For those with Dual Core or better...

[thatbloke]

There is a config file entry that you can add to your config.wtf that will tell WoW what processors to use whlie it's running.

Using this setting you can restrict WoW to only be used on certain CPU cores, or in the case of multiple cores being present, tell it to use ALL of them.

I haven't noticed a particularly big increase in performance myself, but alot of other people I've seen on the WoW forums have reported up to a 40% FPS increase in certain areas (Lagaran being the main place).

You need to add a setting with a specific value optimised for your system to your config.wtf file - everything is explained on this wowwiki page but if you don't entirely understand it or if you have any questions then feel free to post what you have here and I can help you out

Again, while it may not make things better, it should not in any way make things worse unless you go restricting the number of cores that WoW can use on your system.

 

[SwampFae]

Excellent post, Q-Ball. Hover Cat is amused. Have a cookie!

 

[Elincia]

40% improvement in Lagaran sounds Awesome, however I don't understand this sentence from WoWwiki:
To customize which cores WoW uses place SET processAffinityMask "x" in your Config.wtf where x is the corresponding value in the following table.

I opened the file, but I can't find SET processAffinityMask. How is this possible and what do I need to do to fix this??

( also, if this really helps we might wanna make this toppic sticky )

 

[Enya]

40% improvement in Lagaran sounds Awesome, however I don't understand this sentence from WoWwiki:
To customize which cores WoW uses place SET processAffinityMask "x" in your Config.wtf where x is the corresponding value in the following table.

I opened the file, but I can't find SET processAffinityMask. How is this possible and what do I need to do to fix this??

( also, if this really helps we might wanna make this toppic sticky )

Just add the string of text into the file..save and close.

 

[thatbloke]

40% improvement in Lagaran sounds Awesome, however I don't understand this sentence from WoWwiki:
To customize which cores WoW uses place SET processAffinityMask "x" in your Config.wtf where x is the corresponding value in the following table.

I opened the file, but I can't find SET processAffinityMask. How is this possible and what do I need to do to fix this??

( also, if this really helps we might wanna make this toppic sticky )

if the setting doesn't already exist then you must create it - add it on a new line at the bottom of the file with your number and then save it

 

[Elincia]

Ok, thx guys! I will try it out now

 

[Veygrix]

Looking at the Config.wtf file I see in the first few entries:

SET coresDetected "8"
SET processAffinityMask "3"


so it seems it has detected the correct amount of processor cores via the 'detected' variable (in my case, 8 due to a 2x quad core processors)
Though its affinity mask is defaulting to a value of '3' which is a dual core setting to use the first 2 processor cores only. In theory a change to '255' in my case will permit WoW to use all 8 cores, pushing performance up to hopefully bottleneck the videocard performance... I shall do some testing.
Cookies all round for a very usefull wiki page!

 

[Angelic]

Someone's got a lot of money, eh, Vey? Two quads, that's...a lot.

 

[thatbloke]

Someone's got a lot of money, eh, Vey? Two quads, that's...a lot.

It's an Intel core i7 - Although it's 4 physical cores, due to some threading technology that they have each core can execute two threads simultaneously, so it shows up to your PC as an 8-core processor. Which is shiny, and why they cost so much

 

[Veygrix]

No, actually its a skulltrail system I built, two physical quad core 3.2ghz xeon chips, 8gb memory and an Ati Radeon 4870x2 crossfire.

Well tests show me that even switching the value between 3 and 255 the game still only multithreads onto two cores, either the first two when set at 3, and cores 6 & 8 when set at 255 (after running perfmon over a 15 minute gaming session). Not really any detectable difference for me in fps, averaging around 100-150 depending where I am. So no benefit for me until the game itself can multithread better or I can find a value that unrestricts it.

 

[thatbloke]

No, actually its a skulltrail system I built, two physical quad core 3.2ghz xeon chips, 8gb memory and an Ati Radeon 4870x2 crossfire.

Well tests show me that even switching the value between 3 and 255 the game still only multithreads onto two cores, either the first two when set at 3, and cores 6 & 8 when set at 255 (after running perfmon over a 15 minute gaming session). Not really any detectable difference for me in fps, averaging around 100-150 depending where I am. So no benefit for me until the game itself can multithread better or I can find a value that unrestricts it.

According to the blues, it is only optimised to use 2 cores

 

[Veygrix]

According to the blues, it is only optimised to use 2 cores

That makes sense, as the value is an affinity mask setting, which can also be set directly on the application thread, to mask which cores you don't want the game to use, so not to interfere with other running processes. So it only really helps if the game is slowed by other heavily loading threads using the same processor cores, and you have others not being used. Nice, though even nicer if Blizzard eventually update the game to multithread further.

 

[Angelic]

No, actually its a skulltrail system I built, two physical quad core 3.2ghz xeon chips, 8gb memory and an Ati Radeon 4870x2 crossfire.

Is it wrong that I want to marry your computer and have little cyborg babies with it?

 

[Youn]

Blizzard changed this in Patch 3.3.2, might be good to know.

The cvar 'processAffinityMask' controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask "3".