1. Extreme FPS drops in Dalaran

    Ever since I started playing on Warmane with the 3.3.5a clients (both custom and vanilla) I've noticed extreme FPS drops in Dalaran only. Now drops are to be expected because it's generally occupied by many players however I have been there while I was only one there and I still experienced the exact FPS drop. I've tried this on a completely separate PC with an AMD GPU R7 370 and it had the exact same issue however the PC I use for gaming spec's is as follows:

    Windows 10 Pro x64 (have tried on dual-boot Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64 - same issue)
    i7 3.4GHz 4 Cores / 8 Threads
    8GB DDR3 Memory
    GTX 1050 TI 4GB EXOC Ed.
    SSD (OS DRIVE)
    Mechanical Drive (WoW install)


    Also another note to mention is that I have the most current drivers installed and I do use DDU to completely remove previous drivers before moving to the next version. However I should say that this is most definitely not related to drivers because I've been having this issue since the day 1 release of WOTLK 1x server on Warmane and obvious there have been many driver updates since then I even used a completely different GPU at the time which was also quite beafy at the time for WoW which was an AMD HD 7870 GPU.

    When I'm in Stormwind or literally any other zone including dungeons there are literally no drops drastic enough to mention in frame rates this is solely a Dalaran issue and since that is the place where you spend most of time it's horrendous to see drops that break the gameplay in that area. You can see in the screenshot below in Stormwind it sticks to 60 fps where the limit is and before you suggest that maybe I need to set power options for NVidia Control Panel to maximum performance you should know that is already the case, I've tried it with nearly even configuration of options on/off to make the most difference but to no avail they do nothing towards the FPS drop in Dalaran.

    As for the in-game settings nothing gives a stable 60 FPS in Dalaran except having to drop settings to medium or low which is obviously not something anyone would be willing to do when it doesn't make logical sense that your hardware is acting as if it's overworking when actual statics show 30% usage on both GPU and CPU.

    As you can see below in this picture the FPS is normal in Stormwind with normal GPU and CPU usage
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    This is in a Dalaran inn and the FPS with other statistics are normal
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    Here is the issue of FPS dropping in Dalaran the moment I step outside a building
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    These are the settings I run the game at exaggerated to give you the best idea of what happens
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    With customization to the in-game settings for graphics I am able to get the FPS up to 40 FPS in Dalaran however it feels just as suttery as 20 FPS also please note that I literally just launched this particular client for the first time I redownloaded the entire game so this is a barebones config without any addons.
    Edited: March 21, 2017

  2. I just made an observation that might close this entire case for everyone I just remembered that wow.exe for the WOTLK 3.3.5a client is x86 (32-bit) and because of this nature the client cannot use more than 2048MB of memory in one given instance so the very client becomes its own bottleneck.

    [UPDATE]

    I just tested out the theory of forcing the application to use more than x86 (32-bit) native limitations of 2048MB of RAM and even though it used considerably more RAM it didn't make any difference whatsoever in frame rate however it did remove stuttering and replaced the stuttering with general jittering which is a side effect of low fps instead of stuttering which are like micro freezes which was the case prior to applying the modification

    The results are below:

    Spoiler: Show


    [UPDATE #1]

    I've just been informed of a modified WOTLK 3.3.5a client that gets rid of VRAM and RAM limitations that might plague your gameplay. I will download the 17GB client and display my findings here. I wont post said link just yet because I do not wish to waste your time if it doesn't work out for you.
    Edited: March 21, 2017

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