Low framerate in 2.1.0 - 2.1.1?
by Datth | 05/06/2007 16:10:48 Patch 2.1.1 had a good deal of bug fixes that went into place. If you had low framerates in 2.1.0, what is it like in 2.1.1? Technical Support ERROR #132 (0x85100084) Program: C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WoW.exe The instruction at "0x4FE59FCC" referenced memory at "0x00000A51". The truth is out there... |
by Datth | 06/06/2007 02:41:12 That was fixed in 2.0.3 or 2.0.5. The bug was that the counter hits 64 FPS and didn't allow vsync. If you're stuck at 60, uncheck vsync. I cap at 60 with vsync on and seen it go up past 100 with it off. |
by Datth | 06/06/2007 02:43:502.1.1 is today. 2.1.0(b) was last week. |
by Cprompt | 07/06/2007 14:57:34 We're very interested in learning more about what's going on here. Let's do a hardware survey. Everyone who has experienced a significant frame rate drop since 2.1.0 please list the following: 1) Processor 2) Graphics card For bonus points, list your graphics driver version. Our goal is to reproduce this problem in-house. If we can reproduce it, we can fix it. |
by Datth | 07/06/2007 23:05:26
You more or less have the attention of more developers now. All of the ones I received were sent to the QA and Compatibility team for reproduction :) I have a copy of all of them too so I'm making them available to the devs as well. |
by Datth | 08/06/2007 23:19:48
Thanks! We'll be seeking out this GM to get the box into us =) |
by Datth | 09/06/2007 00:06:31
It looks like the QA team were getting low framerates on ATI Crossfire configurations when they emailed me. That may have gotten fixed in 2.1.1 but that's a different FPS issue than what you all are getting. They're still going through system configs (sent them 102 of them that you all sent in). We would like a normal box (non SLI, non Crossfire) system to check out since it's obvious that general hardware alone isn't the cause. I have an open channel with cprompt now and I'm trying to get that GM machine in to get it checked out. |
by Datth | 09/06/2007 00:08:21
QA is in charge of that. Lots of paperwork and we can't gut a laptop to see which piece of hardware or software configuration is the offending unit. Ideally if we were to go that route, we'd build an identical workstation, run the game on both pieces and compare. If yours has an issue, we'd doublecheck installed software, driver configs, BIOS configs, etc. Then we play part swap to see if we can figure out which thing is bugging the game if settings won't work. |
| by Cprompt | 09/06/2007 02:05:07 We located the source of one of the frame rate killers. Those of you who were seeing your frame rate drop in specific areas of the world, such as the Forge camps in Blades Edge, will see a dramatic improvement. Fortunately for everyone, the fix can be made on the servers, so there is no need for a client patch to make the fix. We are working on putting the fix together now. We will get it up as soon as humanly possible. |
by Datth | 09/06/2007 07:43:11
Vista won't let you modify this. |
by Cprompt | 10/06/2007 06:24:47
The hotfix made yesterday was a specifically to fix the frame rate issues in the Forge camps in Blades Edge. Frame rate issues elsewhere are not addressed by this update. We continue to investigate other performance problems. So far, we have seen issues that fall into one of 3 categories:
|
by Cprompt | 11/06/2007 19:43:52
Confirmed. We are investigating now. |
| by Cprompt | 13/06/2007 04:26:12 We believe we have now identified and fixed an issue that is likely the cause of loss of performance after alt-tabbing. The fix will be available in the next client patch. It is unlikely that this fix will affect machines that were seeing a general loss of frame rate without having alt-tabbed. We will continue to investigate the general loss of frame rate case. As soon as I have new relevant information to present, I will post it here on this thread. |
by Cprompt | 13/06/2007 04:36:47
Client patches almost never come out on any day other than a Tuesday in the US. Unfortunately, I am not supposed to disclose the exact day when a particular fix is going out. Suffice it to say, it will be very soon. |
by Cprompt | 13/06/2007 09:06:17
The macro issue was readily reproducible in our lab. We found that filling a character's macro pane with macros containing conditionals did indeed have a slight effect on frame rate, but only if said rate was in excess of 120+ FPS. Deleting said macro, or simply its conditional did restore performance. On slower systems, running lower frame rates, the impact was not measurable. The macros are not the source of anyone's problems. We continue to look for the real frame rate killer. :-P |
by Datth | 13/06/2007 17:28:21
More or less, you won't feel the effects of FPS drops in WoW until you drop below ~30 FPS. 30 and up is considered as optimal for this MMO engine. You might like high numbers but functionality is the key. Those that are close to that number won't feel any drops using conditional macros vs those that are way above (60+). And thanks for calling me Darth. I got a good sig from an internal email :) |
by Cprompt | 13/06/2007 23:23:35
The "driver internal error, check AGP aperture" crash after an alt-tab is a separate issue. We are investigating it presently. |
by Cprompt | 14/06/2007 00:15:55
That's certainly more significant that what we saw. So that we're all on the same page, can you post your macro set here? Simply paste in the contents of macros-cache.txt, found in the "World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\AccountName\macros-cache.txt" folder. Just swap in your actual account name, where I wrote AccountName in the path. |
| by Cprompt | 14/06/2007 02:00:49 For those of you who are seeing a drop in performance after alt-tabbing, we need your help. We are updating the public test realms with patch 2.1.2 tomorrow. This patch contains a fix that we believe will address this issue. If you are experiencing this issue currently, please download the test client tomorrow and try alt-tabbing on the test realms. If our fix does not fix the problem for you, please let us know on the Test Realm Forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11572 |
| by Cprompt | 14/06/2007 02:22:15 Althor, something else that is relevant to you and others seeing performance problems with conditional macros: there is a simple change you can make to your macros to make them perform at the same speed they did before 2.1.0. The issue has to do with real time status updates for your macro buttons. In 2.1.0 we added a feature to show the proper dynamic status of your macro buttons on your tool bars. If the macro has conditionals, this complicates the parsing to determine what spell or action's status should be associated with that button. Since this status can change at any time, it is evaluated every frame. We are working on making this process faster, but in the meantime, there is a simple change you can make to each of your scripts that will make them parse faster. Say your macro conditionally casts distract. You can simplify the parser's job by giving it a "hint" as to what spell it should display status for that macro. In this case, you would put the following line at the top of your macro: #show Distract This tells the parse to skip any parsing of conditionals, and just show dynamic updates for Distract on that macro button all the time. Performance-wise, this should be equal to not having the conditional in the macro, but you get to keep the conditionals. If you simply want no status at all: #show none |
by Cprompt | 14/06/2007 08:56:38
By a stroke of luck, we're able to solve multiple issues at the same time, by virtue of us having multiple programmers on staff. Not to worry friends! We're tackling any and all issues that come up -- general frame rate issues and macros slow-downs notwithstanding. |
| by Cprompt | 14/06/2007 09:13:49 We ran our tests on macros again, and found that there were circumstances where a large amount of macros containing conditionals could actually have a severe impact on frame rate, particularly on higher end systems. We are working on a fix. Autumnhh, You mention a performance loss after alt-tabbing (and that the game is unusually active while alt-tabbed out). We did indeed identify such a case. Patch 2.1.2 addresses this issue, and it will be going up on the Public Test Realms later today. Please take the time to download the test client and confirm that this new patch does indeed address the issue for you. If it does not, we want to hear about it on the Public Test Realms (PTR) forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11572 |
by Cprompt | 14/06/2007 18:08:52
It would be most helpful if both you and your wife downloaded the 2.1.2 test client and tried alt-tabbing with the client on the Public Test Realm. Post your results on the PTR forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11572&sid=1 |
by Cprompt | 14/06/2007 18:12:58
Macros are not the problem, they are a problem. We are investigating multiple different avenues, and have already found multiple issues. |
by Cprompt | 15/06/2007 09:04:33
Althor, we believe we have isolated the primary source of the slow down with the conditional macros, and the reason our QA department did not produce results that matched yours early on. The cost of the conditional macros grows based on how many items there are in your inventory. The cost of each conditional macro is a constant amount, but that amount varies based on how many items are in your inventory. The more items, the bigger the cost. If your inventory and bank are full, and you have a lot of conditional macros, the cost is likely very high, and has a severe impact on your frame rate. Unfortunately, this connection to the items in your inventory was discovered too late to get a fix in for the 2.1.2 patch. It will be fixed in the following client patch. In the mean time, as I mentioned in my earlier post, adding the "#show" line to the top of your macros, indicating the spell or action you want to associate with said macro should remove the cost of the conditionals and restore your frame rate. |
by Cprompt | 16/06/2007 03:20:26
We haven't given up on you guys yet. The trouble has been plain and simple. The general frame rate issue has not been reproducible in the lab. We've received numerous hardware specs, and our compatibility lab has tested on these rigs, only to find that their frame rate is fine. We are currently working on getting our hands on a user's system that has exhibited these symptoms. Once we are able to reproduce the situation, we will be able to tell what is happening. On the bright side, we have identified several issues that would impede frame rate, under certain circumstances. Certain places in the world, such as the Force camps in Blades edge, were causing performance problems due to an errant server script. The areas we've been able to identify have already been hot fixed, and should run fine now. We found a problem with Alt-Tabbing that we fixed in 2.1.2 (which is on the Public Test Realms now). We also found a problem with macros containing conditionals. This will be fixed in 2.1.3. Those with several such macros, and a full inventory would have seen a severe frame rate impact. We haven't given up on you guys, but until we can reproduce the general frame rate loss in the lab, we have nothing to go on. |
by Cprompt | 16/06/2007 08:17:45
no. |
by Cprompt | 16/06/2007 08:18:01
Ok, you convinced me. |
by Cprompt | 16/06/2007 23:30:42
Good to hear. Thank you for checking. |
by Cprompt | 16/06/2007 23:36:33
The fact that your frame rate is able to climb back to 60-70 FPS means that you are not CPU bound. In your case, you are limited by your graphics card. The sky is significantly more simple than the geometry in any given part of the world. Where in particular in the world are you looking? |
by Cprompt | 17/06/2007 08:47:30
Unfortunately, we did nothing to the game in the last 3-4 days. Did you move your character to a new location in the world? Perhaps the problem you're seeing has to do with rendering a particular part of the world. Otherwise, our software didn't change between now and then. |
by Cprompt | 17/06/2007 09:04:13
That's the root of the problem. It appears to be a minority of users encountering this horrible problem. Mind you, we still take the issue very seriously nonetheless. Apparently, the same reasons why most players haven't encountered these problems also make this problem impossible (thus far) to reproduce in our lab. We've had no luck reproducing the issue in-house by building matching rigs from user DXDiags, so we're now moving on to bringing in actual user machines. |
by Cprompt | 17/06/2007 20:39:53
Actually, it wasn't me that said that. It is my understanding that your eyes will perceive up to roughly 50 FPS, give or take a few FPS depending on the person. I think you may be on to something with the pattern of hardware though. It has been my general impression that the issues have happened more commonly with ATI hardware, although there are several users seeing issues with NVidia hardware, but only under Vista. Also, the majority of the posts seem to be AMD processors. Even if the source of the problem turns out to be a driver issue, which sounds likely for the Vista/NVidia users, we still need to provide NVidia or whoever with a reproducible case so they can make their fix. Trying to find such a case is our primary focus now. Thank you all for the great posts on page 40. Many of the posts seem to provide useful clues that we can follow up on. All of your insight is valuable. |
by Cprompt | 18/06/2007 17:37:57
You're dead right. If the dev guys had a machine that could reproduce the bug, then the source of the issue would have been identified. That's the source of the problem here. We've yet to have any success reproducing it in-house. As I've said before, we are currently working on getting our hands on a few such machines from certain users who volunteered their machines. |
by Cprompt | 18/06/2007 17:39:58
It is always possible that some other external device is involved, though it is remarkably unlikely. |
by Datth | 18/06/2007 17:50:08
It's more or less the game won't scale as high as you'd like. I have an Athlon 64 x2 5600+, 8800GTS and 2 GB of RAM. Core 2s will eat my system alive but I'm getting maybe 5 fps under him at most with almost everything maxed :) On the low end, my old Compaq Presario 5320US system (P4 1.5GHz, 768 MB RAM, GeForce 4 MX 440 64mb) ran WoW at a decent 25 FPS most of the time on 1024x768 with default settings. It's still more than playable. Playable FPS starts at around 20-25ish for World of Warcraft. Numbers above 30 is a luxury. |
by Cprompt | 19/06/2007 06:08:18
That certainly does smell like spyware. Your issue sounds different than the majority of the users posting here. You should start up your own thread, and post what software you've tried to use to identify the potential virus/spyware/malware. |
by Cprompt | 19/06/2007 06:29:34
We will take a look at Ground Slam and see if we can hot fix it. |
by Cprompt | 19/06/2007 06:33:47
We are aware of performance problems in SSC. We are working to resolve them. |
| by Datth | 21/06/2007 21:32:24 We're still investigating this issue. Hopefully we'll get some kind of update soon after testing a few things. |
by Datth | 22/06/2007 20:19:08
Can you define what type of computer this is? A lot of store-bought ones tend to come with low-end video cards. Models like GeForce 6150/6200, Intel 945s and Xpress 1150s tend to not perform will with games in Vista. Update: We're currently looking into a machine (laptop) with low FPS. |
| by Datth | 22/06/2007 21:10:47 Hi Lichyflann, What processor class is that? As far as I'm aware, there's a BE-2300 (1.9GHz) and a BE-2350 (2.1GHz). There's not a 2100 AM2-based processor. What OS? You'll want to turn on Shader effects as that actually makes the game render/draw faster as opposed to turning it off. |
| by Datth | 26/06/2007 01:20:18 What makes this issue hard to investigate is that there are no common device or thing causing the low framerates. We see an C2D or A64 machine, 8800 card with low framerates being posted and we try to build one. Nothing. We see an ATI one being posted and we try it with our parts, nothing. The laptop is going through a full battery of tests to see if we can learn more about what's causing some of this. cprompt should have more information on that once it's through. If not I can relay what I learn. I can say this...nobody seems to report a Matrox card so far :) DXDIAG files that people sent in can include multiple drives/partitions or single units so nothing there really. |
| by Cprompt | 27/06/2007 04:18:18 We have been informed that the latest NVidia drivers (158.24) report a known driver issue with low frame rate in World of Warcraft under Vista 32. We saw this issue first reported in 158.18. An issue was also reported for multi-GPU or SLI systems under all flavors of Vista. This last issue was evidently a limitation in Vista, and Nvidia is looking for a workaround. See for yourselves: http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/158.24/158.24_ForceWare_Release_ Notes.pdf This issue does not apply to users running Windows XP, or users running Vista 64, but who are not running SLI or multi-GPU enabled. For you ATI users, we were testing ATI's driver release for Vista from last night, and it appears to greatly improve performance. |
by Cprompt | 27/06/2007 09:28:46
No confusion there. The Intel Core 2 Duo is a 64 bit processor. Your machine is 64 bit. |
by Cprompt | 27/06/2007 09:38:57
And I hope you haven't assumed that after all this time and effort, I would simply drop you guys after finding one single piece of information. I know everyone is frustrated and is looking for answers, but let's not give up yet. Progress is being made. Even if it isn't your solution, it does apply to some people here. Thus it is progress. There are multiple issues at work here. We are working to solve all of them. |
by Datth | 27/06/2007 19:13:07
That was 2.0.3. 2.0.0 had a bug where you'd get too many software sound channels depending on what type of sound card you have (and how many hardware channels is available to it). That got 'fixed' in 2.0.3, where it stopped creating the software sound channels if you had hardware sound checked. It used your sound card's hardware channels but up until your maximum 2d sound buffer channels (in most cases, 32 or 2nd notch). Going above that will mute you. That is fixed now and the game will use up to your specified slider position. I think the only sound issue that we're looking into now is that the center channel might be a bit off in 5.1 or 7.1 setups but we're not aware of anything impacting performance (unless you're running 128 software channels). |
by Datth | 27/06/2007 19:55:46
I would check there myself but your guards would chase me down on foot and beat me senseless. The first thing to check in degrading issue is heat. There is an interesting Forceware driver update (beta) available for the FX and higher cards that you might want to try out - http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_162.15.html They skipped a whole bunch of numbers and came out with 162.15. For everyone else - there's bad news and a bit of good news. The bad news is for a couple of machines that we took in to investigate (minus the laptop), they are local machine issues. One in particular was that Windows Defender on Vista was eating CPU time and made the game run at a crawl. We temporarily disabled it and it was fixed. We're checking into the cause of this but it seems to be something local to that system. Not all Windows Defenders are acting that way or you'd see an outburst of Vista people posting. The other thing was that user macros were also affecting framerate (10 fps difference, machine with macros - 15 fps in Shattrath, 25 fps without macros. It was around 15 macros). We're looking into macro issues. The laptop is still being tested at the time of this post. Good news is that we found some things that would drop framerate, such as a certain mob spell. These are being investigated. These are encounter-specific so you won't see a framerate drop all over the world for this thing. I'll make a new thread with things to try out and what we find. Note that there's no one solution for everyone. Some things may work, some things won't. We're still looking into it but we haven't found much at the moment. |
by Datth | 27/06/2007 20:06:51
No client patches since the 19th of June. |
by Datth | 27/06/2007 20:34:47
Don't forget slipstreamed discs too and installation CDs made by a third party. Those can all be derived from a normal Windows installation disc by pretty much any user. |
by Datth | 27/06/2007 23:24:48
We're using the laptop as-is. It's an Alienware Area 51 m7700 machine and no modifications were made to it. It was supposed to have periodic framerate drops but we haven't found anything outside of having spell effects flare on your screen in certain raid situations. It's been left on overnight and used in a raid in addition to normal usage. The only thing we can think of is the system is like a personal space heater if you stick your hand at the back vent. Something like that would overheat pretty easily. We do have AC running in the buildings so it's quite chilly and good for that type of machine. I suggested blocking the vent a bit but we didn't want to kill a user's machine for the sake of testing. We did test the .NET 1.1 and 2.0 theory (single ones being installed and both coexisting) a while back to test ATI FPS drops that people report and found nothing coming from that. I think it was about a year ago before Burning Crusade came out. |
by Datth | 27/06/2007 23:29:49
It's not crackling, but the center channel is just very quiet. You can stand in front of an NPC and click on him and you'd barely hear anything. You turn a couple degrees and you can hear it normally from one of the front speakers.
I'm not sure. I am trying to learn OSX but it's being put on hold until I get a bit more free time. There's a couple of threads on the Mac forums but they seem to be related to the new Macs with the Santa Rosa laptop chipsets. You can try looking there if you're interested. |
by Datth | 27/06/2007 23:46:47
If we accept more machines, it'll most likely end up like the others that we already have. If we need a machine, we'll contact the person. Don't ask to be contacted; we're not a computer repair place. |
by Datth | 28/06/2007 01:25:50
Only at home :) I connect through SBC Global DSL. Irvine is mostly serviced by Cox Communications cable so those that live here go through that. Other areas have their offerings but I've only been in Aliso Viejo and Irvine. That's about as far as we go in the area of actual DSL and Cable connections. Beyond that we don't officially test routers in-house. |
by Cprompt | 28/06/2007 07:07:11
There are a couple of possibilities for you. You may have the number of sound channels turned up too high for your system. Try turning down the number of channels. If hardware acceleration is enabled in-game, try turning it off. Some on-board sound chips claim they support hardware mixing, but they really don't, and only emulate it in the driver. This ends up being pretty slow. |
by Cprompt | 28/06/2007 17:11:41
You mention the temp of your GPU, but have you checked the temp of your CPU? Just covering all the bases. |
by Cprompt | 28/06/2007 17:23:21
I don't have a list in front of me ATM, but it is my understanding that none of Realtek's chips have hardware mixing support. The difference is that the driver does a really slow job of emulating hardware sound mixing. You're better off letting WoW do software sound mixing, if you don't really have hardware support. Try turning off hardware sound mixing in WoW, and turn down your number of sound channels to, say 12 for a start. You can try dialing the number of channels up gradually, if it doesn't sound good enough for your tastes. Take note of how it affects your frame rate. There will be a tipping point where the number of channels will start to lower your frame rate. You probably should leave hardware mixing off permanently. |
by Cprompt | 29/06/2007 06:37:56
Atlas, what you are saying is a misconception. You're assuming that there is only one performance issue at work here. This is definitely not the case. We have already found definitive proof that there are indeed Vista specific issues. Have a look at the latest NVidia drivers' release notes. Ketonehunter stated that his frame rate was exceptional in XP, even with the current WoW patch, but after upgrading to Vista, his frame rate degraded noticeably. NVidia's current drivers don't cut the mustard in Vista32. Even in Vista64 there are several configuration pitfalls. We've seen severe performance penalties associated with Vista's search indexing, as well as Microsoft Defender. However, this certainly does not mean that we aren't continuing to investigate causes for performance problems under Windows XP. The problem is that we have yet to reproduce these severe problems in house. We have brought in multiple customer machines as well as built several of our own, based on submitted system specs from right here on this thread. We have identified and fixed several issues that could impact performance, but none that account for single digit FPS under XP, such as what we've seen posted here. |
by Cprompt | 29/06/2007 06:48:28
Ketonehunter, did you have hardware sound mixing turned on with your old on-board sound card? How many channels did you have configured when you were getting crappy FPS? |
by Cprompt | 29/06/2007 06:55:16
Come on now. When have Dat or I ever said the problem was just with your hardware? Give us some credit. Look back through the thread at our posts. We are expending a significant amount of effort tracking down leads and following up with customers. |
by Cprompt | 29/06/2007 06:56:31
Is there a definite correlation? Can you see your frame rate drop consistently when Firefox is running, and never when Firefox is not running? |
by Cprompt | 29/06/2007 07:01:18
Are you running on an on-board sound card? Try turning off hardware sound mixing. Also, if your number of sound channels is set to a low value, try cranking it up one notch. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but we discovered a bug in the sound system that would have a significant negative impact on performance if the number of sound channels was set too low. Not to worry, we have already fixed this system in an up coming patch. |
by Cprompt | 29/06/2007 07:08:11
You must have been on one hoss of a machine to have ever seen a consisten 60+ in Shatt. What are your specs? Were your settings turned down? We're seeing 30+ FPS in Shatt on a 8800 GTS P4 3.4 running XP SP2 with WoW settings maxed, and 35-40 on a MacPro with an X1900 running in OSX. |
by Datth | 29/06/2007 17:23:59
EvanC and I have an issue where Firefox 2 did eat up a nice chunk of CPU time when you viewed a certain website. Not sure if it's Flash elements running or some kind of javascript but it's a possibility. I play WoW during lunch with Firefox off now and use the Mac to surf :P |
by Datth | 29/06/2007 17:47:21
If it helps, my little 8800GTS 320MB card can do 25-30 FPS in Shattrath at 1680x1050 on max sliders, 2x AA, max slider AF, driver settings on default in Vista. This is also in Windowed+Maximized mode with Aero turned on. Athlon 64 x2 5600+ 2 GB DDR2 667MHz eVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB (mobo is putting it at PCI Express 8x) Vista Home Premium 64-bit Forgot to add: and a ton of custom UIs. Perl Classic, Titan, Trinity Chat, Serenity (for priest), CT....and lots more --edit-- I claim 1337! |
by Datth | 29/06/2007 18:22:10
Back when I worked in IS for a bit, such software was available. I'm sure it is still around in an updated form. Technical Support doesn't get to test machines in in-game environments outside of our free time. That would be something that QA and Compatibility would do. QA has a variety of machines that go through these places regularly to check on balances/tweaks/changes/etc. Low FPS would be something that they would note as it comes up. |
by Datth | 29/06/2007 19:03:42
Someone asked for the performance for a specific video card, then wanted to know what the max settings were. The person it was meant for will recognize it. It's not a generic statement for everyone. I hit 60-80 regularly while outside and 40-50 in Kara last night. It might be appaling to you but it's also in Windowed mode with Aero enabled. Teamspeak, IE7, WinAmp, Outlook 2007, Avast! and a few other things were loaded, as well as maxed sound channels. I can get higher with XP easily but I prefer Windows Vista. WoW's graphics may not be intensive to you but the other stuff going on in the back of the system does kick it up a few notches. That post is really a direct reply to Shakar and no one else. |
| by Datth | 29/06/2007 23:20:49 PTR patch notes up: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html (oops not up yet, http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ptr ) Areas of interest: - The Warlock spell Incinerate has had the performance of its graphical spell effect improved. (casting Incinerate on a big boss had a big performance drop) - Improved the performance of conditional macros, slightly increasing the framerate. |
by Datth | 30/06/2007 01:10:10
That refers to the in-game Sound Channels option. Go into the game and log on a character. Hit Esc, then go to Sound Options. It's the last slider. For those that disabled sound and got a better framerate, run dxdiag and go to the Sound tab. For Windows XP users, move your Sound Hardware Acceleration slider one or two notches to the left. Exit it then run the game with sound on. Did it do anything? If not, try going into your World of Warcraft folder and open the WTF folder. Open config.wtf in a text editor such as Wordpad and try some of these options: Change the sound provider by adding this line in: SET SoundOutputSystem "1" Save the file and try the game again. |
by Cprompt | 30/06/2007 07:53:54
Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to in-game settings in WoW. To access the Sound Options press the Escape key (ESC) while in the game. From the System menu, select Sound Options. From here you can disable hardware acceleration and adjust your number of sound channels. |
by Cprompt | 30/06/2007 08:06:26
QA conducts regular raid tests. We are aware of performance problems with the Kazak encounter. Help is on the way. We have several fixes for performance issues in raid encounters coming in 2.1.3. |
by Cprompt | 30/06/2007 08:18:22
Actually, Fear has come across one of the issues we have identified. I posted about this earlier. If turning off sound improves your performance markedly, then you will likely benefit from turning off hardware acceleration and increasing your number of sound channels by one notch. These settings are accessible from the Sound Options menu in-game. |
by Cprompt | 30/06/2007 08:20:08
To access the Sound Options press the Escape key (ESC) while in the game. From the System menu, select Sound Options. |
by Cprompt | 01/07/2007 00:47:57
I'm assuming you're running Windows Vista. NVidia is aware of this issue. Under the heading, "Windows Vista Limitations", here is a quote from NVidia's driver release notes:
Note that this issue is specific to Vista, and does not affect Windows XP. We continue to investigate issues with XP. |
by Cprompt | 01/07/2007 00:57:51
As I said, the fix was counter-intuitive. If your sound channels are set to the lowest setting, it will actually have more of an impact on your frame rate. Through experimentation, we found that one notch above the lowest setting is about ideal. Setting it to the lowest setting has a severe impact on frame rate on some systems. As I mentioned before, the other thing that can kill your FPS is checking the hardware acceleration box for the Sound Options, if your sound card doesn't really have hardware mixing support. No on-board sound chips that I know of have such support. It's an easy thing to try. If unchecking the box improves your frame rate, then your sound card doesn't really support hardware mixing. We have found that some sound cards "lie" about hardware sound mixing support. They claim it is supported, but really only emulate it in the driver. |
by Cprompt | 01/07/2007 01:24:04
Hi Alextra, I see you are running with on-board sound. Can you please confirm that WoW is running with hardware acceleration unchecked in the Sound Options menu in WoW? If it is checked, try unchecking the box and see if it improves your frame rate. If the option is not checked, try increasing your number of sound channels by one notch on the slider bar. |
by Cprompt | 01/07/2007 01:31:57
Not to worry, there's no danger of that. We take such issues personally. It reflects directly on our credibility if our customers perceive a problem with our product. We want all our customers to love WoW as much as we do. There's a lot going on here that you guys don't see. The tech support department has a direct line to the engineering department, as well as the QA department. An immense effort has been undertaken on behalf of you guys to replicate these issues in-house and fix them. We've been able to identify and fix over half a dozen separate issues, all of which had a serious impact on frame rate independently. The latest example is the sound mixing issue that I've brought up several times lately. Our current focus is to replicate the performance problems reported under Windows XP. We suspect that many of these customers may be suffering from the sound mixing issue. |