Yeah I am on 20H2. Will run that command once I’m back on the PC. Might not be back home until Monday next week due to work 
I’ll let you know if it finds any corrupt files/improves the game.
I really appreciate your help with this!
I have my notifications on so I will keep an eye out.
I’m having the EXACT same issue…my game used to be butter smooth at a 144fps all the time. Now the game stutters and skips. I just did a fresh install of windows 10 thinking it would solve it but it did not. The only thing that’s worked so far is to turn vsync off. But I prefer to have it on as to not overwork my gpu and avoid tearing. It was fine yesterday…what the heck happened?
EDIT: I determined it’s only happening when i port to stormwind and walk around that area and elwynn forest. Think it’s something to do with the patch.
Give this a shot for your install of WoW:
-
Navigate to your install of WoW in File Explorer Typically found @ "C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft_retail_"
-
Locate the Wow.exe and right click on it and select Properties
-
Go to the “Compatibility” tab and put a check in the box that says "Disable Fullscreen Optimizations”
I make this suggestion because I had something similar towards the start of the patch release and this was the culprit. It was a setting I set a long time ago but somehow got turned off. GL!!
P.S. this works w/ other games that have issues, but it’s been my experience that games w/o an exclusive FS mode benefit more from this.
Doesn’t do anything for games that already run in borderless windowed mode. WoW no longer has the ability to use exclusive full screen.
The fullscreen optimizations are for games that run in the actual FSE mode. It tricks the game into thinking it’s using FSE when it’s actually be piped through as windowed borderless. Allows for quick alt tabbing and such. Basically, all the benefits of windowed, mixed with the benefits of FSE. When WoW made this change, they did it because Windows10 already handles borderless windowed mode like FSE now. The only reason why there are sometimes some frame rate discrepancies, in games that allow both modes, is because in BW mode, there’s a little overhead for the rest of the DWM. So games that might run at 100fps in FSE might run at 95fps in BW.
Here’s a good Microsoft writeup on it:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/demystifying-full-screen-optimizations/
2 Likes
"we enhanced the DWM to recognize when a game is running in a borderless full screen window with no other applications on the screen. In this circumstance, the DWM gives control of the display and almost all the CPU/GPU power to the game. Which in turn allows equivalent performance to running a game in FSE. Fullscreen Optimizations is essentially FSE with the flexibility to go back to DWM composition in a simple manner."
I’m familiar w/ the blog post and the rabbit hole that it has created. It’s especially fun to read some of the conspiracy theories on it.
The suggestion I made was a common suggestion on the WoW forums and has netted a few results including my own first hand experience.
Most recent example:
Another example:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/83-fps-drop-and-freezing/428353/34
I almost wanna say this is related to GSYNC/dx12 interaction somehow. I’ve seen quite a few posts all seem to have that common thread, I never needed to disable the optimizations until I got a gsync monitor myself so I’m not sure.
This made no difference for me. Maybe made it worse actually. I definitely think its something to do with Gsync interaction with this game right now. Something must have gotten messed up with their code for the patch. Taking vsync off in goldshire shoots my FPS to 250-300 and there are no stutters at all. Vsync on and my FPS goes to 143.5 but will bounce +/- ~1 fps and the stutters and skips are noticeable. It’s a frame timing issues for sure. I tested a couple other games to ensure it wasn’t doing it on them, like Overwatch. Perfectly fine. Not sure what to do.
That applies more to older gen games that are still running DX11 legacy and under.
The actual option you’re disabling is ONLY for games that can use true FSE mode. BFSW is the default option for most games now and is the default for DX12 now. This is why WoW doesn’t allow FSE anymore, due to switching fully to the DX12 API(even the DX11 is just a fallback, but still runs through Win10 DX12).
Regardless of if you use FSE or BFSW mode, they both become the same when you’re using DX12. That’s why there’s no point in even trying to implement FSE anymore because there’s no gain. It all gets run through the same path now.
And I’ll say it again, it will do absolutely nothing for WoW. Anyone that claims it does is falling for placebo. It’s another one of those snakeoil performance hacks, like when people go into the registry and change scheduler settings, and then claim they notice a difference.
Updating: I was able to fix the issue with the Overclock feature of my LG 144hz Gsync monitor. The overclock feature increases the Hz of the monitor to 165. Opening the game back up my FPS is locked to 165 and the stutter is gone. Not sure at this point if the problem is wow related or just something on my end.
Tooled around for a few more mins today. Windows found the corrupt system files and repaired it but made no difference in-game unfortunately. Also increased my monitor overclock to 165 hz but set my cap to 144 in case I was pinging off the gsync ceiling but the result was unchanged as well.
I guess really the only thing left to try is a different gpu driver version. Going to have to try like 452.06 or something old and then switch up to the most recent and see if there’s a change. I really miss my old pc lol. Thing was a tank and I didn’t have to spend so much time tweaking each game to reduce microstutter.
There’s been a bug all throughout BFA for hunters, where the screen stutters whenever they mount/dismount with a pet out. That might be what you’re seeing on your hunter.
1 Like
Thanks, sounds like it could be related then. It’s not specifically occuring with the mount/dismount but almost constantly. Worse in combat too as it’s basically constant stutter during it.
1 Like
I played a lot more this weekend on a few toons, I am not experiencing the stuttering but I was getting 1-2 second delays just doing basic things in a few zones.
Appreciate the response. I guess I’ll chalk it up to whatever combo of driver/game/dx12 optimization in WoW for now. Maybe tool around with some driver versions.
I can confirm a stuttering gSync issue in WoW in any nVidia driver past 452.06, when they started updating the drivers for the new 3xxx series of cards. If you revert back to version 452.06, the gSync stuttering magically vanishes.
I can confirm that I just tried 457.30, get a massive stuttering issue, and revert back to 452.06 and everything is better.
nVidia has not solved this issue for months. They dont acknowledge it. I have a 1080ti and cannot upgrade even if stock existed, because I would need to upgrade the driver in order to use the new card, and games would be broken.
For now, try using 452.06 and see if that works for you.
2 Likes
Really appreciate the response. I’ll have to give it a shot the next time I’m home.
I also took two screenshots of msi afterburner while running around attacking mobs in elwynn with and without my pet but good ol’ Blizz won’t let me post and Imgur link. Super weird and fingers crossed that this improves it.
Thank you so much! It worked for me.
Add me to the list of people affected by this and possibly seeing it resolved with your driver rollback solution.
I’m on a Ryzan 2700 with an nVidia geForce 2080.
I was seeing this issue for a month or two over in Guild Wars 2 and had just assumed their game was bugged. When I resubbed here and the problem followed me, I started thinking my system was messed up.
Cut all my graphics down, started culling out addons… nothing worked.
So far… I’ve just been running toons back and forth in towns while in meetings for work… once I can get on properly, I’ll go out and run some real content in both games and a few other games as well… and see if it really fully fixes it.
No one else in my GW2 guild seems to have the issue - and thus far the ones noting that are all on 10xx cards. But this thread was started by someone with a card that I think is the same as a guild member…
So I’m really curious what is the common link between everyone affected by this.
Tried driver version 452.06 but there was no real change unfortunately.
My hunter still gets regular frametime spikes with a pet out but most (if not all) other characters feel fairly normal to play and the frametime graphs reflect that. Their graphs aren’t perfect but it’s not noticeable in combat, mainly just when loading in new areas or asset pop in which I believe is normal.
So far I’m leaning toward a game bug being the root of my hunter microstutter as it happens regardless of my settings combinations.
1 Like
Sorry for the late reply. When reverting drivers stopped working for me, I had to reformat Windows and that seemed to work. I used the older drivers though once windows was installed.