DirectX APIs in 8.1.5

Community General Discussion
1

New Graphics APIs in 8.1.5

In 8.1.5, we are making some improvements to how World of Warcraft uses DirectX. In essence, our old DirectX 11 is now called DirectX 11 Legacy, and our new DirectX 11 is multi-threaded. More details on each DirectX version is below:

DirectX 11 Legacy

A single-threaded rendering backend. This is provided to be the most compatible with older hardware, operating systems, and drivers. This is also the least performant. This is very similar to the functionality of DirectX 11 in 8.0.1.

DirectX 11

A new multi-threaded rendering backend using DirectX 11. This should improve performance for older GPUs or operating systems that don’t support DirectX 12. This is new for 8.1.5.

DirectX 12

A multi-threaded rendering backend using DirectX 12 for hardware, drivers, and operating systems that support it. There are some performance improvements in 8.1.5, but it is mainly the same as the 8.1.0 release.

1 Like
2

World of Warcraft Supports DirectX 12 on Windows 7


After we saw the performance gains of using multi-threaded rendering in DirectX 12 for the initial Tides of Vengeance update, we worked together with Microsoft and our hardware vendors to bring similar performance gains to our Windows 7 users. We are pleased to announce that with today’s content update, World of Warcraft will now support DirectX 12 on Windows 7. This allows our Windows 7 users to take advantage of the performance benefit of using DirectX 12, which was previously only available to our Windows 10 users.

Windows 7 users will need to make sure they have the latest graphics drivers to use DirectX 12. If your GPU supports DirectX 12 on Windows 7, you may enable it by selecting it in the Advanced System settings, under “Graphics API”.

5

While Win7 and DX12 is huge success for the game, please also make performance gains in current hardware.

For example make WoW to use a lot more video memory. I have 8GB dedicated video and WoW use very small amount when running. Also make use of more system memory, when there is free, more RAM lesser HDD read, no matter if is nVME SSD. Make use of all system cores. Here Ryzen try to balance it, with their Zen, but still can make it more useful.

Make some hardware upgrade of servers itself, still can’t handle 40vs40 and WPvP fights.

EDIT: On January 14, 2020, Microsoft will no longer support Windows 7

4 Likes
6

My wow crashes when i use DirextX 12, What’s the point of better performance if you can’t even open the game? …
Windows 10 Home, GTX 1070, I7 8TH GEN.
ERROR #132
574FA02E-ECE4-451C-928E-27DB5E323DC0

1 Like
7

It’s not like flipping a switch. There has to be parts of code that can be processed independently. DirectX 12 they most likely rewrote most of the code.
As for more ram usage there needs to be a reason to store it and you need to spend time storing it in RAM.

While WoW might not store everything in RAM windows does. Windows uses excess RAM to cache files that it may need so that in itself will help.

To test this try loading a program that takes a while. Close it and load it again. It’ll load up much faster because Windows had already cached the files last time.

Why find out why it’s not working. If there was an issue with the game many more people would be having it.

8

Sorry, Blizzard after such good news on paper game run worse now than before, nothing I have change and big PvP fights are terrible. GG in such fake good news, while in game things are worse, than before.

This goes and for you @Someoneelse. Forget about PC RAM, game don’t use dedicated video ram also.

9

I notice a uptick on RAM usage with DirectX 11 Legacy. Is that to be expected?

10

I for one am very happy with the new multi-threaded DX11 mode!

My ancient setup was constantly CPU (i7-2600K) bottenecked with my dual GTX 670 SLI only being 50 to 70% utilized. With the new DX11 mode both GPUs are often 100% utilized and I have seen a very significant rise in FPS!

So thanks for the good job Blizzard :+1:

11

I noticed a increased use of RAM since the new DX modifications were introduced.

Is that normal?

12

Was planning a large benchmark for WoW 8.1 but got on hold for the 8.1.5 changes… now even more work to be done :stuck_out_tongue:

Threadripper 1920X: Vega 64, RX 560, 550, GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 950, GTX 650 Ti, GTX 570, GT 1030, RX560 Crossfire, GTX 950 SLI
Ryzen 3 2200G: iGPU, dGPU
Athlon 200GE: iGPU, dGPU
G3260: iGPU, dGPU
Pentium J5005: iGPU, dGPU
A8 9600: iGPU, dGPU
i7-7700HQ laptop: iGPU, GTX 1060
NUMA mode + dGPU: 2 x Xeon X5675, Opteron 6386 SE

And there is even more work around making a set of repeatable benchmark places or actions + monitoring :slight_smile:

13

It seems there is indeed something fishy with the increased RAM usage.

From the US forums:

14

For those with RAM issues, you can switch to “DX11 Legacy” mode, then the usages will be back to normal:

For my setup I get:
DX11: 3,9 GB
DX11 Legacy: 2,6 GB

But, you will then miss out on the performance gain from the new multi-thread optimizations.

15

Im using DX11 legacy. Theres a uptick on RAM.

I’d just like to learn if it is intended or not to know if I need to plan around it or wait for a fix

16

Likely they keep something in RAM in mutithreaded mode to sync work between them. Or each thread/core has it own copy of data thus more RAM in total.

17

I’m running really poorly this patch.

18

A confirmation about the need of extra RAM would be nice, so that i know i should be ordering extra RAM. :slight_smile:

19

It may be caching stuff since there’s extra RAM. Unless Blizzard confirm this dont take it as a bug.

20

Весь мир, я вас все х [[[[