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04-05-09, 08:53 PM   #1
Aerador
A Fallenroot Satyr
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 22
Low FPS is Raids with nUI+

Ok so I have read around and I understand that a fresh install should fix the issue but it's not fixing it for me. Here's the scoop...

I had nUI Pro before this whole Blizz UI Policy thing and everything was working GREAT. I was sit'n at around 120 FPS on my new iMac just about anywhere. Raiding/BGs would drop to the 80s usually which is still AWESOME!
So then nUI+ came out and I grabbed it just to "comply" with Blizz's new policy so I figured like usual i'd do a clean install of my addons. I deleted the WTF and Interface folder and started over installing all the exact same mods as before with the new nUI+.

Now the problems began. My FPS dropped to the 60s indoors, 30s to low 40s outdoors, and then in a raid/bg (any size group above a regular 5 man party) i'm hit'n 30s spread out but when fighting i'm dropping to the 5-10 FPS range. To narrow it down I wiped both folders again and started over 1 mod at a time. No issues until nUI+ was installed which was the last mod I put on. So I trashed WoW and reinstalled WoW (patches take FOREVER), tested without mods, and everything was back to the 120 FPS mark. Installed JUST nUI+ and once again frame rates dropped.

Again this only happens in groups over 5 players, wasn't happening when I had nUI Pro, and is happening with ONLY nUI installed and nothing else. I wouldn't care much if I just happened to try nUI and it wasn't working for me but i've been using nUI for quite awhile, never had any issues, and now I feel pretty much HOOKED. It sucks to play without nUI now and I JUST WANT MY NUI BACK!!!!!!

Sorry, i'm more addicted to nUI than WoW it seems at times. LOL! Like I said before, I had no issues ever with nUI before and I realize nUI+ is basically the same as nUI Pro was so i'm stumped. I've turned off the animations in nUI and I tried using SunnArt to make the viewport smaller but the FPS issue happens even when the viewport is TINY which really has me confused. When I checked the Addon Memory Usage it's only hitting in the 20MB-30MB range.

System:
iMac 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 800MHz DDR2
6MB L2 Cache & 1GHz Bus
Radeon HD 2600 Pro w/ 256MB
Res: 1680x1050
WoW GFX Settings: Most are set a medium except Shadows are turned off with Full Screen Glow off as well.
Mods: Prat (Chat Mod), Carbonite, Segui (RP Mod), FlagRSP (RP Mod), Sunn Viewport, Lore (RP Mod), Bang Wintergrasp (WG Timer)

Any help is greatly appreciated!
 
04-05-09, 08:56 PM   #2
Aerador
A Fallenroot Satyr
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 22
I forgot to mention that I also tried switching the grouping threw all of the different panels thinking maybe it was the until frames but it's even doing it with Solo and Party panels as well.
 
04-07-09, 05:49 PM   #3
Lery
A Black Drake
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 84
By chance are you playing in Windowed mode? It is known that when playing in windowed mode FPS drops. With any other UI I have used it has dropped about 5 FPS, from 60 to 55. Maybe the lowest is 50.

However, in NUI, I am seeing a considerable drop in FPS. It does down to 30 FPS when playing in Windowed mode compared to 60 FPS in full screen mode.

Here is the testing I just did:

No addons loaded at all. 60 FPS solid no change while questing around. Full Screen Mode

No addons loaded at all. 53-59 FPS while questing around. Windowed mode.

NUI loaded: 30-35 FPS windowed mode.

NUI loaded: 49-57 FPS full screen mode. Sometimes hits 60.

No other addons loaded but NUI.

I have tried adjusting the frame rate from default of 30 down to 10. It seems to help briefly but not completely.

Hope this lends some insight.

Last edited by Lery : 04-07-09 at 06:10 PM.
 
04-07-09, 07:45 PM   #4
Aerador
A Fallenroot Satyr
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 22
Nope i'm not playing in windowed mode. I did however try playing in a window as well hoping that would give me some FPS back but it didn't. I've now tried putting all the gfx settings on low as well with no luck in raids still. Going to try another full reinstall of WoW and nUI+ right now.
 
04-08-09, 07:43 AM   #5
spiel2001
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I don't know if it matters any to say this... but this is a problem a lot of people using mods are having, not just nUI (FPS going to pot while in combat) -- it seems to have started with the WoW 3.0 patch and I still swear up and down that Blizzard broke something in the AddOn engine in that patch.

It does not affect everyone and I have yet to have found a pattern for it that would indicate a common cause.
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What people don't get is that I am, ultimately, an artist at heart.
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04-08-09, 09:04 AM   #6
Treboron
A Cyclonian
Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 35
Wow i'd love 30fps in a raid... I barely get that in SMC alone away from any mobs/animations...

Worse case I get as low as 2fps in AOE intensive raid bosses... Good thing healbot seems to work regardless of FPS

Wish I could afford a new box
 
04-08-09, 09:17 AM   #7
Lery
A Black Drake
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 84
Originally Posted by spiel2001 View Post
I don't know if it matters any to say this... but this is a problem a lot of people using mods are having, not just nUI (FPS going to pot while in combat) -- it seems to have started with the WoW 3.0 patch and I still swear up and down that Blizzard broke something in the AddOn engine in that patch.

It does not affect everyone and I have yet to have found a pattern for it that would indicate a common cause.
Interesting. I would agree with you that Blizzard most definitely broke something. In my testing, as I stated, I only see a degrade in FPS when using NUI. No other addons. Nada, nothing.

If it helps, when I try other addons (i'm a UI junkie, it's an addiction ), my FPS does not degrade as much as with NUI. I completely understand however, that everyone's FPS will drop when using an addon compared to no addons. Just the nature of the beast.
 
04-08-09, 09:54 AM   #8
spiel2001
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So... if you install a battery of addons that replace all of the features that nUI provides, you can run your interface with no loss of FPS?
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What people don't get is that I am, ultimately, an artist at heart.
My brush has two colors, 1 and 0, and my canvas is made of silicon.



Official nUI Web Site: http://www.nUIaddon.com
Official nUI Support Forum: http://forums.nUIaddon.com
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04-08-09, 11:37 AM   #9
Lery
A Black Drake
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 84
Originally Posted by spiel2001 View Post
So... if you install a battery of addons that replace all of the features that nUI provides, you can run your interface with no loss of FPS?
Pretty much yes. Although I would always expect some sort of FPS drop due to the nature of addons, as well playing in Windowed mode.

I was using Ishtara's UI:

http://www.wowinterface.com/download...11091-3.0.html

With that UI I was using Rangedisplay, Questhelper, Auctioneer, DBM, Omen, Recount, SellOmatic, Zaner's Hunter Mod, LightHeaded, Ratingbuster, Doublewide.

While playing I had a FPS in the range of the 50's.

Running just NUI it holds in the 30's.

I just started getting used to Nui and just quested with it. I tried a 25 man vault and crashed out. Probably just an anomaly, but I plan on doing some more raid testing.
 
04-08-09, 12:05 PM   #10
spiel2001
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Here's an old post I wanted to drag back up here...

http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...postcount=2496
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What people don't get is that I am, ultimately, an artist at heart.
My brush has two colors, 1 and 0, and my canvas is made of silicon.



Official nUI Web Site: http://www.nUIaddon.com
Official nUI Support Forum: http://forums.nUIaddon.com
My day job: http://www.presidio.com/
 
04-08-09, 02:22 PM   #11
Aerador
A Fallenroot Satyr
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 22
Originally Posted by spiel2001 View Post
So... if you install a battery of addons that replace all of the features that nUI provides, you can run your interface with no loss of FPS?
Spiel, I reinstalled WoW and nUI and it still happened. SO I gave this a try. I replaced every part of nUI, animated portraits and all with other mods, made the UI look very similar to nUI even and tested the FPS. I also added even more mods that I wanted to try out as well. Basically i'm still pushing about 120 FPS in cities including Dalaran. In combat my FPS yo-yos between 90-110 FPS and in large groups where I was having the issues before (like in the BGs) i'm sit'n in the 70-80 FPS range with the occasional spike up to the hundreds and down to the 60s.

Mods used for testing: XPerl, Bartender 4, Recount, Simple Buff Bars, Clique, Bang Wintergrasp, Carbonite, FlagRSP, Lore, Prat, Segui, Sunnart Viewport, Omen, Furbar (Jam packed with Fubar Addons), ZOMGBuffs, Grid, IceHUD, Auctioneer, OmniCC, Baggins, CowTip, MSBT, Prat, and Quartz.

I've used nUI leveling 2 of my toons to 80 and it used to work without a problem as of the most recent patch. I wish I could find out what this problem is as it just seemed to appear out of nowhere when I reinstalled nUI. I thought maybe I was overheating a bit but the hottest thing in my iMac is my Airport card which is usually in the 50C area. CPU and GPU stay in the 40C - 49C range.

I'd rather have nUI over most of those mods. Any suggestions to try are greatly apreciated.
 
04-08-09, 02:33 PM   #12
Aerador
A Fallenroot Satyr
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 22
Oh another thing is i've been watching CPU Usage in the Activity Monitor and nothing seems out of the ordinary. The CPU Usage DOES spike to 100% on both cores but this is an issue for alot of Mac users, non nUI related, and Blizz has yet to fix that. That usually happens after playing for long periods. Another issue is memory usage when playing over long periods but again, that's not nUI related and both of those issues just require a restart of WoW. I looked at these thinking maybe nUI was using MORE memory or CPU usage than normal and maybe my system was getting a bit stressed out but i'm not seeing that as far as I can tell.

ALSO, when the lag / low FPS issues are happening with nUI installed it's happening in the viewport of the game itself and NOT in the panels of nUI. To test this I installed Sunnart Viewport, made the viewport about 4"x4" hopped in a BG and what happened? The FPS still dropped but the bars (health and others) still updated without issue. Personally I don't see how I could get FPS loss on a 4"x4" viewport when the rendering area is so small but that's what it's doing.
 
04-08-09, 03:07 PM   #13
Lery
A Black Drake
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 84
Very interesting information Aerador.

I had a thought. Is it possible to list the recommended Video, Resolution and Video, Effects settings to run NUI with. Now before you say, this is dependent on your PC/Mac, I understand that. I am just thinking of maybe the suggested settings.

So what I am running with, because I have a fairly well built up to date PC, running Windows XP SP3.

Video Resolution: 1680 x 1050 Wide

Multisampling: 24-bit color 24-bit depth

Refresh is at 60Hz

No UI Scale

Vertical Sync., checked

Triple Buffering, checked

Hardware Cursor, checked

Reduce Input Lag, checked.

I run at Windowed Mode, Maximized, so I can move my mouse to my 2nd monitor.

Effects:

I have always played with these at High. Until NUI I have never bothered changing them. So for now I set it to Good instead of High.

Shaders are all checked.

Thoughts?

If you want my specs:

Intel Dual Core 3ghz

3gb Ram

ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

I do not think specs are necessary, because I can switch to any other UI and or mimic NUI and get better FPS.

So it must be something somewhere.
 
04-08-09, 03:28 PM   #14
spiel2001
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Seeing as this is not an issue I can recreate on my system, I'm going to kind of back off and watch the conversation and see if you guys can home in on where some issues may be... if we can narrow down where it appears the problem is arising from, I can try coding work-arounds and put them up here for you guys to test with and we'll see if we can break it.

I have to say I have noticed FPS lag issues associated with the viewport, the problem is that nUI cannot and does not interact with the 3D world, so what could be causing an issue there is a complete mystery to me. Obviously, if nUI's bars, etc., are updating fine but the 3D world is lagging, then there has to be something else occurring here.

I'd like to invite anyone and everyone who is experiencing this FPS lag issue to pile into this conversation with whatever observations you have and let's see if we can't get to the bottom of it.
__________________

What people don't get is that I am, ultimately, an artist at heart.
My brush has two colors, 1 and 0, and my canvas is made of silicon.



Official nUI Web Site: http://www.nUIaddon.com
Official nUI Support Forum: http://forums.nUIaddon.com
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04-08-09, 05:18 PM   #15
Aerador
A Fallenroot Satyr
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 22
Ok here's my settings I'm usually using;

Video Resolution: 1680 x 1050 Wide
Multisampling: 24-bit color / 24-bit depth / 1x Multi
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
UI Scale: Unchecked
Vertical Sync: Unchecked
Triple Buffering: Unchecked
Hardware Cursor: Checked
Reduce Input Lag: Unchecked.
Windowed Mode: Unchecked

Effects:
View Distance: Medium
Terrain Detail: Low
Spell Detail: High
Environment Detail: Medium
Ground Clutter (Both): Low
Shadow Quality: Low
Texture Res: High
Texture Filtering: Low
Weather Int: Low

Spec Lighting: Checked
Death Effect: Unchecked
FSG: Unchecked

Note I usually run with all the effect set to Medium - High except Full Screen Glow (Has known problems on a Mac), Death Effect (Personal Pref.), Ground Clutter (Personal Pref.). I have tried putting EVERYTHING on Low and/or Unchecked with nUI installed and it made little to no difference. Obviously with all the setting on low I should see an increase in FPS which I am except in a raid group of more than 5 people the FPS drops back down.
 
04-08-09, 06:38 PM   #16
Vis
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Just did some testing with my setup and also using a monitoring addon called OptionlessHouse. I left Optionlesshouse open through all tests so I know there was a slight hit to performance overall. I have 2 seperate WoW folders on my hdd. One has my original set of addons prior to using nUI, the 2nd has nUI and all the misc other addons I still use. I copied the WTF\config.wtf file from the nUI installed version to my original WoW directory as well to ensure video settings were identical.

My computer: Athlon XP Dual Core 2.0 GHz, 4 megs ram, 2 x 9800GT set in non SLI mode, 1680x1050 resolution.

Onto the fun stuff

Original before nUI UI:

In Ironforge solo:

Average FPS: 40
Mem/sec Minimum: 3.07 KiB
Mem/Sec Maximum: 7.107 KiB
Highest Mem/sec addon:Carbonite 6.83 KiB
Total addon only memory: 57.1 megs

In AV 40 Man:

Average FPS: 40
Mem/sec Minimum: 3.86 KiB
Mem/sec Maximum: 8.23 KiB
Highest Mem/sec addon:Carbonite 7.69 KiB
Total addon only memory: 57.2 megs


Current with nUI

In Ironforge solo:

Average FPS: 35
Mem/sec Minimum: 8.06 KiB
Mem/sec Maximum: 27.68 KiB
Highest Mem/sec addon: nUI 26.38 KiB
Total addon only memory:57.4 megs

In AV 40 Man:

Average FPS: 20
Mem/sec Minimum: 176.21 KiB
Mem/sec Maximum: 233.35 KiB
Highest Mem/sec addon: nUI 229.35 KiB
Total addon only memory: 60.8 megs


On both trials I ran the same route through IF and then through AV. In both AV runs I did not engage any enemies, nor get within viewable range of other players.

I'm not sure what all the numbers mean from a coding perspective though.

*edit: had the wrong resolution listed, lol

Last edited by Vis : 04-08-09 at 06:41 PM.
 
04-09-09, 03:10 AM   #17
gothicknight
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The major issue i am having at the moment, is that i lag out that bad during a boss fight that i actually get DC'd. and everytime i try to log back in i lag out again. This continues until the boss fight is over. If i disable nUI+ it runs fine.

Resolution: 1440x900
Multisampling: 24 bitx24bitx1 multi (usually run at x8, but with nUI i can't)
Refresh: 75
Vert. Sync: Yes
Triple Buff: Yes
Windowed Mode: Yes

Effects: All at MAX except death effect which is turned off.

System Specs:

C2D E8400 3.0Ghz (6MB Cache/1333FSB)
4G DDR2 800Mhz RAM
1907MB 9800GT Graphics (result given by dxdiag).
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04-09-09, 07:16 AM   #18
Lery
A Black Drake
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 84
Originally Posted by gothicknight View Post
The major issue i am having at the moment, is that i lag out that bad during a boss fight that i actually get DC'd. and everytime i try to log back in i lag out again. This continues until the boss fight is over. If i disable nUI+ it runs fine.

Resolution: 1440x900
Multisampling: 24 bitx24bitx1 multi (usually run at x8, but with nUI i can't)
Refresh: 75
Vert. Sync: Yes
Triple Buff: Yes
Windowed Mode: Yes

Effects: All at MAX except death effect which is turned off.

System Specs:

C2D E8400 3.0Ghz (6MB Cache/1333FSB)
4G DDR2 800Mhz RAM
1907MB 9800GT Graphics (result given by dxdiag).
This happens to me, but only during a 25 man. 10 man seems just fine. 25 man vault was painful. I got DC'ed, would logon back on and see the fight for a second and DC again. Wash, rinse, repeat, until the fight is over.
 
04-09-09, 07:25 AM   #19
spiel2001
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This is really disturbing and not something I realized was happening. I see frame rates down to 20fps when in a 25 or 40 man raid, but rarely less... much less to the point of a DC.

I don't even know how or where to start to try and sort this issue out.

/sigh

I'd be curious to see what happened if you were to disable the autogroup function and set the unit frame panel to player, party or raid 10 before the fight starts.
__________________

What people don't get is that I am, ultimately, an artist at heart.
My brush has two colors, 1 and 0, and my canvas is made of silicon.



Official nUI Web Site: http://www.nUIaddon.com
Official nUI Support Forum: http://forums.nUIaddon.com
My day job: http://www.presidio.com/
 
04-09-09, 08:42 AM   #20
Seer
A Molten Giant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 649
Due to some RL issues I was / am unable to test a lot at the moment, but I did notice an improvement in FPS (tho I haven't raided at all yet this week, unlikely I will either this week) after I disabled MSCT(MilkScrollingcombattext) things seemed to work better.

But as I have had minimal time to test I shall not say this is the solution or if it is even a solution for myself.. Maybe some of you who use the same or similar add on can try it out ?
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Last edited by Seer : 04-09-09 at 08:44 AM.
 
 

WoWInterface » Featured Projects » nUI, MozzFullWorldMap and PartySpotter » Support » nUI: Bug Reports » Low FPS is Raids with nUI+

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