FPS issue, potential bottleneck hardware question?

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I think I have some pretty optimized for performance settings on both the client and in windows 10. I don’t have any efficiency optimizations enabled, so as to prevent my hardware from down-throttling in any case (that I am aware of).

I use a 165hz monitor and have my target fps set to 165 in game.
I used to have a i5-4460 3.2ghz with a 1050ti mini 4gb and 16gb of DDR3 RAM.
My system is a dell Inspiron 3847.

I would get like 40-50 fps in arathi basin and like 15-20 in large maps like ashran with lots of complexity going on, I had truly hit the CPU bottleneck because my load on all cores was at 95-100% and my GPU was barely 50% utilization during those expensive scenes.

I thought had I upgraded my CPU I would experience a greater load on my GPU as a result and have more frames overall in either case. I now installed a i7-4790 and see a markedly decent boost in performance. a i5-4460 has 4 threads and a i7-4790 with 8 threads as well as 3.6 clock which goes up to 3.8 easily on its own. I have 80 fps in arathi now, but oddly enough it will not go past that 80-90 fps in any case, but ALSO the load on both CPU and GPU are not being utilized even close to 100%!

I got roughly 30-50% CPU load and 30-40% GPU load in that scene! Why wont it use itself to 100% and render closer to 165 fps? Am I hitting a SSD or RAM generational bottleneck here? I am using a crucial MX500 SSD, I forgot to mention that…

I know in the system recommended requirements listed on blizzards official site is a 8th gen 6-core intel CPU, however the first of that generation should only be 1-5% more powerful than my i7-4790, CPU to CPU.

So my question is this - would the higher thread count of a 6-core CPU (going from 8 threads to 12 would be quite useful in a CPU intensive game like WoW with many characters in one environment) be the reason I am not utilizing my GPU 100%, or would it be the lack of nVME or DDR4,5,6,7 speeds? I am not sure! This is hard to determine with benchmarking software! The scenes are also difficult to recreate.

I will have to report back on ashran scenes speeds as I just installed the CPU, but the event in AB showing the under utilization of my CPU and GPU point to a nVME and RAM bottleneck… I basically overall want to get the most out of my 14nm 1050ti 4gb… WoW just seems to not use it as much as my CPU!

Any advice on what to do? I am thinking of just returning the CPU and investing on a new system entirely.

Best,
Boaz

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The biggest bottleneck is the CPU. Going from a 4th gen i5 to a 4th gen i7 isn’t going to give much of an improvement. Thread count doesn’t matter much in WoW, as it’s heavily single-core dependent. It can utilize small bits of a couple of additional cores, but single-core speed is where you’ll get the most improvement.

The GPU isn’t a whole ton better though. Since you listed it as an option, yes, your best bet is to return the 4790 and get an entirely new system if you want to get anywhere remotely close to 165fps. Even still, in heavy traffic areas (Valdrakken especially), expect it to bog down a ways, no matter what hardware you end up with.

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try this if inproves the FPS Ultimate Performance Power Plan

You’ll need to open the Command Prompt or PowerShell with administrative privileges.right-click the Command Prompt , and choose “Run As Administrator.”
At the prompt, type (or copy and paste) the following command and then hit Enter:
powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61

note this will run the CPU at the maxium clock speed

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Do you mean to say that this minimum/maximum processor state is the actual CPU throttling setting? I NEVER figured that out for myself, thank you!!!

@Sarvelis
Thanks for the advice about the hardware. Fortunately they approved the return and with this new information I can just ride out my old CPU until I get a decent system. Any suggestions on a cheap CPU+MOBO + GPU or just CPU+MOBO for bang for buck? Or maybe a helpful website which discusses such? I haven’t built a system in so many years from scratch and I used to just check newegg XD I understand that these days newegg is less than an authority on cheap hardware

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I’m more of an Intel person, but right now Micro Center looks to have some really good AMD-based CPU/RAM/mobo bundles available. If your budget allows, a Ryzen 7 or 9 would be ideal. Even better if you have one in your area, but they ship if you don’t.

For hardware news and info, you really can’t go too wrong with JayzTwoCents and Gamers Nexus on YouTube.

Newegg is still pretty good in my book. They did get nailed for some pretty shady behavior by Gamers Nexus a while back, but they truly seemed to want to change policies to make sure things like that didn’t happen again. We’ll see. I haven’t had to build a new rig since that went down.

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if you have the power plan set to Balanced(recommended) the cpu clock speed will be the lowest (say about 1.10 Ghz). but will go to the max (say 3.40 Ghz) lower power wattage and lower FPS. when needed but the Ultimate Power Plan will run the CPU at max (3.40 Ghz)at higher power wattage and higher FPS

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Amazing, I thought the throttling on a CPU was hardware dependent for some reason, I completely overlooked the idea of the power setting for processor state. I just thought it would force it to be 100% utilization when you flip minimum processor state to 100% and fry your PC. lmao, thankyou SO MUCH! I have been going crazy trying to figure out why my clock speeds on MULTIPLE systems would fluctuate!

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no problem just keep an eye on the temps most cpus have a TJ of 105c before downclocking

Edit you can also go into the Nvidia control panel (if you have a nivida card) and choose High Porformance

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It would be hard even for most bleeding-edge PCs to reach 165 FPS during mass combat scenarios. You have a very weak GPU and quite weak CPU and your performance will be limited by those components - CPU during mass combat, GPU in modern zones (you would have to drop the quality down).

WoW uses up to 4 CPU cores where one of which is the “main” and 3 do some other work at a lower load. Hyperthreading overall does not help. The main core handles game’s “world state” and in combat the more players/NPC the more complex it becomes so the weaker single core performance the quicker it will limit your FPS. You will see 100% load on one core and some load on the 3 other cores. If you have only 4 cores the OS and other active apps will also add to the load.

If you would want high FPS in raids and to some extent in BGs you would need a really strong CPU from Intel 12/13th gen or AMD Ryzen 7000 (or 5800X3D) then some matching GPU, 16GB RAM.

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Thank you for your insight. I would like to build a machine optimized for WoW, and all of this is crucial information!

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It’s hard to optimize for WoW when it has regressions and problems patch by patch. Anyway, it won’t be cheap.

You can also check some of my benchmarks:

https://rk.edu.pl/en/world-warcraft-shadowlands-beta-benchmarks/

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