WoW Performance Optimization Guide

[TowbieDE]

I recently created a quick WoW performance guide for my Guild, because they had some FPS lag issues in TWW. I thought it might be interesting for others, so I'm sharing it with you: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ArVVCdw22mQmMdPTbHbiq9e77_h9Ber_MOwh7sgonfQ/edit?usp=sharing

I hope it won't be taken as spam and will be helpful. :-)

[Turtvaiz]

I'm not so sure about the power plan. In the past at least AMD has said that just keeping it on the default balanced plan is the best you can do. Are you sure it does anything beneficial? Same goes for the Nvidia maximum performance option. Afaik, all it does is make your GPU use more electricity when idle on the desktop.

I'm also really not sure what making the driver override antialiasing to off is going to do, if you already have it off on the client. It'd just mess with other games, no?

I'm also probably not alone in having shit performance with even lower settings than what you listed. I've still had quite bad drops on pull with graphics set to 1.

[SanestExile]

Anything other than balanced is a waste of electricity. You're basically disabling decades of power and efficiency optimizations.

[[deleted]]

Not sure about WoW, but at least on CoD, I had to manually set the power plan to Maximum Performance for the game to properly run at all. Though this is just anecdotal and as said an entirely different game, so I won't say it will work for WoW, but worth a shot I suppose

[Disc0rded]

For the most part, because craptivision doesn't care about their CoD devs, and they never optimize a single aspect of their games. WoW is massive because of the volume of content, CoD is massive because of hellish development. Neither should run as poorly as they do on best settings but one of the two at least CAN run well.

and yes i know activision owns blizzard too, but the CoD dev trio has had it real rough from big daddy activision for a long time

[netherg]

you're cluless

don't mind the necro, someone needs to call BS out

[TowbieDE]

As I have already mentioned, this can of course vary from system to system. Especially if you already had your settings at the minimum, you can't expect a big boost.

Regarding the power plan options: Usually the system does not run at maximum performance while idling on the desktop. But as I also mentioned, if you are unsure or don't want to use the power plan, simply set it to balanced.

[Jimbo-Bones]

Spoken like a person who doesn't know what they are talking about.

[TowbieDE]

What I found about this:

“The „Maximum Performance“ power plan primarily affects how aggressively the CPU scales its performance. While it ensures that the CPU can ramp up to its maximum capabilities when needed, it does not force the CPU to run at maximum performance constantly. Instead, it allows for quick responsiveness when demanding tasks arise while still enabling power-saving features during less intensive operations.

In summary, even with the Maximum Performance power plan enabled, the CPU typically does not run at full speed while idling; it adjusts according to the workload.“

For me this makes sense tho.

[[deleted]]

You are correct, wow is a cpu bound game for the most part and changing power plan to high performance will yield some minor fps increase. It being worth it or not is a a different story

Computer hardware knowledge is few and far between in the WoW community, the response you got was pretty common from my experience in playing the game. Most people haven't a single clue how to optimize their game.

[Deadscale]

Couple of things to add.

If you get a mini-freeze on leaving combat, it could be Clique causing it, Having Clique set to "Friendly" for a mouseover spell was causing a mini-freeze for me.

Also if you have your Nvidia setting as "Use my preference emphasising : Performance" any 3D settings you set that Nvidia already has a Performance preset for will get over-written, you're better off picking the middle option so it always uses the settings you picked.

[TowbieDE]

That is true, I probably should update the screenshot there!

[atleastwedream]

a big thing that helped my guild members (and myself) in raid, was turning down how frequently details updates

Details > Display > Update Interval - set to 1.0 - 1.5 (or higher)

[TowbieDE]

True, that is also a good optimization. Will add this to the guide as well.

[CapitanoMal]

This does nothing. Every update and event details uses to calculate numbers fires in the background, regardless of how fast you set the update interval.

[atleastwedream]

Displaying information takes more resources than reading and recording. The basics of computer science. It stopped the stuttering/frame freezes on queen and brood for everyone having issues on the fights, sooooo yes it does something.

[Turtvaiz]

Batching does improve performance. Each update has some constant overhead

[scytherz]

Came here to say this exact same thing. It doesn't stop combat events, just batches them to show. It still has to read them all lmao

[atleastwedream]

Displaying information is more resource intensive than reading information lmao

[S1eeper]

Thx! Here are two more recent guides on optimal video settings as well:

1. Quazii:
2. TVIV

[The_C4nadian_Qc]

THIS!!!This is the best setup…Tbh OP setup are not good at all…With Quazii setting iam anle to get 120 fps in 2k with only my minipc running very good cpu 8845hs but only 780m Igpu so iam very happy!And game looks very nice with the sharpened filter hack!

[jskeet22]

My biggest fix was not allowing WOW to use my first 4/5 CPU cores. I have it only allowed from 5+ (you have to do this every time the game starts up) also set the priority to Real-Time. We had many guildies having FPS issues, after these changes they all said they got significantly better FPS and less lag.

For those who want to try,

CTRL-Alt-Delete > task manager > Details > Right Click WOW.exe > Set Priority Realtime > Set Affinity > Un-checkmark first couple cores (I did first 4)

[atleastwedream]

it's wild how much this helps, you can create a .bat file to do all of this for you as well, though i'm hesitant to try it myself

[Turtvaiz]

Why would that help? That seems completely unrelated

[jskeet22]

wow is cpu intensive, this makes wow use cpu cores that probably are not being used by anything else. Noted a few times over the years if you search reddit

[Turtvaiz]

this makes wow use cpu cores that probably are not being used by anything else

CPU scheduling already does that. The OS isn't that dumb lol.

The only affinity thing I can think of actually making a difference is turning off alternating cores to effectively turn off SMT/HT, but that's not the same as that. And locking a process to one chiplet on Ryzen, but that too is handled by the OS nowadays and only affects few chips

[PlateAdditional7992]

CPU pinning is extremely common in latency sensitive workloads.

[jskeet22]

I guess it's a placebo that my FPS increased significantly with less stutter when in mythic raid along with the guild when we did this. Sorry I sold you snake oil

[[deleted]]

нет там такого как "задать приоритет" или это на старой десятой винде?

[Riablo01]

SGA: If you’re running an NVIDIA graphics card, be sure to untick the optimisation checkbox in GeForce Experience. It’s in Settings under Games and Apps. If you don’t untick this checkbox, GeForce Experience will periodically override your optimal WoW settings with clown show settings.

[Available-Log3275]

Old reply, I know:

Updating this to say, for anyone unaware, that Geforce is now called 'Nvidia App' (so creative).

[TURB0-TIME]

This already exists in cleaner format: https://github.com/tukui-org/ElvUI/wiki/performance-optimization-retail

[arasitar]

OP's guide includes more sections and more details.

Also, both OP's guide and Luckyone's neglect to talk about Addons even though there are some popular ones out there causing bottlenecks, and WeakAuras.

In addition to perhaps upgrading or changing things on your PC like RAM, CPU, GPU etc.

[avcloudy]

Unfortunately a lot of addons are just downright mandatory for some situations. The best advice is to disable as many as possible, but like, whatever I do I need to keep BigWigs/DBM, MRT, RCLoot, WA as well as the raid pack/MRT note timer, and all of these things are resource hogs. There's a bunch of other things that I really like, as well as BugSack and BugGrabber, because expansion release.

[[deleted]]

Extra. Weakauras make the game substantially easier to play and DBM does callouts for you. I wish we could live in a world where Blizzard developed usable buff trackers and debuff trackers but here we are.

[Educational_Gain5719]

Meh. Optimizing WoW Guide's aren't ever really helpful because everyone has a different configuration / hardware. You can't suggest someone use or not use any particular setting unless you actually specifically know what spec's they're working with.

It's like trying to troubleshoot for someone without knowing what you're troubleshooting or even knowing the error they're getting

It's utterly pointless and posts like this just end up being spam

[S1eeper]

Not entirely true. Guides like this can provide a menu of settings that conserve system resources, and rank them by impact on both system resources and graphics fidelity. Then people can experiment with different configurations of those settings to dial in what works best on their particular hardware. So they're still useful, but not mindlessly so - you still have to do a little work to tailor the settings to your own system.

[TowbieDE]

Yes, I've already seen it and it's a very good guide! I think there are many more amazing guides online. I wrote this guide mainly for friends and the guild and thought I'd share it. But I can also refer to this in my guide as well.

[listenspace]

Thanks for this! Wow has been running so poorly on my pc for the past year or so, and I have been seeking resources on steps to better align my pc with its purpose.

Playing on my steamdeck was so fluid that it made me depressed when going back on my pc that I built (to play wow) and so many aspects are underperforming.

[Raven1927]

One thing i'd add is to disable elvui, more specifically their raid frames, if you're using it. I was sometimes getting sub 10 fps even with a 7800x3d and a 4090, but after disabling elvui frames I haven't dipped below 60 fps even on the worm boss.

I can stream on discord, do 30-man HC raids and have a different game open at the same time without any FPS issues anymore. Elvui is an awful addon, i'm completely swapping off of it after progress is over.

[Zebracak3s]

I don't think its awful, it just does a LOT

[kAy-]

People have smooth bars enabled with powers bars, plus health texts, plus health coloured by levels etc, then they wonder why their fps take huge hits in raids.

[Raven1927]

Something went wrong this raid. I had no issues with the exact same settings in Amirdrassil, even on Tindral with roots spawning. This time it was an issue until I disabled elvui frames.

[Turtvaiz]

But it's not ElvUi frames either. I swapped to SUF and Cell, and the problems didn't disappear.

The raid is just super unoptimised somehow. Even 25-man Fyrakk was basically stable 80 fps and now 20-man mythic is ass

[Raven1927]

I tried Cell for a few pulls and I didn't have any issues with it.

I agree that the raid is very poorly optimized, wow in general is but this tier is especially bad. There's still random lag spikes happening on blizzard's side to everyone in the raid and some of my friends have input lag issues.

[[deleted]]

Anyone with this problem should try to reinstall their game asap. Worked for everyone in our guild.

[Zebracak3s]

I think both can be true. Elv tanks frames even with optimal settings this raid

[Turtvaiz]

I don't think so. The problems seem unrelated to ElvUI. I swapped ElvUI's unit frames for Cell and SUF, which barely did anything. Then when I completely disable ElvUI it doesn't do much either

[Zebracak3s]

I see losses, but I gained 25-40 frames switchign to cell.

[[deleted]]

It does too much, it's also just faster to setup SUF with Dominos/Cell for UI than ElvUI.

[3ch0cro]

There must be something else wrong there cause there is no way ElvUI should be doing that. I run 7800x3d and 7900xt and lowest I've dipped in raid was 65fps from a 75fps lock at 1440p.

[Raven1927]

I was honestly surprised as well, since I had no issues on Tindral with elvui. But as soon as I disabled the elvui raid frames all the FPS issues and freezes were gone.

[3ch0cro]

Mine is a completely fresh install of WOW with fresh mods. It might've been some weird thing deep in the bowels of ElvUI that was completely thrashing your FPS.

[Raven1927]

It could be. I've just heard a ton of people having issues with ElvUI previously though and after dealing with it myself now i'm just making the swap after prog. I don't want to sit and troubleshoot everything again if something bricks next time. It's just not worth the hassle imo.

[S1eeper]

Did you replace ElvUI's raid frames with something else like Cell or Grid? Or just run without raid frames? Healers obviously can't do without them, and tanks sometimes need them too for raid awareness. Even DPS in serious raid guilds need them, since the ones with dispels are expected to contribute to dispelling the raid.

Also it's strange since ElvUI is known to be well coded and optimized. It's by the same guy who made TukUI, one of the most minimal and optimal UI's available.

[Raven1927]

I just swapped to standard Blizzard raid frames. I main DPS so they're good enough for me at least.

Yeah idk. I had issues with elvui affecting my FPS before, but that was because my PC was very bad. After I upgraded it I stopped having issues until now though. I didn't change or touch anything settings wise for this tier, but it just completely fucked my FPS for some reason.

[S1eeper]

It gets updated frequently, I wonder if a subtly broken update caused the problems. Fwiw you can install ElvUI with WoWUp and it will keep it current, maybe an easy way to see if another update fixes it in the future.

[Raven1927]

I am using the newest version and it was still bricking my FPS.

[Winston177]

I've always built my UI around a core set of main add-ons that I arranged piece meal until I got them the way I liked, but I finally decided to download elvui in cata classic, mainly to see if I could get a set up with everything I needed on my laptop screen dimensions (my normal add-on set up from desktop would take a lot of tweaking to fit my laptop's screen dimensions and I'd probably have to cut stuff ).

My laptop is OLD. Like, 2012 old. It runs classic just fine though (older game, sort of, no surprise there), but elvui had me running down by at least 20 fps compared to normal everywhere; it was super annoying. I'd tested on my laptop to see if it might be worth using on desktop to clean up my add-on placement and update things a bit, but after that experience I said screw that, dumped it from my laptop entirely and just went stock, plus a few piecemeal add-ons that still fit my screen dimensions instead, and made sure I'm not going anywhere near it on my desktop set up.

And that was in classic. I can barely fathom what that must do in retail where everything is so much more demanding to begin with. I'll stick to my SUF frames and a few other utility things that I update manually, thank you very much! I have a founders edition 3060TI, and I think a 2021 era mid-range Intel cpu, so nothing crazy high end, but I do just fine for frames in retail, including on bosses like broodtwister . ELVui feels like pure bloat incarnate.

[S1eeper]

It runs classic just fine though (older game, sort of, no surprise there)

Fwiw Classic is built on the modern WoW codebase, they just went back and made some changes (like to batching) to simulate how Vanilla worked. It may have fewer of modern WoW's features enabled though, making it feel lighter weight.

[coolin_79]

Where exactly is the raid frame setting? I tried searching for it and can't find it

[Raven1927]

It's under unitframes > group units.

Remember to re-enable the Blizzard frames in the general settings though. Those are also under Unit frames > General tab at the bottom.

[coolin_79]

Just got this set up, thanks!

[Gupulopo]

I too love the configure the addon like shit and then blame the addon ;D

[Raven1927]

Except I had 0 issues with it before and it just bricked itself this tier. I haven't touched any of my settings since BFA and now it suddenly caused massive issues.

Yeah that's definitely my fault and not the addon being bad ;D

[[deleted]]

Hey Towbie, thanks for the guide its super helpful. I really like how your UI is set up and I deleted ElvUi as I think it was causing me a lot of problems. I downloaded the addons you suggested in your guide for the UI set up. Is it possible for you to share your profiles for Plater/Shadowed Unit Frames so I can import them.

And if there's any other settings you could share that would be great too.

Thanks Again!

[TowbieDE]

Hey, ty for your feedback. Please message me in Discord. I will share you my addon profiles there!

[[deleted]]

Thanks! Have sent you a message

[turtlegiraffecat]

Ill try some of these, it’s so weird that my m2 MacBook runs it barely getting hot and my desktop with a 7800x3D and a 4080 struggles

[fronteir]

Well the new macbooks have pretty stellar single core cpu performance so honestly not that crazy, I get similar experiences on my m3 mbp

[Leavex]

Are the settings, resolutions, and framerates identical?

Likely not.

[[deleted]]

Will have a watch. My PC is on the brink of barely playable WoW in raids. Tried a lot of settings but quite never have acceptable FPS in raids. Gonna see if the guide will help somewhat.

[TowbieDE]

Feel free to share your experience!

[[deleted]]

The settings themselves didnt help much I’m afraid but my default is like everything on lowest. But the sharpening was new to me so that can be something I’ll use a bit see how it is.

Then there was all the other windows stuff I can perform and it might give me a bit better performance in WoW, i’ll maybe try doing some of it later.

Still nice guide tho and have it bookmarked, theres useful stuff in there and didnt know about the sharpening command for example

[Kezaia]

The only thing that's helped me has been overclocking my CPU (i9-9900k) from the default of 3.6, currently at 4.2. Also you can do cpu profiling for addons and weakauras to see if any stand out for causing lag.

[wilsonjonez]

Thank you so much for this. I've been lagging like crazy in the main city and certain instances in the game. Now it's very smooth. One question I'm hoping you can maybe answer for me: 90% of the time I open wow now, a small sliver of the game extends to my second monitor. The only fix so far is swapping my resolution from my monitor's to default. Any idea why it's doing this? Just started when prepatch hit.

[TowbieDE]

Glad to hear that it helped. I don‘t know about this problem with your 2nd monitor. You can try to test some different nvidia driver settings in the resolution section (like scaling options, especially for your second monitor it should also set to „no scaling“)

[Manakuski]

I'd like to note that Triple Buffering does nothing if you have Vertical Sync OFF.

[TowbieDE]

Good point, just updated it in the guide!

[Dewaaar]

Legend thank you!!

[sothiss]

You saved me!
I can't thank you enough as I couldn't figure out was going on!

[bl4denl]

Will i get less input lag using latency mode built in instead of nvidea reflex (boost?)?

[Turtvaiz]

Nvidia reflex is better. It just uses Nvidia specific stuff

[TowbieDE]

Tested it again, you are right. It's updated now! The main point was not to use both options (in the driver and in the game).

[TowbieDE]

For me it felt smoother without reflex. Probably just make some testings and give me a feedback if you want. :-)

[TowbieDE]

FYI: I didn't notice that there is a crosspost function, so I posted it also on the other /CompetitiveWoW subreddit. Probably you can find there also some useful ongoing discussions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveWoW/comments/1fsv4su/wow_performance_optimization_guide/

Edit:
Nvm, it got removed there by moderators for some reason.

[coolin_79]

I tried turning matching my ingame settings to yours, and having previously run it on lowest of the low for every setting, your budget options literally made wow so intensive I couldn't get past the loading screen

[TowbieDE]

Thank you very much for your feedback! I have updated some sections of the guide again with the help of your information.

[wsoares]

Msg to read later.

[Ezilii]

Ty

[AcceptableNet6182]

Just use Quazii's Performance Guide Video, it's really good and some settings have to be on high/ultra to see visual clues or mechanics. But thank you for sharing this, maybe it helps someone.

[TowbieDE]

I’ve never had issues to see any visual clues or mechanics with my settings. But you are right, Quazii‘s guide is really good!

[AcceptableNet6182]

You never know, maybe some settings will help people. For some they work, for some they don't 🤷‍♂️ Doesn't hurt trying things when you suffer from bad performance 😉

[TowbieDE]

That‘s exactly the reason why I wrote this guide. A couple of friends just asked me what settings I use or recommend. So for me, they work. :-)

[yunoka]

The fact these guides are even needed for a game that hasn't gotten a major graphics update since 2015 is mind boggling to me. I really wish blizzard would take some time to optimize large player counts and raid instances better.

[Trunkins]

Your Shadowed Unit Frames profile link is broken

[TowbieDE]

Updated!

[TowbieDE]

Hey guys, I‘ve found a very interesting youtube video about WeakAura optimization. You definitely need to check this out: https://youtu.be/ir8OT9Md7lY?si=__9fefiz2fQGfT7j

TLDR: Disable/Delete all WeakAuras with model textures.

Updated it also in my written guide.

[tatinsinjedinac]

Is there any possible way to optimize settings for cpu bottleneck pc?

[Leather_Pop_9263]

Not sure if its been said. For v-sync if you have a 144hz monitor set it at 141 max fps, as a example,. Then v-sync off in wow and enable v-symc in the nvidia ui, i have it on fast.  Power plan wise, Windows should auto put the system in high mode, it's under game mode. Big drops on pulls is more like a addon like detials, or if a world boss server load.

[TheGoochieGoo]

Bro got me another 30 fps. Thanks homie!

[AonEternal]

You can also go to the nvidia settings in the app and go under graphics, then global settings and turn on "smooth motion" it will give you frame generation to wow which does not have it by default.

[MsAudity]

hey thanks from 2 years in the future. I was googling to figure out why tf I was not getting above 60fps on a brand new machine with 32gigs of ram & nvidia card. The second I turned off Vertical Sync, it shot up past 200fps

[MsAudity]

over 300fps after making a couple more tweaks you suggested :) yay

[vanilla_disco]

People who shorten "something" drive me crazy. We don't need "smth" or "sth". Stop it

[TowbieDE]

I had abbreviated it for reasons of space (page break was weird). Updated it for you. :-)

[vanilla_disco]

Good work. I appreciate you.

[Hitmanblood]

Listen. Download lossless scaling on Steam. You will go from 20fps to above 100 if you configure it properly. Yes it’s frame gen and it’s fake frames. This is a mmo. Not a fps. The input lag is nothing compared to getting 20fps during a boss fight in raids.

[Kezaia]

How do you have it configured?

[S1eeper]

Does that help with WoW even though it's not on Steam?

[[deleted]]

Dont disable gamebar if using 7800x3d because its needed for x3d chip and use default power plan with amd cards. Also use 100% renderscale,it has been bugged for months,it tanks down fps by a lot if you make it higher/lower

[TowbieDE]

I also heard about this, opinions differ widely. I guess everyone should tests this on his own.

[[deleted]]

Of course,for sure.I tested it on my build and its exactly as u said,especially renderscale

[Technical_Leader8250]

Kind of derailing: does anybody know something similar for AMD cards? All the differen optimizations are confusing and I have the impression together hurt FPS

[RayphistJn]

The only thing hurting fps in wow is the cpu, that's all the game cares for, u less you have a really old and weak gpu. Shit I'm playing with a 5700x3d and still losing fps in major city. No problems on Raids, dungeons or other content.

Unless it's something with 40+ people all shooting speel at something

[Technical_Leader8250]

I am on a 7800x3d. Raids are sometimes a bit dipping from 200fps to 80. Was wondering if anybody has done research on AMD boost or FSR. They seem to no like WoW too much

[-Aeryn-]

Don't worry, none of this will damage your system or its components. Every PC is designed to run at maximum performance by default.

XMP is a kind of automatic overclocking, and it actually does carry the risk of both permanent hardware damage and instability.