There are newer generic drivers directly from Intel and Nvidia for Windows 7, but they cause problems for some laptops. And of course, most manufacturers don’t update their custom drivers.
Hey all,
Our dev team is looking for a bit more information from you all in regards to this error. We’ve got a couple ideas for what’s up here but this’ll help us narrow things down.
Are you using your laptop monitors to play the game, or an external monitor when you have this issue? If you’re using the external monitor, does the laptop monitor have the same behavior?
Laptop monitor here. I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 745M. I’ve posted a more detailed description of my problems in this post.
I am using the built-in monitor on my laptop. I just tried to solely use an external monitor and the same issue occurs.
I usually use an external monitor, but I’ve tried the laptop monitor as well. The problem isnt usually quite as bad on the laptop one but its still clearly there with lower framerates than normal and the choppyness, so I’m guessing the only reason there is any difference is because it uses a smaller resolution than the external monitor.
I use only the laptop monitor, i tried a external and same problem. I’m still having the same issue, framerates are fine but there is a noticeable choppiness when moving, also standing around any ground effects, portals or spell effects will cause the whole laptop to slow down to a crawl, til i move away from such things. I’ve adapted to the choppiness but the computer slow down is what’s really getting to me. I stand next to the portal to Darkshore at the docks and the computer starts struggling and voice chat gets really choppy, same with raid bosses like Grong and his fire on the ground. I did Throne of Thunder and Doromu’s eye beams almost killed the laptop lol.
UPDATE: The game now runs A LOT worse since tuesday. I don’t know what you guys did but something has the game stuttering horriblely now when turning left and right, even the mouse cursor is stuttering.
Any updates on this issue?
Nothing just yet Oldmana, sorry for the silence so far. Other than lower powered graphics cards, we haven’t identified any root cause, but we’re having the quality assurance/engineer teams look over the data we’ve got so far.
Spoke to support again, they said it would be useful to mention that there has been a Nvidia driver update since I last provided information. It has not resolved any issues. Here are updated reports:
MSInfo: pastebin(dot)com/HvgTB02r (Windows Error Reporting culled)
DxDiag: pastebin(dot)com/M4G5MCjB
Are there any updates on this issue? It’s been quite awhile since I’ve actually been able to play the game and my pre-paid game time is just ticking away…
I’d also like to add that I tested WoW in Windows 8.1 and this issue also occurs there.
Oldmana,
We haven’t gotten any recent updates on this specific issue. There was a separate issue being investigated where we needed to disable the Windows 7 Aero feature to prevent issues, but ultimately it doesn’t seem to have helped with this. I bumped our thread on this issue, but ultimately the version of directX 11 you’re stuck on on older versions of windows likely lacks the fix for this issue, and that’s going to be out of our control.
If you are having this problem, there’s a known work around in upgrading to windows 10. I would recommend doing this. I can understand hesitance to use the newer version of Windows, but Windows 7 is about to be fully dropped from all levels of support by Microsoft in about 5 months anyway, and historically we follow suit when this happens.
As for the problem also happening on 8.1 - is anybody else seeing that behavior? This is the first I’ve heard of that.
If this issue is truly a bug with DX11, then there doesn’t seem to be a reason to me that changes to the game made to the DX11 Legacy setting can’t be reverted to avoid this bug. The issue starting occurring after a WoW update, not a Windows nor driver update. Patch 8.1 introduced the issue, but there was a workaround. Then after patch 8.1.5, the workaround was no longer present.
The game is supposed to work properly for Windows 7 and I absolutely intend to play the game on Windows 7. My discovery that the issue carries over to Windows 8.1 was quite disappointing as I intend to move to that version of Windows after Windows 7 support ends.
I’d be willing to provide any additional diagnostic data needed on both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 if it helps towards resolving this issue.
Boy, do I have some VERY happy news for everyone in this thread. I have found another makeshift method to circumvent this issue! It’s a shame it’s had to come to my own poking around to get a fix rather than the QA team pushing out a polished fix for this issue, but I’ll take what I can get here. Allow me to explain what my findings are…
If we recall back to when this issue originally came out in patch 8.1(That’s 10 months ago! No official fix to date!), we were able to circumvent the stuttering by changing the “Graphics Card” setting, ironically, to the integrated graphics rather than the dedicated graphics card. This was fine until patch 8.1.5 rolled around and broke the Graphics Card setting(for us). No longer could we select the integrated graphics, but instead just saw duplicate dedicated graphics card options.
After much various troubleshooting and attempted workarounds for over half a year, I’ve finally stumbled across the solution. I had the crazy idea of manually changing the “Graphics Card” setting in the WTF\Config.wtf file to the name of the integrated graphics adapter. This absolutely works! There are a few notes and caveats I need to mention:
- After manually changing the setting, it will be overwritten after you exit the game.
- You can prevent the setting from being overwritten by starting the game with the command line argument to reference a separate config file.
- This will prevent any settings changes to not persist upon game restart.
- DX11 feels slightly janky, stick with DX11 Legacy.
- (More a note to QA): After applying this fix, switching to the dedicated graphics card in the same game session does not create the stuttering issue. There’s no performance difference. Not sure why this is the case.
Instructions to fix the stuttering
- Locate your WoW folder, navigate through
_retail_\WTF. - Create a copy of
Config.wtfin the same folder. Name it anything, I’ll name itConfigfix.wtffor this demonstration. - Open
Configfix.wtfwith any text editor, such as Notepad. Search(Ctrl+F) the file for the text gxAdapter. - If the text is not found, create a new line anywhere in the file.
- We’ll need to find the name of your integrated graphics adapter.
- Press Windows key+R to bring up Run diaglogue, type dxdiag and press enter.
- Press the Display tab, then look for the adapter name under Device>Name. It should look something similar to Intel® HD Graphics 4600.
- Either replace the line in
Configfix.wtfthat contains gxAdapter or the new line you created with the following:SET gxAdapter "NAME OF YOUR ADAPTER INCLUDING THE QUOTES" - Save the file.
- Go to the Battle,net client, click the big Blizzard logo on the top-left, navigate through Settings>Game Settings>Scroll down to World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth.
- Check Additional command line arguments.
- In the text box below, enter
-config WTF\Configfix.wtf - You can now launch the game with this issue being fixed. If you’d like to change in-game settings, you will need to remove the command line argument, make your changes, then redo the steps above.
Alternatively, you can use a macro to change the setting and restart the graphics engine every time you log into the game. Not very convenient in my opinion, but here’s the macro:
/console gxAdapter NAME OF YOUR ADAPTER WITHOUT QUOTES
/console gxRestart