Mods and Performance

[Mordekhuul]

How much do various mods contribute to lower FPS and choppy graphics in 25 man raids? I was getting down to 5-6 FPS while tanking Thaddius last night, and though I was able to flip sides appropriately when my charge changed, it is more than a bit annoying.

I do plan to upgrade hardware, as per the hardware for wrath thread, but in the meantime, perhaps I should cut back on mods.

Anyone have ideas on the worst offenders or what options in mods I might look to disable?

I have already disabled Recount, and am not running a damage meter (there hasn't been a good one since assessment died anyway).

I run a ton of mods - around 50 or so. Most are very small and/or useful for raid leading, and some are cosmetic or fun. Off the top of my head:

Pitbull
Cowtip (tooltip customization mod)
Grid
oRA (to set up tank targets and display them nicely)
XRS (see who is not in range yet or missing buffs)
FuBar (clock, money, guild, rep)
Itemrack
ZOMGBuffs
Bartender
Simpleminimap
Chatter
Parrot (a variant of SCT)
LoggerHead (turns on /combatlog during raids)
Omen
Power Auras (displays an aura around my toon and timer below it so I know when to refresh seals)
Dotimer
ElkBuffBars
Incubator
DeadlyBossMods
Auctioneer
Altoholic

I can post a more complete list later, but that gives an idea.

I was considering trying to live without ElkBuffBars (I love how it automatically puts my debuffs in a specific spot though, so as a tank I can tell at a glance when something is on me or about to fall off).

Pitbull, as well, I might try to replace with some simpler mod that just lets me shift the player, target, and target of target frames around (need them accessible as a tank), if that could help.

Parrot, I might disable, though perhaps just turning off a lot of its frivolous functionality might be enough (I get so much dmg-out and dmg-in spam I can't read anything anyway, but do like having warnings and such thrown up to the middle of my screen).

Cowtip makes me wonder...perhaps all the parsing associated with generating those custom tooltips for mobs I hover over and unit frames I hover over hurts performance?

[RTM]

I've wondered about this myself. I would imagine that a mod that has to do constant checking of some variable (like XRS for range checking) would cause more of a CPU overhead than something that just displays how much gold you have on your character. IIRC there was a mod made at some point that calculates the CPU usage of each individual mod you have loaded; not sure if it is still maintained though, or even what the name of it was.

I do recall Pitbull having issues with the Aura module and performance at some point. While it may be resolved by now, I switched to AG_Unitframes when 3.0 came out and have been using it happily ever since. Pitbull gave you some pretty insane customization options, but in the end I just didn't need it. AG_UF is actually a lot more customizable now, just not to the extent Pitbull is. I have auras disabled and show the pertinent ones through other mods (TellMeWhen, NeedToKnow, etc.).

Cowtip was nice and I used it for awhile, but it just had so much stuff I never used. I switched to TipTac which seems to do the job very nicely and even allows you to select preset configurations to emulate popular tooltip mods like TinyTip or the default Blizzard ones.

Auctioneer takes up a CRAPLOAD of memory, especially if you've been scanning the AH for awhile. I only have it loaded on my AH alt, and run a little mod that puts the item sell price in my tooltips on all my other characters. I don't think it's too CPU intensive though (aside from its AH scans, but you're not doing that while raiding.... are you?;)), so if you have sufficient RAM then it's probably not a huge performance hit.

I use MikScrollingBattleText instead of Parrot, but each of these mods has a way to throttle the feedback it gives you. I found that option REAL quick the first time I raided with a shadow priest.:) You can set it to only show heals above a certain amount. MSBT allows you to combine like events over a certain period of time. So for example, on my rogue I frequently get combat text that looks like 985 (2 hits), which would have been 2 separate hits that totalled 985 damage as opposed to 2 combat text popups that said 522 and 463. Not sure what the performance benefit is on that, but at least it keeps my screen cleaner in combat.

I have yet to do a long 25-man raid in WotLK, so it remains to be seen how my setup will work (or not work) with my mod configuration. Hopefully better than 5fps, although they sure did bump up the spell details on some classes' spells.

[Mordekhuul]

Auctioneer has been pretty invaluable to me since I dropped mining and powered up Jewelcrafting (mmm monarch crab yum yum), making me a blacksmith/jewelcrafter.

Just being able to click on each of my recipes and see what the market price for the gem has been and glance at the undercut recommendation to see if folks are selling them too cheaply (making it not worth posting) saves me a lot of time when trying to make enough gold auctioning gems to keep buying saronite ore.

(Having said that, if anyone on Terenas has extra stacks of saronite ore, feel free to unload them on me with 30 gold CoD's on each stack - avoiding the AH always saves a bit of money on both sides. I'm at 340 JC and climbing!).

[Lissa]

How much do various mods contribute to lower FPS and choppy graphics in 25 man raids? I was getting down to 5-6 FPS while tanking Thaddius last night, and though I was able to flip sides appropriately when my charge changed, it is more than a bit annoying.

I do plan to upgrade hardware, as per the hardware for wrath thread, but in the meantime, perhaps I should cut back on mods.

Anyone have ideas on the worst offenders or what options in mods I might look to disable?

I have already disabled Recount, and am not running a damage meter (there hasn't been a good one since assessment died anyway).

I run a ton of mods - around 50 or so. Most are very small and/or useful for raid leading, and some are cosmetic or fun. Off the top of my head:

Pitbull
Cowtip (tooltip customization mod)
Grid
oRA (to set up tank targets and display them nicely)
XRS (see who is not in range yet or missing buffs)
FuBar (clock, money, guild, rep)
Itemrack
ZOMGBuffs
Bartender
Simpleminimap
Chatter
Parrot (a variant of SCT)
LoggerHead (turns on /combatlog during raids)
Omen
Power Auras (displays an aura around my toon and timer below it so I know when to refresh seals)
Dotimer
ElkBuffBars
Incubator
DeadlyBossMods
Auctioneer
Altoholic

I can post a more complete list later, but that gives an idea.

I was considering trying to live without ElkBuffBars (I love how it automatically puts my debuffs in a specific spot though, so as a tank I can tell at a glance when something is on me or about to fall off).

Pitbull, as well, I might try to replace with some simpler mod that just lets me shift the player, target, and target of target frames around (need them accessible as a tank), if that could help.

Parrot, I might disable, though perhaps just turning off a lot of its frivolous functionality might be enough (I get so much dmg-out and dmg-in spam I can't read anything anyway, but do like having warnings and such thrown up to the middle of my screen).

Cowtip makes me wonder...perhaps all the parsing associated with generating those custom tooltips for mobs I hover over and unit frames I hover over hurts performance?

You've got several redundant mods there.

Properly setup, you do not need Grid if you have Pitbull. Pitbull is a very all inclusive mod when setup properly.

With ZOMGBufftehraid, you do not need XRS checking for who does and doesn't have buffs, just mouse over the ZOMG icon and it will pop up the raid and tell you who has what and who doesn't have what. The only use I have for XRS now is to tell how much mana classes have.

Power Aura and DoTimer are also redundant as they perform the same function with DoTimer covering even more than Power Aura does.

I'll take a screenshot tonight (10 man) and one Sunday night (25 man, hopefully our weekly knock over of Sartherion and Archavon goes down) to show you want you can do with Pitbull (and I don't have it fully configured, just what I find useful).

[Mordekhuul]

You've got several redundant mods there.

Properly setup, you do not need Grid if you have Pitbull. Pitbull is a very all inclusive mod when setup properly.

With ZOMGBufftehraid, you do not need XRS checking for who does and doesn't have buffs, just mouse over the ZOMG icon and it will pop up the raid and tell you who has what and who doesn't have what. The only use I have for XRS now is to tell how much mana classes have.

Power Aura and DoTimer are also redundant as they perform the same function with DoTimer covering even more than Power Aura does.

I'll take a screenshot tonight (10 man) and one Sunday night (25 man, hopefully our weekly knock over of Sartherion and Archavon goes down) to show you want you can do with Pitbull (and I don't have it fully configured, just what I find useful).

Thanks - I'll be interested to see your Pitbull layout. Grid is a wonderful utility, however, so I'm wary of changing, but might give it a shot. Grid's customization, allowing me to easily add new debuffs to be shown in the center icon on fights where its important to know, and such, are pretty valuable, as is the screen space it saves in raids.

Pitbull always seemed a bit TOO customizable, and I'm wondering if you give up performance for that customization or not. Honestly, I'd be pretty happy with a simple mod that lets me reposition the standard blizzard unit frames for my toon, my target, and my target's target (plus pet when applicable), and I'd keep the party unit frames turned off during raids in favor of grid, or even just use grid during non-raid grouping.

XRS has been something I keep thinking of dumping. I use it to scan healer mana and to do a quick "promote all" in 10 man raids where I really don't care if everyone is an assistant as long as everyone can mark and broadcast as needed. That's about it.

I recognize the DoTimer/Powa overlap. My problem was that just running DoTimer I was sometimes letting my seal fall off mid-fight, and wanted something much more obviouis than one of many icons ticking down on the side of my screen.

Power Auras puts a very visible aura around my toon and a timer positioned just under my toon's feet. That said, I'm not totally happy with this situation either, as often in big fights it is hard to even see the power aura through all of the spell effects cluttering my screen (thanks to, you know, being right at the boss's knee-caps while tanking). Perhaps I'll ditch it and try to get used to scanning DoTimer or ElkBuffBars for the seal again...

[PapaSmurf]

Here's a quote from a blizzard rep that may be related to what you are seeing Morde.

Quote from: Thundgot (Source)
We are aware that players on some realms may experience performance issues mainly in instances during peak playing times. This is largely due to the very high number of players in instances, and notably affects Naxxramas the most.

Please be assured that we are working on optimisations to address the issues, and will keep you updated on the progress.

Edit: I got this from mmo-champion

[Mordekhuul]

Here's a quote from a blizzard rep that may be related to what you are seeing Morde.

Quote from: Thundgot (Source)
We are aware that players on some realms may experience performance issues mainly in instances during peak playing times. This is largely due to the very high number of players in instances, and notably affects Naxxramas the most.

Please be assured that we are working on optimisations to address the issues, and will keep you updated on the progress.

Edit: I got this from mmo-champion

Thanks. I did see that, and things they do could help - I can dream.

However, I had frame rate issues towards the end of TBC in our 2 hour Hyjal blitzes, pretty much from the point they upgraded the servers to the Wrath code onwards. I can generally get by, even tanking, but I miss having the smooth frame rates that allow me to quickly spin my camera and click on a mob's nameplate as it runs past me into the raid for a taunt when AOE tanking multiple pulls in Naxx25 (yes, we often end up pulling two groups at a time - by accident at first, and now because its faster).

[shoju]

I Don't know much about your minimap mod, but I found that my old one was taking up a TON of memory (chinchilla). In my search to find a new minimap mod, I went with LnS Map. It's available on wowinterface.com

You do have to edit the text file that has the parameters to 'place' your minimap on the screen, and there is some trial and error involved, but once it's in place, it has very nice functionality, and consumes less than 500kb while running.

I understand some of the mods are for tanking/rl, but here is my current ui. My onebag is covering up Omen.

My UI.

Current mods that I'm using:

Ace2/3 libraries
Bartender
ClosetGnome
Durabilitystatus
LnS Minimap
MBB (top right corner. It's a bag for my minimap icons)
Move Anything
Omen
One Bag
Sunn Art (plus a couple of packs of art)
Pallypower

I'm hoping that I can phase out the ace2/3 libraries, and I need to pick up DBM

[Mordekhuul]

I Don't know much about your minimap mod, but I found that my old one was taking up a TON of memory (chinchilla). In my search to find a new minimap mod, I went with LnS Map. It's available on wowinterface.com

You do have to edit the text file that has the parameters to 'place' your minimap on the screen, and there is some trial and error involved, but once it's in place, it has very nice functionality, and consumes less than 500kb while running.

I understand some of the mods are for tanking/rl, but here is my current ui. My onebag is covering up Omen.

My UI.

I bet memory use isn't too big a problem for me, except when the game is loading (takes forever with huge memory hogs like recount or questhelper). I really should have taken the performance hit and turned on FuBar-PerformanceFu's CPU usage tracking during our Naxx25 run last night, but I was main tanking and we were rushing a bit to see if we could clear all 4 wings in one night (fail - 4 wipes on Thaddius due to inability of a few folks to "go left when negative, go right when positive, for some bizarre reason), so I didn't want to risk dipping my FPS lower than the sometimes 5-6 FPS I was already seeing on boss fights.

[Taelas]

I doubt most of those would slow down your system considerably. Auctioneer, maybe.

[Chesspiece_face]

I've found that the biggest hit i've ever taken from a mod has come from auctioneer. For awhile there i was running it all the time, then took it off and got 10+ fps bump. It's not a mod i would expect to cause those types of issues but it does. It may be a good idea to shut that down when you raid.

I also dumped pitbull awhile ago in favor of X-perl. It does all the stuff i want it to and doesn't seem to be quite so bogged down with excess stuff.

[Artega]

I've found that the biggest hit i've ever taken from a mod has come from auctioneer. For awhile there i was running it all the time, then took it off and got 10+ fps bump. It's not a mod i would expect to cause those types of issues but it does. It may be a good idea to shut that down when you raid.

I also dumped pitbull awhile ago in favor of X-perl. It does all the stuff i want it to and doesn't seem to be quite so bogged down with excess stuff.

X-Perl is also much less efficient. PitBull consumes noticeably less memory than X-Perl does. I will admit that it can be a pain in the ass to get setup, but once you do, you'll never go back.

[Trien]

Discussing 'performance' with addons often generates some amount of confusion and debate with all the different things people use to 'measure' performance.

The first one is memory usage. Some people consider consuming extra memory to be a sign of a poorly performing addon... and it may well be a lack of optimization in the data structures. Effect on actual framerates, however, is likely to be minimal or none at all, since a few extra MB used is not likely to make a real difference in the scheme of things when you've got a few GB lying around (maybe if you had like 512MB it could be a problem... but in that case addons probably wouldn't be your main issue). On the other hand, if the addon author is making use of caching certain data rather than using function calls (various inventory-management addons come to mind), that extra MB used could well correspond to an increase in performance. Addons like Auctioneer which store a ton of data but don't do anything normally (until, say, you dropped by the AH to do a scan) should not affect your general performance either.

The other thing to consider about memory usage is that with all the rage about ACE and other libraries shared between addons is that when they are loaded from within an addon's directory tree (as opposed to sitting inside the Addons/ directory as individual entities), the memory consumption of those libraries is attributed to that particular addon. For example, say you have Grid, and Pitbull (pulling these names off the top of my head here) using a bunch of libraries, and Grid is the first addon to load and loads the shared libraries, Grid will show a much higher memory usage than Pitbull even though Pitbull makes use of these same libraries. On the other hand, if you were running Pitbull by itself without Grid (or any other addon using the same shared libraries), its memory usage would show huge number. So unless you have all the shared libraries split up into individual entites rather than embedded within the addons that use them, don't put a lot of weight on the numbers you see for memory usage. (And, it probably doesn't matter a whole lot either).

Then, there's actual CPU time usage. This tends to have a greater effect on game performance and framerates. And that has more to do with how the coding is done, how much the addon tries to do in OnUpdate calls, what events the addon hooks, and how much it tries to do every time an event fires. There are addons out there that can profile your addons to see where CPU time is being spent.

Pitbull as it was this last year, for example, I could not use on my previous computer (near top-of-the-line early 2006). It would work okay most of the time, but every time I changed targets (and the associated event fired), it would do a whole bunch of stuff which would end up freezing the game for a very noticeable fraction of a second. I ended up switching back to ag_UnitFrames because of that (tried X-Perl, and while performance was fine, the frame layout and appearance did not agree with me). After upgrading to a new computer this last summer though, it could handle Pitbull with no issues, and have stuck with Pitbull since due to it having party targets which ag did not.

Performance bogging down during combat may be due to a number of things. Spell effects could be the issue, if your video card can't handle it. The other culprit tends to be addons that respond to the UNIT_AURA event... which fires very very often in combat, especially if there are a lot of people around--every time someone gains a buff, loses a buff, every time a mob gains a debuff or buff. And addons that respond to UNIT_AURA are every sort of player and raid frames, buff/debuff timers, probably boss mods as well, and more. Within your list, I can see Grid, Pitbull, XRS, PowerAuras which I know for sure. Probably ZOMGBuffs, Dotimer, Elkbuffbars, Parrot and DeadlyBossMods as well, though I am unfamiliar with them. If you're trying to improve the framerate in combat, these would the the addons I would look at first--which ones you could do without, which ones may have a more efficient alternative.

Combat log parsing used to be a big performance hit--for things like damage meters and combat text, since you had to parse the text string for every single combat event (and in raid combat, there are a *lot* of events especially back in the 40-man days and all your casters are AoE'ing), but with the new combat log system a number of patches ago that seems to be less of an issue these days. Still may cause a performance hit depending on how much processing the addon does with that data.

Range checking would probably be more of a generic performance decrease than combat-specific, as it would be doing it continuously (every x seconds)... unless the addon only does it during combat. I am not familiar with any addons having the option to check only during combat though.

Tooltip addons may or may not be an issue, depending on how often it updates the tooltip. I believe most of them just read the data when you first mouseover a unit, and it only grabs new information when you move onto a different unit... so you'd only notice a performance hit if you moved you mouse around a lot and hit a lot of different units and the addon did a lot of processing for each new mouseover. You would notice this though, as your system would freeze for a fraction of a second whenever you hit a new unit but no other time. However, if the tooltip addon has UNIT_HEALTH or OnUpdate hooks to modify the tooltip while it's being displayed, that could be a further performance hit beyond that.

A CPU usage profiling addon may be helpful; turn it on and run through a number of combats, and watch the numbers.

Wish you luck!

(Edit: grammar)