3D acceleration crash or spike lag

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1

Hello,

I’ve been trying to deal with an ongoing issue regarding “World of Warcraft was unable to start up 3d acceleration” crashes.
Now there seem to be a lot of different solution on how to fix this issue and I think I’ve tried almost all of them.

I’ve tried:

  • Disable fullscreen optimization
  • Run program as administrator
  • Run program in compatibility mode for: ‘Windows 8’
    (This actually the one that fixes the error message and the crash, but instead I get a lag-spike…)
  • GPU driver is up to date with latest available (v425.31 for GeForce GTX 880M)
    (Also tried uninstall driver in device manager and re-install it)
  • Assigned ’ High-performance NVIDIA processor’’ as the preferred graphics processor
  • Running the game directly from the WowClassic.exe file, also by renaming it and launching from it
    (as suggested in this post: World of Warcraft was unable to start up 3D acceleration)
  • Disabling any overlays, i.e. discord and Nvidia
    (Even tried closing any background applications)
  • Disconnecting 2nd monitor, using only the laptop monitor.

As mentioned above, the options that fixes my 3D acceleration message and crash is simply running the game to run in compatibility mode for: ‘Windows 8’, but it doesn’t fully fix the issue. Instead I get lag-spike/freezes at those occasions when I would otherwise get a ‘3D acceleration error’. Sometimes its just a short lag-spike for 1-2sec other times its more like a freeze for 5+sec and sometimes it also turns my screen all black and/or even crashes the entire computer for which a restart is necessary…

My PC specs:
Alienware 17
CPU - i7 4940MX
GPU - GeForce GTX 880M (No temperature issues)
RAM - 32GB

This all started a few months ago sometime in the summer, and seem to gradually just get worse. Otherwise in between the lag-spike WoW Classic runs smoothly and perfect.
The only thing that actually works is swapping to using my integrated GPU, but that comes at a big performance hit, ~25-35 FPS on low settings.

It seems this is a very common issue on different setups and Blizzard doesn’t seem to resolve it but instead just gets the user to make ‘workarounds fixes’?
I mean WoW is literally the only game ever of all games I’ve played and experience this 3D acceleration issue thing, so surely its not just a user issue.
There gotta be something with the game that triggers this. Blizzard says “WoW doesn’t support 3D acceleration”, so why does the game even trigger such behaviour…?

It seems to mostly trigger when I’m travelling around in the open world, especially when flying. When in dungeons/raids not very often, but it can happen.

Any further ideas on fixing this issue appreciated.

2

i have exactly the same problem i cant run the render scale or decrease ui scale cuz it crash and say that with 3 d acceleration

3

What version of windows 10 do you have? Type winver into the run window (Windows key +R).

You want to be using version 2004 or 20H2. There’s a tool from the Microsoft website to upgrade called Windows 10 Update Assistant. Download and run that and it will update your system.

This fixed the huge lag spikes and 3d acceleration crashes for me.

EDIT: Scratch that, I’ve started getting the freezes again for some reason.

4

I have the same issues as OP, and unfortunately it occurs on both windows versions for me. Also tried with multiple Nvidia Drivers versions RTX 2080.

My only way to be stable is using DX11 Legacy.

Other people with similar issues solved it by disabling all overlays (wasn’t helpful for me).

UPDATE:
I’ve been playing with the graphics settings by disabling and lowering to the minimum all of them and then slowly turn them back 1 by 1 and testing for a while to where I use to play (preset 7).

I’ve been stable for 3 doing this until I turn SSAO on, regardless of the quality of it. After crashing with it 3 times, I changed it back to “Disabled” and I’m stable again.

Could you give it a try and report back?

5

I started to have the lag spikes in Shadowlands. Sometimes 5s sometimes 20. But it was once every hour or few.

Now the freezes take up to a minute.
Make my screen black or crash the WoW program with a note about 3D acceleration.

They happen every 5 minutes at least!
Even two times during the same minute.
It’s unplayable.
I’ve tried all the above solutions.
Nothing works.

I want to get a statement from Blizzard what they are doing about this.
What information or logs do they need from me.
And I want a fix! This is outrageous that this is happening for more than 3 years!

Either fix this NOW or I want a refund for the game, gametime and my time.

I’ll posty setup details later, when at home.