We have addressed some content and code-related performance issues certain individuals were experiencing with respect to WoW as well as some general performance issues. We will continue to analyze and improve the performance of WoW across the wide base of hardware we support. However, listed below are a few suggestions that might address specific system related issues we have noticed in the past.

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21084

Beyond that, there are some case-specific issues that would lower your performance. I'll keep adding to it so keep an eye out.


Background Programs
Yes, these things do cause your performance to drop. We have seen reports of people's antivirus scans kicking in, some software update service kick in or a web browser eating up your CPU time. One of the machines that we checked had Windows Defender using a good chunk of resources. Try closing your background programs by following this guide:

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21052

For security software that register themselves as services, msconfig won't turn them off. You may have to use the program's specific features to disable it. Note that it's best to update Windows first before attempting this. http://update.microsoft.com

If you want to keep an eye on these programs instead, try using a program called Process Explorer. It's a more-or-less enhanced version of Window's Task Manager and it also has a useful history graph. Keep in mind, however, that both Process Explorer and Task Manager have some minimal impact on framerate (the extent of which depends on their update interval).

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx


Custom UIs and hidden errors
Keep in mind that there is an option in the Interface options to hide UI errors. If you are using a custom UI and all errors are hidden, you won't know if one of them is generating errors. These errors can have a negative effect on your game performance. Try enabling error notification to see if any of your add-ons are encountering errors. Go to the in-game Interface options and look in the Basic tab. Go to the Display section and check Display Lua Errors.

If you are getting errors and you want to use that add-on, try checking for updates.


Driver problems
If you checked the Background Programs section above, you may notice that the Process Explorer utility can check for Deferred Procedure Calls. Here's a link to another utility along with an explanation about DPCs and what it can do to a system - http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml


Graphics card specific things

- ATI
Try turning off Catalyst A.I. in the Catalyst Control Center. If you use an older version, try turning off Overdrive.

Try turning off Adaptive Antialiasing in the Catalyst Control Center.

Desktop Composition (Aero) being turned on may be a very good thing on Windows Vista and 7 as some people have reported their video card using low 2D clock rates on some video cards. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2d-windows-gdi%2c2539-9.html

- NVIDIA
Try turning off Transparency Antialiasing and Ambient Occlusion in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

NVIDIA PhysX drivers may have odd interactions with the video card's performance. If that is installed, try uninstalling or disabling the PhysX drivers.

NVIDIA GTX 200 series video cards may stay in power saving mode, giving you lower performance. Please check your power savings settings. Keep in mind that we do not support third party software but guides like these are available - http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/423880-howto-prevent-gtx-200-series-downclocking.html


Heat
This tends to cause machines to either make a stop-and-go type performance, over-time degrading performance or system shutdowns (not restarts). Each family of processors has its own way of dealing with heat. Some throttle their speed/voltage to low values, some may insert blank instruction sets. You can find more information in your processor's documentation.

For processors that throttle speed, you can use ThrottleWatch, RMClock or CPU-Z to keep an eye on the processor's operating history
- http://www.panopsys.com/Downloads.html - May be outdated and won't work with newer systems
- http://cpu.rightmark.org/download.shtml - May not work correctly under Vista 64
- http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

If you want to monitor the temperature, try using some of the readily available tools:
HWMonitor - http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php
NVIDIA nTune (NVIDIA cards only) - http://www.nvidia.com/object/sysutility.html
ATI Catalyst Control Center (Overdrive section) - http://www.amd.com


How to avoid overheating - http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/142


Multiple Monitors
If you set your displays to use different color depths (e.g. - monitor 1 on 24-bit and monitor 2 on 16-bit), you can end up with very low framerates. For best results, please set all displays to 24 or 32 bit, whichever is available for your setup.

If you're running World of Warcraft in Windowed mode, make sure that the screen isn't "bleeding" into the other monitor, especially if you're using multiple video cards.


Sounds
Any type of sound post processing effect can negatively affect the game's framerates.

On Windows XP, these settings will be found in your sound utilities. These are things like the Creative Audio Console, Realtek Mixer, SoundMAX Mixer and Via Vinyl mixers. A lot of them will be on your task bar but they can also appear in your Start menu.

Windows Vista and 7 have those mixers but they are also reported in the Playback Sound settings themselves. Just right-click your speaker icon, click on Playback, double-click the device you're playing the game's sound through and then click on the Enhancement tab.

Disabling sound enhancements tend to give you a speed boost. Lowering the in-game sound channel options may as well.

Windows XP only - if your sound card is capable of doing EAX (Creative cards), you can try using the Use Hardware option in your game's sound options. You will need the latest drivers from http://support.creative.com/ to get the most out of it.


System limitations
Minimum specs do not lead to great framerates. There have been a lot of integrated cards that perform close to the level of the GeForce 2 cards in most games. Pair this up with Windows Vista and you'll have even lower performance. This chart has a good summary of where most of the video cards stand:
(copy/paste entire link) - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Best-Graphics-Card,2033-7.html

For laptops, a similar chart is available - http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

Recent integrated cards such as the GeForce 6150s/7150s, Radeon Xpress 1150/1250s and the XPress 200s generally won't have much horsepower to push a game. The best you can do is to try lowering the video settings.

Low end GPUs, such as the NVidia FX5200, the ATI Radeon 9200, the ATI X1300, do not run well at higher resolutions. These cards do not have the performance to render millions of pixels per frame, with many spell effects being drawn at an acceptible rate. If you are using one of these cards and framerate is an issue, lower your resolution, and / or move your "Spell Detail" slider to the far left, the minimum setting. This disables or reduces the complexity of many spells effects in the game.

Intel 965 users may find that updating their video card drivers to the latest version will give them increased framerates. The drivers released on and after 8/10/2007 adds hardware processing.

For detailed tech specs of video cards, you can try checking this link - http://www.neeyik.info/3dspecs/


Throttling
Some systems may employ power management features by default. They may be set to use your processor in a way that is less than what it is rated at.

AMD users may want to disable their Cool and Quiet feature. This is an option in their system BIOS. Please refer to your system or motherboard manual to determine how to find this option. If that isn't something you can do, an updated Cool and Quiet driver adds better support for throttling back to full speed:
(please copy and paste this link into your browser)
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_9706,00.html
AMD Athlon(tm) 64/FX Processor Driver for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 Version (x86 and x64 exe)
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor Cool'n'Quiet Software for Windows ME and Windows 2000

Some first generation Phenom models may have odd behaviors with Cool'n'Quiet. Check this article for an explanation of it - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3492&p=6

First generation Phenom models ending in xx00 may experience the TLB Bug fix performance drop in most cases. You may want to read up on it:
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/phenom_9600_black_edition/
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13741/4
There are a few more in-depth articles available online if you wish to study on this topic.

Intel users may want to check on the Intel Speedstep (or EIST) setting as well as their C1E options in their BIOS. Disabling them may squeeze more performance out of the system. More information on those two states can be found at http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2725

Windows XP users may change their system power management options for best performance.
Open the Control Panel, then open Performance and Maintenance.
Click on Power Options, then change the Power schemes to Always On or Presentation for maximum performance.

Vista has additional features that can control CPU speed.
Open the Control Panel, then open System and Maintenance.
Go to Power Options, pick High performance.
Click on Change plan settings underneath it, then click Change advanced power settings.
Go to your Processor power management section and change both minimum and maximum processor states to 100%.
Hit OK

Please check the Overheating section above for tools that can help you monitor your clock speeds and voltage.


Some NVIDIA video cards may have PowerMizer turned on. It can reduce the clockspeed of your hardware in order to save power and to keep temperatures cool. Unfortunately that also slows stuff down. Try checking this link: http://alfred.co.in/software/games-software/nvidia-8600-m-gt-gts-fps-increase/


Underclocked hardware
We have seen reports where people's hardware are not set up properly or they are underclocked. This mostly happens to processors where newer CPUs are put in older motherboards. If the motherboard does not recognize the CPU but it is pin and signal compatible, it may run your CPU at a lower speed. Updating your BIOS may correct this problem. If not, check the motherboard documentation and see if it supports your processor and may let you adjust the Front Side Bus speed to your processor's rated speed. Since the game relies a lot of system bandwidth and processor performance, this change may make a night and day difference.

For some AMD Athlon 64 processors, you may want to use the CPU-Z utility and check your HyperTransport speeds. If yours is running under the normal value of the processor, your framerate will suffer. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8765693758&sid=1
HT Link analysis - http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=3&artpage=3854&articID=895


USB devices
Some systems may experience a performance drop with USB keyboards attached. After loading the game, try unplugging your keyboard if this is the cause of your performance drop. I do not have much detail on it at the time but it doesn't seem to affect only F.E.A.R.

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9740960-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1023_3-0-5


Windows XP - specific things
- SCVHOST.EXE taking up 100% of your CPU - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916089
- Overall FPS decrease - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918165/en-us


Windows Vista and 7 - specific things
NVIDIA for Vista 32-bit
Very old versions of the NVIDIA drivers had low framerate with World of Warcraft. Please update them to the latest build to clear the issue.

Also note that the NVIDIA FX series do not have updated drivers for Vista or 7.


Vista SLI -> there is a 60% drop in performance when running the game in windowed mode with SLI or multi-GPU mode enabled. [289427]
This is due to a limitation of the Windows Vista operating system and affects all multi-GPU systems. NVIDIA is investigating a workaround for this performance problem.
Disabling SLI or running World of Warcraft at full screen will restore performance.

Please keep an eye out on their driver page or forum for any updates.


Multiple GPUs (SLI and Crossfire)
There is a Vista hotfix that may speed up multiple GPU performance. The hotfix is no longer available as it is rolled up into Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Please download and install the service pack if you have not done so.


Sounds
Windows Vista does not offer DirectSound acceleration. Make sure you do not max the Sound Channel slider as that will decrease the performance of the game.


Windows Defender
After some analysis of a Vista system that was exhibiting low framerates, the culprit appeared to be Windows Defender using up system resources. If you want to, try disabling it. Go to your Start menu, then Windows Defender. Go to Tools, then go Options. Scroll all the way down and uncheck "Use Windows Defender". Save it.
Note that if you want your system to stay secure while Defender is disabled, try getting a temporary replacement for Defender. Spybot

Search & Destroy and Adaware SE are some of the freeware alternatives.


Windows Search/Indexing
Some users have reported that their performance will drop down to single digit framerates while Windows is searching or indexing the drive. Try disabling it. Go to your Control Panel, then System and Maintenance. Click on Administrative Tools, then Services. Find "Windows Search" and disable it.

Windows may try to index your World of Warcraft folder. It tends to have more effect if you use a lot of custom UIs or have multiple characters. Right-click your World of Warcraft folder and go to Properties. Click on the Advanced button in the Attributes section. Uncheck Index this folder for faster searching and hit OK.


World of Warcraft

Enabling Reduce Input Lag may help some systems with lower-end video cards. Try enabling that to see if it helps. For 2.4.3, it is in your Interface options. For 3.0.x, it is in your Video options.
This feature should be OFF for anything mid-end or better. Turning it on on a good video card will cripple your performance

If your video card is capable of shader effects (native DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 hardware), make sure those are enabled in-game. It will accelerate the game. The option to enable/disable this was removed from the GUI as it should default to on if your video card supports it. Try typing in /console fixedfunction 0 and hit enter in your in-game chat window to set the setting. Restart it and it'll go into effect.

For a list of video cards and what they are capable of, try visiting this link - http://www.neeyik.info/3dspecs/


World of Warcraft's performance will suffer if your video card's bandwidth is very low (PCI cards, PCI Express cards being ran at 1x). Try using a utility called GPU-Z to find out if you are running the card on a low bus speed - http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Dynamic Shadows has a huge hit on game performance. If you have the Shadow slider maxed out and you're getting low framerates, try lowering the setting or pull it to the leftmost area to turn it off.

Make sure you did not use the framerate limit command and set it to very low numbers. Type this in your game's chat window to remove it:
/console maxfps 0

[last update - 1/26/2010]

Case by case studies:

Overall low FPS and FPS bounces from addons in 3.0.2 - 3.0.3

We're getting many reports where custom addons, like QuestHelper and Auctioneer, will drop your game's performance. Please remove all addons and try the game as it may be just a simple fix.

Your framerate is at a constant 10-20 FPS and you're using a Pentium 4 or Pentium D processor

• An overheating Pentium 4 or Pentium D processor will do this. Make sure that it is running under 65 degrees Celsius on load.
  

Your framerate is stuck at 10-25 FPS

We've seen reports where a video card running on very low bandwidth connections (PCI, PCI Express 1x, 2x, 4x) will cause your framerate to stay in the 20s on low settings. Is your graphics card data-bottlenecked? Run GPU-Z (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/) and make sure your video card is not a PCI video card, or if it's a PCI Express card that it is operating at 16x speed. If you only have a PCI Express 8x slot, those should work fine.

Are you using multiple video cards or multiple monitors? Running the game in Windowed mode and having parts of it spill over to the other monitor/video card may give you problems. Try shrinking it to fit one monitor completely (the primary one defined by Windows) and see what happens.


Your framerate is stuck at 25 FPS, or any number that isn't a vsync number

We had reports where multiboxing software and guides may tell a person to set their framerate to cap at a specific number. To undo this soft-cap, type /console maxfps 0 into the chat window


Your framerate is bouncing

• Overheating processor can cause this. Make sure that it is running cool.
  
• Power management or thermal protection of the processor , such as AMD Cool and Quiet and Intel SpeedStep, can cause this. Check your system or motherboard manufacturer on how to disable it.
  
• If the FPS drops coincide with WoW's CPU usage dropping, your video card is overheating and has stopped receiving commands for a short amount of time so the game has to wait on it. Check your video card.
  

Gameplay while standing still or walking for a while is fine, but a sudden turn feels choppy

The game is using aggressive memory management, especially for those that play at very high settings. We will work on tweaking this so that it lessens the conditions where the game may hitch.

Some of this may be caused by external influences. You may want to check threads like these:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15199332316&sid=1


Certain spell effects, like Desecrate, drops your framerate

First, make sure you update your video card drivers to the latest version. If it persists, please report these in detail in the Bugs forum along with hardware information - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?sid=1&forumId=10023


Area with mist effects may cause your framerate to drop to very low numbers

This is something we're investigating.


Laptops equipped with GeForce 7, 8 and 9 series with old NVIDIA drivers

NVIDIA released drivers for their laptop GPUs as of 12/19/2008 so you do not have to check your manufacturer for them, or rely on third party modifications. Get them here - http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_drivers.html

Game settings and variables that can help you:

• Slight: setting game to 16 bit color and depth, for low-end video cards
  Make a macro for these commands:
  /console gxcolorbits 16
  /console gxdepthbits 16
  /console gxrestart
  
  Please keep in mind that using 16-bit depth will make objects pop in and out of place where they connect. If you want to revert this change, change the numbers to 24


• Vsync + Triple Buffering turned on. More information about the feature is available at http://www.anandtech.com#@@@#eo/showdoc.aspx?i=3591

Game settings and variables that will HURT you:

• Varies: extShadowQuality (Shadow Quality slider). 1 has a slight hit. 2-3 has a moderate hit. 4 will hit all but the better systems, 5 hits all with a sledgehammer.
  
• Vsync on + Triple Buffering off


• Heavy: gxfixlag (Reduce Input Lag). This setting should be off except on very low-end systems.


• Heavy: componentCompress - Setting this to 0 will hurt your performance. Its default value is 1


• Heavy: fixedfunction - setting this to 1 will hurt your performance as it disables shaders. Set this variable to 0. Its default value is 0

Tweaks

• Turning off the combat log:
  /run COMBATLOG:UnregisterEvent("COMBAT_LOG_EVENT")

Changes:

Removed ProcessAffinityMask as it's uncapped in 3.3.2
Added sound settings and information
Added Ambient Occlusion, DPC stuff and updated a couple of entries.
Added some information about true GTX 200 series cards and power savings.
Added a list of cvars that might help or hurt performance.
Added Intel C1E states as it helped a few people regain game performance.
Added AMD Phenom Cool'n'Quiet behavior article - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3492&p=6
Added AMD Hypertransport analysis - http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=3&artpage=3854&articID=895
Added the long-awaited official NVIDIA laptop GPU drivers
Added current things that we're looking into.
Deleted old thread as it had irrelevant and outdated information from 2.1.0 and Vista
Created new thread with updates
Added new commands and new settings for the game and video cards
Added 3.0 changes, such as the dynamic shadows