M11x - WoW Performance, Issues, General Discussion

1. Happy and specs on my sig
2. Look at screenshot for details (Dell Beta Driver, CPU n GPU both on stock clock no OC)
3. PVE and PVE End Game(raid), casual PVP in BGs



Forget to add that this is also with 2x FSAA

 

Can you take a shot of your FPS when your in the middle of Dal and not in a building? Cause my FPS jump up to that aswell if I run inside of a place

 

is this ok? thats one of the most crowded i can find at the point of time i log back in when i run around Dal

 

yes that's perfect! I am just wondering though what the difference is. I bought the stock build that has the i5 in it and such. I wonder if that has anything to do with it, like a bug in particular with that build.

 

whats the problem you have with yours? btw with the settings i got and no OC being able to attain such performance i find that its great enough for such a small baby like m11x. if ppl are still asking for more i really have no comment. i find its running great already. main point is i definitely never encounter frame dip like some mentioned in the thread.

 

just very low FPS , hit a page back and see my screenshots I posted. I have identical settings to you and I am not even using 2x.

 

my external lcd does not have hdmi. i need to look for some hdmi > dvi cable if i want to test that. but honestly about the dip you talking about. assuming u said that on native its not so noticeable. still there should be dip right? i did try even while standing in the middle of dalaran and consistantly monitoring the fps. i really dont see dip at all. just stay consistent 24-33fps depending on the amount of things going on on the screen. next i try standing say example inside one of the building which is also in dalaran. getting consistent 56-62fps. All these are base on the setting which you can see in one of my earlier post.

 

i see your problem. 7fps is crazy. i dont think i ever got that low before even in runs. whats your set up like? which driver you using for both intel n nvidia? any OC? Turbo boost on or off?

 

I have turbo boost on. Tired it off and it didnt help anything.

I am not OCing anything.

I have tried the nVidia drivers but now I am running Dells beta driver on there site. All my devices have updated drivers.

 

let me roughly tell you my set up. all drivers are from stock which are probably what you can find on dell support page. except my nvidia drivers is the beta 257.30 from dell. everything cpu n gpu are stock clock. turbo boost is enabled. nvidia setting drivers everything is at default global setting. i dont change anything.

maybe you want to try pull the setting to medium and see whats the fps you getting compare to your custom setting?

 

i still have your exact same problem and im using the i7 too =/

i only have 4gig ram and not 8... but i doubt that makes the difference.

 

Rahzer, apologies if you already are, but make sure you UN-check "Reduce Input Lag" option.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

mine is unchecked.

 

Guys, just wanted to follow up as I’m still seeing a ton of confusion out here around WoW performance. I went up to our gaming lab today and sat down with our gaming experts (seriously, these guys play WoW a lot) to figure out what was going on. We duplicated the main configuration that I’ve seen here. M11xR2 with the i7 processor (although not overclocked) and an external monitor at 1920x1080. We then proceeded to load WoW and tried to duplicate what some of you are reporting here. We followed specific flight paths or went to certain areas where people were reporting serious frame rate drops. We couldn’t see it. While there is some fluctuation in frame rates, we averaged around 40-45 overall. Minor decreases occurred where we expected to see them – these are definitely influenced by the number of characters on-screen or the amount of rendering due to the complexity of the background. This is to be expected. We were unable to reproduce any frame rate drops from 60 to 20, as have been described here. Just for grins, we then tried turning shadow detail to high and player texture to high. Guess what? Frame rate drops from 45-20 or even lower.

So, with that being said, here is my suggestion as to how to play WoW with the best results on the M11xR2. Turn shadow detail and player texture to low. Everything else can remain on high. If you experience problems, check your network lag and try to turn off overclocking or keep clicking it back until the problem is resolved. Then, remember that you can pick up the M11xR2 and take it on the plane really easily – this isn’t a desktop and it isn’t meant to replicate that level of performance.

 

I like my job and all, but it sure would be nice to be able to say something like that about it...

 

just tried warcraft on my m11x r2 core-i7 4gigs ram, all mostly high settings, 0 lag. even in dalaran. stock drivers that it came with no overclock or turbo boost.

 

Look back at one of my recent post of screenshot with settings and fps. Try to set the same thing as I did and place your toon exactly like what you see on my shot and see what kind of fps you can attain

 

Ok I only have the M11x R1, but you guys think upgrading to a SSD will help improve FPS or is it just loading?

 

SSDs aren't an upgrade to FPS, the improvement will be negligible. You'll notice it in loads and the absence of the occasional "seek" stutter. Stutters still won't be completely eliminated because you'll still occasionally have small hiccups when the CPU communicates with the GPU.

 

So does this mean that overclocking could have a negative effect on the performance of this machine? Can we elaborate on this? I know the i5/i7 CPUs have temperature & thermal limits they need to obey, which could make them more prone to throttling, i.e overclocking doesn't really improve anything - which we have seen in some benchmarks.

 

Unfortunately there is no tool that we can use to monitor the CPU usage plus clock speed in real time while a program/benchmark is running. Don't think we can just assume on the throttling issue. I am not really an extreme pro when come to tools of such since I ain't any extreme tweaker but just another regular user who knows a bit more and love to get the best out of this little beast. So please correct me if I am wrong about the avaliability of such tools.

Actually the throttling issue don't seems to be related to the CPU in most case but more of a gpu thing. I am quite sure about this over some test I did on overclocking and attempt to bench my m11z. It's definitely related to the gpu but weird thing is it only on some stuffs

 

M15x Throttling

I gave that link before. In the very first post there are several tools listed that can be used to monitor how the CPU/GPU behaves under heavy load. For example, GPU-Z can be run in the background and provide graphs over the frequency, and also log the results to file. So, it's all possible.

 

Thanks to the link and advise on tools. Maybe time for another run. but honestly it's not that I am trying to jump onto any conclusion before another test. I am not sure about the throttling issue with m15x. But for m11x I just notice some weird thing with the gpu. At a lot of time when you get performance issue usually it's because for some reason everything on your gpu has been underclock. Hard to say if this is hardware or software since either are possible. I know about powermizer thing. Yes it does have effect with this issue. However I also found out some time even you may have override the powermizer thing it still got reverted and goes underclock. One game that is really obvious I tested with is splinter cell conviction. I know it's running fine with r1 even at high at least fps still playable thou not any great numbers. But for r2 case it runs really choppy. This game seems to be one of those gpu bound game. So better CPU won't bring much to the table. If anyone with r2 has this game would be great you can test it on yours without additional
tweak from powermizer or oc'ing and let me know how it run on your. For me I tested several times, stock run really choppy at high. But completely playable on low. Oc CPU is not going to help. Disable powermizer get immediate boost with the game in high. Making it nearly playable. If oc + powermizer disabled it starts to shine. MaintAin at a moderate playable rate even on high. Sorry if I mess up any typing. Replying from my iPhone.

 

anyone show me how to do the powermizer option?

 

you can find it in this link
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/496720-m11x-throttling-issues.html

it will definitely help fps since u disable the power saving feature on your gpu to make it always run at full clock. be warn this will impact your battery performance as it will also stay at high clock during idle.

honestly from my experience so far this is not necessary for wow smooth game play. but maybe you can test just to find out if you can regain your fps.

just finish running 2 daily on my 2 different toons. i am running as usual all settings as posted before. no oc or anything. and i am running on battery. performance remain great even thou not on AC. able to sustain an avg of 40+ to 60+ fps thru out. after finish running both toons still find myself sitting with about 54% battery. pretty nice imo.

 

I recommend using using the Powermizer Switch (download is the 2nd link) if the tool in the link above does not work. PowerMizer Manager has known issues with some multiple GPU setups. And as always, be careful if disabling powermizer as things will most likely get hotter.

 

No, this has nothing to do with thermal limits or temperatures. The processors in the M11x and M11xR2 aren't guaranteed to overclock to any particular speed. Some of the processors don't perform correctly when overclocked, simple as that. If yours doesn't, downclock it or turn off overclocking completely.

 

Well, I am still curious about what makes them to not perform correctly then. For a C2D, you'll experience BSODs, or maybe other types of crashes when overclocked, if it is not stable. But if you don't, you are sure to get a performance boost.

Now, I am just wondering why it isn't the same with the i5/i7? If there are no BSODs, or crashes, and the performance is not in any way throttled by thermal or temperature limits, as you say, then what exactly causes it to underperform when overclocked?

I don't want to beat a dead horse here, just trying to understand the problem more. I know the Turbo Boost on the i5/i7 are controlled by thermal and temprature limits of the CPU, as well as voltage.

 

Although I just started playing WoW and I am only lvl 5 at the beginner areas I get 57-60fps constantly on high settings. The only thing I installed was the nvidia beta driver erawneila told to install from the dell website. Also my M11x was able to OC to 166mhz right out of the box with no problems.

 

Just got 1 question when I look at the optimus list for what games run on the Nivida vid card it shows wow.exe, but on the description it says tony hawk skateboarding??? Does anyone else notice this? Oh I had wow pre installed.

 

Mine says the same thing... and I also had WoW pre installed.

 

Do any of you have the problem that some games are buggy with the 2xx series of drivers and the stock DELL wont turn on the 335m?

 

yes but dun matter. wow still runs as intended

 

I tot I just want to share how is my in game performance on wow with my m11xr2. I think this would give a great idea to ppl who wonder if this baby really have performance issue or not. my game settings have not change. all remain the same as the last screenshot i posted. and other things too same beta driver that dell posted and no OC, no tweak to powermizer or any other things. enjoy...

YouTube - wow on my m11xr2 -part 1

YouTube - wow on my m11xr2 -part 2

YouTube - wow on my m11xr2 -part 3

 

kopicha, can you take a screenshot also of your "Resolution" screen as well for reference?

Also, what mod are you using that shows the amount of damage your's doing as well as the spell icon on the right side of your character?

 

screenshot can be seen from those i previously taken? those are direct shots from wow which are natives i didnt resize them

the addon is MikScrollingBattleText

 

Unless I missed it? The screenshot you posted a few pages back is from your "Effects" tab, which is good to see, but the "Resolution" tab is right above that on the left.

Thanks for the mod info! I also play a mage, been out of the game for a couple years, need to find the good mods again.

 

oh do you mean the setting page that show the resolution on the video page?

 

Yeah it should show the resolution, refresh rate, multisampling, etc.

 

There you go

 

in 25 man raid my fps drops to constant 14 fps..

 

i will report back on this when i run mine as i only did 5 and 10 so far since started on this lappy

 

5 and 10 are fine when it gets to 25 theirs a problem

 

we shall see... as from my previous laptop i am able to maintain 25-40fps in 25m depending on location and fights. so far this m11x has been outperforming my previous lappy in the gaming department. i will test it out for sure and share with you guys on the fps i am getting along with any setting info or optimization if i do so.

 

Hey guys I am an owner of the R1 and R2. My R1 gets around 40-60fps and my R2 is about 7-25fps. I had tried both drivers from the Dell website and the nvidia driver. Nothing was solved. So today I called alienware and spoken with tech support and I had them access my computer remotely.

We uninstalled both the integrated and nvidia gpu, restarted the computer in safe mode. And used drivesweeper program to remove all nvidia drivers and intel drivers.

Re-booted and installed the integrated drivers from Dell.

Re-booted again and installed the 335m drivers from the Dell website. Not the BETA drivers.

Re-booted and now I'm getting 40-60fps on my R2.

I have my WoW video graphics set on high. And I'm on a 46inch sharp tv 1920x1200

 

were you getting 7-25 fps in a 25 man raid? or just idle at dalaran?>

 

that was just idle in dalaran, and when i was in a 25man icc yesterday it was unplayable.

 

i'm about to do a 25 ICC right now... so if i get 14 fps i'mma try the re install.. what FPS do you get now in 25 ICC?

 

lets see if it fixes mine.

 

Watching this with interest as am hoping to raid while away from my Area-51 base.

Also a classic nvidia "unistall fully before you install updated drivers" reminder here

Should get my R2 before end of month