nUI+ Framerate Issue

[Pbennie]

Good Morning All,

I'll start off by saying I love the nUI+ interface, its neat, clean and leaves a great deal of my screen 'real estate' wide open!! However, my frame rates are atrocious.

I followed the directions for a "clean" install, renamed my interface and wtf folders to ".saved" and went from there. On initial install, everything seemed fine, frame rates were a little low but I didn't worry about it. After installing my add-ons (one at a time as instructed) the frame rates continued to drop until they were between 1-5 fps consistently. I reset my video settings to "low" and that seemed to help; but then I would go into a 5-man dungeon and the frame rates would go out the door again. I uninstalled/disabled more add-ons until I the frame rates got better, but they were still below 10-20fps.

By Sunday, I was a bit miffed, because all of the add-ons I have come to depend on or feel like I can't live without had either been disabled or removed just so I could use the nUI+ interface. I wasn't sure if it was a 'good enough' trade-off but I decided to give it a few more days to see if came across something else. The real deal-breaker was Sunday night; I got into a 25-man ICC run, clearing trash before the boss I couldn't move. I changed my video settings down to the bare minimum, (wasn't ready to abandon the ui yet) disabled all but recount and healbot, logged out and then back in again. It didn't improve frame rates like I hoped it would. In the end I went back to my other addons/mods and left the nUI+ interface/set up in the ".saved" folders.

System Information:
Windows XP 64bit
AMD Phenom 9600, quad core CPU
6GB DDR2 Memory (1066/533MHz)
1GB ATI Radeon Video Card-4650

The system is not set up for over clocking, I thought about it, but that just seemed like overkill. I have another machine, almost identical except its running an Nvidia graphic's card w/512 mb on-board and only 4GB of memory. A friend had me change some settings for wow in the wtf folder but those only seemed to make things worse instead of better...I'm at the end of any options I can think of, any help from you guys will be greatly appreciated. Like I said, I like the interface, it just seems to consume/tie up/compete with more resources than I have available...


Thanks

[Xrystal]

Wow, my system at the time was a hell of a lot worse than yours and I sure as hell didn't need to turn off all my addons to raid.

I used to do Ulduar 25 on a weekly basis as a healer. That meant decursive, grid, skada, boss mods and many more useful even if not important addons running at the same time. Outside of actual fights the fps didn't drop much below 15fps and I could move. Admittedly once the big fights were underway I had problems but not to the extent you are.

What helped me though was switching to party or single player mode. I don't need the frames on display as I use grid to heal. I also had to have my shadows turned off and most intensive graphics turned to medium to get by. At times it would drop to 3fps but most of the time 5fps was the lowest.

Granted I haven't been raiding since before ICC came out so I cannot comment on that but I did spend some time in the Tournament Ground instances with little problems.

Ah here we go. Here's a screen shot of a mid fight 25 man Naxxramas fight. Not a great example but still I am over 10fps with all that stuff on the screen. Oh, and a 25 man Ulduar run as well. Just under 10fps but I am guessing the harder the instance the more complex data is being transferred. I am sure that is why ICC affected you so bad but sitting in the middle of nowhere should not have. Nor should a 5 man or even a 10 man effect you that badly.

What are you doing and where and what are the fps values while you are doing it? What other addons are you using. Perhaps some are competing with nUI to access data and that is affecting things.

This was my set up when I last raided, if I remember rightly that is:
Windows Vista 32bit
AMD Athlon II , dual core CPU, 2.4Mhz
4GB DDR2 Memory (800)
512MB or less Nvidia 7600 GT

Decidely a lot worse than your set up:

My current set up is thus, due to my current main game of Star Trek Online, which is very intensive visually.

Windows 7 64bit
AMD Phenom II 720, triple core CPU, 2.8Mhz
4GB DDR2 Memory (800)
512MB or more Nvidia GTX280

So, give me a location where you're fps is really low and I will either see if I have an old screenshot back then with the old set up or try it again with the new setup. Unfortunately ICC and other raid and instance testing is out of the picture as I don't play at present but simply log in to test and update my addons.
Also, try testing the same thing with just party/solo mode on display instead of the raid and see what the difference is. It may not solve your problem if you need that all displayed but if you don't it may help you alot.

[Pbennie]

WOW

I didn't have nearly that much on my screen!

Add-ons (from memory):
DBM- core and ICC only
Titan
Healbot
QuestGuru --but I disabled it (didn't need it in a raid)
GearScore --but I disabled it
Recount
Postal --disabled (didn't need it in a raid)
XLoot Monitor
-probably a few more but I don’t remember them all right now
__________________________
Locations where frame rates were the worst:
Dalaran (expected-always pretty low 20-25fps)
ICC 25-man (expected low but not as bad as I got)
Any 5-man instance after about 5 min in
___________________________
with all the system resources available (tons of memory & cpu) I'm wondering if there's something else that could be chomping in the background that I don't see. The problem is, I don't seem to have the same issues when I switch to the other 50+ nit-noid add-ons that report crap and keep databases all over the place. I'll try a fresh setup again tonight and keep track of which add-ons seem to be wrecking havoc and try changing the interface to party when in the raid; because if I'm not healing, I really don't care about the other players "health/status"...well not really, really care

Thanks

[Diagnostics]

Is 'reduce input lag' box checked? If so, it can greatly reduce your FPS.

[Petrah]

Keep in mind that just because you disable an addon doesn't mean it still isn't loading into memory. The only way to truly test things is to completely remove any addons from the WoW directory (and their lua/lua.bak files from any/all SavedVariables folders). Also remember to delete the Cache folder after each test if you will be running more tests.

[nightcracker]

Originally Posted by Petrah Keep in mind that just because you disable an addon doesn't mean it still isn't loading into memory.

Unless an other addon loads it, it is.

[Xrystal]

Rofl and thats just the ones you can see
I always have the full DBM but I think they activately automatically so not sure if they are all active at the same time. I used to also have healbot and grid installed at the same time as I was transitioning between healbot and grid and they work quite differently so took some time before I could just use grid. I stopped really playing I think about October but here's my addon list at December 09. Scratch that, there's too many to list rofl .. I have 175 Items in my addon folder at that time. Assuming that 75 were plugins for the actual addons that still makes 100 physical addons running rofl.
Hopefully being in party and solo mode will help things but yes, it may well be worth finding out which addon is throttling things. Oh, try hovering over the fps value and start your search with the highest ones on the list. Perhaps having so many data driven informative addons is getting too much for your system when things get interesting

Originally Posted by Pbennie WOW I didn't have nearly that much on my screen! Add-ons (from memory): DBM- core and ICC only Titan Healbot QuestGuru --but I disabled it (didn't need it in a raid) GearScore --but I disabled it Recount Postal --disabled (didn't need it in a raid) XLoot Monitor -probably a few more but I don’t remember them all right now __________________________ Locations where frame rates were the worst: Dalaran (expected-always pretty low 20-25fps) ICC 25-man (expected low but not as bad as I got) Any 5-man instance after about 5 min in ___________________________ with all the system resources available (tons of memory & cpu) I'm wondering if there's something else that could be chomping in the background that I don't see. The problem is, I don't seem to have the same issues when I switch to the other 50+ nit-noid add-ons that report crap and keep databases all over the place. I'll try a fresh setup again tonight and keep track of which add-ons seem to be wrecking havoc and try changing the interface to party when in the raid; because if I'm not healing, I really don't care about the other players "health/status"...well not really, really care Thanks

[Pbennie]

Ok, at the risk of sounding like a total N00B, I'm posting the results of my experiment of starting from scratch...the second time

Steps:
Renamed my Interface and WTF folders and logged into the game, from there I proceeded to install one add-on at a time until I reached what was installed previously

nUI+
Titan Panel
Titan-Dual Spec
DBM
Recount
Auctioneer Suite
Healbot
GearScore
SellJunk
x-Loot & Monitor
Postal
AckisRecipeList

in that order, each time logging in, checking frame rates, taking screen shots...Well at the end of my list I was still showing a whopping 45fps and was beside myself with joy; then thought oh yeah, I'm hovering above Storm Peaks where the only other soul is another priest farming eternal fire...

So it was off to Dalaran, not too bad, still better than usual but I thought I'd give it some time because the area was still relatively deserted, folks hadn't gotten home from work/school etc. After about an hour the frame rates started to drop but not to the point of halting the interface so...I logged out and loaded a few more of my favorites:

QuestGuru, Dr. Damage, and finally Altoholic...then it breaks...crap, crap, and double crap!

I log out, I remove all of the folders that belong to Altoholic and get ready to log back in...that's when it hit me! I'm staring at the Blizzard Launcher screen and I know there's something else I should check...had problems with it in the past...but I fixed that, there's no way it's enabled again...hmmm

Open up the "Downloader Preferences" menu, wouldn't you know it:
--------------------------------------
-Unchecked "Download while Playing World of Warcraft"
-Checked "Download after Exiting"

-Unchecked "Don't throttle background download, will decrease system performance" --yeah no crap Sherlock!

-Unchecked "Peer-to-Peer Transfer"
---------------------------------------
The N00B part is that I didn't check these before, didn't even think about it. After those were disabled and Altoholic reinstalled I decided to take the interface and all of my add-ons for a test drive in a 5-man....

Frame rates started around 10-15fps, not intolerable, but I remembered someone posting about changing it from raid to party and tried that. After I changed it from party to solo they jumped to almost 30fps. WOOHOO

The graphics are still not "fully engaged" but not exactly low end either I set it to high then lowered Shadows and Weather intensity then disabled spectacular lighting, death effect, full-screen glow effect, and projected textures. The rest I left alone and it still seems to work pretty well.

I posted this "long read" in the hopes that maybe someone else having a similar problem might be able to 'fix' their issue

Thanks All!

[Xrystal]

Grats, glad you got it sorted. And don't worry, we all get noobish now and then