WoW - Quite intensive these days - CPU wise at least

[yh125d]

I am amazed at how much of a resource hog WoW is now with the WoTLK expansion

I upgraded the rig in my sig from my old 8800gt to a 192 shader GTX260 and expected a quantifiable boost in FPS. After all, I'm gaming at 19x10, with everything maxed out - shadows and AA included. What did I gain? A paltry 3-5 FPS. I decided to OC my GTX from 620/1296/1080 to 680/1421/1203 and didn't gain a single FPS. I lowered res to 16x10 and disabled dynamic shadows, and only gained about 2 FPS.

Needless to say I am less than awed. My ram is running at DDR2-980, and according to freemeter and task manager I'm never using more than 2.5gigs or so, so it's safe to say I'm not ram limited.

I lowered my e7200 to stock from 3.5 and saw a 10 fps loss. "That's it!" I said. Then I said, "what the hell is WoW doing choking up a 3.5gHz C2D??" Small cache choking up maybe? This brings me to my next point.

Wow is multithreaded these days. Or at least it seems to be. Using freemeter and task manager I get an average of 75% cpu utilization with nothing but WoW and those meter programs running. When I minimize WoW to check my utilization, both cores drop in activity to ~5% each, which says to me that it is multithreaded. Has anyone seen activity like this on their C2D's and quads?

Maybe we're going to have to up our recommendations for those building WoW machines, especially for those with 19x10 or higher monitors. I know I'm considering a e8400 or q6600 after this realization...


*All fps was measured at the FP in dalaran in the evening, with lots of players active needing rendering

 

[Ares202]

yeh i agree but its weird than it doesnt look much better then it did on day one, bad coding maybe?

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: Ares202
yeh i agree but its weird than it doesnt look much better then it did on day one, bad coding maybe?

I'll disagree on that. All of northrend looks drastically better than old world, and still noticeably better than outland. So much more detail

 

[n7]

A Q9550 @ 3.8+ GHz would look nice in your rig

I suspect you'd see a pretty huge improvement too.

 

[poohbear]

who you have'nt said what your avg fps is yet, just what you gained & lost. if its 30+fps it should be fine. If a 7200 @ 3.5ghz isnt handling it the way you like, i doubt an e8500@ 4ghz is gonna make much of a diff (maybe another 5fps, just like what you noticed going from 3500-3000)

 

[BenSkywalker]

who you have'nt said what your avg fps is yet

In SFK I stay at a constant 60FPS(limit on multicore processors) never dips no matter what I do. In heroic Naxx on the AOE pulls I get about 0.5FPS(lower then Crysis with everything maxed by quite a bit). Saying what your average framerate in WoW is doesn't quite work like a normal game, it is FAR more varriable then in any run of the mill shooter.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: yh125d

Originally posted by: Ares202
yeh i agree but its weird than it doesnt look much better then it did on day one, bad coding maybe?

I'll disagree on that. All of northrend looks drastically better than old world, and still noticeably better than outland. So much more detail

No that's not how "coding" works.

OP/Ares-- I'm pretty sure we're reaching the limit of the (current) WoW engine. After they changed the max values for the slider details, these problems showed up. Even people with Quad core OC'd Penryns + 4GB RAM + 4870 1GB cards are having these slow framerates, hitching when spinning the camera. Blizzard just needs to go re-optimize the engine, that's all.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

who you have'nt said what your avg fps is yet

In SFK I stay at a constant 60FPS(limit on multicore processors) never dips no matter what I do. In heroic Naxx on the AOE pulls I get about 0.5FPS(lower then Crysis with everything maxed by quite a bit). Saying what your average framerate in WoW is doesn't quite work like a normal game, it is FAR more varriable then in any run of the mill shooter.

Instances are never the problem now, it's in the real world that the WoW engine shows it's age.

 

[Udgnim]

WoW is coded for up to 2 cores

it's CPU limited and likes RAM

 

[BenSkywalker]

Instances are never the problem now, it's in the real world that the WoW engine shows it's age.

That's funny, because I have the biggest framerate issues by far in heroic Naxx, far worse then in Dalaran(which would be my second largest problem area). OS, Vault and Malygos even on 25 man aren't bad, but Naxx just crushes my system.

 

[Leyawiin]

Something has changed with that game. The graphics are not and never will be so stressful enough to bog down a modern GPU (low, mid, high, whatever). There is something in the code of the game that is slowly mushrooming with each expansion that is hitting the CPUs hard. I only have an AMD X2 6400+ - but its paired with a factory OC'd GTX 260. When I'm out in the world I get a constant, vertical sync limited 60 FPS. During the past week or so when there were a lot more people playing due to WotLK and having the holidays off I noticed a big drop in FPS in cities. Used to be with my X2 5200+ and 8800 GTX combo I would get about 45 FPS in Ironforge when it was very busy. This past week it would crawl down to 23-30 FPS, all while having a more powerful CPU and GPU.

I think its a combination of all the code involved with each subsequent release, the increased draw distance and shadow quality options, and just more people on the servers. Its just speculation on my part and no, I can't prove it. All I know is the game, while still not being very graphically demanding, is kicking the crap out of my CPU at times.

 

[Wreckage]

I think it's because everything's bigger. There are huge buildings and outdoor areas. Not to mention giant creatures and such. They did add some new shadows that take up power as well.

 

[yh125d]

To clear it up, I was getting ~35fps in dalaran with everything maxxed at 19x10 in the evening (lots of people to render) and it was quite choppy. as soon as I started to walk around it drops to about 20-25

 

[BenSkywalker]

Something has changed with that game. The graphics are not and never will be so stressful enough to bog down a modern GPU (low, mid, high, whatever). There is something in the code of the game that is slowly mushrooming with each expansion that is hitting the CPUs hard.

There are a whole bunch of different factors involved here, hard to know where to start. First off yes- it is true that the core graphics on WoW are not complicated at all. That said, how many games do you play that draw in excess of 100 unique characters on screen at once? Yes there are a lot of the same races, but each of them are in their own gear, riding different mounts, etc.- the sheer variety of different characters on screen utterly dwarfs what the typical game on the PC will ever see.

Now to get all those unique characters on to your screen- how do you think all of that data gets to your vid card? It all has to be sent to you through your connection, then processed by your CPU and the data needs to be sent from your RAM(or worse, HD) to your vid card, then you have the shadows which are calculated on your CPU which change for each model you are looking at(and the dominant light source for that model).

WoW's graphics may not come close to other CRPGs like say, Oblivion, but there is WAY more going on.

In order to optimize their engine they could do a few things, one would be to make it so everyone appears to be in identical gear. Do you want that? I sure as hell don't. I rather like being able to see exactly what I'm dealing with when they are coming towards me, be it friend or foe. They could reduce the radius of how far out they load players into your RAM, I would absolutely detest that, as it is now I will occasionaly have people pop into view right in my face(two epic flyers headed towards each other as an example).

On the technical end they could do things like use a geometric LOD system to scale down the resources utilzed, but that would create vertex thrashing for one(either that or increase RAM demands from storing mutliple versions of the same model) and furthermore unless the game was written to only run under DirectX 10 you would smash into DX9's small geometric batch bottleneck and send performance screaching to a halt.

With all of that said, they could do a bit better on using a front to back sort order on the tail end of the rendering pipeline, but in order to do that it would require tighter syncing of net code which would increase everyone's latency a bit(and even then you would have cases where it would still fall down due to individual users lag spikes).

 

[Leyawiin]

Thanks for a more detailed explanation Ben. You obviously have a lot better grasp of what may be going on in the game than I do! I know its an apples to oranges comparison, because its never as busy as WoW, but Lord of the Rings Online doesn't have the extreme slowdowns in player character intensive areas (like Bree) that WoW does in a place like the central room of Shatt. Maybe the way textures (for both the world and PCs/NPCs) are cached is handled better. More graphically detailed game, but not quite as busy from a player character standpoint. Meh, guess I shouldn't compare them.

One thing is true, the knee-jerk (from a lot of people) statement that WoW can run on most any rig just doesn't hold up anymore (if it ever did).

 

[Elias824]

Well dont forget in wrath they added aton of new shadow effects, that makes a massive diffrence with frame rates, maybe try lowering it. Ive also had issues with Death knights too, some of the AE effects seem to make a rather large dent in frame rates for me.
WoW graphics in general seem abit funky though sometimes, one of my buddies just upgraded from an x1800gto2, to an 3850, and his fram rate dropped about 10fps with the same settings.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Originally posted by: Elias824
Well dont forget in wrath they added aton of new shadow effects, that makes a massive diffrence with frame rates, maybe try lowering it. Ive also had issues with Death knights too, some of the AE effects seem to make a rather large dent in frame rates for me.
WoW graphics in general seem abit funky though sometimes, one of my buddies just upgraded from an x1800gto2, to an 3850, and his fram rate dropped about 10fps with the same settings.

I can't wait until they replace the wow engine in a few years with something that can render like crysis.

I think the photorealism of Crysis blended with the toony nature of WOW would be amazing to look at. In fact, if you google the Stargate Mod for Crysis, you can see a very similar looking WOW environment in one of their vids. Mostly because it's using the photorealism of Crysis engine to make another world. So it looks real, real like another planet.

edit

here is the vid

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[yh125d]

Originally posted by: Elias824
Well dont forget in wrath they added aton of new shadow effects, that makes a massive diffrence with frame rates, maybe try lowering it. Ive also had issues with Death knights too, some of the AE effects seem to make a rather large dent in frame rates for me.
WoW graphics in general seem abit funky though sometimes, one of my buddies just upgraded from an x1800gto2, to an 3850, and his fram rate dropped about 10fps with the same settings.

In my post I pointed out how lowering res to 16x10 AND disabling shadows completely only gained 2-3 FPS

 

[Foxery]

Eh. You're having trouble with the maximum possible settings in the busiest possible locations? Imagine that.

Turning down the spell detail to Medium (during raids) and things like AntiAliasing / Texture Filtering (in general) will greatly help you with a pretty minimal impact on your experience.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: yh125dI lowered res to 16x10 and disabled dynamic shadows, and only gained about 2 FPS.

Maybe we're going to have to up our recommendations for those building WoW machines, especially for those with 19x10 or higher monitors.

Yet you proved yourself that it is not the resolution... Try it will all features on, including dynamic shadows, and lower the resolution to the lowest the game will allow you. You would probably see about the same FPS. Or at least, the same MIN FPS.

The issue is obviously not the graphics, the game code itself is what bloated up. It simply requires a faster CPU to do all that math in real time.

That is why I recommend people don't skimp on their CPU, you can always lower graphics settings to play a newer game on an older video card, but you can't lower "general code" to lower CPU requirements, so you just have to deal with lower FPS if your CPU is slow.

 

[taltamir]

1920x1200 = 2304000
1680x1050 = 1764000
((2304000-1764000)/2304000)*100% = 23.4375% decrease in pixel amount from 1920x1200 to 1680x1050.
((2304000-1764000)/1764000)*100% = 30.61% increase in pixel amount from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200.

Did you see that kind of difference in FPS? if not that your GPU is not what is holding you back. Your GPU is not being fully utilized because something else is holding you back.

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: taltamir
1920x1200 = 2304000
1680x1050 = 1764000
((2304000-1764000)/2304000)*100% = 23.4375% decrease in pixel amount from 1920x1200 to 1680x1050.
((2304000-1764000)/1764000)*100% = 30.61% increase in pixel amount from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200.

Did you see that kind of difference in FPS? if not that your GPU is not what is holding you back. Your GPU is not being fully utilized because something else is holding you back.

Yes, that's pretty much the point of this thread. Pointing out how WoW is gpu maxed past a certain point (hence the minimal gain in 8800gt -> GTX260) and CPU is the major bottleneck(even a 3.5 C2D) assuming 4gb ram

 

[boglwe]

Well, the biggest bog down factor with WotLK is the shading they added, if you want another 10fps or more, just turn them off. They also increased the visible distance as well, which is why northrend is so pretty. Those two factors are very hard on GPU's and CPU's. I am running a GTX 280 and a Q9550@3.65 at 1900x1080 and get average of 100fps anywhere I am at, nax is fine as well. I can get your a screenshot if you need.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: boglwe
Well, the biggest bog down factor with WotLK is the shading they added, if you want another 10fps or more, just turn them off. They also increased the visible distance as well, which is why northrend is so pretty. Those two factors are very hard on GPU's and CPU's. I am running a GTX 280 and a Q9550@3.65 at 1900x1080 and get average of 100fps anywhere I am at, nax is fine as well. I can get your a screenshot if you need.

Actually, would you track CPU usage while you're playing and see if WoW will actually use all 4 cores?

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: taltamir
1920x1200 = 2304000
1680x1050 = 1764000
((2304000-1764000)/2304000)*100% = 23.4375% decrease in pixel amount from 1920x1200 to 1680x1050.
((2304000-1764000)/1764000)*100% = 30.61% increase in pixel amount from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200.

Did you see that kind of difference in FPS? if not that your GPU is not what is holding you back. Your GPU is not being fully utilized because something else is holding you back.

That is not actually true. Your math is right, but your conclusion is not. Long are the days when fill rate has been the issue. Fill rate alone isn't what determines FPS, so you won't see a linear increase like the percentages you provided when dropping the resolution down.

Just compare 1920x1200 benchmarks to 2560x1600. If it were based on fill rate alone, then 1920x1200 should have 78% better performance in FPS over 2560x1600. However, you will not find that is true when reviewing benchmarks. A good example would be Anand's here The nice thing about that graph and test is that you can clearly tell that the CPU is not the bottleneck as can clearly be seen by taking the numbers from one of the last gen cards (3870 or 8800GT for example).

Anyway, not to detract from the thread here as WoW is CPU hungry, but I just wanted to point out that FPS does not increase proportionally with resolution. You get some performance, but nowhere near a 1:1 ratio.