Massive stutters with DF client

Whether or not your “asset pop-in” issues are related, it’s pretty clear that this thread is about stuttering. I’ve noticed the stupid draw distance problems for many years…well before stuttering became an issue.

As others have noted, this seems to be happening primarily in the Dragon Isles, with Valdrakken being particularly painful. I know you’re upset but I don’t think your problem is the same. You’re not as bad as Pawg and I appreciate you keeping this thread alive, but we’ve already seen what happens when Blizzard sees an excuse to start talking about a different problem to make it seem like they’re working on something.

I’ve been watching for the stutters in HW Monitor tonight, and I’ve noticed that my CPU jumps up to like 100% for a split second as the stutter takes place. This is with fully updated drivers for everything (using DDU for the graphics drivers and making sure all my random drivers are up to date with Driver Reviver). This is also a fresh install of WoW that I reinstalled 2 weeks ago, and no addons running.

My GPU settings are all normal as the stutters take place; no jumps taking place there, just the CPU. Is anyone else seeing the CPU spikes when the microstutters take place?

If you want to test them easily, just queue for an epic bg and just sit there. They’ll happen even if you’re not controlling your character.

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When I login to my main character my game freezes for like 3 - 5 seconds, after that the game runs just fine. It’s a little annoying. I have no addons installed so it can’t be a UI issue.

The freezing appears to get progressively worse as I progress through the Dragonflight campaign. I first noticed my game freezing upon login after completing a 5th chapter of the Dragonflight campaign a little while ago.

Yesterday I completed a 7th campaign chapter and now the freezing is lasting a lot longer than before.

When I login to any other character that hasn’t done any of the campaign yet I have no issues with my game freezing at all.

(My main is on my EU account)

To confirm this is when logging into the game not the character selection screen? My game freezes for like 1 second on char selection, but when logging into the game it’s like 3-5 seconds as you say and it DOES NOT happen on any other characters I have (they haven’t entered Dragon Isles).

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I’m tired of playing nice with this pop-in issue being mentioned over and over, I suggest you make a new thread about it. If we deviate from what this thread is about, it’s easy for Blizzard to close it or not look at the stuttering.

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I have this same issue. I have a thread about it as well. Still waiting on a Blue reply. It only recently started happening, too.

As a whole I also have the random stutter as well, which is the original point of this thread, but that’s fixed by turning sound off until Blizzard comes up with a fix for that as well.

A real double whammy.

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Disabling the sound worked for me. Either everything or the sound effects. Disabling music alone didn’t help. I can play the game without wanting to punch a wall now but playing without sound effects is lame.

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I posted here a few weeks ago and wanted to say I still have the stutter issue, I have seen zero improvement since prepatch. I also get the 3 second lag when entering the game - but that issue started happening about 2 weeks ago.

Still have the exact same issues from pre patch to now still no fix or update from blizzard and they wonder why people don’t play there game

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Still have stuttering performance issue. Coming in to say for informational purposes. Thanks

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Please ignore Pawgwalker. Despite confirmation from Blizzard that the game engine is experiencing compatibility issues (I can post the transcript from them if I really have to) between the OS and drivers, Pawgwalker insists on banal explanations that aren’t even entirely correct. It’s like watching someone go back and forth with other people who know less than them, but since they only know an iota more than the other person, they just compound the issue by spreading more misinformation.

You don’t really know how CPU bottlenecking works, but I won’t waste my time explaining it in detail, Pawgwalker. I can tell you all that the game doesn’t use more than 75-80 percent of GPU horsepower with a RX 6900-XT and Ryzen 9 3950X in PBO2 mode, and this is while the game is using less than 50 percent of a single hyperthreaded core. I mean, take that for what it is, but the stuttering is NOT coming from the game’s inherent bottlenecked engine.

In my case, my frame rate dips are coming from “in-engine drag” because of DX12 driver calls to my GPU; hence, the driver issues Blizzard has already confirmed are happening. The game simply isn’t using the overhead on my GPU. That is NOT a bottleneck problem on the hardware end, it is a bottleneck on the driver / engine end of things.

A hardware bottleneck is apparent when 100 percent of the GPU is being used, and the engine cannot render more frames because it’s processing power is limited. It can also manifest when the GPU is fine at 100, then throttles to a lower percentage because the CPU is saturated at 100%, and then frames get dropped by the GPU to compensate for the bottleneck, thus bringing GPU usage to lower values. This latter issue is NOT happening, and hence, this is not a hardware issue stemming from system horsepower.

A software CPU bottleneck is when the engine driver calls do not call for overhead available from the hardware system profile itself. This issue is the one we are facing right now as is apparent from numerous tests being done by a broad spectrum of high-end system users across the internet. You can look those up yourself.

In summary, Pawgwalker, you need to stop posting recommended system requirements to those of us who have high end gaming rigs. We do NOT have CPU bottlenecking through our systems because we exceed any requirements to have those issues through hardware profile – even IF the engine through DX12 is still only using 4 cores of our processors. Our latent speed and bandwidth for hyperthreading precludes any CPU bottlenecks from causing consistent stalling at reasonable frame rates.

As for the rest of the issues, yeah, we know there’s a flippin’ engine bottleneck, and it’s not because of DX12 – which is designed to handle 8-core hyperthreading tasks or more if it’s ultimate mode.

Maybe a blue post could illuminate the situation and confirm a few things so people like Pawgwalker and those they are arguing with can stop disrupting the purpose of this post – and that is to relay information to collate for blue guys to do their thing. It isn’t to judge system specs, blame ourselves for our experience, or to inflame a situation clearly antagonizing everyone as it is already.

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Pawg hasn’t posted in 3 days lol…pawg living rent free it seems.

Pretty well written, except that this also affect all the other APIs. DX11/Legacy, Metal (macOS) and Vulkan (Linux) all have the stutters.

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Yes, I can confirm this.

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The no sound workaround works for me. As a previous poster said, it has to be all sound. You can’t just mute music.
edit: I’ve noticed there’s certain things or the sound effects associated that make the stutters occur. For example, the impact of heroic leap. This only happens in Dragonflight areas.

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Blizzard seems to enjoy avoiding commenting on technical discussions It would seem. Honestly everything that has been said is true. The pop-in, performance and frame-timing have all been pretty bad in Dragonflight despite having good hardware. I really wish we could get some sort of comment about this even if its “hey yeah our engine just is outdated. Cant do much. Just letting you know it wont get better.” Cool, then we can all stop talking about it.

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I’ve been looking for a reason to quit WoW and start enjoying all the other games I’ve been missing out on. I’m having a lot of fun. At this rate I’m half hoping Blizzard never fixes the game (or is simply unable to, which wouldn’t surprise me all that much).

Considering the history of this engine, it’s hard to believe crap performance could be the final nail for me with WoW.

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One way to always be able to reproduce this for me is:

  • Go to the enchanting table > get your dragon
  • Press Whirlwing Surge > Surge Forward and land near the AH

From 60 to 37 FPS as you reach the AH. After that back to 60 as if nothing happened.

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Likely draw calls on the CPU and player rendering. It got better when they enabled DX12 back in BFA but since then its gotten quite bad again.

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Whatever it is its awful even with a CPU released in March 2021 while being one the better performing ones (11700k) even with a single core at 5ghz and 4.9/4.6 on the rest this is baaaaaaad.