UI killing frame rates

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by Teylana, Sep 22, 2019.

  1. Teylana Elder

    I was a little bored tonight and decided to go sight seeing though the game. At one point I hit F10 to hide my UI and it seemed to me that the game ran more smoothly. So I ran a few tests. Sitting in my guild hall, hiding the UI took me from 70 to 95fps. Southern Felwithe, 140 to 200. PoK, 80 to 115ish.

    My UI is stock but I do have a lot up (a half dozen chat windows, 10 hot bars, etc). I get how that could slow me down but Task Manager never shows any of my CPU cores pegged. Ditto for my GPU.

    My question is, is this normal? Should I really be taking this much of a performance hit from the UI?
  2. Caell Augur

    Any windows set to some level of transparency?, if so, try making sure all of them are 100% not.

    Otherwise, yes it's normal.
  3. Gangia New Member

    I have the same problem. No matter if transparency is on or off.
  4. john5 Lorekeeper

    I know what it is. The chat service.

    For whatever reason, something about chat channels causes FPS lag. To test this:

    Open a new chat window.
    Make your own randomly named chat channel (trying to join a channel that doesn't exist creates a new one with that name).
    Filter your new chat channel to the new window, by itself.
    Spam yourself in the new chat window, make sure it's several pages or more. At least 50 lines.
    Check your frame rate, either visually or with your graphics utility of choice.
    Minimize the chat window, or if your UI is custom and doesn't have the option to minimize, type /clear.
    You should see a difference in frame rate.

    When general chat is really packed and talkative, keeping my general chat window minimized during action helps a lot.
  5. Kurage_of_Luclin Augur

    I have found that currently, minimizing a chat window actually causes extreme game lag during raids, but just dragging an open chat window behind the other (I.E. my DPS spam window is not visible), I get much less lag.
  6. Teylana Elder

    It's interesting that it would be the chat channels - particularly their visibility since hitting F10 clears the issue. You wouldn't think text would do it but... Sounds like some code needs to be optimized.