So some background. My PC is a bit on the older side (6 years), but up until a few months ago I had no issues playing the game. Raids, populated capitals, etc. No FPS issues.
A few months ago, my GPU (GeForce 2060 6G) started to get loud whenever I play games and started and this is where the issues started. I could play like 30 minutes and then it would crash out and my FPS would drop to less than 1 and gameplay would get choppy or just never recover and the screen would freeze. Naturally, I assumed it was the GPU because of the noises it was making.
I replaced the GPU with a 5060 Ti 8G. The problem improved only slightly, but the FPS will still tank and I’ll have to close the game and wait a few minutes for it to recover.
Something not mentioned yet is that I have 8GB of RAM (4x2). Before I replace that (because its really expensive), I’m exploring other possibilities that might be plaguing my comp/software because the game was running fine just a few months ago.
That really isn’t enough for todays operating systems + gaming. You’re probably writing to your page file a lot. Windows 10 and 11 usually idle at like 3-5gb alone. Depending on graphics settings and which version of WoW you’re playing, it’s not uncommon to see WoW using at least 4-5gb.
What’s likely happening is that you’re OOMing your system memory and game related assets that were in system memory are being offloaded to the page file, which even if it’s an SSD, is 1000s of times slower than RAM<->VRAM transfers. If that page file is on a mechanical hard drive, it then becomes a nightmare.
So when the game needs an asset from system memory that has been offloaded to the page file, it has to wait for very long amounts of time for it to be shuffled back to RAM and then VRAM, and that will stall your rendering. If it takes too long, it can possibly trigger a TDR on the GPU.
Your best bet is to look into picking up some more ram or replacing what you have with larger amounts, but it’s a really terrible time to buy any (prices are like 2-4x higher than they should be right now).
Would you think that an additional 8GB would suffice? A friend was mentioning that depending on the game, some things require a higher upper limit, like 16 for the set. I’ve seen prices and have my doubts they’ll go down any time soon so I’d like to not spend too much for this since I already am into this a couple hundred from the GPU.
I actually made a mistake in the original post. I have 16 GB (8x2). I’m still going to try to get some more RAM and see if that fixes it. If not then I don’t think my issue will be hard drive related at that point. Thanks for the help.