In my last post, I took a theoretical look at how an increased latency affects your DPS. To no surprise, the higher the lag, the less DPS. (Note, I’m using lag and latency interchangeably.) I listed a couple utilities that I have used to tweak my Windows experience in order to improve overall internet activity. In this post, I’m going to continue pursuing ways to optimize your system.
To recap: One of the first things you want to do is turn off all background processes. Granted, some don’t affect WoW at all. I run BOINC – a very CPU intense application – in the background and haven’t had any problems with WoW unless BOINC is trying to upload the datafile to the server. Occasionally I even keep iTunes on. And just about every raider I know runs Ventrillo simultaneously with WoW. I recommended the utility Autoruns, from Microsoft’s Technet, to manage your startup processes and services.
The second thing to do is tweak your Network Interface Card (NIC) and TCP/IP settings. Most of these tweaks require more than just the hardware properties dialog box, they also require registry tweaks. I recommended a tool I have used in that past called TCP Optimizer to make that chore easier, and less likely to crash your system.
Where else does lag come from? I guess the first question would be “How bad is my lag?” To determine the zeroith law of lag, you need a utility that can measure it. I use PerformanceFu on my FuBar panel. It reads off not only my current latency (in ms), but also my frame rate and memory used by add-ons. That information helps determine sources of lag.
The biggest lag culprit is WoW itself. Well, maybe not out-of-the-box WoW, but definitely all the must-have add-ons we can’t live without. By monitoring PerformanceFu, I can see add-ons that I’m not using taking up extra memory. I have finally gotten in the habit of turning off add-ons I don’t need during game play. 1) Auctioneer is off unless I’m in the AH. 2) PvE add-ons are off when I plan on mostly PvP-ing. 3) PvP add-ons are off when I plan on mostly PvE-ing.
Display settings is the next culprit. When patch 3.1 hit we all had to go into the display settings and turn down a few settings. I will admit to having a pretty high horsepower system, except for my Mobo which only has a PCIe 1.0 slot. I don’t have SLI. I do have a PCIe 2.0 card in the slot, but without the motherboard to go with it, I’m not quite at full power. Still, it’s a good system that can crank out FEA, so it can handle WoW. I still had to turn down a few ambient settings 1 tick and shadows almost off; 1-tick up from off, actually.
Your display settings does two things for you: it increases your frame rate which in turn decreases your lag. These two items are not mutually exclusive.
Computer hardware is another item to look into. I won’t go into specifics like FSB speed or IRQ sharing. But I will give you a personal experience. I was originally running with the on-board sound. It was a decent 7.1 surround setup, but I kept getting sporadic problems and even disconnects. I switched to a sound card, disabling the on-board sound, and amazingly my frame rate improved. Latency averaged about the same, but my game play experience was improved. Did it solve the disconnects? No, I had to buy a new switch for that. I had no way to tell that my switch was bad, but it was cheap to buy a new one and swap it out to see if that was an issue. Apparently it was, because after attaching the new switch I haven’t had a single disconnect. Most likely problem, it overheated when playing WoW. It ran fine all other times except when playing WoW.
What else is on your home network? Printers, labtops, Wiis, Xboxes, and any other network peripheral – probably connected through a switch prior to being connected to your modem – will consume bandwidth on your system. Most home networks can handle it. My home network is only a 10/100. I haven’t gone Gbit because I have nothing that needs that speed. Besides, my DSL only goes up to 1.5Mb/s. I have more than enough room in my home pipeline to fill several DSL lines. Even some of the fastest cable modems are maxed 20Mb/s and typically only provide much slower speeds, somewhere around 7Mb/s. My home network has 5X the bandwidth of even the fasted cable connection. The only thing to worry about with the extra peripherals are any that automatically phone home to update themselves. Although communication in your home network isn’t slow, they minute they take up bandwidth going to the internet, WoW is going to lag. That includes your DirectTV boxes.
Some of these things are complex for the non-techie. But even if you aren’t a hobby system builder, you can still look around and use some common sense to improve your WoW gameplay experience.
- Find your internet capable hardware throughout your house and turn them off when not in use.
- Turn off add-ons you aren’t using.
- Adjust your display option settings.
- Check for any hardware conflicts in your system. Upgrade where necessary.
- Add as much RAM as you can.
- Keep background apps to a minimum.
Eddie “Brigwyn” Carrington is often known as being that crazy dwarf on Twitter.
He's also a blogger, podcaster (Hosts Brigwyn's Corner, Co-host of Everything Blah! and of course Redneck Geek and Cajun Gamer with his good friend Andy "Daewin" Dino. 
