Hi, I have been having a weird issue recently. I think it started a few days or weeks ago. When I start my game everything looks normal, most of my graphics are maxed out and everything looks fine, but after a while or maybe hours the graphics degrade and for a like of a better word, everything becomes more and more pixelated. When I look at my graphic settings most things are still “maxed out”, but some options becomes turned off or says “requires a compatible or capable gpu” or something like that. I have a RTX 4070ti and never experiences issues before. The problem also only seem to affect game assets, because my chat window, healthbar, nameplate, etc are all fine and don’t look degrade. If I reload UI, nothing changes, if I relog nothing changes, but if I close and re open the game everything is back to normal in the beginning.
I have a background in IT and did a few troubleshooting steps and as of right now, nothing really helps, but since it takes some time for it to happen in game, is sometimes hard to tell. I have done all my Nvidia update, my next step is likely a DDU and Nvidia drivers re install. I’M mostly asking if anyone else have experienced something like this.
PS: I doubt the issue comes from my GPU or my hardware in general, nothing else seem affected and all temps seem fine.
Historically this is caused by a display driver TDR when running in DirectX 12 mode. WoW’s engine subsequently loses its display surface and falls back on DirectX 11 mode instead. Being in DirectX 11 mode, some features become disabled (such as RT lighting). At the same time it also picks up a slightly lower resolution (I suspect it believes the window has borders on it), which results in upsampling artefacts as it’s still displayed at full resolution.
I’m unsure if similar happens during a TDR when already in DX11 mode, mostly because I’ve never had it happen to observe.
You can fix your resolution by changing to windowed mode temporarily and back. I’m not 100% sure about restoring the features without reloading the client - you could try “/console gxRestart” or manually forcing DX12 mode (if it lets you).
Thanks for the feedback, I tried a few things and it always seem to come back. Did a full DDU with the latest Nvidia drivers, but at some point, like half an hour to 2 hours it seems to come back. If I try to switch from Dx12 to dx11 and then back to Dx12 it crashes the game with an access violation warning. Tried resizing the Window too to just Windowed mode which also resulted in an access violation crash. Very weird. I find it weird no one else seem to be having the problem, it seems to be from the latest WoW patch. Maybe the last two Nvidia patch did it? I might try reverting Nvidia drivers to 2 patches ago and see if that does anything.
What temperatures are your GPU running. And overheating GPU can cause pixelation