Im downloaded a completely new client, completely reinstall the gpu drivers and updated windows to the latest builds. No effect.
rtx 2070, 16gb ram, 9600k.
Even when rendering at 100%, i have problems in the spires after the patch and loading the GPU up to 100% in places, which was not the case before the patch at 200% rendering … That is, the drop is less than 60 frames …
And also disgusting flickering on the place with last boss, flickering swords at the entrance and other graphic strange things.
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The reason i am asking, is that Addons that run innefficient loops, can accumulate fps hits over time, so if you reinstalled any addons, afterwards it may still be an issue, if that one addon you reinstalled is the problem. Deleting the WTF which stores addon memory may sometimes work, but if you keep the addon then it still persists. Regardless if you did infact delete them and not reinstall them then that is obviously not the issue, and you can reinstall all your addons again, if they arent the problem no need to treat them as a variable.
Its worth noting that FPS drops can happen if your system uses too much ram, or has been turned on for “too long”. But since you rebooted thats probably not the case either. Unless you boot chrome with 500k tabs everytime.
A lot of the time players are quick to blame an update in a game for their fps loss, while it may be completely coincidential. I will say though that an update to like the one we just had is unlikely to be the cause of any framerate changes within existing content, but its plausible.
I would argue that 16GB of ram is on the low side if you run other software in the background, though it depends on those programs and how effecient your bus is, which on newer systems is pretty fast. So older systems need more RAM than newer systems to operate with same ease.
You might also be experiencing whats called artifacts, with what you describe as flickering swords. This means its more likely to be an issue with your Graphics card; it could be memory, gpu or otherwise. If you have another Graphics Card lying around you could try to swap it and see if it helps. I doubt very much its a software issue related to World of Warcraft based on your description and troubleshooting so far. I am much more inclined to believe its a hardware issue with you RTX2070, or a driver issue, the latter you can do very little about. HOWEVER, there is something you can try.
Uninstall ALL Graphics card drivers, then clean install the newest drivers.
IF you don’t uninstall your previous drivers, they may become corrupt as they try to recycle old data. Think of it like you are shopping for spare parts, instead of buying new. You may keep the older yet seemingly functional duds and studs, but they don’t quite fit with the new parts because they have deformed in use, and thus they may look fine, and operate fine, but won’t fit. Take for example swapping tires on a car:
You ought to swap all four, but most only swap the two most worn. The other looks fine, but are actually pretty worn, and its not as safe to drive, as swapping all four. If you only swap 1 or swap 3, that can actually be straight up dangerous.
For your Graphics Card drivers, which reuse parts of an older installation, this can sometimes cause glitches, and artifacts, and sometimes straight up break the card, which is why you should always do clean installs, yet I for one am a bad boy just doing the easy fast install.
So what can you do:
Start with uninstalling all Graphics Card drivers, then install the newest.
If that doesn’t fix the issue, try to swap the Graphics Card to a different one.
If that still doesnt help. You might have an issue with your PSU, or multible issues.
If your PSU is a cheap one… throw it out! Never cheap out on the PSU! You might also have insufficient power for your system, because while its rated 80bronze 500W it might not deliver 500W. and the 9600k is a hungry chip, pair that with rtx2070 and some driver updates… ugh 500w 80 bronze is not sure to be enough.
If you like all the rad kids nowadays have an entire stageshow with RGB lights, then it only stacks. If that fails too… then oh boy it might be the Motherboard. However now we’re entering territory where you should be experiencing these issues systemwide. Fire up Another AAA title, and if the issues are not pressent in at least 1 out of 10 other AAA, then its not the Motherboard or PSU.
At which point you might want to take a look at Nvidia’s fora.
PS: It’s actually quite normal that you get FPS hits in Cities, when the cities are full of players etc. this is due to the extra geometry and textures, which needs to be rendered. The same reason why we have Raid-profiles today. You might want to look into an addon that dynamically changes profiles if the fps drops too much, though this will require reloads frequently.
Thank you very much for such a detailed answer, but I do not understand only one thing, how in one day everything could change so much, without any interference in my system, and after all, the problem is not only mine, judging by other messages?
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The best way to answer that question:
When you drive your car you don’t expect a piece of metal to suddenly break in two. Yet it sometimes happen. The damages internally can be invisible up until the moment they break. The same thing can happen with any piece of silicon. The truth is Silicon and transistors degrade over time, just like a lightbulb does, if they are picked carefully they will last a whole lot longer than a traditional light bulb but, even diodes and transisters are rated for a specific amount of current and power over time. If you have had a system for some time that has been knawing at your components eventually some day it just breaks.
Think of it like intearnal errosion of a water tank: On the outside it looks fine and operates fine, but one day there is a hole in it and there is water everywhere. It might start out as a small hole, but if you don’t react to the puncture eventually the small problem becomes a big problem.
So to answer it briefly, it may not be a sudden issue, but the issue can appear sudden to you.
It may also be a driver issue that doesn’t create any errors at first, but then a system update arrives, which is tested on “normal” drivers, then the slightly “different” driver may break completely in opposition to the normal drivers. It may be a very small issue that ONLY affects world of warcraft because its only caused by something used by that game alone. In reality Hardware and Software for Computers are much more complicated than an Apollo rocket, but we have become very good ad educating almost anyone to be some level of experts.
Take our elderly, when they ask experts its not because they are dumb, but the people growing up with computers have been in training as experts since they were born. But in reality its as complicated for an elderly person to operate a computer as its for them to build an Apollo Rocket. The point is that computers are very delicate machines, with so many variables that they are much more prune to breaking than your avg. Coffe Machine. The difference between a Saturn V and a modern PC is that the PC wont get you killed in a spectacular explosion if its powerunit fails. And also it physically wont put you on the moon by it self.
It possible that multiple people have repeated the same steps as you in terms of drivers or hardware, which has caused you to have similar or infact the same symptoms. However, the same diagnosis based on this is very difficult to conclude, example, I may go to the Doctor with Flu-like symptoms, the doctor says you got the Flu, then 10 other people go to the doctor with Flu-like symptoms and the Doctor says Flu, because its likely that they all have the Flue, its a viral infection, and thus plausible there is an outbreak. However, one week later 1 of the patients died of Minigitis. The symptoms can be very similar and straight up probable, but you always have the risk of a fail diagnosis without running further tests, and elliminating options.
Point is, while I say its unlikely that you end up having a PSU issue because other people have similar issues, its by no means something you can rule out, before methodically going through all posibilities.
WoW regressions do happen and when multiple users confirm it, blue post about it then it’s not really worth “defending” that regression.
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All of this explication makes sense only if one user happens to get it. But there’s a lot of people having this issue, just check the replies on the forums and with a varied range of hardware (from high end to low end). You can’t really suggest that everyone’s hardware happened to degrade right after 9.0.5 patch and that’s why we notice an FPS loss, it’s just absurd. Everything worked perfectly fine before 9.0.5, as soon as the patch hit everything went south on FPS and there is even a hint with the anima streams.
More so, me and another guy posted screenshots where it can be seen how the FPS jumps a lot just by making small camera changes. I turned the camera around a bit and lost 30 fps. Someone else took a step forward in Oribos and FPS went from 180 -> 80 and it was literally the same spot, but just with one step further.
There is no way to defend Blizzard on this. I appreciate your attempt to explain to us and troubleshoot, but with so many people experiencing this (and who knows how many more that just don’t bother posting on forums about it), it’s impossible for it to be something on the user’s end.
Edit: I also work as a game tester, so I’m not clueless about game bugs.
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I didn’t even realise Blizzard was under attack?
No, i am not defending Blizzard in anyway, I was just answering the questions, and following up with answers that’s all.
I still wouldn’t rule out any of what i said out. You may be barking up Blizzards tree for something, which is actually a Driver issue, albeit whether Blizzard knew of it or not, there is no smoking gun i am afraid. 
Alas, multiple sets of hardware may still be caused by the same overrides in windows registry, when it comes to drivers. Just as well as it could mean that it is a game issue, but without methodically checking for this, you cannot be sure.
Ok, to dismiss the driver possibility since I see it brought up multiple times:
I run on an integrated GPU, which means I have no dedicated GPU, which also means that I don’t have any drivers to install on it.
But me working with an integrated GPU is not the problem because before patch, it was fine. If having an integrated GPU was the problem it should have been bad since the launch of SL, not only after 9.0.5.
Edit: My PSU is fine, RAMs are fine (16 GB - more than enough since I run with all on low and 50% resolution scale and without any aplications running in the background except Discord and Battle.net).
I got latest Windows update (and issue is present both after the newest driver and before getting it). I booted the game without addons after a reinstall and I had the FPS issue still…
One thing which really makes me believe Blizzard stealthly changed something is that before 9.0.5 at some bosses you couldn’t see certain visual effects on abilities which now seem to appear. If these new effects popped up, there might also be something extra which burdens people’s hardware or as someone else suggested, maybe they broke something related to the camera view (you know, things in game world are not loaded when you don’t look at them, so maybe they remain partially loaded).
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Integrated GPU’s still use drivers, its usually an APU driver you’re looking for here. Nevertheless it does, at least in your case not seem very likely it’s a driver issue.
To pin it on wow you still have to verify that no other AAA comparable to age and release is not experiencing the same issues. Its possible its an engine issue, that have meant that certain upgrades to the drivers, actually caused even worse issues than rolling back certain pipeline elements, meant for optimising. That’s unforgiving because as a consumer all you will ever see is your framerate and graphics drops, but you won’t know why or what the alternative is. However, just to point out how stupid the argument of regression sounds:
“YES! I AM SURE! Blizzard LOVES to spend money on extra render pipelines, just to spend MORE money rolling it back, its super big motives suuuper big like YUGE!!!”
Aight, I understand that doesn’t, cover all arguments, like the one i just made myself. But it’s most certainly not an ill intent, to roll back rendering optimizations, it usually has to do with other stuff that actually forces the hand. Blizzard doesn’t wan’t angry players, thats bad for business. Obviously. There is no money motive here to find, other than a game that doesn’t crash can be played.
Its also possible, the changes they made hasn’t been spottet because not enough players were active on the PTR, to force the issue and or report them. And finally this can lead to a publishing decision, where deadlines are more important than the quality of the game, essentially forcing Blizzards hands to either regress or send a crashing client live. Or ignore the changes causing some lower FPS because a publisher says shipt it anyway.
Now its a bit special Blizzards Publishers is Activition Blizzard, but Blizzard Entertainment is essentially a Studio, much like DICE is a studio owned by EA. The developers are usually not the same people making these decisions up front, they just implement them.
I am not “defending” Anyone here, just trying to nuance the situation a bit, usually there are always a more complicated reason behind things, it goes for everything, however, sometimes the simplest answer is also the right one.
I would still say if you’re running a toaster System with DDR3 Ram, don’t expect your 16GB RAM to do much, then i’d go for at least 24GB. If youre on gen 1 DDR3 Ram id probably go for 32GB, Depending on other tasks. Now in my case I am a developer so i actually use multiple cores and RAM resources, I usually do have 500 tabs open in chrome, and several pieces of software running, so i DEFFINITELY Cannot run the game with less than 24 GB and do my addon development.
One final possibility, Blizzard upgraded their Graphics presets, which means what was previous High is now Medium, so you run more expensive settings for the hardware, but it looks as if you kept the same settings, however, im also pretty adamant this would have been in the patch notes.
Partially loading of things may suggest that the changes they’ve made is a roadmap towards utilizing SSD’s more, at which point SSD’s are VERY different when it comes to speed, albeit they are faster than HDD’s. But it can to slow SSD’s actually worsen the loading. It might also be bugged. It’s hard to know whether the OS influence this also, with KnowledgeBase updates.
But what you can do is try to adjust the Ground Clutter settings from the console, this may or may not change it up. Regardless, I will say its likely Blizzard have been working on improving the render pipeline, and then something has gone wrong, you might see a hotfix rather soon if that is the case.
I also have a SSD and the rams are DDR4. Still, as I’ve mentioned before, people with very very good systems are experiencing the same problem. I’m talking about RTX 3080, good CPU and a lot of RAM, so it’s not a “not good enough hardware” issue…
Maybe it was an unintentional change, I don’t know. And the PTR argument, it’s not really people’s fault for not playing PTR. Blizzard makes so much profit they can afford to hire more testers instead of outsourcing their playerbase for unpaid work.
It’s just annoying Blizzard doesn’t come with an answer. A lot of MAC users have also been experiencing this, but its easier to pin point if it’s a lot of MAC users having the same issue.
As for the regression argument… it’s more like Blizzard tries to avoid spending any money so much that they can’t bother doing a thorough performance test (inb4 covid - i’m sure someone working for Blizz can boot the game from his own PC).
Don’t get me wrong its not really an argument, as much as a stating a fact, fewer people to test with different real world hardware is always a problem. The issue with inhouse testing is the same with theories. They don’t always apply in the real world. So that’s why PTR is a thing. Yes there are money aspects to it too, but mainly you cannot substitute PTR with inhouse testers, on company hardware. Just doesn’t apply. Not that you can blame the player base, it’s just what happens. Just wanted to clear that up: I AM NOT blaming the players. The PTR is something I wan’t as an Addon Developer, because it allows me to be up front with addons before the patch release so the eventual changes i NEED to make, are very few and small. So for me its a Win Win, more so than a “free work”, I help out Blizzard, Blizzard help out me. Though i will agree that’s not the avg. player.
Its not the first time Blizzard has voiced this issue either, in fact they went as far as to create the “Experimental-Card” in overwatch which has pretty much replaced the need to test balance changes. So the PTR is used for more serious changes to the underlaying systems, while the balance changes that needs some additional input is much more closely tied into the live game.
That certainly seems to point towards it not being OS related or driver related specifically due to an error. The reason Blizzard don’t comment on these things are that its expensive to spend developers’ time to have them answer the forums, which is not the same as they are not being read. Also Crashes and dumps do infact have Jira hooks embedded in them, so this actually automatically creates and groups issues of similar nature, when you use the crash reporter, for instance. It creates tasks, and a developer will look into it. Though, its not the same as they should, if you know the game crashed for a different reason, such as my issue earlier today, I knew it was MY addon causing the issue, though i didn’t understand fully why. In such a case a forum thread is more appropriate. You can be almost certain some developer reads the threads, especially when they got a lot of replies and likes. But they may not have time to both read the issues, and reply within a short ammount of time. If they know what the issue is, they are likely working on a fix, if they don’t they are likely reading through all the crash reports, dxdiags, and code to try to figure out what it is. If they have nothing to report back, its from an economic point of view a waste of money to do it anyway. Although its totally frustrating and bad customer treatment, but it is what it is.
I’ve been hit with a massive drop in fps today. Loaded up after work and my addons had reset, lua errors all over the place even with no addons - did a scan and repair in which it downloaded some content and since then I’ve lost almost 50% fps.
5800x
64gb ram
Nvidia3070 on latest drivers 461.72
As I said was fine after 9.0.5 but something is up today - disabling addons makes no difference. I’m going to backup and re-dow load wow client later and see what a fresh install behaves like.
Even with all settings on low I am getting less fps than I was on max yesterday.
EDIT: I’ve re-downloaded WoW (yeay fast internet) but there is no change.
EDIT2: After a little research it seems the 461.72 driver has some issues so I downloaded the ‘hotfix’ 461.81 driver but that has not changed anything.
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Sadly they did not change a thing yet…
Anima conductors in Aerdenweald, Bastion and Maldraxus still cause severe FPS drops when activated and SoA is still as crap as before…
This need some attention real quick because permanent activated anima conductors ruin the game experience… And i can’t even enter SoA and run it without getting nauseous…
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Did all Troubleshooting recomended by Blizzard.
Updated win10 pro to latest version.
Downgraded nvidia drivers to 5gen’s older, updated nvidia drivers to latest.
Updated z390f mobo bios.
Ran wow without addons.
Ran wow in win7 compatibility mode.
Ran wow in admin mode.
Ran wow without Battle.Net.
Ran wow without any backgroud program.
Scanned and Repaired Wow Files.
Defraged all storage devices.
Can we focus on the fact that every single one of us had wow perfect and smooth before the patch, and after the patch it looks like an indie game?!
Rest of games/programs/benchmarks still run as before, only wow has changed.
The problem is in the patch, not our systems.
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Yeah, done a full benchmark of my system this morning. Cinebench, Heaven, Passmark all what they were in January (new build) . Other games are fine - Doom Eternal, Cyberpunk and CoD Warzone. It is just WoW that suddenly changed yesterday - addons and gfx settings make no difference I am stuck at 45-50 fps where I normally run at 100-120 with all on max settings.
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imagine Cyberpunk running better than wow…
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Well it depends on the scenario, since Cyberpunk hast pretty good multicore utilization unlike WoW, it is certainly possible for more “demanding” games to run better than a game on an engine from around 2000 ( development took 5+ years for WoW think) which in it’s core is mostly singlethreaded.
You can easily run into a CPU bottleneck in WoW with many players/mobs in a raid or worldboss, even on a 16 core CPU, because what counts more is the IPC of a CPU in this scenario.
Cyberpunk loves my 5800x, WoW uses 4 cores at best and they rarely go over 20% usage.
Explained well above by Klyuki
Luckily they’re is a post in the US Forums now also…both get ignored though…
and video proof
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Blizzard it’s not on our side, for many of us our FPS really did drop by 20 after the patch.