World of Warcraft Classic FPS Stutter / Hiccup With Vsync After the Recent Update

Hello there ever since the Update for Battlegrounds came out my game has massive issues with stuttering to a point which is game breaking for me. Before this I used Vsync with out any issue but now the frame rates constantly dips blow 60 FPS into the mid 40s and I get these Microfreeze frame stutters. I have spent countless hours now trying to find a solution and so far all I can come up with is a workaround.

I went as far as to reformat my Operating System which is Windows 10 1909 with the latest NVIDIA Drivers 441.66, Fresh Installation of WoW Classic with no addons but none of this has resolved the problem. I use 4 Monitors which are all at 60hz with my computer and the only solution to remove the stutter with Vsync was to disconnect 3 of the 4 displays and only use the main middle screen which is not ideal, It seems the issue is related to Vsync not working correctly when all displays are connected. The Work around I discovered was to just cap the frame rate at like 75 / 100 FPS and turn Vsync off, this resolve the stuttering issue however now I have to deal with screen tearing.

And I also did test all the various Sync option with in my NVIDIA Control Panel such as Adaptive Sync and Fast Sync with the in game Vsync disabled and none of the help at all. This issue is very frustrating because it didn’t exists before this latest WoW Classic Battlegrounds patch, I am not sure what changed but since Blizzard decided to remove the Dedicated Fullscreen mode from the client I can’t seem to find any other solution online.

My system Spec:
Fresh Installation of Windows 10 1909
EVGA RTX 2080TI SC Ultra
Intel 9900k
32GB Corsair 3200Mhz RAM
1000W EVGA PSU
1x 512GB Samsung 970 Pro NVME [OS Drive]
2x 1TB Samsung Evo 870 SATA SSD [Game Drives]
3x DELL U2515H 2560x1440 Displays Connected Via DisplayPort to Dedicated NVIDIA GPU
1x LG Ultrawide 2560x1080 Display Connected Via HDMI to Integrated Intel GPU

Any suggestions are much appreciated!

Edit: I just Installed Retail World of Warcraft and this problem does not seem to happen with the retail game using DirectX 12, but when using DirectX 11 the Frame Pacing is all over the place with alot of judder on the screen however when using DirectX 11 (Legacy) Everything is smooth again. So DirectX12 and DirectX 11 (Legacy) are working great but Normal DirectX 11 Which I believe is what WoW Classic Uses has the same issue on the retail game too.

Same problem here, I have tried all the solutions I could find, including selecting my graphic card, changing Vsync option, selecting my monitor etc, nothing of that seem to work (Well, it did work, but it’s still far from pre-patch situation). It’s truly an in-game problem, the game shows low fps even in low level locations that aren’t flooded with people, and I’ve noticed that if I look at complicated effects such as lava in Ironforge my frame rate drops below 40, that wasn’t possible before the patch.

1 Like

Yeah I agree, I tried everything that comes to my mind, I even turned it to the lowest settings and tried using the Intel HD Graphics from my CPU and if you set the game to the lowest settings and resolution scale of 50% even the Intel HD Graphics can do 60+ FPS however it did not resolve the Frame Skipping / Stutter Problem. When Vsync is enabled.

I just tried downgrading my NVIDIA Drivers to older version and I also Tried Installing both DCH and Standard Drivers but nothing fixes it. This issue started right after WoW was Updated with the Battlegrounds Patch and the only real solution is to play with Vsync turned off and Limit the Frame rate to something like 120FPS, but this “solution” also produces screen tearing as the frame rate is no longer in sync with my Monitors 60Hz Refresh rate.

The Retail version of World of Warcraft has three different API Settings to choose from. DirectX 11 (Legacy), DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, Both DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 (Legacy) seem to work fine with Vsync turned on and no issues but the Normal DirectX 11 and Vsync has really bad frame pacing and screen judder, The WoW Classic API is also using Standard DirectX 11 as stated in the Config.wtf file and it can’t be changed to anything else. For now I am really running out of ideas I hope Blizzard can look into this issue. There should not be this many problems with such an old game!

Blizzard also decided to remove the ability to run the game in Dedicated Fullscreen Mode rather than Borderless Windowed which is something DirectX 11 fully supports and as a result we can’t use this option either which really sucks.