Hi guys, I know WoW is CPU heavy, how good would a Ryzen 5700x be for WoW?
I particularly struggle in High Pop areas like Stormwind/Badlands.
GPU is 3080 Ti
In Badlands when everyone is spamming i go as low as 17 FPS with GPU usage never going above 40%
From the current CPUs I think for WoW the best would be 5800X3D. Extra cache seems to benefit WoW (and several other games, Factorio etc) quite heavily. It is more expensive than 5600X though. 5700X is unlikely to give much benefit over 5600X for WoW as it has just more cores with slower base clock. At worst it might be slower.
So I’d go for 5600X or 5800X3D depending budget if you are upgrading in AM4 motherboard (eg. from 3000-series). I don’t really know what’s the current situation witht Intel CPUs and how they compare to AMD currently if you are building entirely new system.
3D cache versions of 7000 series CPUs are likely released next year.
I’m using a ryzen 3600 and it’s great, fps is always well over 100 unless theres a huuuuge amount of people at the primal event all spamming abilities then i go to 30-40fps. And i’m paired up with an rx6700
A 5600X or higher would serve you well. Hopefully prices are pretty good on the 5000 series with the new generation out.
A very low FPS is a sign something is not correct. Either the game itself or your system. 5700X is really strong.
nothing you can do,wow engine is ancient and will never be better than this.
People think they need these overkill CPU’s to run wow is just hilarious. Its not the CPU, its their custom game engine from 2004 limiting your fps, what that means is that the fps is clientside and it can’t utilize full power of your CPU. A faster CPU will show a slightly higher fps margin yes, but it’s overkill to go for high end CPU thinking wow even tickles it’s power. Hope that helps.
Start by resetting all graphics settings to default, or by turning the graphics settings right down with the “Graphics Quality” slider…
Then go through your settings one by one turning up the things that you want enhanced, and revert any changes which cause a major drop in fps.
For example, I have my main graphics settings as -
Shadow quality = low
liquid detail = fair
particle density = ultra
SSAO = disabled
depth effects = disabled
compute effects = low
outline mode = disabled
texture resolution = high
spell density = everything
projected textures = enabled
view distance = 10
environment detail = 5
ground clutter = 3
everything else i leave at the default settings for my GPU, except for…
Graphics Card = set to my main GPU and not left as “Default”
Max foreground FPS = 60
Max background FPS = 30
Target FPS = 60
Yes my GPU can push much higher than 60 FPS, but using this setting stops it from lagging in busy areas where there are many particle effects happening. I could reduce particle effects and set target FPS to higher, but this seems like a good medium.
After changing any graphics settings, exit the game using the game menu - to ensure your changes are saved correctly, and then restart it.
My CPU is the Ryzen 7, 4800H and my GPU is the GTX 1660ti
I don’t have the same issue as you.
If following these guidelines doesn’t fix your issue, then something other than the game’s graphics settings is causing the issue.
I don’t know what content your playing, but i would never recommend a 3000 series Ryzen for WoW these days to anyone.
I just recently upgraded from a 3900X to a 5800X3D.
My FPS more than doubled.
My min FPS literally went from 15 to 30 in extreme situations.
I assume you are not raiding mythic or 30man HC, else you would have noticed the low FPS there too on some bosses with adds or S4 affix motes spawns.
No way to keep 100FPS in a raid with a 3000 Ryzen. Not even with a 5800X3D.
Also the elemental invasion FPS are very hard to compare since the amount of people differs vastly.
For Horde in the barrens it seems to be worst. At one point there must have been 2 or 3 full raids at least, even the server started lagging 
If you go to ungoro there’s maybe a handful of people and you can get 100 FPS+ compared to 15 
Get the 5800X3D if you are on AM4 currently and be happy for the next 2-3 Expansions at least
It’s the game engine. Even the fastest CPU can not get stable FPS in certain extreme situations. WoW is barely multithreaded. It needs high IPC and lots of CPU cache (that’s why the 5800X3D is killing it in WoW).
You are contradicting yourself here.
You still need a highend CPU if you want good FPS in WoW, old engine or not. There is no other way.
Sorry, but why are you recommending these low Gfx settings to someone with a 3080TI who is severly CPU limited and setting Gfx to low would not make any difference in performance, but make the game just ugly for no benefit
The only Gfx setting to set to low i would actually recommend is “compute effects” since it only reduces fog rendering quality with almost no visible effect but a HUGE FPS increase where it applies.
Yes, it’s called CPU Limit.
I am not recommending those settings, if you read my post again then you see I was recommending a method of troubleshooting. I did state what settings I use, (as an example), so I understand your confusion.
I understand, but there is no need to lower any settings on his high-end GPU if the problem is the CPU 
I did a lot of WoW benchmarking. The game uses up to 4 cores with one being the “main” one and in mass-combat scenarios becoming the limiting one. If he has 5700X the FPS should never be that low unless there is a bug in-game or something wrong in the system.
With 5900X + RTX 3070 I managed to drop the FPS only to around 90 FPS in the most extreme “mass combat” scenarios. However, during SL there were times they broke something (SoA and some semi-transparent structures) or boss encounters in the latest raid where FPS dropped no matter what hardware. And there are cases where for example Nvidia driver conflicts with another driver or weird Windows service and it can have a similar effect as well.
https://rk.edu.pl/en/world-warcraft-shadowlands-beta-benchmarks/
I get it. But still you are only one player, a raid has 10-30x the amount of players all casting their spells and proccing x amount of buffs all interacting with each other and the addons.
Now imagine ~80-100+ players in one spot.
If you don’t believe it, just go to a barrens elemental invasion event now and join a custom grp via the lfg tool with a full raid and more.
Thank you for this response, this is really informative.
The 5800X3D is just that slight bit out of reach for me pricewise. But I might have to just bite the bullet and do it.
I see I failed to list my current CPU and screen resolution. Sorry.
I have 3440x1440p ultrawide and i7 8700 (nonk)
And it can be measured. Do you thing people don’t benchmark raids? Check Hardware Numb3rs videos, most of his testing is in raids.
And the whole zone goes bananas just because there is an actively farmed world boss there. That’s a mostly WoW limitation / their network limitation, not your own hardware. Same as trying to PvP with corruption 
idk, a few ppl here have said something might be wrong with my system but I doubt it.
I only ever get low FPS in 2x games.
WoW as previously described.
Warhammer 3 (when I zoom all the way in and have 40 + units on screen)
But other than that im usually anywhere from 80-100+ (my screen is 165hz)
edit
ive actually looked for WoW benchmarks and couldn’t find any. it doesnt seem to be popular at all for benchmarks.
i always see like Hardware Unboxed - Cyberbunk, F1, MS Flight Sim, Assassins Creed, God of War, its always the same titles
Only few WoW players benchmark WoW regularly and with some effort into data quality Non-WoW players can’t really test it so the coverage will be close to none.
You can check hardware numb3rs channel on YT. He has some “benchmarks” of WoW with Ryzen 5000 and Intel 12K.
But take these FPS with a caveat, those numbers are without addons and the “raid” tested is LFR.
So the real numbers will be more like half of that.
Also very CPU limited, but strongly prefers Intel over AMD in this case and many threads (for the gras setting )
See Gamers Nexus benchmarks for that.
Oh and btw. i think you haven’t mentioned what your current CPU is.
That would be very helpful.
Could WoW benefit from DLSS or at least improving on multicore/multithread support, like ESO has done over the past years? Maybe it’s not possible to implement in this engine…
DLSS yes but only if you are GPU limited, so no gainz in raids or invasion event.
Multithreading improvements, could gain alot if done right but don’t expect anything unless they are switching to a new engine made from the ground up.
They won’t change engine, but maybe there’s someone out there that could improve current one. Wouldn’t maxing the game put more strain on GPU and away from CPU, or is there specific settings?