WoW Changes: New Multithread Optimizations Coming in Patch 8.1

That's right; Blizzard has started to add new optimizations to WoW, to make the game run smoother on more modern gaming computers.

But even an expansion with six new zones spread across two island nations, 10 dungeons, the new Island Expeditions and Warfronts features, and two new Allied Races to play as isn't enough by itself. Thus, Blizzard will be adding to BfA with patch 8.1, titled Tides of Vengeance, and it is positively packed with goodies.

Patch 8.1 testing
This change was highlighted by Adam aka MysticalOS, author of the popular addon Deadly Boss Mods, who pointed out the new control for these features over Twitter.

Target Audience
These optimizations, however, won't affect everyone. Most importantly, they only work when using DirectX 12, meaning you must be using Windows 10 and have a compatible CPU and Graphics Card.

Having that hardware limitation met, the second point is that those multithread optimizations will only help with rigs that are currently being held back by CPU. WoW is extremely CPU bound, meaning that its performance is highly dependant on processor speed, rather than other factors. When using a medium to high-end GPUs from either Nvidia or AMD, WoW usually won't be able to use the Graphics card at its full power, because it is being held back by the CPU. These optimizations, however, change that and allow the game to better use CPU cores.

Benchmarking the Optimizations in Full HD
There are currently 4 different optimizations in the game, with two being enabled by default when using DirectX 12 and other 2 likely not yet stable enough to be used. Knowing that, we ran tests to see the impact of these optimizations in the city of Boralus on the PTR.