particular job on the cpu. But it really seems out of place there, and if all other textures are rendered on gpu as they should be it would explain why only these textures are suffering for it.
Would a change in what renders what be significant enough for Blizzard to not consider doing (out of it being too much of a hassle) or is it within the realm of possibilty?
Don’t mock yourself. The smooth brains work at Blizzard not understanding a large portion of their playerbase uses their PC mostly for internet browsing and WoW.
You shouldn’t need to spend insane amounts of money on a new PC to play a 16 year old game, updates or not.
It’s so nice to see someone else who understands this stuff explain it far better than I can. Intel supported AVX before AMD, so they don’t have this issue.
Well the way Bliz is treating it, they are basically blaming the people having the issues for not spending several hundred dollars (or more) to upgrade to brand new CPUS & hardware to play WoW. Seems I picked the wrong time to come back into WoW. Now I can’t run it on my processor with 8gb of ram & a nVidia GTX 1050 Ti card. Damn sad when I do 3d rendering on this “old” system & “obsolete” video hardware without issue but WoW can’t even load texture maps for skin & hair…
I failed my coding classes and this is the conclusion that even I came to. I hope the explanations here help the devs pinpoint the issue so they can get it fixed. I imagine everyone will sleep better after.
EDIT: I will also note that after reading all that my guess is it’s an oversight on Blizz’s part on how AMD CPUs work vs other brands.
In my opinion it should be 100% within the realm of possibility. I’m just a hobbyist so take that with a grain of salt but I don’t think this would be impossible for someone like Blizz.
I wouldn’t mind if they even had an option for the old models similar to when they changed the skeletal structure of the models way back and let us with the older computers just have less options. Unfortunately for myself and some friends covid hit our pockets more than our health, and cant exactly upgrade just yet.
That’s pretty much it right there 100%. I have no idea why AVX is likely the culprit, but it definitely explains why FX and later cpus have no issue. Up until then, SSE4a was the latest AMD had and sadly Phenom II was one year shy of getting it. Weirdly enough Intel and AMD both shipped CPUs supporting it at the same time. Intel shipped the Core platform with the i3, i5, and i7 first in Q1 2011. AMD followed with the FX in Q3 which sparked a lot of “add moar cores” memes.
nerd talk aside, I have no proof that it’s the culprit, but it seems very likely since it ends right when AVX was introduced to the markets. Someone with an Intel older than 2011’s Sandy Bridge needs to chime in, lol.
Please fix it 
dont forget about us
I should have a system that old kicking around. I think. Lemme go rummage around.
Please do… if it does not have the same issue I’ll eat my…headband. I’ll log in and take the level squish just to update my armory, too.
Well, time for me to sleep ; v ;
Thanks a lot guys for at least trying to give us some help/insight. It feels a bit better now that I know more people are chiming in c:
I hope by the time I wake up this has been addressed by a blue post that can give us some more answers >.<
Sorry to say this is what they are calling “fixed”. Basically if you aren’t running hardware that isn’t 3 years old or newer, they have already abandoned us. Read the Shadowlands requirements… I’ll bet only 1 in five players can match that minimum requirements now…