I don’t know how more people aren’t talking about this but the GPU usage in many parts of the new zone is insane, I’m getting drops to 90 fps with a 4080 at 4k, AA off, all settings maxed and compute effects set to Good with RT off, like I’ve been using forever.
Many parts of the zone max the GPU at 100% 330w which is at least 30% more demanding than any other part of the game ever gets, and like 50-100% more demanding than the “average”. Compute effects is the heaviest GPU setting along with RT shadows, but the other settings don’t provide much of an improvement when dropped.
Again, I’m not talking about the game’s poor CPU usage and stuttering which are still a thing ofc (because they haven’t been making any performance improvements since DF came out), this is just pure GPU usage. There is nothing in this zone that looks wildly different than any prior DF or WoW zone, and I’ve no idea how are weaker GPUs faring that were near the edge in prior zones.
Edit: this is also not related to the lower resolution scale + FSR thing that I’ve seen people mention, I was never using that to being with.
And as a sidenote, no other Zone is this dense in visual fidelity. Of course it will eat more GPU ressources. Finally WoW reaches its visual potential and becomes a modern game (no meme reference intended)
There’s not much behind it, sometimes they just go over the board with visual effects nowadays, and create zones that are much more demanding then WoW usually is.
The last zone like this was ardenweald in SL. My RX 590 was able to keep 60+ FPS in all zones with high settings at 1080p, but ardenweald tanked it to below 40.
Now I have a 6900 XT. All zones are barely even touching my GPU at 2K with 100 locked FPS, but the emerald dream stresses it out, just like you said. It’s not a bug, it’s just the way it is.
Although I would say these zones generally look way better then others, so at least you can somewhat see where those extra resources and watts are going.
Aand with all that said, I agree that this level of graphical fidelity isn’t worth it for that much extra HW requirement, but hey, that’s what happens when you push a 20 year old game engine to it’s limits.
Game graphics(any game, not just wow) are full of ‘paradoxes’. Some settings have big visual impact while having small performance impact, and some have small visual impact while having big performance impact.
Examples:
Texture resolution - Massive visual impact but at the same time if you play on any hardware built in the past ten years there will be no FPS changes whatsoever. Therefore, texture resolution should be kept at high even on potatoes.
Opposite of that would be:
Particles density, volumetric fogs, SSAO - post medium settings barely noticeable visual impact while resulting in a massive FPS drop. Therefore, no need to use max settings for those.
Liquids and shadows are kinda in between. Noticeable visual impact while resulting in a reasonable FPS drop.
It must be because of particle effects or something, because my GPU fans go nuts in there, it doesn’t get that hot, MSI 3070 ventus 2x, hits about 60C tops running wow so still very cool but holy hell the fans blow up to 1000-1200rpm just idling there, port back to valdrakken, it’s down to 500-700 rpm, no clue why
It’s just weird, why would world of warcraft change the fan curve? My gpu sounds the same running 128 player conquest on Battlefield 2042 on high graphics as it does in the emerald dream
WoW doesn’t change any fan curve, but many report recently in the new zone their GPU usage is getting high, which might make your GPU hot and that increases ur fan spin. For me i just locked my fps at 144 and reduced view distance to reduce GPU usage.
I think you missed what i was saying, why would they change the way/how many frames are drawn for one zone in the game? Valdrakken is a huge zone with tons of things in there that has to be rendered but doesn’t exhibit the same behavior as the emerald dream