Despite running WoW on the lowest possible graphics settings and having my Laptop set to ‘Best Performance’, I’m still experiencing horrible fps drops in Mythic + (don’t talk to me about raids…)
For my current set-up, WoW is recommending a setting of 4 on the 1-10 graphics slider however my FPS drops to below 50 when flying around the world on these settings, so I need to reduce them before doing anything remotely intensive.
Currently using Intel Core i7-4710 (2.5GHz), 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M
If anyone knows any common fixes, or is a bit more computer literate and can help me outit would be much appreciated. Happy to give any more info if required, I’m out of my depths here.
Just want to specify again that I am using a laptop so external upgrades only, as far as I’m aware tinkering about with the built-in stuff is out of my league (as usual)
Aside from laptops not being optimally designed for gaming, your 4th Gen. i7 CPU is the weakest link, I’d say, followed by your GPU.
External upgrades - if there are any that will help - may put you into "new machine " territory, anyway.
The most obvious upgrade you could make to the machine would be to swap-out the storage device to an SSD (unless it already has one), but if even that is something you wouldn’t want to (attempt to) do, then the only option is… new machine.
Thanks Eighjan, this is both exactly what I was looking for and exactly not what I wanted to hear. I didn’t think there was much i could do to upgrade the laptop, although I have been recommended to get an SSD, I’ll look into the cost of this.
Regarding the performance, would you have an idea whether my experience with FPS sounds about right for the specs I’m running? If not thats understandable i appreciate it’s not an easy question to answer without having the machine and running programmes.
Pretty much par for the course, given the spec. you’ve listed… might be worth asking “a friend who knows” to have a look at what may be running in the background, to see if you can free up a few extra resources.
Noticeable FPS drops are something that should be investigated via monitoring software. It can be that either the GPU or CPU is performance limiting the game but also it can be thermal throttling (laptop cleaning time), RAM, system latency, some GPU drivers issue with Nvidia/iGPU switching, slow HDD I/O. Apps like Process Explorer, HWinfo can monitor this stuff. I did some benchmarking last year with those apps included: https://rk.edu.pl/en/benchmarking-and-analyzing-world-warcraft-performance/ Your GTX 860M will be close or bit behind desktop GTX 1030. It’s low/very low, but on low settings it should be somewhat stable.
Flying around: it could be the storage as it has to load new stuff as you fly. You can disable some preloading by typing that in the game chat: /console worldPreloadNonCritical 0
but that’s mostly for loading screens (how long Dalaran loads for you? ). There are cheap but decent SATA SSDs out there. Windows + WoW = at least 256GB SSD.
). There are cheap but decent SATA SSDs out there. Windows + WoW = at least 256GB SSD.