Hello
I encountered the following problem. I have Nvidia driver 560.70 (July 2024) installed. The game works well and stably with this driver. But my other games regularly require driver updates. And every time I update video driver, other games work well, but WoW starts to work just terribly. I tried installing drivers version 561.09 (September 2024), version 565.90 (October 2024), version 566.03 (October 2024) and version 566.36 (December 2024 - the current version). And on all these drivers in WoW I have microstutters at different times. They are especially pronounced during dynamic flights in the open world. It becomes extremely unpleasant to play. Because of which I have to roll back to driver version 560.70 every time to be able to play normally.
And I’m trying to figure out what the problem is? In the drivers? In the game? In my PC? Is this a common problem or some special case? Are there any solutions?
The PC configuration is as follows:
GPU - Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16GB
CPU - Intel Core i7-14700KF 3.4(5.6)GHz
Motherboard - Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX-W
RAM - G.Skill 32 GB (2x16GB) DDR5 6000 MHz
SSD - Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB 2000.3 GB
I’ve had microstutters for around a month now and I can’t for the love of me figure it out.
I dont recall me installing the newest driver back then but perhaps I need to roll back the driver to see if that fixes it.
Microstutters have always been a RAM issue for me. The graphics driver is always the first thing to find system installability. Also there can be a software issue that can cause issues with 1% lows. Try closing all background apps and any screen recording apps. Disable windows defender and/or anti-virus.
Lets check the GPU first. A quick simple check. Install and open gpu-z and look at the link speed of the GPU. Its bus interface on the first tab. Is it PCIe 4 @16x? Is Resizable Bar enabled.
When you set the RAM to DDR5 6000 did you run anything like a memtest? If you set the cpu to default and the memory to the default Intel recommends. Does this fix the issue?
I have all the hardware configured as it should be. RAM clock and timings. Frequencies, voltage and limits for the processor. The video card works correctly. All this is not only configured, but also repeatedly checked by a series of stress tests. I have no problems at all in other current games. They work stably for me at maximum graphics settings in 2K at a frame rate of 100+. The problem is exclusively with this game and Nvidia drivers.
I did not just install and remove all these drivers. I checked their performance using stress tests and in different games. In stress tests, the difference was within the margin of error. In games, newer driver versions often gave a slightly better result, but within a few extra frames.
Problems are observed exclusively in WoW. And a little in Diablo 4. Both of these games work fine on driver version 560.70 and begin to stutter on any newer version from the list of those that I gave above.
Moreover, I specifically removed all modifications from WoW to check - and tried to launch a “clean” client of the game. There was no difference. On driver version 560.70 the game works smoothly and stably. On any other driver version from the above the game constantly stutters. To be clear - we are talking about barely noticeable micro-stutters. It seems like everything is fine, but you feel that some smoothness is missing. Sometimes they get stronger. Well, the FPS graphs show constant drops without any strict periodicity. At random times.
[GeForce Experience] Performance Monitoring overlay may stop refreshing GPU information [4679970]
**[GeForce Experience/NVIDIA App] If GPU utilization gets stuck at 0% within Performance overlay, games may display stutter [4720547]**
I don’t use GeForce Experience or their new app that they offer to install with new driver versions. I don’t even have these apps installed. Moreover, I even have Windows overlays disabled.
The only overlay app that I use to measure FPS is MSI Afterburner. But it is also disabled by default. I enable it only to measure performance indicators in games, if necessary.
I have a 10900kf @ 5.3GHz and RAM 4xDIMMs @ DDR4 4000 CL15 DR. I have a RTX 3080 TI and the latest drivers from nvidia. No issues at all.
I turned g-sync off, it causes issues for me (full screen seem ok). HDR is on, set to auto. For a 14700k you can try with E-cores disabled. Some games don’t like e-cores. I have optimisations for windows games on (required for HDR on). I have hardware-accelerated gpu scheduling on. Windows defender is on.
This is all great, but on the old driver version everything works fine for me. The game works smoothly even during dynamic flights, I see the frame rate around 160 most of the time. Everything is fine. But as soon as I update the driver (with a PC reboot, of course) - microstutters begin. I roll back to the old version - everything works fine again. I install another newer version of the driver - I see microstutters again. I roll back to the old version again - the game works fine again. I very much doubt that specifically newer versions of video drivers conflict with E-cores specifically in this game. Then why don’t old drivers conflict with them? And why do they conflict only in WoW, but not in many other games?
In any case, I still have the problem. And I could not find a solution. The game continues to work correctly only on the old version of video drivers.
Hi again - Did you find any workaround besides older driver?
I just got my PC back from another unrelated problem but I asked them to reset my pc + bios to see if the stutter still persisted, I DL classic wow, fire it up and have stutters within the first 30 seconds. No addons, programs or anything installed just wow.
I’m going insane at this point.
No, I couldn’t find a solution to the problem. I’m still using the old drivers from July last year. True, I haven’t checked the recent driver from January 30th. But I haven’t had time to mess with it yet. Although there’s not much hope that WoW will work well with it. And it’s a shame, because other current games work much better with new drivers. But because of WoW, I have to put up with minor problems in other games and continue to use old drivers.
Like you mine are random bust very apparent ehen switching zones or even subzones. I mostly play classic so it isnt as persistent but it still shows.
I can’t play retail at all atm because every time I use an ability I get insane stutters per ability used and even looting. No addons or anything installed just straight up stutter fiesta.
I’m starting to thinknits because my SSD isnt feeding info at a reasonable pace but when playing the new Indiana Jones I do so in 130 FPS max settings and no stutter occours at all.
I will note that freezes in the first few minutes after launching after installing a new driver - this can be considered a normal phenomenon, since the game can adapt its resources to new operating conditions. Also, freezes can occur during the first playback of certain animations for approximately the same reasons. But if they become constant and persist for a long time after launch - this is clearly a sign of incorrect operation of either the game or the driver. And since other games work almost perfectly, the conflict is clearly somewhere between WoW and the driver.
P.S. I decided to check the latest driver version (572.16 from January 30, 2025). I haven’t done any in-depth testing. For now, I just launched WoW and did world quests for an hour. The first few minutes were very laggy, but then everything seemed to be fine. There are still microstutters in the city and when changing locations, but I had them on all driver versions. But I didn’t notice any stutters when flying in the open world. To be sure, I’ll try to play a little longer when I have time. I also played Diablo 4 for an hour - the situation is similar. After the first launch, there were terrible stutters for a few minutes, but then the game worked stably and smoothly for an hour.
Iv been experiencing stutters since like January, my game started disconnecting, capped my frames and they stopped but now mobs/npcs and the occasional online player like glitch a foot forward, was this the issue in your case mate? I’ll try the old driver u said, I had no problems for 3 months and one day my game just broke
Based on the description, this doesn’t sound like my problem. I haven’t noticed any issues with other players or NPCs. Only microstutters during dynamic flights. And they are especially noticeable during flights over Dornogal. And during the flight through the Coreway before entering The Ringing Deeps
P.S. By the way, with the January driver the game runs smoother than on previous versions, but the problem was still there. I’ve already updated it to the February version (572.42), but the situation is exactly the same. That is, the game runs smoother than on previous versions, but sometimes microstutters still occur. With the July driver the game still runs smoother.
I have now completely removed all addons (moved the folder with them to another location) to check the clean game client. In some places it has become a little better, in particular, stutters have disappeared when opening a backpack and studying new transmogrification models (this is logical, since I had heavy addons installed to improve these aspects of the game), but the overall situation has remained unchanged. I still observe microstutters during dynamic flights, which are very noticeably increased in Dornogal. I also observe noticeable stutters when changing locations and when approaching the entrances to the delves.
To be fair, I would like to point out that stutters when changing locations and approaching delves have been observed on all driver versions since the release of the current expansion. But microstutters during dynamic flights are observed only with drivers that were released after July 2024.