World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm--Tom's Performance Guide

[punnar]

Thank you Toms. Now I know what has to be done.

nVdia, you win this time around.

 

[Judguh]

I like the detail of the article also. An idea for another article I would like to see would be to see how much of a difference there would be on current and maybe somewhat older titles between old drivers and new drivers and brand new cards vs like the 4770's (which used to dominate for a short while when in crossfire, but in the tech world, that was long ago already ).

 

[nekromobo]

What an horrible article. Toms has gone down down down I say.

Any idea to check cpu utilizations behind the fps ? WoW seems to be horribly coded is the only conclusion for this article.

I bet enabling DX11 would help any GPU out there with its fixes to multicore support(check this?)

I bet Blizzard would want to help a high profiler like tom's hw

 

[terrybear]

Well IF there is a way to enable more core use then that makes this article needing to be redone with the core's enabled for a more accurate conclusion.

 

[Jamdodds]

Amd... you're making me want to punch a baby!!

 

[nforce4max]

Yet now multy box benches :/ as usual only one account.

 

[Wheat_Thins]

Whats the explanation behind the AMD deficiency?

 

[theholylancer]

[citation][nom]SpadeM[/nom]I'm impressed, if Chris went to all that trouble to benchmark the new expansion for a mmorpg in such great detail it can me only 2 things:1. Chris is a closet WoW-player2. Really boredWith that said, i really do hope to see more of these articles, albeit with a more demanding title on the bench, even if it's from a "lesser" developer/publisher combo. PS: I do hope ppl appreciate my sense of humor[/citation]


given his familiarity with the wow mechanics and raids, I would say he has king slayer if not light of the dawn or bane of the lich king.

and yes I play wow

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

every benchmark in wow should be made in a high population city on a high population server @ 18:00 server time(i.e Orgrimmar). I have a Core 2 duo e 6750 OC to 3.4 GHZ with an GTX 460 1 GB. I have enabeled DX11 and everything on ultra. Outside OG i get between 70 - 150 FPS, i even had a peak @ 190 FPS in 1 dungeon :d ) but when i enter OG @ rush hour i could get even 20 FPS (in worst cases, it happened a few times). so take in mind that if you are on ultra and get an average 40 - 45 FPS outside OG, be prepared for OG low FPS

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]Article[/nom]AMD claims World of Warcraft is supported by CrossFire, but all of our testing (and a good number of posts to Blizzard's forums) suggest that this game simply will not scale beyond one GPU, even when the GPUs are built onto the same card. [/citation]

I don't think their scaling works. I've tried enabling the crossfire logo in the catalyst driver and played wow with the latest patch. it doesn't show up (it does in other titles like supreme commander 2). Tried with an 4870x2 and a 3 gpu setup using an extra 4870 .. it will not use more than 1 gpu using a default installation.

 

[demodus]

[citation][nom]neiroatopelcc[/nom]I don't think their scaling works. I've tried enabling the crossfire logo in the catalyst driver and played wow with the latest patch. it doesn't show up (it does in other titles like supreme commander 2). Tried with an 4870x2 and a 3 gpu setup using an extra 4870 .. it will not use more than 1 gpu using a default installation.[/citation]

You can't have the game run in "Windowed" or "Windowed (Fullscreen)" if you want ATI Crossfire to work. I have an ATI 4870x2 and I can only see the logo if it runs full screen, FYI.

 

[ohseus]

Interesting article and really detailed. The first thing I noticed is that the author has a nether drake. As a WoW player myself i knew then that he really played the game as they are a bit of a grind to get.

For me I am able to play using an x3 440 and on board hd4200 with 4 Gb ram. Environment and character textures at high view distances at high particles at fair and shadows at low. to me this gives me a pleasant view outside and inside instances I turn down the view distance a bit as it matters less normally. They have done a good job of making the game look great and still playable by lesser systems.

 

[Bolbi]

It's nice that enabling DX11 provides a performance boost; however, I'm guessing that those with DX11 cards are, for the most part, enthusiasts who already have powerful systems capable of churning out 45+ fps. So, those with low-end hardware and need the boost most likely will not see a gain.

 

[aggroboy]

If you're using the classic i7-920, WoW is just maxing 2 cores so you must overclock to get a decent performance at high details. For other recent mainstream games, multi-core is usually well supported so I can leave the CPU at stock 2.67ghz.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]demodus[/nom]You can't have the game run in "Windowed" or "Windowed (Fullscreen)" if you want ATI Crossfire to work. I have an ATI 4870x2 and I can only see the logo if it runs full screen, FYI.[/citation]
That might be my problem then!
I'm using a 3 monitor + beamer setup, so I've put it in window mode, so it doesn't minimize when I have to click in vent or something.

Will try putting it into fullscreen if I can find the time later.

Thanks

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]ohseus[/nom]I turn down the view distance a bit as it matters less normally. [/citation]
I find view distance quite important really! I tried playing on my company laptop once (i5, 4gb, ati something) on fair settings. When I ran out of hitpoints (defile), I couldn't see in which direction I had to fly in icecrown - because of lacking view distance. That sucks.

 

[Quotidian]

Naturally I am the guy with 295 GTX -.-

 

[dgingeri]

I just want to say thank you for all this info. It is good to know how Blizzard has so radically revamped the graphics engine so that it actually makes use of higher end hardware, yet still has settings which allow the use of mainstream hardware.

WoW was never very good on entry level/ budget hardware. This just makes it a bit more obvious. I know I can't play it on my old Athlon64 3200+ laptop with R200 graphics, but it is good to know that I can still, at the lowest settings, manage my auctions and trade around mats between my alts. My main machine (Core i7 920- 3.8Ghz, SLi GTX 470s) will handle it just fine.

I already knew that SLi didn't improve performance through main settings, but it does improve image quality substantially when using SLiAA at a X16 setting.

It's good to know that I can tell other players that the biggest limitations are CPU cache and horsepower. So if they want better performance, they should upgrade their CPUs.

 

[Onus]

I'm not a WoW player, but I still found this very interesting and thorough. I hope not too many other games suffer so poorly with an AMD CPU, and am most curious about that.
For WoW, the GTX460 certainly looks like it is the sweet spot for price / performance.

 

[davewolfgang]

Back in July/Aug when I was building my new system, I did a lot of research and looked at a lot of benchmarks to get the choice down between an i7 or an AMD X6. While there wasn't any "specific" WoW related tests, I'm glad I made my choice the i7. (What helped is also that I multi-task too with Outlook, FF with multiple tabs, Yahoo, Skype, Vent and TV usually also running.)

I will be upgrading my GTS250 early next year, either with one of the new cards or a priced lowered 460 (to sli in the future also), and that should be able to last at least a few more years.

 

[g00fysmiley]

thank god finally i have a soarce when i tell poeple that YES wow uses mroe than one core, and yes wow can be gpu limited to a point, people even on toms forums seem to think a 5670 will max out ultra at 1920x1080 with framerates limits by refresh rate... my amd athlon II x4 340 with ASUS 450 TOP is maxing out in utlra at 60 fps at1920x1080 ... however i shoudl note while it is maxing it was in the 50 fps range until i turned on dx11 not its smooth. next expantion i do not expect my system to do ultra if i haven't uopgrade it'll likely be on good /high

 

[wortwortwort]

With an i5 750, I should be getting the same performance as the i7 875. The hyperthreading doesn't appear to make a difference at all.

When the benchmarks were done for the CPUs, were those settings tweaked the way that was mentioned in the comments.

 

[dgingeri]

[citation][nom]Troyroberts[/nom]WOW only uses 2 cores by default. However youc an configure it to "quasi" use more cores. you have to manually edit your config.wtf and change the variable: SET processAffinityMask "3" (3 is the default meaning 2 cores) to the following values for respective processors:i7 Qudcore with Ht- 85Any Quadcore chips with no HT - 15i5 Quadcore which does not have HT as far as I know - 15i5 Dualcore with HT- 5Dualcore with HT- 5Dualcore without HT - 5AMD tricore - 7There used to be a blue post explaining the settings and how to calculate it for different cores. But the old forums got wiped.[/citation]

Sorry, bud. This was changed in patch 2.3. in 2.3, they defaulted to using all available cores, but it maxed out at actually using 4 cores.

In 4.0.1 and up, it now uses all 8 "cores" (including the physical and the HT virtual cores) on my Core i7 920, but it doesn't even use half the capacity of any of them. I sit around 35-40% across all 8 "cores". I actually get better performance with HT off, running 65-70% on all four physical cores.

The Blizzard devs aren't idiots. They know how to program pretty well.

I'd kinda like to see an expansion on this including turning HT off on all the Intel chips and running SLi for anti-aliasing. I'm running with HT off and SLi X16 AA with my GTX 470s. That seems to give me a big boost in image quality with no loss of performance thanks to SLi.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]demodus[/nom]You can't have the game run in "Windowed" or "Windowed (Fullscreen)" if you want ATI Crossfire to work. I have an ATI 4870x2 and I can only see the logo if it runs full screen, FYI.[/citation]

You're right. When I run it fullscreen I've got the overlay indicating crossfire is enabled.

While standing in ironforge I'm pulling 87.5fps staring at the bank mailbox with crossfire, and in window mode I'm getting 80.2fps - not exactly worth the extra power draw for a 10% performance increase.

 

[dgingeri]

[citation][nom]Fokissed[/nom]The number is calculated with binary addition, you can specify which cores you want WoW to use by setting the affinity mask to the binary number that represents the cores used:core0 - 1 (2^0)core1 - 2 (2^1)core2 - 4 (2^2)core3 - 8 (2^3)core4 - 16 (2^4)core5 - 32 (2^5)Add these numbers up to get the affinity mask that suits the processorual core - 3 (11)Tri core - 7 (111)Quad core - 15 (1111)Hexa core - 63 (111111)Using binary numbers as boolean values for each core (right to left) will convert into the affinity mask needed to use those cores.[/citation]

Back in the day, before patch 2.3, when this was needed, the setting for Core 2 Quads would be "15" and Core i7 would need "85" to avoid using the HT cores. However, setting any computer to "255" would cause it to use all available cores. So, that setting was the easiest.

However, that setting was no longer needed after patch 2.3. Blizzard defaulted to using all available cores at that point, but was limited to 4 threads, or 4 used cores. This setting was used frequently after that on Core i7 machines because it would sometimes use a HT virutal core and its corresponding physical core. (i.e. it would use processors 1, 2, 4, and 7, skipping cores 5 and 6 and limiting performance to three physical cores.)

In patch 2.4, this changed. It used the 4 cores much more prudently and stuck with physical cores only. It would detect HT virtual cores and avoid them.

In patch 4.0.1, they spread out the program to use more threads, and now makes use of all available cores up to 32. So, a dual 6 core Xeon would have 24 cores and they would all be used. They just use them to a much lesser degree.

No settings are needed to change this, but turning off HT can help performance a little.