11x questions - WoW, mouse/keyboard

I've been lurking here for awhile (about two weeks now) and I've made the plunge on the M11x R2 i7 w/4GB RAM 320GB 7200RPM HDD.

I still have a few questions though.

My main game right now is WoW. I keep hearing that some people play fine with it and others just hate it.

I'm not a raider (thought maybe with Cata i could get into it?) thought I do enjoy random 5-man instances. I currently use a stock 2010 MacMini (no bootcamp) and WoW runs well enough (so long as I don't enter Dal when its busy).

- WoW will continue to run fine for me w/the M11x right?

- My second lurking question is can I use this thing w/external mouse, keyboard, and screen and close the lid?

Thanks for all the info and opinions i've read so far. Can't wait till mine arrives on the 17th... hopefully before I go out of town for a wedding.

 

1. There have been reported Optimus issues with WoW.

2. Yes. Just go into Alien Fusion and you can mess around with the settings.

 

I just got the same set up. Runs Starcraft 2 with ease. I dont know about the optimus issue with WOW, but if you white list the game then there shouldn't be an issue.

 

WoW is my main game at the moment - I resubbed the day my m11x arrived after a 2 year hiatus. I have an R2 i7. I've had no optimus issues whatsoever. WoW has worked perfectly out of the box and it flies (at least in leveling and the lower level dungeons - I haven't tried raids or PVP). And I'm running everything at stock speeds and with only official dell drivers.

 

I keep hearing about
WOW issues on this forum and I've got to say, someone doesn't have their puters set up right or there is a driver issue or something because my little r1 rocks this game.

The other night my guild on Icecrown, WHU (warcraft hunters union) ran an event. To me it looked like we had 3 to 400 players at times standing/running/shooting within feet of each other (video here:
Warcraft Hunters Union: WoW Hunter Blog with Hunter Guides, Gear Guides, and Assorted Chaos. Warcraft Hunters Union - A gathering place for hunters who have paid their dues

If u havn't seen WHU in action, its an awesome thing to see.

In any event, I was pulling no less than 27fps within feet of a moving fight involving some 3 to 400 peeps...so I am SOOOOOO not buying that the m11x can't run wow smoothly. I routinely get 150's or better and probably average in normal play around 90. I even 'dual box" with two windowed instances of wow running two accounts on my R1 (power leveling) and get between 60 to 90 on each window (running same nearly maxxed settings) simultaneously, and I've got mobs and pets all over the place..

Surely the faster i7's and i5's can do better. I dont even run with the 335 o'clocked as I see no need. temps hardly budge. i've never seen 50C on this puter.

c u all in cat

seer

Oh and yes you can use the externals and close the lid, however, i'd leave it slightly open as you get better heat dissipation up thru the keyboard. Good idea to use external keyboard for gaming, don't know about you but i mash the hell out of it when the going gets intense and much easier to replace an external than your lappy board.

 

seer, if you would be so kind, please post your WoW display config settings so others can reference.

Thanks!

 

amazing event seer!
as horde, i can appreciate dwarves in lava... but jumping in?

lol shooting the firelord looked awesome, bullets flying everywhere.

seer, how well does wow run in a 10 - 25man icc run on the m11x?

 

WoW should have ZERO problems running.

And you should look into raiding...its pretty fun. Im done raiding right now, just leveling some alts since I took down ICC 25 on Heroic with my guild...so yea, pretty much BEAT WoW. Although leveling my druid is pretty damn fun.

 

1) WoW is very playable on my M11X R1, but I have Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive installed and most of my graphical settings are set to low; my main display is a 24" Dell 2408WFP

-even at low graphical settings the game looks beautiful; yes I don't see as much depth when flying around, but I see enough
-leveling and 5 raids are great...fps 30+ in raid, Dal is sub 20s, leveling 60fps+
-in ICC Marrowgar is where you see the most ground redraws and I get sub 20s on that fight, but I easily can move around and freely cast without any graphical latency. I'm a healer and can get top 3 in healing (hard to out heal druid or shammy)
- there are two tweaks that I have done in registry to help with WoW ping latency as well as as cpu network throttling as discussed here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/513360-new-m11xr1-optimization-must-have.html

2) I have an external mouse/kb/monitor plugged in and leave the m11x display off as well as the LED lights off. Now I leave the lid up, since it helps with the ventilation of the laptop.