Wow pauses every 10 seconds

[Wowgamer233]

I just wanted to share something that was driving me crazy for a few days. I have quite a few mods (mainly Ace2).

The computer is an Intel Dual-Core 6600 @2.4Ghz with 2Gb of RAM. Video is an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS. OS is Vista. The PC was pretty much for nothing but playing Wow.

I get a solid 60 fps no matter where I am and what I am doing.

So, my problem. Every 10 second the game would pause for 1-2 seconds. People would "pop" all over the place.

I went through every single mod in blocks and disabled them all and enabled them one-by-one.

The culprit ? FuBar_PerformanceFu.

Every 10 seconds this mod polls memory and bandwidth and presents a ton of valuable information. The irony was that I was using that to chase down the mod causing the 10 second pause so I never disabled it. This explains why it took me forever to determine it was causing the pause.

In hindsight it seems quite obvious that a tool that should be categorized as a form of debugger would be causing this.

So, I removed the mod and the game play is now wonderfully smooth.

Just wanted to share this as I've seen many other posts on the Internet where people did all the obvious like defrag, scandisk, bios update, update all drivers, DivX checks, delete WBD, delete WTF, re-install game, completely re-image, etc, when trying to work out similar sounding issues.

I hope in some small way this may help someone else who may be experiencing the same (or a similar) problem.

Oh, and as a final note I'm not saying that FuBar_PerformanceFu is a "bad" or misbehaving mod. Just that the nature of the mod causes my issue and disabling it on the Fubar or removing it from my addons folder worked for me.

[Kaomie]

I think you just need to disable CPU profiling part of PerfomanceFu, which I bet you had enabled. This hooks on every update function to calculate how much CPU time is spent in each addon, so it is really heavy.
If not there is something wrong with your install, I never had any problem with PerformanceFu.

[Wowgamer233]

Originally Posted by Kaomie I think you just need to disable CPU profiling part of PerfomanceFu, which I bet you had enabled. This hooks on every update function to calculate how much CPU time is spent in each addon, so it is really heavy. If not there is something wrong with your install, I never had any problem with PerformanceFu.

Hmm.. good point on the CPU profiling but that is not enabled. I had checked that as it causes a dramatic reduction in ui re-draw so is very obvious when enabled.

When I have very few addons enabled and Performance Fu the 10 second pause is almost unnoticible but still there. With lots of mods it is very apparent. With Performance Fu disabled and all my (considerable amount of) mods loaded the UI is 60fps, latency of 120ms, wonderfully smooth and completely lag free all with every graphic setting completely maxed out.

[malcite]

Strange though. I got PreformanceFu installed (without the cpu profiling enabled) and it runs smooth here. For some reason my Fubar in general is the single most memory using mod though.

BigWigs, Swstats, my bank mod (keeps track over all my alts bank items), and a rather complex bagmod (baudbag, complex but genious) Even Natur Enemy CastBar (NECB) doesn't take that much as it does and i got it enabled and running at all times gathering data about not only my cast timer but others in the raid (which is the most memory using scenario) aswell.

On a memory based level i wouldn't say that Fubar is that much better than titanbar tho apparently but the only reason i use fubar now instead of titan is because titan messed up my internet speed (worked well memory wise tho) and because was WAY out of date

[jonathon]

hey, I'm glad you posted. I was having a pausing issue roughly every 1-2 secs. my frame rate was in the low 30s, but it still had that pausing look. anyways, I was running cpu profiling and after reading your post I tried it without cpu profiling. and voila not only did my pausing problem go away, but i increased frame rates up to the low 40s.

To the last poster, it is strange that fubar runs at the top of the memory usage list(does on mine to). But oh well.

[Siz]

FuBar is more efficient than Titan.

Here is a good thread regarding causes of apparent high memory consumption: FuBar being Fubar?.

[Gemini_II]

If your FuBar is at the top of the list, then I'll wager that it's the embedded libraries of all your FuBar plugins. Embedded libraries will give skewed results. Checkout wowace for a read.

EDIT: And the thread that Siz linked to

[Wowgamer233]

Originally Posted by wildlandfire21 hey, I'm glad you posted. I was having a pausing issue roughly every 1-2 secs. my frame rate was in the low 30s, but it still had that pausing look. anyways, I was running cpu profiling and after reading your post I tried it without cpu profiling. and voila not only did my pausing problem go away, but i increased frame rates up to the low 40s. To the last poster, it is strange that fubar runs at the top of the memory usage list(does on mine to). But oh well.

Made my day that you benefited from my posting

[Wowgamer233]

Originally Posted by Siz FuBar is more efficient than Titan. Here is a good thread regarding causes of apparent high memory consumption: FuBar being Fubar?.

I have around 30 Fubar mods running and have 3 bars at the top of the screen and 2 at the bottom. While I agree that this collection does indeed make Fubar "win" in the most memory race it still behaves flawlessly.

One tip I learned recently was to do the following to dramatically clean up my somewhat messy multi Ace2 lib collection...

Use WowAce updater...

WowAceUpdater Settings > put a check in the Automatic Dependancy Download
WowAceUpdater Settings > put a check in the Delete Before Updating
Mark Installed Addons (F4)
File > Re-install Marked Addons
Mark Installed Addons (F4)
File > Install/Update Marked Installed Addons WITHOUT externales (Shift-F12)

The end result of this is current versions with the libraries in the Addons folder.

I got a nice speed increase (fps and latency) from doing the above.


Example WowAce activity...

Update started: WITHOUT externals (8/18/2007 4:30:03 PM)
Temp Directory (C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\WowAceUpdater), Skip Version Checks (False)
Current addon snapshot saved to C:\World Of Warcraft\WauBackups\backup000.xml.gz
Updating from: http://files.wowace.com/
Cache age is 6 min. (TTL=10 min)
Adding Dependency ArkInventory -> PeriodicTable-3.0
Adding Dependency AtlasLoot -> Babble-2.2
AtlasLoot_BCInstances - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 46851
AtlasLoot_OldInstances - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 46844
AtlasLoot_RepFactions - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 46845
AtlasLoot_SetsandPvP - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 46846
AtlasLoot_WorldLoot - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 46847
AutoTurnin - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 44558
Adding Dependency BigBrother -> SpecialEventsEmbed
Adding Dependency BigWigs_AQ20 -> BigWigs
ChatHighlighter - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 26541
CombatAnnounce - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 38051
DrDamage - Updated to rev WITHOUT Externals 46841
Creating Change Summary At C:\World Of Warcraft\Interface\Tools\WowAceUpdater\ChangeLog.html
Saving log to C:\World Of Warcraft\Interface\Tools\WowAceUpdater\waulog.txt
Update Complete (8/18/2007 4:30:05 PM, total seconds: 2.26)
Summary: 9 Updated, 0 Errors

***You can access the logs from the View menu***

Update Complete!

[Kaomie]

Originally Posted by Wowgamer233 Made my day that you benefited from my posting

Again I do not believe it is PerformanceFu by itself, you probably have a conflict with something else (like having multiple FPS/bandwidth meters, Bongos_Stats or whatever else at the same time).
The problem in most cases is with CPU profiling enabled. Funny thing is when you enable it you usually get a warning about performance impact and that it should only be used for testing, but no one reads warning anyway we know

FuBar is not worse or better than Titan. It is better if you also use a lot of other Aced addon because of the sharing of the libraries. Then it really all depends on which look-and-feel and available modules you prefer.

Embedded versus standalone Ace libraries makes a single true difference which is the initial loading time and memory. After the first garbage collection it should be roughly equivalent, unless authors used hard embedding or incompatible versions. You should not see a huge overall memory difference and only marginal FPS changes if any at all...

[Wowgamer233]

Originally Posted by Kaomie Again I do not believe it is PerformanceFu by itself, you probably have a conflict with something else (like having multiple FPS/bandwidth meters, Bongos_Stats or whatever else at the same time). The problem in most cases is with CPU profiling enabled. Funny thing is when you enable it you usually get a warning about performance impact and that it should only be used for testing, but no one reads warning anyway we know FuBar is not worse or better than Titan. It is better if you also use a lot of other Aced addon because of the sharing of the libraries. Then it really all depends on which look-and-feel and available modules you prefer. Embedded versus standalone Ace libraries makes a single true difference which is the initial loading time and memory. After the first garbage collection it should be roughly equivalent, unless authors used hard embedding or incompatible versions. You should not see a huge overall memory difference and only marginal FPS changes if any at all...

I can confirm that profiling is 100% not enabled.

[Azareus]

Originally Posted by Wowgamer233 I can confirm that profiling is 100% not enabled.

Did you try to disable the "Show Addon Usage" option? Just that one?
It happened to me.

That option is cool (and enabled by default) but my computer started having the "pauses" you talked about.

It's a sort of "Profiling" anyway.

Let me know.

Az

[Seerah]

Originally Posted by Kaomie Embedded versus standalone Ace libraries makes a single true difference which is the initial loading time and memory. After the first garbage collection it should be roughly equivalent, unless authors used hard embedding or incompatible versions. You should not see a huge overall memory difference and only marginal FPS changes if any at all...

Was about to say the same thing. Actually having standalone libs will *NOT* improve your memory usage or fps. In the end, the game is running one copy of the libs, regardless of where they're located.

[Kaomie]

Originally Posted by Wowgamer233 I can confirm that profiling is 100% not enabled.

I can confirm you have selective reading disorder
The first sentence was the one for you

Originally Posted by Seerah Was about to say the same thing. Actually having standalone libs will *NOT* improve your memory usage or fps. In the end, the game is running one copy of the libs, regardless of where they're located.

In a perfect addons world that would be 100% true. Unfortunately you may have some differences because of the reason I mentioned

PS: Seerah your signature is nuked for me it says "Unable to find that sig. Visit blablah.."

[SirQuester]

Turn off V-Sync (vertical sync) and Tri-linear filtering (unless your screen is showing signs of tearing when off). This should enable your fps to go above 60fps, like say around 100fps or so.