Taking a stab at the FPS drag in raids...

spiel2001 · 06-05-09, 07:12 PM

For those of you still seeing FPS problems in raids, I would like to ask you to help me try to identify if the talent browser is part of the problem, or possibly a big part of the problem.

If you would... take some time to note your frame rates while raiding. Then save the attached file to your [ Interface > AddOns > nUI > Units ] folder and reload WoW and resume raiding. Do your frame rates change? Let me know what your frame rates were before and after installing this patch.

NOTE: This "patch" effectively disabled the entire talent browsing system in nUI, so you won't see character builds while this version is installed. But I need to know if that code base it what's deteriorating performance in raids and how much, if any.

.

Seer · 06-07-09, 10:19 AM

Haven't had time to raid yet (maybe tonight) but....

I updated a few other mods today.. (Questguru, Skada, DBM, Talented) all seems fine when leveling in the old world.. As soon as I go to Northrend, esp near Dalaran I get frame rate drops like I've never seen before..

Just flying around it went from ~30 to 3, back to 30.. Takes a few minutes tho before this starts
Getting near Dala it goes down to 20 with drops to 1, taking seconds for the game to get back to responding..

Undoing this change seems to make it a bit less.. So I guess it must be one of the other mods causing this..

Stupid game..

btw, Swatter doesn't seem to catch any errors..

Xrystal · 06-07-09, 10:46 AM

Well I know at the moment I don't go higher than 10fps in naxx 25 .. sometimes as low as 2fps which is beastly. Thankfully at the moment I am dpsing but its a killer when I'm healing or tanking Razz

Seer · 06-07-09, 10:58 AM

Hehe.. Well, let's just say this machine I'm on should be able to do 60fps, afterall, it can run Crisis fine :-p

Cleared all of my variables redownloaded several addons, except poweraura's.. Seems better, at least not as hard dips in dalaran..

spiel2001 · 06-07-09, 11:18 AM

Well... there are three key modules that I have not yet been able to update to the new event engine design (and thus eliminate the garbage memory they produce and the irritation of the broken garbage collector that causes) and those are the unit auras module, the unit spec module and the unit raid group module -- all three of which are heavy use modules... especially when raiding.

I suspect that when I can get those three updated it will make a non-trivial impact on nUI's performance in raids. We'll see.

Seer · 06-07-09, 11:27 AM

Hm, well, the problem at the moment is, I'm not in a raid, just moving around in Northrend and this happens.. Seems fine in Kalimdor..

Applying the patch seems to make it worse (longer pauses).. Tho that can be just a feeling, seems a bit odd that this change could make whatever is screwed up even more screwed up..

spiel2001 · 06-07-09, 12:00 PM

I absolutely would not expect that as the only thing this change does it make the talent browser non-functional. No reason at all for it to increase load in any way, shape or form.

There are some non-trivial issues with performance in Northrend that, imo, have *nothing* to do with any mod... just being there makes your FPS drop, even using no mods.

Seer · 06-07-09, 04:20 PM

I know... But this seems like I went back to a nUI version with that taint that caused Swatter to go crazy (well, something like that..) with the exception that Swatter doesn't catch anything, except a fubar message that fubar tried to do something while I was in combat, and the exception that I'm not in a raid :-s

Maybe the last small patch from Blizz is the problem..

Anyway, since I reinstalled the OS allready again, might as well reinstall wow from scratch and see what happens... :-p

havoxx · 06-07-09, 06:14 PM

Originally Posted by Seer

I know... But this seems like I went back to a nUI version with that taint that caused Swatter to go crazy (well, something like that..) with the exception that Swatter doesn't catch anything, except a fubar message that fubar tried to do something while I was in combat, and the exception that I'm not in a raid :-s

Maybe the last small patch from Blizz is the problem..

Anyway, since I reinstalled the OS allready again, might as well reinstall wow from scratch and see what happens... :-p

Can I ask a stupid question? Did you do a quick format, or a full format? I usually reinstall the OS just for the hell of it every 6 months, but if you had an issue, and you only did a quick format, it's possible your MFT is fragmented and causing issues.

Also, I want to throw in a quick reminder, most addons drop FPS, hell, let's face it, they all do, the more you have, the worse it gets, there's also the sound card, that can cause insane hiccups and issues if it's a piece of crap, or has bad drivers, lastly, remember, your ping to the wow server has another huge impact on the framerate.

You may be looking in the wrong place, it may not be wow at all.

Xrystal · 06-07-09, 10:55 PM

Okay, went back into naxx and briefly nUI went up to 44mb of memory usage or is it kb .. rofl can't remember. Also, although I could feel an improvement most of the time the moment we started fighting I was back down to about 4 fps and having problems.

Originally Posted by spiel2001

For those of you still seeing FPS problems in raids, I would like to ask you to help me try to identify if the talent browser is part of the problem, or possibly a big part of the problem.

If you would... take some time to note your frame rates while raiding. Then save the attached file to your [ Interface > AddOns > nUI > Units ] folder and reload WoW and resume raiding. Do your frame rates change? Let me know what your frame rates were before and after installing this patch.

NOTE: This "patch" effectively disabled the entire talent browsing system in nUI, so you won't see character builds while this version is installed. But I need to know if that code base it what's deteriorating performance in raids and how much, if any.

.

Seer · 06-08-09, 01:00 AM

Originally Posted by havoxx

Can I ask a stupid question? Did you do a quick format, or a full format? I usually reinstall the OS just for the hell of it every 6 months, but if you had an issue, and you only did a quick format, it's possible your MFT is fragmented and causing issues.

Don't get me started on MFT problems..

It's a new drive. And all was fine last week before the patch, I just didn't have the time to play wow after the patch till this weekend.

Thanks for the heads up :-)

spiel2001 · 06-08-09, 04:11 AM

Okay -- well, that pretty much tells me that the bigger problem is the unit auras, so I'll focus my attention there first.

Xrystal · 06-08-09, 07:13 AM

Scott, I only noticed the big fps drop since 3.1 hit. What have you done significantly since then ? Just in case

It might help point to the area. I personally think the extra umph they added is just too much for my computer even with its 4gb of memory and its somewhat archaic Nvidia 7600.

From the graphics corruption I have been getting recently in other games (*cough* Sim3 is way toooo addictive ) I am wondering if my graphics card is getting to the end of its usefulness and may be going to the great scrapyard in the sky soon. I have been taken to leaving my case open for a week or two at a time as the computer seems to heat up significantly that it feels like a sauna in my room.

The graphics in WoW I have had to push down to almost minimum so that I can put spell details to near maximum to catch the important stuff during raids.

spiel2001 · 06-08-09, 07:40 AM

Well... to be sure, nUI always had some FPS issues, but they were mostly a ignorable until the 3.0 patch... it's been all down hill from there with no change in nUI to speak of. The key changes that have been made since then have been in reaction to the problem.

Contion_ZH · 06-28-09, 06:56 AM

Its been awhile since this has been talked about but it started to affect me really bad in 25 man content. I was running a 25 man Naxx - with the installed file from the first page and I was running between 2 - 6 fps. Most of the time it I freeze or start fps lagging was during the gaining or loosing of an Buff or Debuff... I have had nothing but nUI installed to test if it was addon compatibility and I still had the lag. I also attempted the nUI console refresh rate suggestion from another thread and that did not resolve it either.

spiel2001 · 06-28-09, 07:07 AM

I'm aware of the issue with the nUI_UnitAura module and hope to have it recoded by this coming weekend. I would be curious about one thing as a test... if you pan the camera during these FPS lags straight up at the sky or to an empty wall... dose your FPS go up notably?

There are a *lot* of people complaining about FPS issues in the 25 man raids and they are *not* running nUI. I have found a lot of it appears to be graphics related and I'm forming a theory that it is related to the 3D features they added to the graphics engine. I have found that when these FPS issues start, if I pan the camera to a location where there is little graphic "action" in the view, my frame rate will jump from 9-12fps to 40+ fps. It's a pain not seeing the combat, but if you know your rotation and have a boss mod to alert you when trouble is coming, it's workable.

In the meantime, I am recoding nUI_UnitAura to see how much I can improve its performance. I do expect to have it in next weekend's update as I already mentioned.

Xrystal · 06-28-09, 09:09 AM

I have had to drop my graphics to minimum apart from effects for spell detail which of course is fundamental to watch for those ground attacks.

It improved my fps somewhat but the other day I went one step further and seems to have improved quite a lot.

I noticed that while I was Grizzly Hills questing with my fiance that my fps wasn't climbing about 15fps which is weird. So I took another look at the graphics options and read through the extra options at the bottom. Where the death glow or whatever it is called is situated at. I can't recall exactly which ones I turned off but the death glow one was definitely ( I wasn't worried that I didn't look like a ghost when I died - rofl ).

I haven't noticed anything else detrimental yet but frame rates in grizzly almost doubled or more and I have been getting 30+ fps in grizzly regularly. Of course my latency has been bad as well recently but playing between 10pm and 5am will mean I hit the download times my brothers use.

spiel2001 · 06-28-09, 11:44 AM

I found through trial and error that turning of the "Specular Lighting" option at the bottom of the effects panel made a HUGE difference in frame rate... better than doubled it for me.

Xrystal · 06-28-09, 11:52 AM

Ah yeah .. thats the one I didn't do cos I was in the middle of group questing

But in zuldrak at the moment I am hitting 50+ dps which I haven't seen in a long while .. well at least since 3.1 hit us.

Haven't had the opportunity to test it in raids since I did that change yet to see the difference graphics and fps wise so can't confirm yet whether it helps there.

Contion_ZH · 06-28-09, 01:05 PM

Originally Posted by spiel2001

I'm aware of the issue with the nUI_UnitAura module and hope to have it recoded by this coming weekend. I would be curious about one thing as a test... if you pan the camera during these FPS lags straight up at the sky or to an empty wall... dose your FPS go up notably?

There are a *lot* of people complaining about FPS issues in the 25 man raids and they are *not* running nUI. I have found a lot of it appears to be graphics related and I'm forming a theory that it is related to the 3D features they added to the graphics engine. I have found that when these FPS issues start, if I pan the camera to a location where there is little graphic "action" in the view, my frame rate will jump from 9-12fps to 40+ fps. It's a pain not seeing the combat, but if you know your rotation and have a boss mod to alert you when trouble is coming, it's workable.

In the meantime, I am recoding nUI_UnitAura to see how much I can improve its performance. I do expect to have it in next weekend's update as I already mentioned.

Aye when I pan or even zoom into where I am viewing less spell detail my fps goes up but that is true in any case... but it only goes up a few for me while using nUI. When not using nUI even at my regular camera distance I usually pull 30 - 45 fps.

I will admit my computer is not some super tweaked out computer that would server as a multi realm game server. But I am a Game and Simulation Programming and Design Major so it is not just your average computer.

I have had almost 159 mods running at once in raids before discovered nUI. and I am currently running less then 30.