#60 - Nov. 29, 2012, 4:21 p.m.
That's because WoW mostly runs on 1 core and not 3,4,5 or 6. It utilizes sometimes core 2 and 3 for a very few % but that's so small it doesn't make a difference.
Have you tried to change the configuration to try to maximize performance using some console variables?
I've been paying attention to WoW's CPU core usage since at least Cataclysm was launched, and I must say that I get pretty even and very high numbers when it comes to % of CPU usage in at least 2 of the cores.
If you happen to have a very high CPU usage on only 1 core, you might want to try to check your
/WTF/config.wtf file inside WoW's folder, and edit some variables out.
*Please remember to make a backup copy of this file just in case...*
There’s at least 2 variables that probably deserve taking a look:
-
timingMethod-
processAffinityMaskIf none of these variables show up on your config.wtf, the game is automatically using the best values for your computer, you can still add these lines and force a specific value but it’s not recommended unless you know what you’re doing and have any performance issues that you need to solve.
I know this isn’t very user friendly, and especially processAffinityMask can be hard to understand so here’s the basics:
If you know which CPU you have and how many cores it has you can manually try to set the processAffinityMask value and see what works best.
Generally you should use for:
2 core CPU’s:
SET processAffinityMask "3" 3 core CPU’s:
SET processAffinityMask "7" 4 core CPU’s:
SET processAffinityMask "15"For 4 cores, you can experiment with values of 15, 85 or 255, I won’t get into much detail of what that does, but you can check on wowwiki if you’re curious.
This is basically the same thing as opening Windows Task Manager, Processes Tab, and right clicking on wow.exe and clicking on “Set Affinity…”
What this does is it tells your OS which cores it can use.
For timingMethod, as long as you have a multi-core processor, that is, anything that has at least 2 cores, you should have this line in your config.wtf (again, if the variable isn’t there, means the game is automatically choosing the best value):
SET timingMethod "2"There are many more variables that can influence the game’s performance, for example, if you ever used any addons to measure or benchmark your cpu’s usage, there’s a very high chance that those addons activated CPU profiling, and that is a major performance decrease if it’s not deactivated properly by the addon or the user. (scriptProfile should be set to FALSE so it becomes disabled,
SET scriptProfile "0", again only do this if this variable already shows up on your config.wtf and has a value of “1”, which means it’s activated)
Here’s a list of console variables for the
Engine,
Graphics, and
InterfaceAgain, please backup your WTF folder, messing around with variables is generally safe and usually you can undo most mistakes, the game even does this for you if for example you happen to use a value that is out of range, but you should always keep in mind that the game usually automatically picks up the best variable values for your system, so it’s not recommended to change them manually unless you are having any performance issues and really know what you’re doing.