I have observed that when I log into WoW, Win11 Efficiency Mode is immediately triggered for all background apps like file explorer, any and all web browser’s processes, causing significant throttling of ALL background apps. Interestingly, this behavior does not occur with other games I have tested, such as Starcraft 1 and 2 and non-Blizzard games, like Ghost of Tsushima, Batman Arkham Knight, which still activate Efficiency Mode but have no sluggishness for any background apps and browsers.
I feel this suggests there is a specific interaction between WoW and Win11 Efficiency Mode that results in performance degradation. The issue is particularly problematic because it severely impacts the performance of everything throttled background and I have tested on Firefox, Vivaldi, LibreWolf, and Chrome. When WoW is running, these background apps and browsers become heavily throttled, resulting in lag, sluggishness, and frame rates dropping to 10-20 FPS, making the system feel as if it is running on Pentium II if you get what I mean.
Given that Efficiency Mode is designed to throttle resource usage for background processes, and while WoW runs fine, it seems to be disproportionately affecting other background apps. I hope this post raises awareness and hope Blizzard to investigate and consider implementing a fix or workaround.
This would greatly improve the user exp for WoW players running Win11, especially since other games somehow are not triggering any sluggishness even with Efficiency Mode running. It can’t be just me only.
I have read and tried it, it is not working at all. I think user in that forum reported as fake. I on a desktop too not laptop. Yes I also did set to Highest. I actually tried many ways and I simply could not solve it, as mentioned, WoW must have some interaction with that useless mode.
The Windows Scheduler does a lot of things under the hood. WoW probably just pushes enough threads, often enough and in the right way, that the scheduler wants to push BG apps into efficiency mode. It might also have to do with P vs E-core usage as well.
Also, AFAIK, it pretty much always pushes non-Edge browsers into efficiency mode(maybe Edge too? idk, i’ve only ever used edge to download Chrome lol). I’ve never not seen Chrome with the green leaves next to them in the task manager and I remember playing around with chrome://flags/ settings and a bunch of command line/registry settings and none of them will get it to stick. The green leaves always pop back up.
Just to add, there isn’t any registry or group policy fix that can truly disable Efficiency Mode system-wide in Win11 is enforced by design, and Microsoft made this intentional. I’ve tried all the registry, power plan, and Task Manager tweaks, even download Project Lasso (no improvement) but background apps always get pushed back into Efficiency Mode eventually.
Again, I want to emphasize that, based on my testing with another multiple games (Path of Exile, Crysis 3, Cyberpunk 2077, etc.), only WoW curently causes this extreme system-wide sluggishness when background apps are throttled. There’s a very high chance WoW is interacting with Efficiency Mode in an inefficient way.
If Blizzard or anyone else needs proof or logs, just let me know exactly what’s needed I’m happy to provide any data or testing required to help get this properly looked into.
Again, this isn’t really a WoW issue, this is a Windows issue. WoW is a user level application and has pretty much zero control over what Windows does with other apps.
WoW is a CPU bottlenecked game that puts a lot of pressure on a handful of threads(in modern zones/capitals or when near a lot of other players) and puts a lot of pressure on the GPU drivers for shader compilation, since it doesn’t do any precompilation of shaders like the other games you’ve mentioned. The Windows Scheduler probably has heuristics that look for types of activity in apps, that will make it more or less likely to push other apps into efficiency mode.
Also, when you say these apps get sluggish, do you mean when you’re using multiple monitors and mouse over to another screen or do you mean when you alt+tab out of the game to use the browser on the same screen. Windows MPO can cause similar issues if the monitors are mixed refresh rates.
All I know is that I don’t experience the same issues you’re claiming and I’ve tested it in single(unplug my second screen) and dual monitor(144hz main monitor and 60hz display tablet) setups.
Are you pro at these stuffs by any chance? If not why and what are you even suggesting? I was really hoping Blue reply with something. You think I made all these up for fun? Look at some of these threads.
I’m a single Gsync monitor + Nvidia GPU. I specifically listed other CPU intensive games I tested - none of them have this issue. The problem is only with WoW. Alt-tabbing causes the throttle(as it should but sluggish but not other games), as long as WoW is active. I’ve repeatedly explained that it’s WoW’s interaction with Efficiency mode. I really don’t wish to repeat myself every time just to reply. I’ve already detailed every issue above. 6 days subbed ends anyway, I highly doubt any of the staff even bother looking.
Good luck to all future Win11 users eventually y’all gonna experience it.
The blues who used to frequent the tech support forum are long gone as of a year ago. They were either reassigned or moved on from Blizz.
Pawgwalker knows a lot of tech stuff. Also, the logic you’re applying is kind of flawed. There could be other apps out there that you have the same experience with, but you’re not using those right now.
I have been actively working on games and tutorial/example game projects for the greater portion of ten years now(mostly indie projects, and by indie, I don’t mean pixel art games) with UE4/5. I’d say I have a tiny bit of experience when it comes to these things.
So a handful of people, out of millions playing, and it’s mostly crickets about this issue. Sounds like there’s some kind of combination of variables you guys share in common then. Post a DXDIAG report on pastebin and link it here.
The only one you’ve named that is intensive is cyberpunk and it’s not actually the game itself hogging most of that, it’s mostly the multi-threaded batching of drawcalls, which is more of a directx/vulkan and nvidia/amd sided workload, rather than the game’s workload.
Were you one of this people that followed the parroted placebo advice years back, when Nvidia/Microsoft were ironing out MPO issues, where leetest youtuber ultra haxor maxfps10000 guides would have you edit the properties of wow.exe->compatibility->disable fullscreen optimizations? If so, check the exe again and uncheck the option.
So what you’re saying is that you aren’t actually looking for a fix, you’re just looking for a direction to point the finger. I’ve been on Windows 11 since it came out and have “get the latest updates as soon as they’re available” option enabled, haven’t had any problems like what you’re describing. I’ve used 12th/13th/14th gen Intel CPUs, along with a mix of AMD and Nvidia GPUs.
Re-read my post regarding CPU Intensive and re-read about only WoW is the main cause of my issue.
I appreciate the input, but I disagree with some of the advice given. Here is a FPS monitor when I encounter FPS throttle how my background apps slow down/sluggishness when WoW is active.
https://imgur.com/a/1KnlNXN
Don’t know what is this I only understood UE4/5. Don’t worry about it.
Here’s the DXDIAG you requested: https://pastebin.com/ux7m4Srg
No? I don’t dabbled or mess with nonsense like this. I know some stuffs but not to that extend.
So do I. But 12th generation are not affected. And no I’m just frustrated because this issue has been hard to diagnose. I’ve found a fix, but my main objective is to raise awareness and to try and see if people like you or blue would help I wasn’t aware Blue has been shifted pointed by Green.
Thanks to everyone who replied. I’ll step back from the thread now(Close if you will), but I appreciate the discussions.
No thanks, I was able to comprehend it the first time. Like Pawg, I disagree with your assessment of what is and isn’t a CPU-intensive game/app.
A standalone monitor without visual context doesn’t mean much on the forum.
The two of us have a lot of experience troubleshooting WoW. We don’t know everything, but we know you’ve provided some incorrect information regarding how the CPU is used.
If you’re no longer interested in diagnosing the concern, you do have the option to mute the thread. Scroll down to Tracking, there should be a Muted option.
FYI, player posters can’t close a thread. Player are those that post in Green, Gold or White. Only Blue posters can moderate.
You have some memory leak issues with firefox.exe and explorer.exe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an explorer.exe radarpreleak before. Radar stands for “resource exhaustion detection and resolution” (yeah, I know, kind of dumb that the A in exhaustion is used, instead of E lol…) and is usually a sign of some kind of memory leak, but not always. Like some apps might actually use a boatload of resources, if say you’re working on some big open world realistic style game in Unreal Editor.
But if apps like the explorer are running into resource limits, it means that either something is hogging all the ram and the explorer just happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, or that there’s something else going wrong with your system. Are you one of those people that keeps 10000 tabs open in a browser? Maybe try closing out of all of them and retest with just WoW and a single browser tab.
Also, a couple other things:
disable hardware acceleration in firefox and see if that helps
make sure that your gsync settings are set to fullscreen only and not fullscreen+windowed. wow uses borderless windowed fullscreen, which counts as fullscreen to gsync(I think so long as MPO and FSO aren’t disabled).