Hi. So I’ve been having this issue since I played Dragonflight, and it’s still happening in TWW.
When I visited Valdrakken/Dornogal and fly around an area with a lot of people, my FPS will tank down to 10 FPS, and it will stay that way even if I leave the area and go to a place where I normally have my capped 60 FPS, it will stay incredibly low until I reload the graphics engine in game, then it goes back to normal.
I’ve tried everything I can think of. It’s happened with no addons enabled, it’s happened after I updated my drivers, it’s happened when I set graphics settings to minimum and when I set them to maximum. I’ve tried every variable I can think of and nothing is fixing this issue.
Please if anyone has any ideas I would much appreciate it.
I found my post from last year detailing pretty much the exact same things:
Didn’t get any replies on that one at all, really hoping someone can help shed light on this issue.
Did you ever try one of those “city optimizer” type addons that try to wrangle a bunch of cvars under the hood while in a city to increase performance? It’s possible it broke some settings that aren’t menu exposed.
Maybe try a full interface by moving/renaming your interface and WTF folders, then log in and run the command /console cvar_default and restart the game. Test and see if the issue persists. If it doesn’t, then it means it was likely an addon breaking something in the persistent CVARS that get stored on the server.
Tried it, nothing changed. It happens with a fresh install as well.
I wanted to add:
I noticed that if I fly around Dornogal and get “the bug”, and then fly far outside the city, my FPS will return to normal unless I turn around and look in the direction of the city. I’m talking like incredibly far away, where nothing inside the city should even be loaded.
Could it be something like the game is keeping models loaded or overloading models and not getting rid of them?
Post a DXDIAG report on pastebin and link it here by selecting the text and pressing ctrl+e or click the </> button above so that the link.looks.like.this. Start+R->type dxdiag->enter->wait for the progress bar to finish->save all information.
It’s possible that you’re running out of VRAM or something and that it’s hitting the shared memory pool(Windows will use some of your regular system RAM as swap space for VRAM if you OOM your GPU, but in doing so, it’s really slow since it has to wait on the CPU to shuffle things around as needed). This can happen if you’ve got other stuff running with GPU acceleration like browers with 9000 tabs open and overlays from the million and one apps that implement them for some reason.
For one, your bios is extremely old. It’s from 2021 and there have been around a half of a dozen updates since then with the latest one being from September of this year. A whole lot of issues/exploits have been improved on over the years.
Also, the “Windows Error Reporting” section at the end is blank and that almost never happens unless you’ve recently updated the entire OS from like from W10->W11 or from one major built to another like W11 23H2->24H2. So I’m assuming you’re using some kind of cleaner like ccleaner or some other kind of similar tool.
How are your temps before, during and after visiting capital cities? It’s possible your cooling is going bad and the extra load of being around a lot of players/npcs might be putting your components into a throttled state.
If you want to test the temps with apps like HWMonitor or HWiNFO64, make sure to uncheck the background FPS limit in WoW so that the load doesn’t drop when you alt tab out to check temps (you can change it back after you’re done testing). Give it a 3-5 minutes in each test and when you’re in a city, make sure to be around a lot of players and stuff and that they are all in view.
I’m not entirely sure how to update the BIOS, as it’s not something I’ve done before.
The error logs are likely blank because I updated Windows last night to see if that would help with the issue (it didn’t). I don’t use ccleaner or anything similar.
The GPU/CPU temps run about 50c, so I don’t think it’s a heating issue, but I will see if I can monitor VRAM.
Yeah, that was one of the potential reasons I mentioned
Well you’ll have to look it up on the manufacturer’s website and follow any directions they have exactly. A lot of companies have Windows UI based updaters for non-tech savy people, but I’ve personally never used them, so I can’t really vouch for them.
Another possible explanation is that your GPU drivers are crashing or are triggering a TDR hang and it’s causing some weird vsyncing issue or the game is going into background FPS limit mode.
You might want to do a DDU reinstall of the Nvidia drivers: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/1001/wagnard-tools-ddugmptdr-manipulator-new-cpu-core-a/
It’s a pinned guide and even the Nvidia staff point people to it.
When you go to reinstall the drivers, don’t install the Nvidia app with them(they phased out Geforce Experience and now there’s a new app that replaces the functionality of GFE). Sometimes it bugs out and sets the max fore/background fps limits incorrectly.
Used that program, clean installed drivers, still happens.
This is so frustrating. WoW is the only game this happens with, and it started happening right after 10.1 dropped.
I fly around Dornogal for a minute, perfectly fine FPS, then bam, hard drop to less than 10 no matter where I am at in the city or where I am looking. This bug has been the main reason I stopped playing in Dragonflight and I can’t believe it’s still happening now.
Check the graphics settings of the game and see if you have the background FPS limit box enabled. It defaults to 8fps and if something is going on with your system where the game is losing focus(it might still look like the game is in focus, but to Windows, it’s not), the game might switch to background fps mode.
Also, if you have more than one monitor, unplug them all except for your main screen and test again. Sometimes another screen will steal active focus.
Yeah I’ve been putting off installing my OS onto the SSD. I guess I’ll go ahead and give that a shot. I’m not entirely sure what all that means, but let’s see if that changes anything.
Ok so, I’ve spent like the last week straight working on my computer and trying various fixes.
From the most recent suggestions, I:
Installed my OS onto my SSD (and trying a fresh WoW install) - still have the bug.
Updated my BIOS - still have the bug.
I’ve tested just about every single graphics option in the game to try to narrow down this bug. It’s very easy to trigger in Dornogal. It doesn’t necessarily matter where I am within the city, I can trigger the bug by leaning into areas of (normal) lag, and then the game will create an “area of low fps”. It doesn’t actually matter if there’s anything of note or visual intensity in said area - it can be completely empty of NPCs (a place where I normally get 60 FPS). My FPS will drop to 10-30 whether I am inside this area or far away from the area looking in its direction.
The ONLY graphics option which I’ve seen have ANY effect on this bug: If I have MSAA set to ON at any levels when I get this bug and then turn OFF MSAA, my FPS will return to normal - erasing the “lag zone”. However - this bug happens even when MSAA is set to off. If I get the bug while MSAA is off, turning it on and then off again does not remove the lag zone.
This is my last day of sub. I’ve spent all month trying to fix this bug. I’ve had no fun playing this game because I’m obsessed with fixing this stupid bug. I’ve been playing this game since launch day in 2004. I’ve never had anything like this happen before. Again it ONLY happens in WoW. I’m seriously at my wit’s end here. I want to be able to enjoy this game like I used to but ever since Dragonflight this bug has made the game unplayable for me.
Please if anyone has any last idea - I’m all ears.
Yeah that’s because under the hood it’s basically running the command /console gxrestart when you change the MSAA setting. Same goes for switching GPU from auto to your GPU and back.
Sounds like there’s something weird going on overall with your system or client though. I’d suggest making a macro with that /console gxrestart in it for now and just click it if your client bugs out.
One more thing you could try is pressing start+ctrl+shift+B (yeah it’s an awkward combo) and your screen will blank for a second. It’s a Windows command that originally was used to deal with (B)lack screen issues and basically resets the drivers and some buffers. Sometimes, it fixes issues with games.
Overall, sounds like something is messing with syncing or fps limiting. Did you ever run the DDU reinstallation of the drivers from safemode? It has to be done in safemode to work correctly.
Running that command causes a hard freeze for a few seconds while it resets everything. Turning on/off MSAA causes no freeze - it’s an instant change.
Doing “/console gxrestart” has always fixed the issue (temporarily), and as I said if MSAA is already off when I get the bug - turning it on and then off again will NOT fix the bug. It will only fix the bug if MSAA already on when the bug was triggered.
I know this whole issue is so weird - this is the only setting I’ve seen have any effect on my entire situation which is the only reason I’m trying to be as specific as possible.
And yes, I did try the driver uninstaller with no results.
Yeah it’s a partial restart, not a full texture pool flush where it has to reload all the textures and assets again. But gxrestart is the full bruteforce version of it.
But anyways, you have something abnormal going on with your system. The only times I’ve seen that FPS limit stuff bug out is when geforce experience/nvidia app bug out and swap the fore and background fps limits with each other, or when people have overlays from apps they don’t realize have overlays(which can hog forground focus and put wow into background fps limit mode if enabled), or when they have a crypto virus that’s hogging their vram, etc etc.
Hello! I am back again! This time, I come with a video showing the issue. Because maybe that will help, who knows?
The very first time I ever had this problem was the day 10.1 dropped. The ravine next to Valdrakken that leads to Zaralek Cavern was the first time I ever got the bug, and it still triggers the bug to this day.
In this video, you’ll see me start out just fine in Valdrakken (using default UI with no addons), averaging around 45 FPS in the city (which is great for me), and then shooting back up to 60 as we leave the city - only to encounter the bug and fall down to ~15fps when I am looking a certain direction on the ledge above the cavern.
The macro I hit in the video is the “gxrestart” macro, which you can see solves the problem for a time. This bug happens also with continued movement around certain other areas such as Valdrakken and Dornogal. (Note that I do not have to be dragonriding to trigger this bug. I can trigger it normally by just walking around Dornogal, but I’m using a trial character for this video as my account is not active right now.)
Alright, for one, seeing the game title bar at the top, it looks like you’re playing in actual Windowed mode (not borderless windowed mode) and sometimes Windows flakes out with Vsync because the Windows desktop manager uses triple buffering and WoW might not be set to the same, which can lead to weird syncing issues. When the game isn’t set to borderless windowed, the DWM has to composite the frames of the windows elements and the WoW elements together every frame. Based on seeing your FPS lock to 60, it definitely looks like the game is vsyncing to 60hz. Since the game is in Windowed mode, the in game vsync option won’t likely do anything.
EDIT: First thing to test: Make sure WoW is in borderless windowed mode and not windowed mode. Test it again and see if the problem persists. This might help rule out any of the MPO stuff I was talking about in the first paragraph.
Another thing: This might be a case of corrupted assets or some kind of security issue where an antivirus or something is spinning like wild when it needs to load/unload assets. Might be memory integrity security related? Maybe the security isn’t handling all the memory requests for loading/unloading correctly?
I know it’s a tall order, but you might want to completely uninstall the game, delete the leftover WoW folder (uninstall will leave a bunch of vestigial stuff behind) to ensure that absolutely nothing remains and then reinstall. This will also correct any folder permission errors and if the drive it’s installed on has any error issues, it will likely write the data to new blocks.
I’d recommend trying to completely uninstall+delete the WoW folder, reinstall to a completely new and unique folder like call it “wow” instead of letting it default, log in and run /console cvar_default to absolutely ensure no server stored cvars are stuck in some weird state. Lots of addons can mess with them without you knowing and their changes will remain even after you disable/delete them.
At any rate, definitely very odd behaviour in that clip. I haven’t seen anything like that with this game before. Especially since that area you were in is like 1/10th the cpu/gpu load of being in Valdrakken…
I experienced this behavior back in ICC when components in my machine were dying.
Was the SSD outside the computer and you installed it? I’m asking since all models in the report were HDDs.
Definitely try the local fixes Pawg recommended first. If those don’t work, I’d look to the GPU since restarting it is “helping.” I also recommend replacing those HDDs. Using all of them at once is affecting the overall performance of the machine.