How can I tell if my GPU is starting to show it's age

How to tell if my GPU is corrupted or broken?

Recently I heard some kind of weird noise, I cleaned my PC from the DUST and now it’s gone.

However, if the game is currently running fine but I notice some FPS bottling, which I’m so I can’t tell if it’s my 7700k CPU or my GPU.

Is there any way to find out?

One thing is clean the dust other is change the thermal paste, I recommend you change them both CPU and GPU, on GPU dont use a lot thermal paste just the quantinity of a rice. Usually by years the thermal paste dry and it doesnt work as before, and the CPU or GPU will heat, also I recommend you format your OS clean state or create another User (Administrator) enter to it, and delete the old user that you were in, in this case you wont lose any program, and do the follow things:

  1. Disable Virtualization in BIOS.
  2. Disable all options for EMI protection in BIOS. (at your own risk but increase performance)
  3. Install LatencyMon program and check if theres a big latency delay between your drivers, if there is, its a need the next step.
  4. Change all IRQ’s in Windows so no devices share the same channels, (checking if theres no corruption on shared ones) (if the graphic card is sharing same IRQ channel with other hardward or and its more than 16 on number there will be problems)
  5. Disable Hyper-V.
  6. Activate MSI Mode on your graphic card and make high priority its IRQ (-1). Theres a good guide on guru3d forum title of the post " Windows: Line-Based vs. Message Signaled-Based Interrupts. MSI tool."
  7. Turn Hpet OFF.
  8. Activate Empy Standy List clean memory. Good guides on Youtube.
  9. Disable Game Mode if Windows 10.
  10. Disable Cortana
  11. Disable Windows Search (services.msc)
  12. Change your Windows Energy Options (Control Panel) to High Performance.
  13. Change all on Nvidia Control Panel to High Performance.
  14. Unpark the cores with Quick CPU (good for old cpu)
  15. Install “Prio” its a program for Task manager that remember options selected, so you can convert wow.exe to be permanent “High Priority” on Task Manager.
  16. Disable Windows 10 Telemetry.
  17. Disable Nvidia Telemetry. “rundll32 “%PROGRAMFILES%\NVIDIA Corporation\Installer2\InstallerCore\NVI2.DLL”,UninstallPackage NvTelemetryContainer” on elevated command prompt
  18. Disable Nvidia Ansel go to "C/Program Files/Nvidia Corporation/Ansel/tools
    and run NvCameraConfiguration.exe then at the bottom Ansel Status to Disable. (Now its on the Ansel folder its not on tools)
  19. Uninstall Nvidia G. Experience (Bloatware)
  20. Go to wow main folder, Wow.exe right click, compatibility tab, check on disable optimizations for full screen then click buttom “PPP high configuration” a new menu appears, Disable High values for PPP change to “Application” ok all ok accept all.
  21. This use with your own risk, but some computers have an increase of 40% of performance, since old computers werent made for security patches for Meltdown and Spectre those downgrade performance heavily for security, theres a tool on Guru3D called inSpectre that can disable them, and increase heavily the performance but use it with your own risk. I use it my computer is mainly for games and I dont visit many websites.
  22. Use TimerResolution on MAX while playing.
  23. Disable GameDVR
  24. Disable Windows 10 Apps stay on background
  25. Close Blizzard Launcher while Players. Must be completely closed not on background.
  26. Right click on Desktop Screen Settings, scroll down click on Graphic Settings or Elements Graphic Settings, Be sure its Classic Application on the square, click to find the app you gonna play on this case Wow.exe on its game folder, then pick maximum performance.
  27. Defragment the World of Warcraft Folder.
  28. Disable Windows Defender or anti antivirus while playing.

Now other step, the following lines got to be added in your config.wtf file located in WTF directory of your WoW instalation.

SET processAffinityMask “value” - This allows you to tell WoW how many processor cores your computer has and it will do its best to utilize them.

The “value” should be as follows:

  • If you are running a single core processor, set this to 1 (sorry but you won’t get any performance from this)

  • If you are running a dual (2) core processor, set this to 3

  • If you are running a triple (3) core processor, set this to 7

  • If you are running a quad (4) core processor, set this to 15

  • If you are running an 8 core processor, set this to 255.

Example: SET processAffinityMask “3”

SET g xTextureCacheSize “value” - You can tell WoW how much memory should/can it use for textures in game instead of just letting WoW to decide.

I’ve tested it and you can easy put all of your card memory to WoW for best effect (assuming you’re not doing something graphically intensive in the background), others say it’s safer to give it a half or 3/4 of it though, and should be enough as well I suppose. Anyway it’s for sure better to set it then leave it on auto.

The “value” should be as follows:

  • If you have a 128mb card, set this to 128.

  • If you have a 256MB video card, set this to 256.

  • If you have a 512MB video card, set this to 512.

  • If you have a 896MB video card, set this to 896.

  • If you have a 1GB video card, set this to 1024.

  • If you have a 4GB video card, set this to 4096.

Example: SET gxTextureCacheSize “1024”

Last recommendation, fans die over time, you should change them is not good the ones that comes with factory. Buy custom ones for CPU.

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Really really awesome guide limey, I thank you so much for your awesome time…

I’m currently testing few things, I realized GameDVR was set to (1) on regedit. Had to set it to 0 and testing now seems better a lot, gonna follow the guide you posted if I see no good result.

I forgot that one also disable Apps running on background.

Somehow, the cause of the insane FPS drop so far was the “nameplate” addon Either from Elvui or Neatplates… That was causing insane fps drop like I gain up to 30fps.

I’m testing in the Elite BGS/ Aka Wintergrasp/Isle of conquest. while 40v40.

I’ll keep you up in touch, so far everything fine… in case someone in future was searching for the same issue.

do what I told you everything on the guide you will win more FPS xD like 50 fps more Im honest lol

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It’s not unusual at all for addons to nuke FPS, cause latency, etc. FPS drops are usually caused by addons that are either badly written or haven’t received necessary updates and are silently throwing thousands of errors (which chews up your CPU), and latency can be caused by addons trying to keep track of tons of players.

A great example of this is the BGEnemies addon, which gives you raid frames for the opposing team, putting priority targets (like healers) at the top. It’s an insanely useful addon, but I have to disable it in 40v40 maps because if I don’t my latency will spike from my normal 16ms to 1000ms+, as if the servers suddenly teleported to the moon or something.

Elvui is nuking the FPS so bad, I tried to join a 40man Wintergrasp during combat with Elvui 29 fps, Without 66fps and smooth.

:confused: I’m really trying to see where is the issue in Elvui because I cannot play without it.

I did half of your guide so far, but I don’t wanna mess up anything before I check where is the actual issue from.

If you know anything with Elvui would be great man, what is causing the FPS is it the portrait… maybe… dunno.

Are you sure this problem with Elvui? maybe you need to check other addons? Weakauras makes fps low

Trying my best, I’ll keep you guys up whenever I check what is causing this FPS drop…

I downloaded MSI Afterburner/RivaTuner To see my CPU+GPU Usage within game…

It looks like WoW at 100% render is using 50% of the GPU … When I put it to 150% render it went up to 90%…

CPU temps are at 45c but suddely 1sec jumps to 57 then back to 40ish… but that doesn’t happen a lot… I dunno if this is because of my OC or the Core voltage.

However, CPU usage is around 33% not sure if that’s good or bad or fine? or it should be more? Or it’s because the Old WoW Engine…

Still testing tho, I’ll let you know just in case someone is searching for this issue as well…

My issue is mainly in 40mans, or 25man raids.

change its priority on task manager to ‘Real time’

Scattered thoughts from my own experience. Some or none of this may be helpful, but it’s worth a few minutes typing it up. It sounds, though, as if your issue is specifically Elvui.

How much RAM is in your system? The difference between 4GB and 8GB on my system with nothing else change was very significant. The difference between 12GB and 8GB was tremendous. WoW can be a massive memory hog, and you don’t need to be consuming all of your RAM for it to have an impact.

If you’re on Win10, make sure Game Mode is off.

The add-ons I’ve found that nuked my FPS the most as more people were around, my group size increased, and/or combat with a large number of people involved was occurring were:
– nameplate add-ons, with load increasing as more nameplate types, more nameplates, and more information per nameplate is displayed.

  • weakauras, particularly if you have out-of-date weakauras; some types of weakauras can hammer FPS even if they’re up to date.
  • a variety of aura and combat message parsing add-ons, either by default or when configured to give you information about everyone else in your raid.
  • Custom fonts applied to anything that renders a great deal of information to the screen on an ongoing basis during combat. Here again I’m talking about nameplates, scrolling combat text, and similar.

The game settings I’ve found that hurt most in similar situations:

  • visible nameplates other than my own
  • shadows, particle density, and other lighting effects in raids could just kill my system

The three things that dramatically improved my ability to play the game with weakauras, nameplate addons, and other goodies were:

  1. Upgrading to 12GB of RAM
  2. Buy a 512GB SSD, plugging it into a spare slot, and moving the game over to it.
  3. Cranking shadows, the two view distance sliders, and most other visual effects down to almost the minimum in any raid, indoors or out.

Again, though, from what you’ve said it sounds as though Elvui is the main culprit. What is it about Elvui that you can’t play without? It may be something you can replicate with other add-ons. Elvui is heavy.

Could you please tell me why? I heard a lot of people saying turn this feature off. But I don’t know why.

Thanks for the helpful guide I’ll follow it.

basically everything actually, the way you can change the entire UI with Elvui is amazing. But somehow, It’s causing massive lag.

Broadly it’s that Game Mode on higher-end CPUs (specifically I7s) doesn’t appear to provide any real benefit, and its handling of background processes can result in anything from erratic performance of background apps to erratic performance of the rig overall.

Most complaints from I7 users involve its throttling (or effective stopping) of background applications (music players, browsers, email, streaming apps, etc.), and its inducement of cyclic in-game stuttering.

Again, I doubt it’s the issue here given that disabling Elvui seems to fix or significantly improve the problem.

If you haven’t already tried it, there is an add-on called AddonUsage that might be informative. It hasn’t been updated since BFA launched but should be installable.

I updated a bit the things to do to run smooth :smiley: