World of Warcraft benchmarks
- World of Warcraft Shadowlands performance analysis
- Troubleshooting and reporting WoW technical problems
- WoW Dragonflight CPU performance comparison
- WoW Dragonflight GPU performance comparison
- WoW Dragonflight iGPU and mobile chips performance comparison
CPU, RAM, performance scaling
- Benchmarking Ryzen 5900X and RTX 3070 in WoW
- Ryzen 5 3500X versus i5-9400F in World of Warcraft
- Analyzing World of Warcraft multi-core and frequency scaling
- WoW performance with different RAM configurations
- World of Warcraft Shadowlands Beta - SSD versus HDD
GPU topics
- Intel Arc A380 - first look at Intel discrete graphics card
- Ray tracing and API scaling on Intel Arc A380
- Analyzing ray traced shadows in World of Warcraft
- Testing Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in World of Warcraft
Integrated graphics
- World of Warcraft on AMD, Intel and Apple integrated graphics
- Benchmarking World of Warcraft on AMD APU integrated graphics
- Benchmarking World of Warcraft on integrated graphics
- World of Warcraft on handheld and UMPC devices
Windows on ARM
- WoW Dragonflight PTR and Classic on Windows on ARM devices
- Testing out World of Warcraft natively on Windows 10 ARM
Apple silicon, macOS
- Resolution and graphics quality scaling in WoW for Apple M1
- World of Warcraft on macOS Apple devices
- World of Warcraft performace on macOS Big Sur and Apple M1
Old clients
Shadowlands benchmarks
- World of Warcraft Shadowlands Beta CPU benchmarks
- World of Warcraft Shadowlands Beta GPU benchmarks
- World of Warcraft Shadowlands Beta iGPU benchmarks
Other articles
- Benchmarking and analyzing World of Warcraft performance
- Performance and hardware comparison of Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft
- Analyzing WoW Shadowlands Spires of Ascension 9.0.5 performance regression
- WoW pre-Shadowlands hardware news
- Testing Radeon Adrenalin 20.10.1 Shadowlands pre-patch support
- Checking WoW Shadowlands 9.1 performance and technical problems
- Windows 11 vs Windows 10 in WoW Shadowlands 9.2 PTR
Benchmarks summary
Zones like Ardenweald seem to be noticeably more GPU demanding than other zones. Other are more typical with CPU being the limiting factor. The combat as always is heavily CPU limited - if you want high framerate in mass-actor combat then the latest top CPUs will be in order. On a smaller scale or just the open world, this will be less apparent.
- CPU: modern 4-core CPU is a minimum to get the maximum performance out of the game, 6-8 cores if you intend to run other apps and lots of add-ons alongside the game. The game barely scales beyond 4-cores - but it does spread the load across multiple cores (just that it doesn't scale performance up due to a single
main
core being the bottleneck). - GPU: for 1080p you will be fine with a budget GPU. If needed lowering the settings mode will increase the FPS. For higher resolution high fidelity you will however need a top-of-the-line modern GPU. The game should be fine with 4GB of VRAM. 2GB cards can see some performance penalty. Higher resolution/settings can use a bit more.
- RAM: you need at least 8GB - although zones like Oribos may exceed it (on Windows), optimal 16GB depending on add-ons and other apps running. Note that especially Ryzen CPUs scale really well with RAM frequency (and latency) so for new systems try to pick better kits of RAM.
- Storage: Using an HDD gives much longer load times and if possible it's advised to switch to even a basic SATA SSD. The game still works on an HDD though.
- Display and resolution: if you want more than 1080p resolution then I would recommend ultrawide 3440x1440 displays. If you really like it there are also super ultra-wide displays. 4K isn't bad, just that WoW is really nice on an ultrawide display.
- Laptop: Integrated graphics can run the game really well on medium settings, but only the latest, most modern integrated graphics like Vega 7/8 in Ryzen 4000 and 5000 CPUs and Intel Tiger Lake G7 CPUs.