FPS issues in one specific game
July 2, 2013 3:45 PM Subscribe
The boyfriend's having FPS and sluggish gameplay issues in one specific game -- "World of Warcraft." His computer is more than powerful enough to, in theory, run it without any problem, and it used to. What gives?
The boyfriend used to play "World of Warcraft," then stopped for a bit a few patches ago, back in January. He was running the game fine back then. Picked it back up now, suddenly he's having FPS / sluggishness issues.
These issues seem to happen only in 25-man raids -- everywhere else, the game plays fine (40-60+ FPS). They seem to be especially pronounced in Throne of Thunder (he tried doing T14 LFR, and although it was marginally better the issues were still there).
His computer is far better than mine, yet I can run the same raids on the exact same settings with no issues.
Lowering graphical settings makes very little difference, as does removing all addons (it just runs at ~20 FPS rather than ~15, which doesn't make a huge difference). This happens whether or not he's running anything else in the background; all other games run fine, even ones that are far more graphically intensive.
Monitoring program says his video card is not at 100% load (not even at 50%) or particularly at high temperatures when this is happening, and neither is the CPU. Outside of raids, in the open world, with view distance set on ultra his card does hit 100% load, but his FPS never gets below 50-60 there.
His specs:
i 7950 3.07GHz processor
12GB DDR3 Corsair RAM
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 580
Win7 64bit OS, if that makes any difference. He runs the game in DX11 and his card is overclocked to 1100mV Core, 830MHz Core, 2004MHz Memory. He's using the latest drivers (he wasn't when the issues started, so he updated, it makes no difference).
I'm honestly at a loss as to what could possibly be causing this. Any ideas?
The boyfriend used to play "World of Warcraft," then stopped for a bit a few patches ago, back in January. He was running the game fine back then. Picked it back up now, suddenly he's having FPS / sluggishness issues.
These issues seem to happen only in 25-man raids -- everywhere else, the game plays fine (40-60+ FPS). They seem to be especially pronounced in Throne of Thunder (he tried doing T14 LFR, and although it was marginally better the issues were still there).
His computer is far better than mine, yet I can run the same raids on the exact same settings with no issues.
Lowering graphical settings makes very little difference, as does removing all addons (it just runs at ~20 FPS rather than ~15, which doesn't make a huge difference). This happens whether or not he's running anything else in the background; all other games run fine, even ones that are far more graphically intensive.
Monitoring program says his video card is not at 100% load (not even at 50%) or particularly at high temperatures when this is happening, and neither is the CPU. Outside of raids, in the open world, with view distance set on ultra his card does hit 100% load, but his FPS never gets below 50-60 there.
His specs:
i 7950 3.07GHz processor
12GB DDR3 Corsair RAM
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 580
Win7 64bit OS, if that makes any difference. He runs the game in DX11 and his card is overclocked to 1100mV Core, 830MHz Core, 2004MHz Memory. He's using the latest drivers (he wasn't when the issues started, so he updated, it makes no difference).
I'm honestly at a loss as to what could possibly be causing this. Any ideas?
By 'now', does he mean this week? After the 5.3 patch or before?
I only ask as you accounted for almost everything in your question, except for one thing I can think of: if a recent patch caused something weird to happen with DX11 (on a specific setup) and you, on your worse rig, might be playing with DX10 and immune. If you give me dates within a week, I'll trawl through the patch notes looking for changes to particle effects (since that's the most likely culprit--when in doubt, if it's an MMO and causing problems in a raid, it's particle effects) to try to narrow potential causes. Also, figuring out which patch caused the problem would allow me to look for "wow FPS problems after patch X.X" to see if anyone else experienced it and has a fix.
Also, what programs has he installed since January? Started up a new Antivirus? Proxy service? Anything with online connectivity (some games come bundled with the bandwidth-sapping Pando service)?
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:16 PM on July 2, 2013
I only ask as you accounted for almost everything in your question, except for one thing I can think of: if a recent patch caused something weird to happen with DX11 (on a specific setup) and you, on your worse rig, might be playing with DX10 and immune. If you give me dates within a week, I'll trawl through the patch notes looking for changes to particle effects (since that's the most likely culprit--when in doubt, if it's an MMO and causing problems in a raid, it's particle effects) to try to narrow potential causes. Also, figuring out which patch caused the problem would allow me to look for "wow FPS problems after patch X.X" to see if anyone else experienced it and has a fix.
Also, what programs has he installed since January? Started up a new Antivirus? Proxy service? Anything with online connectivity (some games come bundled with the bandwidth-sapping Pando service)?
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:16 PM on July 2, 2013
Response by poster: He noticed it when coming back in May after 5.3. (The very first achievement he got after coming back was May 26th, so there's your date, give or take a day or two.)
After he resumed playing at the very start, he had slideshow FPS (2-3 FPS) on Iron Qon (picking that one because it's apparently the worst of the lot). After rebuilding his UI, pruning his addons and making sure everything was up-to-date, he's now up to 10-14ish FPS on the same boss.
I'm also running DX11, so nope on that end.
He tried dropping the particle density setting lower, it had no noticeable effect.
He's literallly installed nothing new since January, just the occasional software update (antivirus definitions, mainly).
No changes on the hardware end, either, except for a new cooler on the video card (the fans on the old one had died), but if that were the issue, I would imagine he'd have problems everywhere, especially in more graphically-intense games, which isn't happening. There is no temperature / load spike in the video card matching the issues occurring.
posted by sailoreagle at 4:38 PM on July 2, 2013
After he resumed playing at the very start, he had slideshow FPS (2-3 FPS) on Iron Qon (picking that one because it's apparently the worst of the lot). After rebuilding his UI, pruning his addons and making sure everything was up-to-date, he's now up to 10-14ish FPS on the same boss.
I'm also running DX11, so nope on that end.
He tried dropping the particle density setting lower, it had no noticeable effect.
He's literallly installed nothing new since January, just the occasional software update (antivirus definitions, mainly).
No changes on the hardware end, either, except for a new cooler on the video card (the fans on the old one had died), but if that were the issue, I would imagine he'd have problems everywhere, especially in more graphically-intense games, which isn't happening. There is no temperature / load spike in the video card matching the issues occurring.
posted by sailoreagle at 4:38 PM on July 2, 2013
I'd first try disabling any security software, firewalls, all running applications.
Then try reinstalling wow completely. Then try some stepping back a few versions on the video card driver.
After that possibly a complete windows reinstall...
posted by meta87 at 5:12 PM on July 2, 2013
Then try reinstalling wow completely. Then try some stepping back a few versions on the video card driver.
After that possibly a complete windows reinstall...
posted by meta87 at 5:12 PM on July 2, 2013
Disable all mods. Re-enable them by 1 by 1. It's probably a mod.
posted by kavasa at 6:03 PM on July 2, 2013
posted by kavasa at 6:03 PM on July 2, 2013
Is he using Healbot or Shock and Awe? My machine ran WoW just fine until the latest patch. Then, it just plain choked to death with Healbot and Shock & Awe installed, even when I was doing things I'd done previously with no issue.
posted by headspace at 7:01 PM on July 2, 2013
posted by headspace at 7:01 PM on July 2, 2013
Has he tried uninstalling the game and reinstalling it? A recent Rift patch began causing me crash issues, so I did a fresh install of the game, patched it up, and now it works fine.
posted by Verdandi at 9:51 PM on July 2, 2013
posted by Verdandi at 9:51 PM on July 2, 2013
Monitoring program says his video card is not at 100% load (not even at 50%) or particularly at high temperatures when this is happening,
Perhaps the card has started throttling its performance to keep temperatures normal due to loss of ability to dissapate heat? Open the box and clean the dust out of the graphics card heatsinks (and CPU heatsinks too).
Even if it doesn't help, it still will have been a good thing to have done, in a maintenance sense.
posted by anonymisc at 11:50 PM on July 2, 2013
Perhaps the card has started throttling its performance to keep temperatures normal due to loss of ability to dissapate heat? Open the box and clean the dust out of the graphics card heatsinks (and CPU heatsinks too).
Even if it doesn't help, it still will have been a good thing to have done, in a maintenance sense.
posted by anonymisc at 11:50 PM on July 2, 2013
In my experience, it's probably an addon. If he can go to an area where there are a lot of people standing around casting spells or doing emotes ... (hmm, like near a bank on a holiday/weekend maybe?), he can try the trouble-shooting technique that involves halves.
You disable half the addons. If the problem doesn't disappear when the first half is disabled, disable the other half and re-enable the first half. When the problem disappears, you know the problematic addon was in the half you just disabled. So repeat the procedure: disable half of those addons, leave the other half enabled. (Basically: half the addons. Then quarter. Then 8th, etc. If he has only a few addons, he can probably do this one by one.)
He may have to load and reload WoW for the addons that can't be disabled from within the game. But I really, really think this is an addon issue.
(It may also be beneficial to do this in a raid setting, if only because some addons don't start working [or malfunctioning] until they're in a raid with hit bars going up and down. I have no idea how he can get a situation like that where he's not needed to do anything, though. Do battleground PVP? [joking])
posted by saveyoursanity at 12:55 AM on July 3, 2013
You disable half the addons. If the problem doesn't disappear when the first half is disabled, disable the other half and re-enable the first half. When the problem disappears, you know the problematic addon was in the half you just disabled. So repeat the procedure: disable half of those addons, leave the other half enabled. (Basically: half the addons. Then quarter. Then 8th, etc. If he has only a few addons, he can probably do this one by one.)
He may have to load and reload WoW for the addons that can't be disabled from within the game. But I really, really think this is an addon issue.
(It may also be beneficial to do this in a raid setting, if only because some addons don't start working [or malfunctioning] until they're in a raid with hit bars going up and down. I have no idea how he can get a situation like that where he's not needed to do anything, though. Do battleground PVP? [joking])
posted by saveyoursanity at 12:55 AM on July 3, 2013
Was going to suggest CPU heat, as this happened to me a few months back, and it ended up being because while installing a new video card, I'd managed to strangle the fan over the CPU with a stray little power cable, and the problem would only manifest playing games.
posted by nerhael at 1:42 PM on July 3, 2013
posted by nerhael at 1:42 PM on July 3, 2013
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posted by shortskirtlongjacket at 3:56 PM on July 2, 2013