M11x - WoW Performance, Issues, General Discussion

Do the Wow fluctuation issues seem like they could possibly be heat related? Has anyone tried disabling powermizer yet? (be careful of heat if doing this)

 

I believe its a heat thing. I've been playing games on laptops for awhile and I usually can spot throttling. I believe the m11x R2 is doing it, question is, if its the CPU or the GPU. I'd try disabling powermizer but how is that done?

 

I haven't tried it yet but I'll check it out. It doesnt happen in other games though, and that is a global setting right? When I run Crysis I can stand still and the FPS will stay constant(even with the res cranked up on a monitor). I've only seen this happening in WoW. FlukeNukems post seems to indicate it might be occuring when the CPU is fluctuating between different speeds, and the CPU apparently does this with or without turboboost on. So it appears you will be walking smoothly along then for a second everything will go into slowmotion before it kicks back up again. If it was the GPU/CPU that couldnt handle it I would think it it would be a constant slowness.

To really test this in WoW you have to go to a low populated area and look at a wall, because in Dal the FPS is going to fluctuate because of all the activity, and at 1920x1080 because it isnt as noticable at the native res. And we cant use the argument that this graphics card cant handle 1920x1080 because On my 9400M laptop I can put it at that rez and not get these fluctuations. Granted on the 9400M the FPS will be lower, but its not bouncing wildly. And that laptop has the tried and true core2duo, which explain why this may not happen on R1.

 

Can use powermizer switch (download link is the second one). Once again though be careful because this may cause extra heat. I do not recommended using this tool unless you are comfortable with any potential issues that could arise.

EDIT: Interesting info Allamar. You really do have multiple things in the R2 trying to automatically throttle and it definitely seems to be pointing to a throttling issue somewhere. As you said the GPU & CPU should be more than capable enough to handle things.

 

I just tested WoW using the integrated graphics, and I get 12FPS at 1920x1080 at the area I'm at (Elwynn Forest), but no fluctuations.

At the same place with the 335M I get 60FPS, but it bounces down to 40FPS every 4 seconds or so.

Even though 40FPS is playable the sudden drop and then spike back up creates kind of a "hiccup" which makes the game seem like it is in slow motion for that second.

 

What makes me believe that something is being throttled is because in the first couple of minutes of the game the FPS are high but then I hear the fans kick in and then the FPS from there on out go to crap

 

mine strait suck off the bat, lol. but maybe i'm just doing something wrong.

 

In dalaran i'm only getting 10-15 fps, 5man dungeon 30fps but sometimes drops to 15. show nvidia gpu is being used so i'm confused. i have the 258 drivers and the new physX installed.

What kind of fps was the R1 getting?

 

Quite a bit higher than that, I get a consistent 30-60 FPS everywhere on my R1. I don't obsess over it, so there may be occasional drops, but nothing I notice, always seems smooth to me.

I think all these WoW problems are just related to Optimus and the R2.

 

glad to hear its not just me.

 

I did some more testing and here is what I noticed:

The FPS drop seems to only happen when you are not in a graphic intensive area, such as looking at a wall in barrens. You'll see the drops from 60-40ish. In Dalaran when alot of things are happening the FPS stays steady for me around 25-30FPS, but I dont see the spikes every few seconds.

My guess is when you are in an area that requires less intense processing either the CPU or GPU is throttling down.

 

It really really sounds to me like powermizer. See a great explanation on powermizer here (great program too, but I dont think it will work right now with optimus.) Pay special attention to the known problems.

 

i'll mess around w/ that tool a bit

 

Ok so I actually had a chance to sit down tonight and play Warcraft for a couple of hours. I was able to raid 10 mans and 25 mans and this is what I've found.

There must be a bug in the drivers because I don;t notice throttling that much now. I notice though that in the new lands, WOTLK, this is where FPS goes to crap. There must be some extension that isnt handling the new land right.

Also what killed my FPS is "fog" as I like to call it. Like spells that have a dense fog to them. It seemed the GPU couldn't process it and it brought it down.

These are just random tidbits and findings thats all

 

My worst fears are that Alienware have implemented some kind of throttling on this R2, for the CPU or GPU. Brian, can you comment on that?

There's been reports of throttling on the M15X and M17X. I hope it hasn't spread to the M11X. Please use ThrottleStop, TMonitor or the PowerMizer app to get more info, or have a look at the M15X or M17X forums.

The R2 with an i7 should definitely play better than the SU7300. There can be no excuses here. The periodic dip in FPS when hooked up to 1080p HDMI is also worrying. We should have pretty high and consistent FPS.

Really hope this gets looked into and not pushed under the carpet. Hopefully it is just inconsistent reports or a driver problem, but I start to see a worrying pattern.

 

yea i finally logged onto like a lvl 37 alt thats in the pre-bc area, and at "good" settings (w/ a few minor tweaks) i can hold 40-60 fps.. so i guess i'll just keep playing alts till they can tweak this to where it works better in WOTLK areas.. I may just be a whiney little girl about it, but i cant play w/ 20-45 fps. not when my old (not as well specc'd) laptop played it better.

 

finally got my wow installed and updated. did not try hooking to external display. no intention to do that since I have a desktop and game console if i wish to go gaming on big screen.

result is quite pleasing to me when compared to my previous Lenovo Y450 (P8700-2.53ghz, 4GB-DDR3/1066, GT130M-512MB/DDR3, Win7 Ult64bit).

running on native res with no AA (find it not necessary for small screen as jagged are not visible at all), sound quality setting at high, gfx settings mostly at highest except shadow at medium, draw distant at 3/4.

Dalaran consistent at 20-32fps
Did 5m HOS running between 40-69fps
SW 28-50fps (did not really run thru the entire place)
IF 40-80fps (did not really run thru the entire place)

using stock drivers for these initial quick test. will switch to beta drivers and test again as i am going to try other games first. CPU n GPU both at stock clock running on AC with default balance setting.

 

Omg Why doesn't this notebook just do what it has to do? I installed WoW today and when I press launch it tries to loads WoW then I get a black screen for 2 seconds and go back to the desktop screen but it's still open so when I click on it again it does the exact same I dont even see the login screen, what the hell is this?


EDIT:
What a restart can fix haha it works now. I got 57 frame (with ultra settings on a aw2210 monitor with max resolution) when tried a trial account with my r2 now Im trying with wrath of the lich king expansion just need to add play time on my main account

EDIT2: That went bad :< I guess il try again after installing all the drivers even though I don't think that will solve the problem

Weird that a GAMING Notebook can't even handle WoW...

 

what really gets to me is that wow is like a 5 year old game!!! 17 fps while leveling is NOT OK.

 

^^ disable powermizer and overclock your CPU, GPU, Shader and Memory clock. That should improve your FPS.

 

lol, im sure that would improve it.. shouldnt have to do all that -.-;

 

Unfortunately, out of the box, the R2 is setup to maximize battery life and performance. Some laptops must be tweaked to achieve the best performance.

 

ok 552/1324/854 w/ EVGA... no boost in FPS

how do i disable powermizer? i have the tool, but it says there arent any powermizer settings defined, so wouldnt that mean its disabled?

 

what sucks is when I was playing at level 60, I had a intel centrino 2.0ghz with 1gig DDR2 memory, nvidia geforce go 6600 (Asus Z71V) and it played it very well. This was in 2005-ish. This played it well enough that I could have fraps recording and still maintain good FPS.

Then TBC came out and requirements went up and I got a new PC: E6750, 7900GT, 4gig DDR2 Dual Channel, and it ran it just fine

Then WOTLK came out and yet again I had to change my computer. I got a Q9650 OC'd to 3.6ghz, 8gig DDR2, GTX 260, and I still sometimes have FPS drops during raids to probably low 30s.

I tried using my Z71V again shortly before it died to play and I would have to turn off all addons and unable to go to Dalaran. The requirements for this game just went up a retarded amount. It's like they added a new shadowing effect to the game that older things can't comprehend.

Btw, this was all done on lowest everything settings, no AA/AF and vsync off. I've never really turned anything up except for view distance to maybe half.

So I dunno if it's fair to say a 5 year old game since things have changed in it, more particularly at every expansion. Still though it's not a very demanding game and the R2 should definitely be able to handle it. My R2 is currently in production so when it gets here I can play around with it.

Oh also to add, I have a lenovo Y530 with a 9300m and it runs wow just fine in IF. I get probably 100-120 fps in ironforge, haven't done a raid with it since I let my brother borrow it while he's stationed at the Navy Base. I would love to compare them though. The Y530 has a T6600 C2d, 2gig DDR3, 9300m

 

That's because powermizer is still enabled.

If i remember correctly, the first step is to create powermizer settings. Do this by just clicking the button and it will automatically add the settings to your registry. Next step would be "enable powermizer feature" The rest is pretty much self explanatory.

 

So are there people actually working on a driver solution for this problem? My R2 arrives tomorrow and the main game I play is wow

 

I'm sure they are, I highly doubt they'd let this sit considering it's the biggest multiplayer game available after all these years still.

But like I said above, requirements are by no means low. It does have a low requirement to start the game bare with no addons and lowest everything, but to get everything to the ultra level at 60+ fps all the time including raids is very demanding. My quadcore with GTX260 can't even achieve it, not that it's the most expensive PC on the market

I'll play with settings in a few weeks when I get my R2

 

Really? Thats very odd. I built a PC 10 years ago for about $400. It is able to play wrath of the lich king fine (and do 25man raids fine) - with all graphics turned down and no add ons, true, but even so ...

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The reason the m11x R2 is having trouble is due to drivers and nvidia optimus, not due to hardware.

 

well I've also read (don't have experience as it's still 'in production') that the tool to watch what graphics card people are using shows the nvidia being used while running wow but with inadequate FPS

Just stating to people that even the highest graphics on wow is demanding, regardless of how old the game is, and some semi-up to date computers will have trouble maintaining such good FPS with ultra settings in Dalaran or 25man raids with shadows.

 

I finally tried hooking up my m11x to my 24" Dell monitor via their DVI cable thing, glad this cable finally came in handy as it's only gone unused since I bought the monitor three years ago...

Any ways, I'm actually playing World of Warcraft as I type this. Iron Forge and Hell Fire Peninsula both run anywhere from 30ish-60ish FPS depending on circumstances, very much playable. No random dips in frame rate so far. I'm running at everything maxed out except Shadows, which is down to one setting above off. Ress is 1920x1200 and I'm using the pre-installed 189.* drivers since they are the only ones that work with Bad Company 2.

One thing of note, do NOT use the "Reduce Input Lag" feature, this is will kill your frame rate.

And yes, the smoke effects are not friendly for your frame rate.

 

I'm going to laugh if the 'reduce input lag' feature is what's been causing problems for him the whole time; lol. I hope it is for his sake, easy fix...

Could it also be a memory problem? I see you're running a SSD and double his memory. Maybe that's smoothing it out?

 

wow r2 works great soo far for me

 

take some screenshots of large environments if you can, like flying above hellfire with FPS shown

 

Where can I put off the input lag? Is it just an option on the WoW option menu?

 

Hit the "Esc" key, then the "Video" button at the top, then look around the middle of menu screen for "Reduce Input Lag" and then uncheck it.

 

Sorry, no flying mount yet, working my way up again. I haven't touched my US account in years, was pre-expansions. All my good stuff is on my now canceled Euro account.



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The thing with WoW is the endgame is mostly raids, dungeons or PvP. So whilst framerates are ok wandering about in the wilds or stood in a building somewhere if the m11x r2 can't handle Wintergrasp, Lady Deathwhisper, or a big AoE trash pull in ICC then it puts a lid on the game somewhat for a lot of players.

 

I see major major issues with these screen caps.

WHY do you have unused hotbar items??? WHY???

On mine, I have all the available rows on the bottom and right side of screen (double rows) and all the buttons filled.

 

Alright so here is a little WoW update since I have a break from school and I was able to play on the weekend for a couple of hours. (School meaning a masters so I am not a 16 year middle school-er lol)

So I hooked it up to my TV which supports the max resolution. The frame rate was reading around 40 FPS in Thunder Bluff and old lands but there was terrible clipping / frame skipping. It was like the card wasn't able to produce the frames fast enough. I have experienced this type of behavior about 3 years ago when I got a Asus Gs1 gaming laptop. The reason why it was acting like that was because the laptop was throttling.

I am willing to try this powermizer option and express my findings to the forum but can someone please give a DETAILED way to actually unlock this option and on how to disable it?

PS: I see that alot of people are debating saying that the game is demanding and such but like I said in my main post that sparked this whole discussion "The m11x R2 should be able to out perform my 9600m old laptop". We can argue settings and such all day but I feel its safe to say that it inst the game being to demanding on the laptop. But in fact I feel that there is some type of driver issue or hardware issue. It would actually be nice that either Alienware / Dell / Nvidia would announce that they recongnize 'a bug'.

 

I can honestly say after playing WOTLK for the last couple of weeks, leveling from outland (50-70fps inc dungeons) into Northrend (40-65 fps inc dungeons) and also the odd weekly raid quest on my Main character I have only had one or two issues. The issues were both related to certain particle effects which crashed me out, slightly annoying but I had similair issues on my Desktop (Area-51) not so long ago which stopped after new nvidia drivers fixed the issue. That and the usual dsl disconnects (BT suck ).

Even on my Area51 I couldnt run full settings in raids without a performance hit, so I never expected to get even close on my little M11x. I am happy to say it runs much better than I thought it would! I have turned off the performance killing settings, tweaked view distance and quality settings here and there so it still looks good but plays smoothly.

For anyone not an avid WOW player, with the settings turned to max and lots of players in your area it will EAT YOUR MACHINE ALIVE!

The usual suspects cause my lag, heavily populated areas cause cpu lag trying to render all the other players, isle of conquest is pants, wintergrasp gets boggy, raids get choppy when the effects start flying about but ITS NOTHING NEW!

After avoiding the temptation to post on this thread earlier Im glad I waited until I had played it thoroughly to myself, Im not going to spend the next few days posting benchmarks after benchmarks as its actually irrelevant to my post, my point is, WOW PLAYS BEAUTIFULLY on my M11x. I have stock dell drivers, no OC, turbo ON blah blah, no tweaks at all, I tried them, they made virtually no difference to WOW. If you have been messing with your drivers take them all back to the latest dell ones, clean your system properly and try again WITHOUT EVERYTHING ON MAX! its a game not a benchmark.

So in short if your after a system that will run WOW on full HD on a 60 inch plasma but it needs to be portable and last 4 days on battery and stay cool enough to keep your 7UP cold whilst on your lap, dont buy the M11x, buy the m17x and a fridge. If you want a great little portable gaming machine that can still hold its head up to the bigger boys at a price, get the m11x you will love it.

PS if your an end game raider and your looking at this as a desktop replacement? NO, its a netbook!

 

Rahzer, I have disabled powermizer and it did not help this issue. It seems to be specific to WoW. Whenever I am in an old area, such as barrens, at 1080p where you think the framerate should be good you get the horrible clipping and dips that you are speaking of (60 to 40 fps then back again). If I am in Dal where the GPU/CPU has to kick into full gear I do not see this issue, and I am fine with the performance. At this time I have given up playing WoW on this laptop higher then native res because of this issue.

Also, if you enable the "Reduce Input Lag" option it will increase the load on the card and the framerate drops/skipping will not occur in the old lands. Running it in "Windowed" mode performs the same function.

The main issue I have at 1080p is that in areas where the framerate should be high you get this effect which seems to be throttling it down and then back up which causes that skipping. Im using the Dell beta drivers BTW

You can even see this at the login screen where the snow is falling. Turn the details to medium/high and put the resolution at 1080p and every few seconds you will see the snow go into slow motion. Then, enable the "Reduce Input Lag" function and the snow is suddenly falling smoothly. Why? Because the FPS is staying at 30 instead of bouncing from 60 to 30 and back.

Try that.

For some reason this is hardly noticable at all at the native resolution.

So in effect, I get worse performance at 1080p in the old areas where it should be great. When I get to an area in WOTLK like Dal, yes the FPS is lower, and im fine with that. It doesnt do the crazy bounce at least.

 

Ah alright so I guess we are in the hands of the waiting game. I agree that WoW shouldn't be run on Ultra, I can't even do that on my desktop BUT you should be able to run it at a decent framerate with shadows turned down one notch from the top.

 

Guys, please check the M11x Throttling thread, and download the programs linked to there (M15x Throttling link) and then you get a clear answer if throttling is involved.

You then monitor the CPU and GPU frequency under load when you are gaming in WOW or running Furmark, and you can get a graph that easily shows if the frequencies fluctuates, ie throttling.

 

It also simply can't be stated enough that spell effects and shadow quality are horrible unoptimized.


wow can run on incredible old systems, but they added stuff like spell effects to make the old engine look better, really takes a crank. these things have been added later, but are not something you need if your playing on the 11'' screen IMO.

if your outputting to a larger monitor, then it might be a bit more needed thou, but to be realistic wow can really demand something of the machine in certain situations.

 

again i just want to say wow is completely playable at least on my R2. i know some ppl in this thread are reporting they have issue with fps throttling but honestly i have not seen it happen on mine. sorry i cant post anything constructive to begin with to help out since i cant replicate the same problem on my machine.

 

Kopicha..have you tried any some of the tests in my earlier post? Try connecting the laptop to an external monitor and put it on 1080p.

Put the details on medium to high and at an area like Barrens or Elwynn forest. A low detail area...where it should perform, this is where we see the fps spike and drops.

You should see the FPS at 60, then drop to 40, then back to 60.

This drop isn't noticable at native resolution, which is good since that is mostly what we'll be playing on.

Just wondering if this is what you have tried in your testing. I'd like to see if more people can reproduce this issue.

 

Here are a few of my screenshots from last night just to show you guys how this should NOT be.

One is in a populated area which is the warlock in Dalaran. I know we arent to get great FPS in there but 7...reallly? 7...

The next is in a dungeon facing a wall, nothing else in the way and look, 15fps.. again this should not be.

The last is flying away from Dal facing the sky so there isnt any really drawing and look 9FPS.

Again this performance is uncalled for on this type of laptop with the type of hardware in it.

 

It is a problem with either your hardware or software settings. The hardware is more than capable of playing this game smoothly as many others have said.

Some suggestions for others, again, run the game with your laptop using stock everything. Thats means dells drivers, no OC, no Turbo, No GPU OC just as it came out the box.

A lot of us, when we got our new laptop had many issues, so we all raced about loading new drivers, changing settings, OC'ing, etc etc. At present MOST issues are resolved or being resolved in terms of optimus etc (see optimus thread). So go back to stock settings and test again, if your having issues then start lowering your video settings until your happy with the performance. Turn off background processes etc, the usual stuff. Then I would suggest that, for those of you that are willing, to post the following to help build a quick overall picture,

1. Are you happy with your WOW experience on the M11x - Just say Happy or Unhappy and state your machine processor R1 or R2 i5/i7.
2. Post your current game settings i.e. - Resolution, Medium/High, Low shadows etc.
3. What you play i.e. - Lvling, PVP, PVE, PVE Endgame (raids)

I think that way we can hopefully see what is the current happy medium for the game.