M11x - WoW Performance, Issues, General Discussion

True

Maybe Blizzard games and mobile gfx drivers don't rhyme

 

I am sorry to re post this here but it seems somewhat related.

"I just discovered something disturbing ! but it does explain the current situation with SC2 for me.

I monitored the GPU while running different games and found that the gpu activity turned out to be very different.

here is a screenshot while running Settlers 7:
http://thomaskc.dk/sc2/settlers7_.jpg

As you can see the gpu activity is up around the 98%

I haven't got a screenshot of the same while running starcraft II BUT!
It never raised above 21% activity, ever!

that fits perfect to why the game starts off by running amazing with 2 buildings and 12 units on the map and why it runs worse and slower as the game moves on since the 21% gpu use will end up not being enough to keep the fps.

Now the big question... to do about it?"

 

I have a m11xr2, and i play wow without any problems..

 

Dalaran?
5 Man instances?
10 Man raids?
25 Man ICC raids?

 

This statement doesn't mean much.

I play WoW perfectly when I'm not raiding. But this doesn't mean too much because it plays terrible when raiding.

Is the ultralow voltage i7 really that weak?

 

Right!

We know WoW performance is CPU based? So I thought I would do a bit of looking.

All this at OC=160, Turbo=On, SpeedStep=On. GPU is OCed a bit too.

Running around Dalaran WoW is using less 40% of the GPU, this is with low or high setting in the graphics. The CPU multiplier is x10 to x14. The CPU temps are all < 60degrees. I am getting 30fps average.

Sooo, I tried DDO.
GPU 100% used, Graphics on Max, CPU & GPU temps > 60degrees.
CPU multiplier at x14 to x16

What can I conclude from the crude test? WoW may be CPU bound but it also has problems harnessing the available CPU power. It is at heart a single threaded application which I suspect is the major factor holding it back.

I have previously tried setting WoW to a mix of 1/2/3/4 cores/threads but found that the default setting was the best (not by much).

[Edit] just to add into the mix that my desktop quad core with a GTX260, the main effect on FPS in 25man raids is the speed of the CPU... may be I should swap that for a two core zippy fast thing instead
[Edit 2] Oh and WoW is far the game I have most performance issues with on whatever PC I have used

 

I've seen WoW performance that's all over the place with the m11x R2. In Orgrimmar I was seeing FPS as high as 114, but in Dalaran it might drop to as low as 15fps while moving (this is with Ultra graphic settings + shadow detail all the way down, 1600x900 rez, external monitor). It really depends where you're at and what's going on in game.

 

Yep I suppose I should have added it was on external monitor (1080p) and with the tools running on the laptop screen.

 

I know some people have posted screenshots and whatnot but as WoW is the game I play most on my M11x i'd like to get a general idea of what frames people are getting on what settings and with what model (R1/R2 etc) So i'll start,

Model/Specs: R1 OC'd to 1.7,4GB ram, GPU set to discrete in bios.

WoW settings: Native Res, Vsync turned off (I do get some screen tearing due to this but I also dont have the 60fps cap.) All settings switched to Ultra except shadows which is one notch up from the lowest setting and all effects turned on.

Performance,

Vanilla areas: Absolutely perfect always above 60 fps and mostly much higher (80/90 and in some cases over 100 FPS)

Burning Crusade areas: Still very good performance here although can drop to around 30 fps in some areas but usualy maintaining 60+ fps.

Wrath of the Lich King: Seems to vary from area to area for me for example leveling an alt in Grizzly Hills and my FPS will drop down to 20 in some areas but be at 50 in others genberally though I average around 50FPS in most northrend areas and its more than playable.

Raids: Cant comment on this as I havent done a raid since mid 2009.

Dungeons: I've done dungeons ranging from the level 15 ones to the 80 ones on this machine and they have all been perfect (Pretty much same performance as the Vanilla areas)

PvP: I like to pvp alot on my alts and have been pleasantly suprised at the performance, in WSG i'm getting very good frames upwards of 70 FPS mostly with lows of maybe 40 fps never lower though. the biggest bg i've played in so far with this machine is Strand of the ancients (Which is 15v15) and gthe performance is again great averaging around 50fps with lows of 30 fps but still very playable.

And here is a pic I took of my alt in Zul'Drak showing my fps,

Spoiler

(Image quality isnt great but meh)

I know this is quite long and dont expect everyone to do the same just a general idea of your FPS along with WoW and system settings would be great.

Thanks.

 

Notebookcheck: Review Alienware M11x R2 Subnotebook

They talk about Optimus, and turbo mode (it might not be "turboing" while playing WoW??).

 

TB does kick in. actually problem seem to occur only on random ppl which cannot be explain. for example my case wow runs perfectly fine

 

I think people just have different perceptions of "fine"

Like someone may think since this laptop was manufactured in 2010 with up to date tech that it should run wow at Ultra settings with high fps since it was made back in 2004

Then there's people like you and me kopicha that dont' mind the game on lowest settings and no shadows. I get 30-40 fps in Dalaran with many people around and move without lag

 

Well I do mind if the game looks completely bad thou given such a new tech but I know what I suppose to expect out of this thing and not something that fly like rocket. I definitely have a lot of games running at high settings. My wow isnt running all low without shadow like you think so.l If you look at the history of this thread you will find what kind of settings I have in the game.

 

First off, I run tons of addons, so you might see better frames if you don't.

I ran 10 man horoic ICC Wednesday night. Started with all settings ultra, except shadows. Frames were wildly swinging sometimes hitting as low a 7FPS durring heavy boss fights. Especially on the Guship Battle, it was unplayable and I died . I then dropped down to "good" (ie. medium) and everything jumped back to the 40-60s durring Saurfang, Festergut and Rotface.

Overall I was very happy with the performance at "good" for ICC. Since most content is up close, I didn't mind having the view distance reduced. Definitely prefered the high frames. Very very happy overall!

Something else I'll add. I installed the NVidia 258.96 drivers (Its a little tricky to do, search around the forum for instructions). This is a must IMO. The overall frame rates are higher and stability is much better than the Dell drivers. For example, I noticed with the Dell drivers, I would log in and be getting 40FPS in a dense area. I would move around a bit and it would drop to the 15-20 range and never recover. THe NVidia drivers stay higher overall and don't seem to sag over time.

Also with the Dell drivers, input got very jumpy/laggy when the frames dropped, where as the NVidia drivers don't seem to have this issue and overall input remains smooth even at lower frame rates.

 

hvae you tried the 259.22?

 

Not yet, so far I've been satisfied with 258.96

Is the 259.22 better?

 

i just got my m11x R2 last tuesday. i cleaned up everything and reinstall windows. i used kopicha's modded nvidia driver and my WOW runs perfectly. im getting 40-60 fps in WOTLK instances and 30-40 in raids. i just set the View Distance and shadow to middle and everything on max with 8xAA.

 

runs perfectly fine in 25 man raids? that's the only thing that concerns me, 25 man raids. I want to buy this machine, and I've been doing some research, but I'm not liking the fact I would probably not play with 20+ fps in end game content.

 

Didn't read all 33 pages, but why exactly does the M11x r2 underperform in WoW? Is it only WoW or all games? Is it a throttling issue? The specs on the thing are more than enough to run it seamless @ max settings.

 

@IntenseIGFX i think it's more of nvidia's driver issue. everything is on max with 8xmultisample except for shadows and view distance when im on 10man ICC and i completely turn off the multisample when im in 25man raids. i have a desktop which is more than capable of running newer games in their highest settings but i always wanted to play more on a laptop and in M11x, i'm completely blown away on how it can handle WOW in high settings and even SC2 in ultra settings compared to my studio xps 1330 >.<

 

it's more because wow doesn't use 4 cores and more reliant on raw MHz

 

Wot he said. WoW hardly (like 40%) uses the GPU.

 

its a known thing wow is a very old game. at the point of time during the game there is no multicore processor. only at later time blizz try to integrate multithread support but dont expect it to be like those app/game that are purely coded that way. it was explained before that it normally only work off 2 cores. you can force it to utilize all the cores you have but does not mean it will run great.

i have tested playing with different settings forcing wow to use different cores on the R2. but it doesnt really make much of a difference. there is a huge topic of this in blizz official forum u can try to search there and read it up. this is quite a worthless thing to try

 

I have switched to the A03 bios and MSI Afterburner for GPU OCing and finding much better WoW performance (and general stability).

 

I play WoW with 200+ FPS questing and 120+ in 25 man raids (100+ when things are nuts) and you can look @ my specs..

 

@IntenseIGFX - You have an m17x, this is topic about the m11x

 

Thats interesting, cause I idnt know what kinda performance you could get with wow and a laptop. How about large battlegrounds with 40v40? and everyone is on top of each other...

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I get about the same FPS as I do for what I previously stated +/- 10~20 FPS in the most difficult of situations. I've never dipped below 70.

Of course I understand that. I was just offering my input in regards to whether or not WoW's performance is adversely affected by the quad cores and higher end parts.

 

You are simply overpowering WoW with that system. People here are not claiming that WoW is adversely affected by new technologies used in today's systems. They are just saying that it's not making use of them sufficienly well. For example, think of a game like Lost Planet 2: it has way better looking and more complex graphics than WoW has but plays much better on a M11x than WoW. This is not to blame Blizzard since WoW is quite an old game but it's frustrating to not being able to play an almost 10 year old game on a brand new gig that runs new games like a champ.


That's all.

 

Maybe I need to read through the thread again, but I play WoW and am considering the M11x. People here say there's an issue with it. Also, is the 11 inch screen really that small? I haven't seen one in person yet.

 

The screen is fine, and the performance is not as bad as some people make out to be, but trust me you won't even come close to the frame rates you are getting on your 17x, especially in 25man ICC raids which seem to be especially dependent on CPU due to a ton of pixel effects. Can you play WoW with it? Of course. Can you raid with it? Well certainly not as smooth as your main gig but yeah.

 

You're in luck as it's actually larger! It's 11.6"...

 

Is it a specific issue with WoW or is it all games? The specs on the 11x seem MORE than adequate to run WoW @ ultra with great rates. I'm just a little confused.

 

Yea, its totally playable. I mean its a hotroded netbook. You can't expect to turn all the knobs to 11 and have 60FPS all the time.

Generally I run at "Fine" for questing and 5 mans, and drop down to "Good" when raiding and see 30-40FPS most of the time.

But again, don't expect to be on "Ultra" unless you are willing to put up with some wild FPS swings.

Its more than adequate for most games.

Its running an i7UM... "U" being a very important letter there as in CULV "Consumer Ultra Low Voltage". Where your M17, if you unplug it you have to run from one plug to the next, the M11x can double as a gaming machine or spend 4+ hours surfing off battery power.

i7UM Netbook<i7M Laptop<i7 Desktop

Just as a point of current reference, in the Mafia II benchmark my M11x averages 23FPS with everything set to the default install settings (which I think is all the way up?). Is that unplayable? Not in the slightest, looks great IMO.

 

I know someone will have a go at me probably from talking about my 'old' M11x R1 but 40 man AV and IoC BGs I've had no issue with, though VoA 25 (Toravon the Ice Watcher - when Whiteout and the orbs come) has bought my laptop to it's knees - i.e. less than 1FPS with moderate spell detail and most other settings high, with draw distance below middle. This is versus my XPS M1530 (Core 2 Duo T7700 at 2.4Ghz) which manages 25FPS in the same fight at a higher resolution.

 

I tried to Kopicha's (sp) modded driver on my M11x. Fortunately or unfortunately I dont have a screenshot of my raid FPS before this driver. All I can say is I ran Ruby Sanctum last night and I got an FPS of less than 9fps and then in ICC25m, I was getting an average FPS of less than 20.
So I joined a pug 25m Onyxia (fail at that) and this is what I got.


I am a heavy addon user so there will be a pick up of about 10fps without addons which is not bad for a 25man raid.

Here is one from standing in Dalaran.

 

guys I found something interesting yesterday so I just thought to share. under your graphics option. if you turn off the full screen glow effect (uncheck it). It seems like you will get a substantial boost in your fps. For example in Dalaran I hardly see my fps dip below 30. As I understand that is something that tax the CPU( post processing) rather than GPU. Given the weaker CPU in M11x I think it's wise to turn that off. Should help considerably. It doesnt really impact the graphical appearance of the game by much. Still look as good. You guys may want to give a shot and try on your side.

 

Good catch kopicha. I also found this article that explains some of the setting (with images) that might help.

World of Warcraft Performance Guide - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

Hi guys

Is there anyone use m11xr2 play dragon age origins, mass effect and sacred2?

I can only get 10 fps or less on these games with lowest graphic setting and without external high resolution monitor. when I use 3dmark06 to run a test, I can not test on GT335M, 3dmark shows only the intergrated graphic card, so the score is only 1400.

I have done the setting on nv control panel ,the default graphic card is high-performance one.

My machine is i7u640, 8Gram, 500GB 7200rpm, NV GT335M, nv driver control panel version is 2.575219

Anyone can provide some infomation on how to resolve these problem? many thanks.

 

I use this driver and solved problem ,now the doa can run 30 fps with high graphic setting ,thanks to kopicha

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/514053-nvidia-optimus-driver-259-47-whql-r2-only.html

 

I'm still having problems on my computer. 15fps... and 20 with all-low settings.

 

is your game whitelisted to use the nvidia GPU?

 

soo what are the take-home messages here? i.e. as soon as i get my laptop what should i do to get the best wow performance? I've read through the thread and couldn't seem to get a decisive answer...

Oh and i'm getting the m11x R2 with i3.... yeh i know i3 but i won it so not complaining...

 

Go to this thread; HERE and install that driver.

Don't expect to crank everything up to Ultra and get 30FPS. At least turn shadows down a bit, and set water on low (its not working on anything above that for some reason).

Expect to get great portability and definitely eyebrow raising performance out of an 11" notebook. Especially with 4.0.1, and the above mentioned driver I'm seeing very good FPS.

 

I can confirm excellent FPS. 100+ in classic, 60-80 in outland, 40-60 in northrend, with everything on ultra except shadows (high). Setting water to ultra and turning on sunspots doesn't affect performance at all, because those features don't work, so to get any water, it must be set to low/fair.

 

Just ran ICC 25man heroic, no crashes..
40fps when not in combat
13-20 fps in combat

Very playable, grafix settings on low except for:
projected textures(enabled)
reduce lag(enabled)
particle density(good)
view distance(fair)

I did not play about with setting just dropped them to low and set those above.

CPU - OC to 164
GPU - no OC and running the 258 drivers (must try the new ones i expect)
ThrottleStop - active

 

I got kicked from a 25 ICC raid last night because my M11x R2 i7 froze up for 15 minutes and I couldn't get it to reboot until I finally held the power button down for 30 seconds or so. Since then, I've taken a lot of advice from this forum, but the advice I feel helped most was to set the minimum CPU usage under the power profile to 100% when plugged in. It made my CPU-Z processor speed go from 600-1100 Mhz to a consistant 2200 Mhz. I could tell a HUGE difference in FPS in Dalaran. From 10 - 20 FPS depending on where I was. Obviously I haven't had a chance to try another 25 ICC yet... hopefully they don't reject me next week.

I was running 3-5 FPS during the Blood Queen and wiped the raid because I couldn't move fast enough... on my first raid with a new guild. Suffice it to say I was EXTREMELY disappointed in the performance of my computer. But I think if they give me another chance I'll do much better next week. I know the game, I know my class, and I know all the fights, I used to lead a 10 man every week for my old guild. But I was used to running on an EPIC desktop computer that would run 100 FPS ICC 25 in windowed mode, yet it burnt out on me a month ago... and I chose the M11x to replace it. I hope my choice wasn't a bad one. Will see next week.

 

How is it that people are only getting 10-20 fps in dalaran. I consistently get 30-40+ on ultra settings. Maybe my server is just low pop?

 

roxxor, can you post your individual settings? Perhaps this will help those who are having issues.

View Distance =
Environmental Detail =
Texture Resolution =
Terrain Blending =
Ground Clutter Density =
Texture Filtering =
Particle Density =
Ground Clutter Radius =
Weather Intensity =
Shadow Quality =
Player Textures =
Full-screen Glow Effect =
Specular Lighting =

 

launcher settings
=============
full screen = yes
terrain texture detail = 100%
texture filtering = 75% (approximate, hard to judge with slider)
terrain highlights = yes
trilinear filtering = no
sound channels = 0%
sound hardware accelaration = yes

in-game settings
============
rez = 1366x768 (wide) + fullscreen
multisampling = 2x
vsync = off
View Distance = ultra
Environmental Detail = ultra
Texture Resolution = high
Ground Clutter = ultra
Texture Filtering = 4x aniso
Particle Density = ultra
Shadow Quality = good
liquid detail = low (any higher setting doesn't work with Optimus)
sunshafts = off (the only other setting that doesn't work with Optimus)

Can't find the other settings you describe (some of those pre-4.0?)

EDIT: I should probably mention that my FSB is OCd to 166mhz and I have ThrottleStop running @ 100/100.