Bizarre FPS problem in DX11

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Up until the prepatch, WoW was making very steady performance improvements to DX11 on Windows 7. Even on Beta and PTR, performance was very high in places where it wasn’t before, and FPS was generally very smooth across the board.

But when the patch went live, that changed, in a particular and very confusing way.

In places like Boralus where there are tons of things to render, I consistently get 60+ FPS - much higher than before the patch. This is great.

However, in places where there’s not much to render - such as vanilla zones, or inside of buildings, or when the camera is facing at the ground - my FPS drops significantly. It feels like VSync is cutting it in half or even a quarter - even though the ingame FPS counter still reads ~60.

This happens no matter if I have Vsync turned on or not. Triple Buffering also doesn’t make any difference, neither does the new Target FPS option.
I’m using an RTX 2060 in Windows 7 with the DirectX 11 graphics API. Upgrading to the latest NVidia driver didn’t fix it.

Turning all my graphics settings to minimum actually makes it worse.

This is so baffling. The less work there is for my GPU, the worse my performance gets. This is the polar opposite of what should be happening.

This only affects World of Warcraft, and has only been a problem since patch 9.0.1.

MSI Afterburner shows a consistent GPU temperature of 41C, GPU Usage hovers between 23-26%, and Core clock speed doesn’t change, so it’s not a heat throttling issue.

I have no idea what is causing it or how to fix it.

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Check your nvidia settings and see what power option it’s using for WoW. I can’t remember all of them, but there’s options like “prefer consistent performance” “always use maximum performance” “conserve power” or something along those lines. It might have something to do with that?

You’ll have to add the game to the options under program settings(I wouldn’t make broad changes like this to the global options)to review the settings, if it’s not already there.

~https://imgur.com/a/kvyafJN

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Unfortunately, none of the settings in the NVidia control panel make any difference. :frowning:

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Hi Derrek

You mention you are running Afterburner. Wow doesn’t like overlays of any sort. Often cause odd issues and crashes.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/31366

Let’s disable any overlays then then test things.

You might try a Selective Startup as well:

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/23848

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(Afterburner doesn’t run as an overlay - it just monitors hardware in the background.)

I followed the steps for Selective Startup article you linked - disabling ALL the Startup applications and rebooting - and it made no difference to my ingame performance.

No Discord, no MSI Afterburner, no antivirus, nothing is running in the background.

With only World of Warcraft and Battle.net running, the issue persists - low to abysmal framerates when there is very little geometry to render.

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You know Everia has some good thoughts. It’s almost like things are idling down. Did you check that Nvidia setting they posted. Is the Windows Power setting on high performance?

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Try the DX11 legacy setting that works for some people. I’ve got a feeling that WoW has some coding issues with the DX12 API and AFAIK, even DX11 mode runs through the multithreaded 12 API at it’s core, if you’re using Windows 10. The DX11 legacy setting in WoW forces it to use the older API I think, like what was used in Win7/8. Might fix your issue.

EDIT: Which version of Windows are you on? After rereading your first post, you’re making it sound like you’re on Win7. In that case, I’d definitely try the 11 legacy mode. While Win7 did get their own weird version of DX12, I doubt it’s a proper version of it compared to the Win10 version.

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I did. WoW is set to use High Performance mode in the Nvidia control panel, and Windows power options are also set to High Performance.

That was one of the first things I tried.

While DX11 Legacy doesn’t have the same “low FPS under minimal load” issue, it gets much, much worse performance anywhere that puts a even a light strain on the GPU (places that should not even be remotely taxing for an RTX 2060, such as the Valley of Heroes in Stormwind).

So by changing the graphics API I can either get good FPS in low-detail areas, or good FPS everywhere else, but not both at once like I could before the patch. :confused:

I’m starting to wonder if this is an issue with my monitor. I’ve had to use a DVI to DisplayPort converter cable with this monitor, but I have another monitor that supports HDMI, so I’m going to try using that one and see if it makes any difference.

(And regarding DX12: The Windows 7 version of DX12 was indeed atrocious. It ran slower than DX11 Legacy, broke the DWM, and couldn’t even do basic things like vertical sync, so it was never worth using. Blizzard seems to have realized this, as the option isn’t even there anymore.)

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No luck. Different monitor with different cables still has the same problem. It is not a monitor issue.

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This could simply be a Win 7 issue. It is closing in on a year since Windows stopped support there. We are seeing a good number of game issues simply because systems are not running the latest 2004 version of Win 10.

Saying that it’s odd behavior - have you tried playing on Classic. See what happens over there.

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I’ve only had this issue since 9.0.1. Before that, everything was fine. Performance was good to great and didn’t slow down in low-detail areas.

I haven’t installed any Windows updates in months. I have no problems running any other DX11 games. So it’s not a Windows issue.

It wasn’t an issue last time I played Classic either ( a few months ago ).

It’s a WoW issue that’s new with the patch.

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The patch brought all the new Shadowlands graphics with it as well as the requirements. The game wouldn’t even load on a good number of older systems.

I agree this looks like possible game behavior. Thing is if it was a game issue we would see other reports and this is the only one I have seen.

I would reinstall the game. I don’t see mention that you have tried that.

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Haven’t had time to do a full reinstall, but I also haven’t noticed this issue for a few days now, so I think it’s been fixed. :smile: