Lately my game is stuttering which is driving me crazy. About every minute the frame rate will suddenly drop down to 10 for about 5 seconds before returning to normal. It usually happens in combat situations, especially in instances. I tried turning all addons off but still there. I think I remember reading that this is an issue with Nvidia graphics cards and they know about it? I don’t know when this problem started but I know I definitely didn’t have it in BFA. I have Geforce GTX 1650 with latest driver.
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If you tested without addons (not just addons off) then it could be one of the following:
- Nvidia driver conflict: remove Nvidia drivers with DDU, update other drivers if possible (like audio drivers), install Nvidia drivers
- SSD/storage problem: if the drive is “close” to full or has aged it can have problems when assets have to be read on instance start.
- Some weird system applications like Windows wallpaper rotator, overlays or some weird antivirus/performance optimization app.
Hey there Testonek,
The latest Nvidia driver did have an update for a issues the game has been having with flickering in some areas ingame. This was no linked to a FPS drop as far as I was aware.
As Bigkeg eluded to, while the addons do not show up ingame they are still partially loaded and can continue to cause issues. Renaming the Interface and WTF folders is the true test in cases like this.
Having the Task Manager open on the Performance tab to the side while playing can help highlight if anything odd is happening when the drops occur ingame.
I found a video showing exactly what’s happening on my end, I think it started in 9.05.
I checked CPU and memory in task manager during these stutters but it remains the same at 30% and 57%. I tried turning on vsync and it still happens. I haven’t tried renaming the Interface and WTF folders yet but I’m not hopeful it will fix it considering I’ve seen others mention the same problem with Nvidia in WoW.
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If it’s that pixel shading bug then entering Spires of Ascension would trigger it immediately (check https://rk.edu.pl/en/analyzing-wow-shadowlands-spires-ascension-905-performance-regression/ for reference).
If it’s not happening after entering SoA then it’s something else. Try to run userbenchmark so we can rule out some other problems that might occur.
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It can happen everywhere, not just SoA. It was just happening in Sanguine Depths. I ran userbenchmark
UserBenchmarks: Game 19%, Desk 72%, Work 18%
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3750H - 62.9%
GPU: AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics - 16.8%
SSD: Intel 660p NVMe PCIe M.2 512GB - 142.4%
RAM: Samsung M471A1K43DB1-CTD 2x8GB - 79.2%
MBD: Asus TUF Gaming FX505DT_FX505DT
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/44243256
Intel 660p
Performing below expectations (35th percentile)
How much free space that Intel SSD has?
It’s TDP and fan curves not really related to this problem.
137 GB free of 475 GB
That may start affecting it. When WoW extracts assets it could clog it buffer. As it’s a DRAMless SSD it doesn’t have an actual cache and uses some of free space available - less and less as the SSD gets fuller.
If you can try removing so unused apps/data to free up space and check if it helps the game.
Could something like CCleaner help?
You need just free space so if you have a big files or games you aren’t playing try removing those or moving to another drive.
I think it started in 9.05
I haven’t tried renaming the Interface and WTF folders yet but I’m not hopeful it will fix it considering I’ve seen others mention the same problem with Nvidia in WoW.
In my opinion you should try. Especially if it appeared after patch. Copy your WTF and Interface folders and check how it works on a freshly installed game.
Sometimes even updated addons may cause stuttering.
Also check temperatures of your cpu/gpu.
Throttling isn’t for few seconds. It would be continuous. As he isn’t getting repeatable problems on SoA entrance it’s also not the 9.0.5 SoA + friends bug.
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OP posted another thread to which I responded to saying that a lot of other players after 9.0.5 are having problems with FPS, in particular with the GTX 1650 card (in which, the game drops FPS then returns to normal as shown in the video).
Of course there are other FPS issues such as in Spires, and when interacting with objects that also cause the FPS to drop in 9.0.5. These problems have been attracting larger attention and appear to be more widespread than the FPS random drops after that patch.
In my particular case this did occur after 9.0.5. I’m inclined to think somewhere along the lines, these FPS issues are ALL connected to an issue in the game.
It just dumbfounds me that responses are still suggesting addons when numerous people are also experiencing the same drops in FPS after a new patch. I get that addons can create problems particularly if outdated when a new patch hits, but this problem has been on-going for numerous users now for months now (along with the other FPS glitches in game that are definitely a game-related issue). I think it’s a safe bet to say it’s not addons that are creating the problem. Driver updates also haven’t fixed it, windows updates don’t fix it, all the help guides and steps also don’t appear to do anything to resolve it.
It also can’t be an issue with OP’s SSD having limited space, as mine has lots of space and I’m having this issue.
There’s clearly some underlying issue, but I doubt it’s on the user-end; although in saying that, a bandaid fix would be great to have if possible but a lot of people with this problem have tried everything and nothing so far as stopped it. This same problem IS present in the 9.1 patch too. I’m not sure if the other FPS issues are though.
EDIT: I don’t know if OP has observed this, but I have infact kept task manager open and managed to open it when the FPS drops are occuring and the only thing I notice is that CPU usage goes way down, and also should say that outside the game, the computer does not feel laggy at all when they occur.
If OP had the same problem as yours then his FPS drops would not be as random and would always show up in SoA. The performance percentile is bit low and the 660p is a basic SSD that looses a lot of performance when it cache gets used - with limited free space the cache is small and can cause random stutter and asset loading delays.
If adding more free space won’t help then it will be excluded from the list 
With Nvidia GPU you would have to run nSight Graphics to capture a frame log and then check how many pixels are shaded on a such low FPS frame. With AMD cards it’s bit easier - and that 9.0.5 bug that is still here floods the GPU with pixel shading as showcased in that article.
You obviously know more about this bug than I do, that’s for sure. All I know is I’m very frustrated with it at this point, and every thread where someone brings it up seems to get the same generic responses (check addons, updates ect) and people are doing this and getting no where. 1 month later the thread(s) are closed without a further response or anything to say the problem is going to be addressed so it’s infuriating to a degree. I can confirm it also happens on the PTR so 9.1 is also having this same bug, that affects a lot of players. Yet, they’re told the same generic responses on EU and US forums.
I don’t think your article is being looked at too well by them or else they can’t fix it themselves.
They can’t address it until they have identified the problem. If they were to post and say " happens because and will be addressed" when they haven’t identified what x or y is yet, then… Well, bad things. Something about trust, etc.
Maybe its not even something they CAN address. Just like everyone was blaming Blizzard for flashing trees. Turned out to be a driver issue for nVidia to address.
They did saw it
It started in 9.0.5 when a lot of people had problems with this. Then they dropped a hotfix that eliminated most of the problems… but mostly iGPU users (including Apple M1) were still reporting problems. dGPU with weaker memory throughput (pixel fill rate) would also be affected more - I did a test with Radeon GPU Profiler and it turned out that in SoA it shades a very large amount of pixels - bit more than in wideshot Ardenweald scene.
They didn’t comment on it from what I know but on US forums some M1 users wrote that the in-game support told them the problem isn’t easy to fix/won’t be super quickly - so it could be very low level stuff.