WotLK High end system, massive fps drops (stuttering)

[secretstalker]

Hey all,

As the title says, I am having big issues with FPS drops in-game.

When I first start up the client there is nothing wrong. My FPS is perfect, it stays at 165 and everything is great.
But then about 2-3 hours later the same thing ALWAYS occurs: my fps starts getting awful spikes every few seconds, to the point where my screen stutters.
It will got from 165 - 10 - 120 - 165 - 15 - 100 - 150 - 20 - 130 - 25 - 160 - 15 etc etc continuously, making huge stutters on my screen where it feels like the screen freezes for a milisecond every few seconds. It's basicly unplayable and just makes we want to quit straight away.
It doesn't matter where I am, in Dalaran or somewhere alone or in a dungeon or a raid, it always does the same thing.

Things I have tried so far that haven't solved it:

- turning off all addons
- restarting client
- everything low on graphics
- windowed mode
- full screen mode
- vertical sync on and off

My specs are:

CPU: Intel i7 9700K
GPU: 2080 RTX
RAM: 16GB

These specs are definetly overkill for WOTLK WOW. So I know that isn't the issue.

I have googled about this issue pretty extensively and found some old threads, but nothing with a definitive solution.
My next step will probably be a fresh install of the client, but I am hoping someone else has had this same problem and somehow fixed it.

Hopefully someone has the answer!

kind regards and thank you in advance for anyone with a solution

[dolcokidol]

Nope, it's an old game, it has no idea what to do with all of that compute power it has. I think I feel a bit smoother when locking wow to two cores only so you may wanna try that. And vsync also helps if I don't dip under 60 which only happens in cities and 40v40 BGs.

[secretstalker]

How to you unlock wow onto 2 cores?
I already tried Vsync and it did nothing for me

[Faskel]

I have the exact same problem which occured after a windows update or nvidia driver update.
I tried the same things as you and also tried fiddling with read/write only settings on the wow folder, but nothing helps.

My specs:

CPU: Intel i7 9700K
GPU: 2070 Super
RAM: 16 GB
OS: Windows 10

I've played on Warmane for a long time with no problems, but now it's just too much stutter to enjoy the game.

Hopefully someone know a fix for this!

[Tousen1988]

Try disabling Hardware Cursor in your settings as well. Friend had the same problem after NVIDIA update but disabling that worked for him

[Faskel]

I tried reverting to the previous nvidia driver version 457.51 and I have played for 2+ hours without any stutter.

Disabling hardware cursor may be a fix aswell but I didn't try it before reverting the driver. I'm going to stick with this fix for now, but please tell me if disabling hardware cursor works.

[ShifumiForum]

Try disabling Hardware Cursor in your settings as well. Friend had the same problem after NVIDIA update but disabling that worked for him

Thanks I unchecked the box and now my game runs at 144hz as it should :)