WoW FPS Lag and Win7 CPU Parking

C

CounTDookU23

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 28, 2004
Messages
439
Sorry if this has been covered before. But I figure I would share this in case it does help anyone else....... yes i know wow is the devil. Thats not what this is about.

I always wondered why my computer could run some of the newest games with the newest graphic engines........... with full settings. But noticed Dalaran always ran like shit.

I found a thread on the forums regarding multiple core cpus and a setting in the config.wtf file that fixes that weird Dalaran frame crash. (abnormally low frame rates for me)

I run on a 2560x1600 with VSYNC on. But upon entering Dalaran my frames would plummet. I just didnt understand why. So heres the thread.....

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778017311

I set my config.wtf to processAffinity value of 15. Now my frames are locked back in at 60FPS with every value completely maxed out in WoW video panel....... at 2560 x 1600 resolution. Fuck yeah. Read the thread........ hope this helps anyone out there.

From what I was reading on the thread it helps people with older hardware as well.
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I also adjusted the CPU Parking in the registry preventing Win7 to park Cores/HT cores

Windows 7 uses a feature called "Core Parking". Basically it shuts down cores when it thinks you don't need them. In my opinion this is great for a laptop to conserve battery but me and my Alienware desktop Core I7 system don't really care about power consumption. To see if it's parking your cores, go into your task manager, performance tab, and hit the 'resource monitor' button. Choose the CPU tab and check the graph labels. You will see CPU 0, CPU 1, etc and if they are parked it will say 'parked' after it.

Anyway the Core I7 has eight CPU threads and the resource monitor shows four of the eight threads were parked. So I figured out that Win7's stupid core parking was keeping WoW from using more than one processor core, effectively stinking up my gaming experience. I am not sure why WoW didn't just use a non-parked core but I'll leave that to Blizz to explain.

After some craftly Googling I found that there doesn't seem to be any user interface to disable core parking., but I found this link with a registry mod you can make to get rid of it. I did as instructed and Win7 no longer parks my precious cores. My game is back! Try it. If you're unsure be sure and export the registry key to a file first before deleting it.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1861804
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Thanks, i gotta try it, cause dalaran runs like crap for me too since i installed win 7.
 
I will give this a shot when I get home. Dalaran does indeed run like shit on random occasions for me. I just thinks its shitty optimization on Blizzards part, but maybe I will get lucky with this.
 
Holy crap. I just thought Dalaran was "too much" for my machine.
Can't wait to try this when I get home!
 
WoW thank you for this post and it is kind of ironic. I am currently building a new rig for a friend and the sole thing he wants is 60+ FPS in Dal with Shadows on. I never really pay attention to my FPS in WoW because the game runs great even Dal.

However upon his requisition I decide to see how my rig in sig which is over a year old now performed yesterday. I figured I was getting more than 60 FPS (Running at 1920x1200 with all settings at max) and I was surprised to see that in Dal I was only getting around between 30-40 FPS. I turned off shadow and it jumps up to 60-70. I will test these changes tonight and hopefully I will be able to get 60 FPS with Shadows.

Perfect timing with this post!
 
Very interesting, I'll give this a shot. Could use more performance in-raids. Dalaran doesn't run terrible for me but I do stutter very heavily during peak hours. This is on Mal'Ganis.
 
Sweet, maybe this will explain the micro stuttering I am getting a lot.
 
This works.

I recently found this article also. I restarted my account during Thanksgiving due to the free 7 days Blizzard was offering and upon loading up the game again I was getting pissed off that my computer (in sig) was running crappier than my wifes Core2Duo. So I started researching the performance issue. That's when I stumbled upon this discussion on the Blizzard forums.

On my computer I set the "affinity" to 255, which enables WoW to run on all 8 cores of the i7 (4 physical, 4 hyperthreaded). I then disabled core parking because I found out WoW was using physical core 1 and 2 and hyperthreaded core 3 and 4. This was because physical core 3 and 4 plus hyperthreaded core 1 and 2 were "parked" and WoW was not waking them up to use them.

But really, the biggest performance killer is that Blizzards default setting of 3 causes WoW to only run on physical and hypertheaded core 1 of an i7 system. So, you're only using 1 core of your nice, fast i7 unless you manually change this setting. There is no way to automatically do it. Blizzard knows this (it's stated by one of their reps in the linked thread) and doesn't care because in their words we're only a small percentage of the CPU population and it works fine on "most systems". NICE! :rolleyes:

If you're running a Phenom II quad or a Core2Quad you're probably not going to see as much of a gain by changing this since you're already using 2 physical cores with the default affinity setting. Also, if you've manually turned off hyperthreading on your i7 you won't notice as much of a gain. (I used to have hyperthreading off before I quit WoW in the summer so this is why I never really noticed the issue before)

It's really a night and day difference on a hyperthreaded i7. Change that setting to 85 or 255 immediately! Turn off parking too if you're so inclined.

Changing this setting literally gave me a 25 fps boost in Dalaran. I was standing there by the bank waching my fps hover around 35-40 fps and getting pissed. Closed the game, changed the affinity setting, reloaded the game.... 60fps. Madness.
 
Is this for windows 7/vista only or can a windows XP machine get better rates in Dal?
 
Dende said:
Is this for windows 7/vista only or can a windows XP machine get better rates in Dal?
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The processor affinity WoW issue can be applied to any box using multiple cores. Usually the people that benefit the most are the boxes that contain more than 2 cores.
 
Rich Tate said:
The processor affinity WoW issue can be applied to any box using multiple cores. Usually the people that benefit the most are the boxes that contain more than 2 cores.
Click to expand...

Just fyi I looked at my config.wtf (in the wtf folder right?) and saw no affinity setting. I'm working with 2 cores only.
 
The WoW config fix is for quads/quads with HT/dual cores with HT..... from what I understood. Lots of reading on the forum thread. Give it a read. Theres tons of info to be found in there.

You will not find the process affinity entry if you are running on a regular dual core....... I don't know of any dual cores with HT.

The Win7 core parking tweak has helped people with dual core cpus from what I read. Read the thread on WoW forum. Lots of questions answered there.

I know that the config file tweak had a huge impact for me in game. All the weird micro stuttering and Dalaran frame crash went away........... even with tons of people in the area the frames rarely dip below 60......... 57-58 at worst on my 30" setup.
 
From Blue Poster.......... but makes a lot more sense if you read through the thread. Lots of useful information being tossed around.

Can you explain this further please? Are you saying the default detected for dual core systems should be 3? If so, and it isn't, should we change it to 3? I guess other than copy pasting the variable given, I'm not sure what to do next, still.
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If you have more than 1 core or physical processor (think a minimum of an Athlon MP system with 2 processors), processAffinityMask is automatically set to 3. It's the decimal value for 1,1
You don't need to change it unless you want it to use a specific core. If you want it to use the first, change it to 1. If you want it to use the second, change it to 2. If you want it to use both, use 3 or leave it alone since it's already the default.

The OP's chart is inverted. I'm going to update it to this type of format:
╔════════╤════════╤════════╤════════╤════════╤════════╤════════╤════════╗

║ Core 8 │ Core 7 │ Core 6 │ Core 5 │ Core 4 │ Core 3 │ Core 2 │ Core 1 ║

╠════════╪════════╪════════╪════════╪════════╪════════╪════════╪════════╣

║ +128 │ +64 │ +32 │ +16 │ +8 │ +4 │ +2 │ +1 ║

╚════════╧════════╧════════╧════════╧════════╧════════╧════════╧════════╝
 
I don't understand what the point of parking is in windows, doesn't intel/amd already have low-level stepping to save power on unused cores? 8 low-power cores is always going to be faster than 1 full-powered core, I thought that was the whole point of stepping down multipliers when near idle.
 
anyone try multiboxing? .. i get about 1/2 rate multiboxing even with the second copy with everything turned to minimal.
 
csnv said:
anyone try multiboxing? .. i get about 1/2 rate multiboxing even with the second copy with everything turned to minimal.
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Using the instructions in that thread, you should be able to get the different wow clients to use different cores, so they aren't fighting for resources.

On the overall topic, this tweak helped greatly on my i7920, my understanding is that basically what was happening was that under the default settings WoW is able to use two cores, but the "3" setting explicitly tells the wow client it can only use core 0 and core 1, and if those are overloaded, the windows scheduler can't just move the load to less stressed cores.

Unfortunately if you have HT enabled, core 0 and 1 are both logical cores on the same physical core, so on a quadcore with HT, like the i7s, you are basically capped at 25% of cpu resources available and it chokes under high load.

If you have 4 logical cores (i.e a dual core cpu with HT) or 8 logical cores (quad core with ht), setting the cvar to 15 tells wow it can use any of the first 4 logical cores, and setting it to 255 tells wow it can use any of the first 8 logical cores, which frees up the windows scheduler to move the load to other less stressed cores, so it doesn't choke anymore.

If your multi-core doesn't have HT enabled, this should basically make no difference.
 
The processor affinity config setting worked for my setup, I was able to run all over Dalaran and my fps never dropped below 60(gpu restricted) where before it would go slide show by the bank and when I turned a corner.
 
Is this all I need to do ? Per the last post on the wowforums thread;


Just log onto the game and type this to your chat window:

/console processaffinitymask 15

Hit Enter. Exit the game and then log back in.



So that's it ? And it will stay that way ?
 
Zorachus said:
Is this all I need to do ? Per the last post on the wowforums thread;


Just log onto the game and type this to your chat window:

/console processaffinitymask 15

Hit Enter. Exit the game and then log back in.



So that's it ? And it will stay that way ?
Click to expand...

Yeah it will stay that way and enable WoW to use all 4 cores (but not at the same time).

I tried this myself and it helped a little with some of the hitching in Dalaran, however I am GPU limited by my 8800GT now (1600x1200, Ultra Quality, 2xAA)
 
Thx for the info. I don't play wow but let you guys know if I notice any improvements in other games...
I have 2 5870s and an i7 920 oc'd. Only real gripe I have is men of war..
 
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