M11x - WoW Performance, Issues, General Discussion

As of patch 4.0.1 and drivers 260.99 I'm also seeing 40+FPS (my average in titan bar is 47 last I looked).

 

thanks for posting your config - yeah, some of the ones I mentioned may have been removed - the settings I found via google were on a dated page.

Hopefully this will help with a launching point. thanks for posting.

 

I believe it's due to the fact that optimus doesn't switch when launched.

Therefore, I created a shortcut on desktop, right-clicked and clicked "run with Graphics processor > high performance nvidia"... and i've been getting 60fps on ultra everywhere, other than places that require high shadows.

However, I've been getting a problem of seeing no water texture when the quality is set to good or above.

PS to enable the option "run with high powered graphics card" go to nvidia control panel and look for it...

 

I have the same problem with my m11x r2, and after some research, I'm thinking it isn't specifically an m11x problem.

All the tips in this thread really help but, as I've already read and experienced myself, as much of an performance boost they give, they still don't seem to solve the underlying problem (which may be that WoW is just old and doesn't mingle well with the high-tech i processors).

I also noticed, like others, how the framerate would drop and not come back. For example, I'd start at the Exodar with between 70-100+ frames, with mostly maxed settings, then go to the tower at Lor'Danel in Darkshore and they'd fall to around 25fps. Sometimes 40-50 if I'm outside town and not looking at too much. And then the game proves to me that something isn't right, because when I returned to the Exodar, via hearth, the frames remained at 20-40 when they should have been at least in the 70s.

But if I exited the game and came back a few minutes later, the frames were smooth again. Actually, I learned, if I just alt-tabbed in the exodar, the frames would immediately improve from 30 way back up to the normal values.

Maybe this is old news for you guys, but I searched this interesting quirk and found other examples, all, it seems, on nvidia cards. There's a video on youtube showing the same effect on a different game, and forum posts on the problem.

Anyway, so I wanted to see if this "trick" would work when it counted, so I went back to that tower in Lor'Danel (there's a lot for the game to render there, and where the frames always take a hit) and alt-tab'd.

My frames went from 25-28 (before) to 35-40 (after) They stayed in that bracket indefinitely--unless i rotated the camera a lot. In which case they returned, eventually, to the lower values.

Not very helpful, I realize. At least you you can use it to return the framerates to their "usual" values--once you get someplace less graphically intensive.

 

I'm curious, it has been more than one month and I couldn't find a solution for this yet, neither dell support.

M11x R2 is freezing a lot of games when you use the NVIDIA 335m card ( but never the integrated one ), forcing you to do a hard reboot because you cannot kill the process on the task manager, and I have no idea if the problem is hitting all users or just a few.

So, if you are playing succesfully WoW, Guild Wars, or everquest 2, please tell us if there is anything special about your R2, for how long yo have been playing those games, and most importantly, if you ever had it frozen where killing the process was impossible ( and if so, how did you fix it? ).

Thanks

 

Hi. I've been playing wow, largely without issues, on my R2 since September. I have had the occasional freeze that you describe - one in which killing the process isn't possible. I only ever observed these freezes when heavily OCing the GPU. At stock it runs perfectly.

I did find a solution to the task killing problem. What I did was alt-tabbed out of the frozen game, opened device manager, disabled the nvidia card, killed the task, then re-enabled the nvidia card. This allowed me to relaunch games without a reboot.

If you are having problems at stock speed, I would suspect heating issues or a faulty chip.

 

I myself experience these crashes which force me to do a hard reboot while playing Witcher with my card NOT-OVERCLOCKED. I did notice that these crashes became more prevalent with OC.

At first I thought it was the game but now that revler8 is having the same symptoms, I will take a look into the health of my card.

 

I have an occasional freeze that I solve by alt tabbing out of the game and then back in. This always unfreezes the game. I am not overclocking the video card but I am the motherboard...

 

i had this problem a ton post cataclysm on 257.30 drivers from dell...switched to 260.99 and havent experienced it since....

 

I've had the same freezing problem you describe but with Rome: Total War.

 

I never was able to get The Witcher to run on my R2. It would lock with absolutely no way to kill the process. Forced shutdown was the only option. I gave up and played it on my desktop.

Eagerly awaiting Witcher 2. That's a sweet looking engine they've built for it.

 

My R2 is NOT overclocked, and tech support has changed my video card 2 times now.
WoW NEVER freezes on the integrated video card, only the nvidia one.

roxxor, how much have you played wow at stock without getting errors?
Sometimes, I can play for 2 days without an error ( rare ). Maybe it just didnt crash on you because you havent played that much?
Anyway, thanks for the tip on how to avoid hard reboot.

Rigek, do you mean you have those freezes playing wow? Are you on R2 or R1? You never experienced the freeze where you have to reboot?

Intangble, I'm using 260.99 and it still crashes to me, how much did you play wow without experiencing crashes? More than 10 hours at least?

edit: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...dia-geoforce-gt-335m-causes-game-crashes.html also, browse that post and you'll see people having the same issues with other games

 

i usually do 5-6 hour increments......not 10 hours straight, tho pre cata i def did some 10-12 hr binges.


whats ur temps...are u monitoring?

 

Well, I play about 4-5 hours per day. So a fair bit.

 

I used to have this problem, but not for a long time now, and only with WoW.

Assuming you are running with newish GPU drivers then I would highly reccomend that you Don't OC the GPU, that seems to be the main culprit IMO.

Also for improving play try Throttlestop, and subjectively I also think this improves stability.


EDIT - Afterthought, try a refresh of your DirectX install.

 

I had this problem, also. The only thing that fixed it for me was installing the community built drivers from Nautis. I almost wonder if Blizzard's anti-cheat software (Warden I think its called) conflicts with the optimus driver similar to how punkbuster does. In any event, I couldn't play reliably at all before and after the community driver I can. Hope that helps...

 

while we are at it, to everyone playing WoW: can you see water when you choose highest water quality?
When I do that over here, I can't see it.

My computer is not overclocked, and I have played wow with minimum settings on the laptop screen, and it still froze, so maybe I have to wait for a new driver or try the community one after all.

What puzzles me is why some people can play it without a problem, when they are using the same drivers I am

 

The water quality (and sunspot) problem is a known issue, and has been acknowledged by Blizzard as being an optimus bug. Whether or not they're working on it is not known. And AFAIK, there isn't a single R2 owner on these forums that have reported that they don't suffer from this issue. The users you are referring to with no problems are probably R1 owners.

 

Strange, apparently this seems to be an ongoing issue with WOW since Cataclysm came out. Wonder what the hell is going on.

It seriously frustrating cause it's happened me a handful of times already. ughh

All of a sudden the damp laptop freezes in the middle of a heroic. ><

(yes i have an m11x R2 ) just incase

 

actually roxxor, when referring to other users not having the same problem I am, I was talking about freezing.

Why your computer does not freeze playing wow while mine does? It cant be a heating issue, they changed my motherboard and ram memory twice already, and wow freezes to me even on lowest settings :/
and I have no overclock

 

R2 here. I've never had this problem, except on my desktop system. The M11x works just fine.

 

CheeseFrog, you can watch water at Ultra settings?

Note that some water will display even on ultra because they still use older graphics, but mostly, water from the ocean will not display.

Please elaborate more

 

I'll have to check when I get home. FWIW though, the best looking water setting on my other notebook (Dell XPS 13) is the lowest setting. On Ultra on my XPS (which has an nVidia 8400m IIRC) the water looks almost invisible.

 

I play a ton of games on my R2 the only game that ever locks up is wow which also happens to lock up on my desktop. It's not so much that your r2 is the problem rather that wow is a buggy piece of crap, poorly coded game.

 

I play cod4 and wow on my m11x and no problems with freezing ever so it might be a hardware problem. Don't overclock if that's revelant.

 

It seems to be only going on with WoW. Anyone else gaming for 3+ hours on M11x R2 with it not freezing?

I was playing LFD2 the other day for 3 hours and the laptop was A OK.

 

I have played 6-8 hours straight each day for two days, nothing wrong with WoW for me

 

just look over at this thread. same problems different games. no solutions. what fixed it for me was i reseted the bios and everything seems to work out just fine onw

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...dia-geoforce-gt-335m-causes-game-crashes.html

 

Hey everyone,

I've been reading these forums for the past month or so, to help solve any problems I've had with my m11x r2, but I can't seem to fix this problem.

Every time I play WoW, it will crash, at some point. I've tried everything I could think of. Fresh wow install, lowered graphics, fresh OS install, multiple variations of drivers (including the custom 265s on these forums) and the game is still crashing.

So, my question is... has anyone had any luck with solving this problem? Also, if this is indeed a problem with optimus and it's due to the drivers not fixing the issue, what are the chances I can get a refund or at least credit towards getting a different system? I really like my m11x, but the fact that I can't play practically the only game I play now, makes me regret the purchase.

 

This is like the 3rd time this topic comes up and no-1 seems to have a response.

I don't think it's because of overheating cause I've played other games for like 3+ hours on this thing.

I think it has to be a problem with CATA because I don't recall this happening in WOTLK

I've tried all your solutions too. Fresh instiall, updated DirectX drivers, wow repair, downclocking.

Maybe it is something that is out of our hands and has to do with compatibility issues with optimus and some changes that CATA brings along?

 

Yes, I've seen this topic come up a few times.

One thing I've noticed along with the crash is that MSN live messenger 2011 crashes along with it, but nothing else.

 

I managed to wait it out and was able to get to the desktop and saw some directx9.0 error... couldn't understand what it said

Best part, when I tried to kill the process wow.exe from task manager it would not close. I had to restart.

 

Same here, can't kill the process, and need to restart. I'm having the same issue with SC2 btw.

 

R2 here. I haven't had any issues with freezing, but after an extended session, 3 hours or so, when my laptop is starting to get noticeably hotter, I start to get some nasty computer lag spikes and mini-freezes which last from 1-5 seconds. I am using a cooling fan. I haven't been monitoring my temps, but like I said, I can feel the temp difference, and that's when things start to get screwy.

This is only with WoW btw, all other games I play work fine.

 

Hi, I have just restarted playing Wow after almost 2 years. I am playing it on my m11xR2 that I purchased around July earlier this year. I noticed that my Framerates in are not really playable, and would appreciate any advise as to which Gfx drivers to upgrade to? My Framerates are about 18-25 FPS and drops to 7-9 FPS inside the city. I have checked and the Nvidia is kicking in.

I am currently on 258.96 drivers and have not updated any drivers since I installed it 4 months ago.

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

Chiming in as another R2 owner with random Wow crashes. It always seems to happen in a fight or during quick camera movements. When I'm out farming herbs or whatever I can play for hours. I keep getting dropped from instance groups because I crash during boss fights, though. I've tried everything in this thread, plus calling Support - whose last solution was to tell me to discharge the caps on the motherboard and call back if it froze again. :/

I had it crash during one other game as well - DeathSpank. I bought it off Steam and was playing 2-player on the TV when the nVidia chip locked hard - very similar behavior to the WoW locks. This is beyond irritating.

 

I have had problems with WoW in the past, even the failure to shutdown. Now however it is quite stable. I even did full ICC 25 man raids with lowest fps being 15.
My current approach is..
Drivers 260.99
Throttlestop (this makes a huge difference)
CPU OC to 164
GPU no OC

 

Thanks. Would you mind giving me a link to this set of latest drivers? The 260.99?

I just installed Throttlestop and have these settings:

TDP/TDC = 30/30
Force TDP/TDC = 5
My CPU is OC'ed to 160
Turbo Boost enabled
GPU not OC'ed

 

NVIDIA DRIVERS 260.99 WHQL

 

Thanks slickie! Nice to see you are still so active on this forum

Could you take a look at my Throttlestop settings? Would you suggest any changes?

 

Those settings look good to me. Run TSBench and watch the TS window to make sure that your multiplier is at or very close to x14 for all threads. If it is, then you're all set.

 

Sorry. But I do not have TSBench...where could I get that software? Thanks so much for your feedback and help again.

 

It's integrated into the latest version of ThrottleStop.

 

The version I downloaded today was 2.89. I thougth that was the latest version.

The multiplier number is the number below the FID column? If that is, it fluctuates greatly between 8-11....

I just lowered CPU OC to 158...the computer just BSOD at 160...

DO you think OC'ing the GPU would also help? If yes, what software should I be using to Oc it?

Sorry for the barrage of questions.

 

Oh... I guess that means that uncleWebb has added that to the newer beta version. Let me find his parent thread or a link.

Here you go.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/531329-throttlestop-guide.html

Scroll down to the bottom of his fist post. 290 beta 8 is what you want. Otherwise, those settings look good. Post your TSBench score afterward.

 

Ok..I downloaded the Throttlestop beta version and saw that it had the TSBench option in it. I pushed the 32M button, and saw that the result was 41.355. Is that ok? I noticed that when I ran TSBench, all the 4 FID values across the cores remained at 13.97 to 13.99 throughout the bench. I did not reach 14. How do I increase this value? Do I increase the TDP/TDC values? I see some people increase this to 100/100 while I set mine at 30/30 as written in the post.

 

Mine generally fluctuates from 13.98 to 14. Lowering the Force TDP/TDC value to 4 might eek out that last little bit to keep you at 14, but honestly I wouldn't bother. What that value does is set the rate at which TS keeps arguing with the BIOS about what the TDP/TDC values should be.

EDIT: And raising the TDP/TDC values to something really high can't hurt anything. Give it a shot. I run mine at 100/100 if I recall correctly - something much higher than 30/30 certainly.

 

Cool! Let me luach WOW now and see if I can notice an increase in FPS....

 

Can't help you there as I don't WoW. Surfxombie knows his stuff on that front though.

 

Well, I just went in to try runng Wow and it's still really low frame rates. It starts off with around 25-30 FPS in stormwind, and after running about for about 3 mins, it drops down to 8-10 FPS....

I have installed Throttlestop, and my CPU is OC'ed to 158.

However, I am still using the 258.96 drivers. I have yet to install the 260.99 drivers. Will the 260.99 drivers make any noticable FPS impact? I am hesitant to install the 260.99 drivers as I have not seen any write ups on how to go about installing it. I remembered that with the 258.96 drivers, I had to follow a bunch of steps to ensure not only a clean install, but that the drivers would be recognised. This required some special steps like manually replacing the .inf file.

I really hope to get Wow running. Thanks for all the help.

UPDATED:

I have installed the 260.99 drivers, installed Throttlestop, OC'ed to 158, but my Framerates are still around 10 FPS just walking outside the Stormwind Bank area ......I know from reading this thread that some people have gotten it to run really nicely and hope someone could suggest a solution. Thanks.