Authors CurseForge

I'm getting really low FPS in WoW and the initial loading time is brutal, it's around 2-3 minutes long.

What can I do besides eliminate addons to fix these issues?
What hardware upgrades would help?

Follow the new vipe. Using uber light addons like

oUF, pUF, rUnits
oMinimap, pMinimap, rMinimap
pBuffs, rBuffs
pTags
rBars
pCast
AzCastingBar
...

I use about 20 addons and in total they add up to +- 650 Kb memory used.

Loading times are +- 10 seconds or less.

Hardware upgrades really depend on what Hardware you are using at the moment.

But in general at the moment memory is really really cheap, so if you got a DDR2 Motherboard memory is the cheapeast and most often the best upgrade for WoW Performance, although more than around 1,5GB(2GB) are not worth it if you are using XP(Vista)

If you dont have a DDR2 Motherboard (or DDR3 but only idiots buy that:P) you will normally use a quite outdated CPU aswell (Athlon XP, Athlon 64 Single Core, Pentium 4), depending on the speed/rating of those CPUs a CPU upgrade might be worth it. Currently CPUs considerable would be after my opinion: Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 (~around 145?) AMD Phenom 9500 (around ~145?).
The Core 2 Duo will be faster in WoW as it has only 2 Cores(WoW currently only support 1 Core fully and around 15% on the other one) which are faster clocked.
The Phenom features 4 Cores that are a tad slower but in optimized programs faster than the Core 2 Duo.

At the moment there are not many optimized programs besides Video Encoding/Rendering/etc., but in the future there will be almost every Game optimized for Multi Core architecture as its the only way the CPUs manufactures can go to improve performance now.

From those CPUs I would choose the Core 2 Duo atm, not because its faster in WoW, but because AMD currently has problems with their Phenom and the Core 2 Duo has high overclocking potential.

If you buy a new CPU you need a new Motherboard of course, i myself own a Gigabyte P35-DS3(around 80?) it supports 45nm Core2Duos and i really like it atleast :P But you can of course buy another Mainboard Chipsets you can buy for the C2D are currently P35,X38,X48. P35=consumer X38/x48=high end

And dont forget new memory :P


And Graphics Card could be an option aswell, although most Graphic Cards are bored with WoW, but a GeForce 8800GT is really worth the money atm. But you need a PCIe Slot for it, so if you still got a AGP motherboard you cant get such a card.
p

(All prices based on german prices in euro(=1,5Dollars))

So that my loading time went down by miles has nothing to do with using new 'sort' of addons?

Memory has a slight impact on loading times, but so does CPU. However, once the addon is loaded, memory has -zip- to do with performance unless you are running the minimum requirements for Wow. And even then, the effect is negligable.

CPU usage on the other hand, takes processing time away from the game, higher CPU usage by addons means less is available for things like.. the graphics engine.

However, your best bet for increasing FPS, is 2 pieces of hardware. a faster hard drive (FASTER not BIGGER) and a better video card.

CPU is only part of the equation. Video cards are the biggest thing.

Quote from Funkydude »

You could have a 2mb addon with options and a 6kb addon with no options, whats the difference in performance? NONE! The code for generating options just lies there, not using cpu, and it's barely executed what once a week? Like I said you are actually just making it harder for yourself when it comes to configuring these addons.

That said, I must admit I am actually a fan of configuring addons manually and have several of my own with no options, it has nothing to do with performance, I could understand it more if this was the situation you were describing.

Yeah I know what you mean but he DID say that his initional loading time takes about 2 minutes, whereas I thought perhaps he could switch over to some low memory addons so he fixes 1 problem.

You people need to stop using the blanket statement "memory doesn't matter"... it does and you're giving the mindless users the impression that it doesn't...

There are many addons that take way WAY too long to load because they do really stupid shit with no regard to the memory they use, even if it's a one-time static use. It's not hard to delay initializing things until they are actually needed, or keeping things "compressed" and only expanding them out on the first demand for them. Many addons use very large savedvar structures as well, which is a realy bitch to load. Plain and simple, creating large table structures takes a lot of time and should be avoided when possible.

The other thing that "memory doesn't matter" skips entirely is that memory consuption rate matters a lot. I know that the people around here know that, for the most part, but using that blanket statement over and over again reinforces to the people that DON'T know that it DOESN'T matter.

Just stop will you guys? If you're not gonna explain what does and doesn't matter, and WHY... or provide solutions... just don't waste your keystrokes.

BTW... all my addons strive to be as tiny as possible, at all times :)

What really would improve performance is: Give Addons their own thread to give Quad/Dual Cores some work todo :D

I hope they do improve the threading capabilities with WOTLK, else even people with highend CPUs will get FPS problems if they improve graphics quality as they did with TBC in WOTLK.

Quote from tekkub »

Just stop will you guys? If you're not gonna explain what does and doesn't matter, and WHY... or provide solutions... just don't waste your keystrokes.

Usually people say that static memory doesn't matter - which is correct provided one understands what it meant by static. :P

As for giving so-called "mindless users" wrong ideas. I'd much rather try to get rid of the overwhelmingly common misunderstanding that fewer and smaller addons improve performance than try to explain all details about memory usage to people who for the most part don't really care about those details. :)

Quote from break19 »

CPU is only part of the equation. Video cards are the biggest thing.

I disagree. Unless you're running an ancient system, you're likely to get a much bigger increase in performance from a faster CPU than from a more powerful video card. Since WoW's graphics engine is now several years old, it doesn't take advantage of some of the fancier features of newer video cards (SLI, advanced shader effects, etc.)

Another problem is that desktop computers have been adding additional cores to the CPUs instead of getting faster CPUs, and WoW is not optimized to distribute the workload much over multiple cores.


I've seen some 2.4 PTR posts suggesting that they're doing some extensive stuff with the rendering engine. I'm hoping it's for optimization and not just to make things look fancier.

But static memory use does matter when it comes down to load times, which is half the concern raised in this thread. Defining big table structures on load (which most any addon that uses Ace's config stuff does) takes a lot of time. Delaying this cost until the first need helps a ton at load time, but in the "big picture" it "doesn't matter".

It all depends on perspective, and the overwhelming perspective around here is that load time doesn't matter, which makes me a sad panda. Warmup was my first contribution to Ace for a reason.

Another bit people like to cry is that no config == faster. It's true to a degree, but only because of the approach people take. Generating config frames or slash handlers does take time, but it doesn't need to be done on load. Hell, 90% of the time it only needs to be done the first time the user loads the addon... they configure it and then never open that panel again. Again, the best approach is to delay creating the frame or defining the handlers until the user actually initiates the config. This is what I do with all my config panels in the new 2.4 GUI, and I certainly hope lots of people follow my example. However I expect they will just use Ace3Config and declare big ass table structures when they load up.

Quote from HunterZ »

I disagree. Unless you're running an ancient system, you're likely to get a much bigger increase in performance from a faster CPU than from a more powerful video card. Since WoW's graphics engine is now several years old, it doesn't take advantage of some of the fancier features of newer video cards (SLI, advanced shader effects, etc.)

Ancient by who's standards? A year old? year and a half? a 2yr old computer isn't ancient.

a 386 is ancient.

Video cards process the graphics. Features aside, a video card with more onboard RAM, and a faster GPU will most certainly increase your FPS lot more than upgrading your CPU will, for the same amount of money spent.

Video card upgrades are, by far, one of the most "bang for the buck" upgrades you can do for your system. Memory upgrades are the other one. CPU upgrades likely require a new mainboard, new RAM, and maybe even new peripherals, depending on things.

Typically, when someone upgrades their CPU, they're doing major upgrades to the entire system, however you can purchase a good $200USD AGP video card (or PCI-E if you have the newer stuff) and it -will- likely improve your framerates significantly.

However, to get a similar increase by replacing your CPU, you will likely spend about twice that.

My old 9800Pro ATI card was already bored with WoW...i had 5fps in Hyjal and then i OCed the card quite a bit, it didnt improve anything while other graphic intensive games had a FPS boost :P
OCing the CPU (A64 3500+) though was worth it until i upgraded to my new CPU :P

My experience with overclocking.. The performance "boost" seems to be trivial, compared to an actual upgrade. I overclocked my laptop's ati card as high as i could, a little at a time, then backed it off a little when it started having glitches and other issues.

The performance gain was 2 to 3 more fps. Hardly earth-shattering, and not worth the trouble.