So I’ve been searching for an answer for my problem for a long time but all I can find is “its the game” but I can’t find an actual fix and I know wow can run better so I’ll just post my problem with some extra details and hope for the best.
So I am getting very low fps all the time, Currently sat in Boralus at around 35-45 FPS using my own optimized settings to get max fps without looking like garbage, close to default setting 7.
This is the absolute max FPS I can get inside a city or with more than 4 people on screen, in open world about 40-50 Sometimes 60 but never more than that and very rarely.
Inside dungeons I drop to about 30-40, in raids about 25-35 and in epic battlegrounds 20-30fps apart from Ashran which is more like 10-25 so not a big difference between all situations minus epic BGs and dropping 10-20 frames going from Boralus to a raid is understandable but the main problem is that my CPU and GPU usage is very low around 60% max with my daily settings, I’ll add more detail below.
If anyone has any ideas please let me know.
What I’ve done so far
- Full UI reset (no change in fps)
- Removed all addons (+5fps maybe)
- Tried all different preset graphics setting and recommended
- Updated graphics drivers (no change)
- Rolled back graphics driver (no change)
- Overclocking CPU and GPU (+5fps)
- Total reinstall of WoW (no change)
- Complete system reinstall (wipe every hard drive clean and a full new install of windows) (no change but slightly faster loading times)
- Tried putting WoW on SSD (no change in fps, faster load times, no duh)
- Turned off shadowplay (+5fps)
- A lot of other things I forgot about
For comparison I moved around the same spot in Boralus with my usual settings and recorded data, then I changed settings then closed the game, opened it, loaded in fully, waited a couple minutes for all the loading to be done and then recorded data and rinse repeat.
I know wow mostly only uses 1 core so all the CPU readings below will the the highest of every single core available I wont bother listing the lower % as its irrelevant.
Lowest settings possible
With advanced settings all disabled or on their lowest setting got me an average of 56 fps with a range of 43-61.
CPU usage never went above 60% averaging about 49% on the highest core
CPU Temperature stable at 47-52 degrees Celsius
GPU usage never went above 47% averaging about 34%
GPU temperature average of 46 degrees with a max of 51 degrees
Maximum settings
10/10 settings most advanced settings turned on got an average of 38 fps with a range of 18-51.
CPU usage never went above 75% averaging about 65% on the highest core
CPU Temperatures stable at 48-55 degrees
GPU Usage never went above 71% averaging about 55%
GPU temperature average of 52 degrees with a max of 56 degrees
My own optimized settings
Got an average of 43 fps with a range of 38-55
(I’ll list the major changes I have under the results)
CPU usage never went above 70% averaging about 65% on the highest core
CPU Temperatures stable at 47-54 degrees
GPU usage never went above 62% averaging about 50%
GPU Temperature average of 52 degrees with a max for 55
My daily graphics settings are set to 10/10 but I change the following:
- Texture filtering 8x Anisotropic
- View Distance 7
- Enviroment Detail 7
- Ground clutter 7
- Shadows low
- Liquid detail good
- Sunshafts disabled
- Particle Density high
These are all the most effective changes for performance/quality
I have not tried all these settings inside raids but my own results are at the top of the post and I tried overall settings of 5 and only gained about 5-10 fps compared to my settings with similar hardware usage and lowest settings gained me another 5-10 so a max of 20fps boost from my setting which look pretty good to absolute potato graphics.
My Hardware specs
Operating system: Windows 10 Home
Processor : Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.00GHz
CPU Cooler : Corsair H80i GT Hydro Cooler
Graphics Card : GeForce GTX 970 iChill Herculez X4 Air Boss Ultra 4GB GDDR5 PCI-Express
Motherboard : ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. B85-PRO GAMER (SOCKET 1150)
Power Supply : 850W XFX Pro Black Edition-Full Modular
RAM : 16GB Corsair Vengeance (2x8GB) DDR3 2133 Mhz
Hard drives/SSD : -120GB SanDisk SSD
WoW is currently on the SSD but was on a HDD beforehand (Was a clean reinstall to the SSD did not manually move)
That’s everything I can think of, thanks for taking the time to read it all, as you can see there really is not much difference in FPS between my setting and max everything, low settings did give the best results obviously but I can’t play like that I know my PC specs are quite old but should still be able to run at 60fps+ which currently it can barely do on lowest settings, the main issue is the CPU and GPU usage being so low when it clearly has more room to pump out more fps, it just is not doing it, also just for anyone wondering it’s not a ram problem I never use more than 75% of my RAM.
TL:DR, never getting more than 60 FPS stable on any graphic settings with CPU and GPU usage never going above 75%
Any ideas or help would be much appreciated, thanks again!
Edit Ok just read that wow now has multi thread support with dx12 but that just makes me more confused, I am running dx12