Checking WoW Shadowlands 9.1 performance and technical problems
Patch 9.1 for World of Warcraft gave us new content but also new technical issues. Let see how performance looks like versus 9.0.5 and 9.0 and what are currently reported problems.
Performance comparison
Lets start with a desktop PC. I've tested patch 9.1.0.39291 on 05.07.2021 - after few days of hotfixes since the patch 9.1 was released. I've used latest drivers and latest Windows 10 version as well as latest BIOS/AGESA available.
Performance looks good and there seems to be no regressions, maybe even slight performance increase when looking at previous results for 9.0.5 and 9.0.0. The bug
in Spires of Ascension is still present in the game. I've analyzed SoA regression before, it was seen by Blizzard and even some NA Apple M1 users were able to get some responses from support stating that it won't be quick to fix.
Going down the stack let's check Lenovo IdeaPad 5 14ARE05 laptop with integrated graphics:
Here we see no changes. The game is playable at 1080p mode 3 without much problems.
In terms of RAM usage the highest one is usually in Oribos. Desktop PC used 12GB while the laptop used 9GB which is consistent with previous results - 8GB of RAM won't be enough for some locations in WoW.
9.1 problems
People are reporting severe FPS loss when opening map or when some interface elements activate. On both systems I saw some FPS drop when map is open but nothing that would cause stutter. The FPS drops seems bigger when newer zones maps are opened. Looking at frametimes a clear pattern becomes easily visible:
Stable and choppy framerate without and with map open on PC
On a laptop same pattern can be observed
Aside of that there were few cases of degraded SSD performance, overheating (hot weather?) and alike, not directly related to WoW. If you have problems with your PC or WoW you can check my troubleshooting guide.
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