So I was playing Classic last night, just doing some random questing. Had no issues at all, didn’t notice anything strange.
But as soon as I got on a flight point in Zangarmarsh, my FPS all of a sudden went into the tank. Now, the game won’t run at faster than 5 FPS. I logged into retail and it’s the same. Game is unplayable.
I checked my Graphics Card drivers and they are up to date. I checked the processor speeds and temperatures, and the GPU temperatures and they are all fine. No outliers.
It’s as if my computer just gave up.
I turned the computer off and went to sleep. Turned it on this morning and it still runs fine, but as soon as I start either Classic or Retail, the FPS drops immediately - even on the character loading screen. I disabled all addons and reloaded my UI, but there was no improvement.
Also, I use two monitors. I noticed when WoW is the active monitor, WoW runs at 5 FPS. When I click on the other monitor and browse the web or something, WoW goes back to running at 30 FPS.
Any ideas?
(Just checked Dragonflight beta - it still runs perfectly at 100 FPS in Orgrimmar)
(Second edit/update - It was working fine again, but then I tabbed out to look at some talent setup on Chrome on the other monitor, and when I went back to the WoW monitor, the game crapped out again)
It is odd that the FPS issues are happening almost randomly in 2 out of 3 World of Warcraft client tiers. Common causes would be interfering programs, drivers, add-ons, or a hardware problem. The alt-tab seeming to make the game slow down to a crawl again makes me think an overlay or program is to blame though.
Common overlays to test with disabled would be Discord and Overwolf. Rivatuner Statics has caused rather specific slowdowns before. Removing it would be best to test if it’s a factor should it be on the system. Overclocking software like Afterburner or ArmoryCrate can also cause issues at times. If anything for overclocking is installed, first test if setting things to defaults helps. Uninstalling the program would be best if things persist so we can also rule it out as a possibility.
If things persist past that, could you provide a DxDiag file please? Once you have it, just copy the contents of the text file created and paste it here between two ~~~ like so:
DxDiag Here
If you have issues pasting here, use Pastebin and post the end of the link. (ie. 123456 for pastebin.com/123456)
After I shut down Overwolf (I use it to update addons) and Discord, seems to be working ok. I don’t use any overwolf overlay, but I know Discord uses one (although it wasn’t actually doing anything at the time).
I also know that Overwolf kinda sucks, and has been causing my Hearthstone client a LOT of problems lately. I’m thinking maybe this was on their end, but will see if it keeps happening.