FPS issue

[elio]

Ever since last night my FPS has become very low. Dropping to 1-2 in some areas of AOE pulls in BT. I have never had this issue- I usually run around 45-55 FPS baring the usual teens in Shat and IF back in the day.

I have all my video setting turned to low right now- not playing in window mode- nothing running in the background. My video card is an NVIDIA GE force 8600GTS. Fully updated drivers.


Any recommendations would be appreciated.
I am a computer noob so bear with me.

Dozer

[Psysica]

In my experience Wow is veyr happy with Memory. Im not sure how much effect it has on FPS. But atleast it makes wow runs alot smoother. And you are sure that its cooled enough your graphic card/machine.
This could be one option.

What about other games same there, that indicates a hardware problem then, if thats not the case. Maybe try to re-install wow, may be broken in some way. Just rmb to save your pacthes before deleting, so you dont have to download em all again.

[Satrina]

Unless your system is running the absolute minimum specs for WoW, addons won't affect your framerate, and even then it's pretty unlikely. About the only way an addon could affect your framerate is to spend a lot of its time in a loop that hogs processor time. Your problem most likely is caused by something else.

[Dunmail]

Check from adaware / spyware and see if your pc is clean.

I'd update any packages you use adaware/spybot etc then go offline and run them. I've had issues from that in the past, mainly on ET but once with wow, usually if I've been near u-tube amusingly.

Checking your pc case & gpu fans for dirt and using a brush to remove it would also be an idea as they do pick up crap, and eventually that can lead to crashes and it running a bit slow. Spyware of something system based, as mentioned above that is hogging memory sounds more likely though. Also check all your fans are running ok, in case a component is causing the system to overheat.

If still iffy I'd strip your WoW mods out, then gradually add them back in, in case it is a mod issue. I've warily kept clear of ace2 and running a ace 2 setup as I got bsod & crashing and very laggy gameplay/fps when I swapped mods after installing a 8800 GPU. From swapping back to titan/Bongos I've had far more stability and only one crash. I surmise a mod had a memory leak, caused the pc to chug then killed it. Took a while with having decent ram, but was occuring faster in instances. Shame as some of the nice clear interfaces on show here look to be ace2 based and I don't fancy the risk.

[Satrina]

From swapping back to titan/Bongos I've had far more stability and only one crash.

Edit: While amusing, what I said here wasn't nice. Suffice it to say, FuBar is significantly more efficient than Titan.

I surmise a mod had a memory leak, caused the pc to chug then killed it.

Garbage collection runs constantly and incrementally in the UI subsystem while WoW is running. Even poorly behaved addons with memory leaks can't get too far out of hand before a garbage collection interval now. Even so, you would never notice anything besides a larger amount of memory being consumed by the UI.

Static memory usage is NOT an indicator of performance. If you're really concerned with an addon and suspect it may be slowing your system, enable CPU profiling and see if the suspect addon is burning a significant amount of CPU time compared to everything else (grab an addon like Resource Tools from WoWInterface that can show you easily). Even with that said, addons like Omen will burn a lot of CPU time in combat and virtually nothing outside of combat, so you need to take the addon's job into account. A buff frame is always working to some extent, unless you have no buffs. Don't forget to turn off CPU profiling when you're done investigating, as that does have a performance decrease associated with it while you use it.

TL;DR: If you're having performance issues, it has nothing to do with memory.

Shame as some of the nice clear interfaces on show here look to be ace2 based and I don't fancy the risk.

Whatever was causing the problem, it wasn't the fact that addons are Ace based. It's possible it was one misbehaving addon, but attributing a problem to the entire class of Ace addons is as absurd as saying you won't eat apples anymore because you got one with a worm in it.

[Satrina]

Also: If you're getting bluescreens and/or error 132 crashes, even "just one", you have a problem that is unresolved and the odds are high that it is a hardware problem or a driver problem. Start here: WoW Forums -> _____Error 132 Information