Performance debugging ideas?

seebs · 07-12-09, 01:15 PM

Okay, I confess myself stumped.

I have a medium-large collection of addons (maybe 80-100 directories in addons/, but some are libraries or multipart addons like auctioneer).

My CPU's a phenom II 940, I have 4GB of memory, and my GPU's a Radeon 9800. I run under WINE. I get a pretty solid 60fps in the old world, and 20-35 in Dalaran, depending on which way I'm facing.

Here's what bugs me: Those numbers are apparently unaffected by anything I can do.

All effects at max? 60fps old world, 20-35 Dalaran.
All effects at minimum? 60fps old world, 20-35 Dalaran.
Antialiasing 4x? Same.
Antialiasing 1x? Same.
Swap in a GTX 260? Same.
Turn off all addons but a frame rate counter? Same.

So what on EARTH is happening here? If it were GPU limited, I'd expect that a higher-end video card would help. If it were CPU limited, I'd expect that turning off all addons would help.

I'm stumped. I can't figure out anything that affects this.

Vis · 07-12-09, 01:35 PM

Have you toggled off V sync? If you havent, that would explain why you are capped at 60 fps.

seebs · 07-12-09, 01:43 PM

Originally Posted by Vis

Have you toggled off V sync? If you havent, that would explain why you are capped at 60 fps.

Oh, I'm expecting to be capped at 60. I set maxfps 60 on purpose.

What I can't figure out is what's limiting frame rate in Dalaran to be LESS than 60. If it were the video card, I'd think that reducing all the settings or replacing the card with one about 50% faster would have a pretty noticeable impact. If it were the CPU, I'd think that turning off all my addons would have a pretty noticeable impact. Neither has any that I can measure.

Vis · 07-12-09, 01:48 PM

Ah, OK. I didn't realize you were wondering about improving fps in Dalaran.

I think it's just that Dalaran is horrible for lag and fps anyways. The only way you'd be likely to get better performance there is to be alone on the server, lol. Blizz really should have made Dala a larger area or something. I'm pretty sure what you see for fps there is average.

***EDIT***

Although I did read somewhere that WoW is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive, and there was something on another forum about selecting processor affinity for WoW on quad core's. I don't remember where I had seen that though

seebs · 07-12-09, 01:50 PM

Originally Posted by Vis

Ah, OK. I didn't realize you were wondering about improving fps in Dalaran.

I think it's just that Dalaran is horrible for lag and fps anyways. The only way you'd be likely to get better performance there is to be alone on the server, lol. Blizz really should have made Dala a larger area or something. I'm pretty sure what you see for fps there is average.

Yeah, I'm just wondering why. Am I actually network-bound at that point? It just seems really odd to me that my machine can't render faster, but that no amount of changing the rendering load affects how fast it renders.

Vis · 07-12-09, 01:56 PM

It may also be due to Wine, but I have no experience with that, so I'm not sure.

Without V sync enabled, or setting a maxfps on my machine, I get similar numbers to yours. And that's with an addon only load of around 115-140 megs.

I'm using:

Athlon X2 6000+ (3.15 Ghz overclocked)
4 Gb Ram
Dual 9800GT Nvidia cards set to non SLI.
Win XP Pro