Is this a 1080p bottleneck with 3090/6900xt or a WoW issue?

[Zarknoth-cenarius]

so before you ask, i didnt buy more than 2 gpus on this list. i went on a trading spree. trading one gpu for many. so i may be the first here who has had an opportunity to play world of warcraft shadowlands on more than 1 gpu this year alone. the list of graphics cards i tested the game on with a top of the line cpu, is alot. note the first tests were completed between april and august of 2021

this year alone. i played with the following setups where the rest of the hardware has been the same:
All tests completed in shadowlands areas only.

core i9 10900k + AMD rx 550 = 50-80 fps in a busy oribos, sometimes hitting a 100 fps in certain areas

core i9 10900k + Nvidia rtx 3070 = 150-200 fps in a busy oribos, sometimes hitting a 230-280 fps in certain areas

core i9 10900k + AMD 6700xt = 150-200 fps in a busy oribos, sometimes hitting a 230-280 fps in certain areas

then i upgraded my cpu and saw a huge jump:

core i9 12900k + 6700xt = 200-230 fps in a busy oribos, sometimes hitting a 300-350 fps in certain areas

core i9 12900k + Nvidia 3060 = 200-230 fps in a busy oribos, sometimes hitting a 240-300 fps in certain areas

notice how with change of gpu theres very little difference, but the fps still really high.

but heres where the problem i discovered lies

i also tested these 2 setups but both cpus the 10900k and 12900k are running at 4.9GHz:

core i9 10900k + nvidia 3090 = 117-130 fps in a busy oribos, sometimes hitting a 280-300 fps in certain areas
core i9 12900k + AMD 6900xt = 117-130 fps in a busy oribos, sometimes hitting a 280-300 fps in certain areas

in both situations here with an overpowered gpu, the cpu didnt matter. and the gpu was underworked. and fps is way lower than my refresh rate of 165 hz in oribos versus the lower end gpus.

why? why is upgrading feeling like a downgrade? theres something wrong here. it needs to be looked at.

EDIT: i should mention this will sound very strange. but with the 3090/6900xt, if i change my graphics settings crank it all up to max or lower it all the way down to 1. the fps remains exactly the same. i dont understand. it had 0 effect on on fps.

but in classic wow a few months back i tested the 3090, and got 900 fps in stormwind on low settings. then they changed the client and it wont go higher than 300 fps in stormwind now., in the tbc client. i’d say theres a problem with WoW’s graphics api.

[Zarknoth-cenarius]

I found a Temporary workaround in case anyone runs into similiar issues with a 6900xt… and this feature is a bit advanced, but you have to go into the AMD overclock settings where you have to force the minimum gpu core frequency to the same number as the default maximum or just a little bit under. preferably just a little bit under…

the reason for this is i noticed my gpu core clock would only run at 500mhz with world of warcraft running. it seems world of warcraft was not fully utilizing my gpu, so i forced usage while it was running. now im hitting 500 fps in battlegrounds. and like 200 fps in oribos

@Mods you can close this thread.

[Cyrik-jom-gabbar]

As a general statement, the game engine is dated and is still largely CPU bottlenecked. Draw calls and other elements put a significant burden on the CPU. I noticed a much larger increase in FPS by upgrading my CPU than I did my GPU. That’s not to say a high end GPU is worthless, but optimal performance in this game calls for both a strong CPU and GPU.

[Zarknoth-cenarius]

im aware of that. but the problem was that when i upgraded my gpu to either a 3090 or 6900xt. something funky was happening with the game. its like it no longer seemed cpu bound. or gpu bound. it was like no matter what graphics settings i tried the fps was always the same. its really weird.

i posted some screenshots that show the difference in fps on low and ultra settings. in fact on low settings my fps was lower by 6 points. lol

[Album] When your gpu is so powerful that your fps in WoW doesnt change on low or ultra...

[Sarvelis-ysera (Sarvelis)]

As mentioned, the game engine is pretty dated, and is largely CPU bound. It mostly utilizes only a single core of the CPU, but a while back, optimizations were put in place where it will also partly utilize (~50%) up to two additional cores.

As far as the two hardware configurations where it seemed like graphics settings made no difference, to me, that sounds like some potential residual old GPU drivers mucking things up. Even if changing from an Nvidia card to another Nvidia card, it’s important to uninstall the driver used previously - even if the same version - and reinstall a fresh, new driver. I always recommend using DDU in safe mode to clear out the old driver. If that’s not done, you’ll see some strange results.

[Echoplex-faerlina]

6900 XT owner checking in.

Two things to check. First, under the Radeon Software - > Gaming → Global Graphics (or a specific profile if setup for WoW). Under Advanced (drop down arrow at the bottom under vertical refresh settings). Check for “Frame rate target control”. If that is enabled, make sure it’s set slightly higher than your refresh (or to your desired tastes).

Also, in the game settings under “Advanced” check for “Ray Traced Shadows”. I have found that enabling this will lighten the CPU load in my particular case (12900k) but can have adverse effects on FPS in certain scenarios. Stranglethron Vale (TBC Classic) being one where I notice huge dips with RT Shadows Enabled (even on “good” setting) down into the 40-60 FPS territory. Disable this and remove any of the frame limiters I have in place and FPS is immediately back to 200+ usually ~300.

I prefer the look of the RT shadows but have settled on having them on “good” at least in TBC Classic due to this behavior. I would say that I am able to maintain 144 fps (yes, I have it capped) 99% of the time unless I find myself in situations where for whatever reason RT isn’t as optimized as it otherwise could be. But the dips on these crazy overpowered cards isn’t annoying to me anyway as it’s still above 60 FPS and that’s generally limited to short durations while in very specific scenarios.

For the sake of detail however, I did try to see what impact I would get with an OC on the GPU while in one of these lower fps areas with RT enabled. So, in Stranglethorn (Bal’lal Ruins, facing inland) with everything ultra-maxxed with some app overrides in the Radeon software for super-sampling AA etc. I’d say I get about 85 FPS. Changing the resolution scaling doesn’t seem to change the FPS value as much as I would have imagined either (which I have set to 122% on a 1440p monitor). Currently sitting with 85 FPS or so I’d say the GPU is using 40% according to windows and CPU is sitting at 13%. If I go for a reasonable OC on the card to 2650 MHz Core and 2200 MHz Memory with voltage at 1200mv FPS jumps to just about exactly 100 FPS. However, neither of the usage on the CPU or GPU reported in task manager has changed more than 1% in either direction.

To make a long story short: Pushing high framerates generally requires quite a decently high core clock on the GPU so long as the CPU can keep pace. This holds true even if the GPU has tons of spare capacity for other tasks. It’s just about getting that frame buffer to move as fast as possible.

[Echoplex-faerlina]

6900 XT owner checking in. Check for frame limiter caps set in the Radeon Settings and see what the RT shadows settings are in game. RT shadows can have significant negative impacts in some areas and significantly positive impacts in others so ymmv.

Also, even though the GPU doesn’t report being 100% utilized in task manager this is mostly irrelevant on such powerful cards. Bumping my core up to 2650 MHz and the memory to 2200 MHz saw 20-30 FPS improvement in the most impacted of areas. Even though I saw the FPS jump pretty substantially, task manager reported less than a 1% difference in CPU or GPU usage after the change.

[Nok-winterhoof (Nok)]

The performance of Nvidia 30xx cards can be throttled by the use of a power supply that is too low for the card to achieve maximum performance.

For laptops, the GPU output gets funneled to the CPU where it is throttled down to increase battery performance.
The laptop would need to support either a mux switch to disable that ability or an external monitor to send video directly from the card to the screen.