Terrible performance on WC3 for R2 (does WoW-like adjustments work?)

I've searched through the forums and can't find anything addressing this. I'm getting terrible performance (~10 fps) for WC3 (Warcraft 3) on the R2 (i5) and wondered if people ran into the same problem. Any solutions out there? There seemed to be some tweaks that can be made from the WoW thread and I wondered if any of those can be somehow applied to WC3. I have the latest drivers and can verify that the GPU is "working" when WC3 runs but the fps values tell a different story. I even white-listed the app to no avail.

 

that has to be running the intel GPU or something, there is no way the nvidia GPU can run that low even at the highest settings possible

I know you said you whitelisted etc configured optimus, but maybe it's bugged or you didn't hit apply (not saying you're an idiot), just thoughts

 

What drivers are you using?

 

Dude I was playing that game on the ASUS EEE PC with an ATOM CPU and basically no graphics (some integrated junk).

 

I'm guessing it's bugged. I don't mind obvious suggestions. I hit apply because I can see the setting when I open it up again. I'm pretty sure it's not really utilizing the GPU even though the taskbar notification of 258.96 says it is.

I installed the latest 258.96 drivers.

I know! I've run this with older celerons and got it to work better. I was looking forward to finally turning all the details way high to see how nice it could look, only to be disappointed.

 

It seems to happen a lot with laptops these days... that they actually perform worse than the their older friends did.

 

StarCraft II, WoW, WarCraft III.. this does not seem to be the choice machine for Blizzard titles..

 

maybe i got a lucky one but i've had 0 fps problems with the above games

 

This is with r2? What configuration/ video driver are you running? I'd be very interested to know what your settings for wc3 are if it's just a matter of tuning it properly.

 

Correction - the R2 is not the choice machine for blizzard titles. My R1 is handling all 3 above titles like a dream

 

Not sure about the others but WoW is down to how fast your CPU can go, multi cores don't add much to it. The i7 relies on turbo boost to crank up the speeds which means it's going to be sub-optimal.

Mine spends it's time between x10 and x14 when OC'ed to 160. I have tried setting WoW to use just a mix of cores/threads and just letting it use all 4 seems to give the best result.

(hmmm, maybe I should have put this in the wow thread)

 

yeah iknow wow is reliant on the CPU speed more than anything. Quad core does nothing for the performance of the game itself

i don't know how other blizzard titles are

I also don't play a full fledged game of WC3 but rather just dota occasionally. Not the most intensive.

I also always play my games at lowest settings unless I gotta turn something up, like spell effects and Draw texture things for WOW

 

Hmm .. I'm able to get passable numbers (20-30fps) if I turn resolution down and effects to low but that seems silly considering the power of the gpu and the age of this game. On newer games like Heroes of Newerth or League of Legends, I can get 50-60fps on med/high graphics.

For R1 owners that play this WC3 (like dota), are you getting 60fps on all high settings?

There must be a way to get the gpu to run this old game to the max. Settling for low settings at 40fps doesn't seem right.

 

Damn... i wonder if I would've been better off ordering the R1...

So many BS problems with R2 it seems. Oh well, what's done is done i suppose.

 

OP, I have the same issue as you. When I play WC3 FT on Bnet, I get horrible FPS, usually around 10-20. I'm so use to having 50(I think that is the max FPS) that it is just unplayable for me.

I tried single player, custom game and got 50FPS but as soon as you log into Bnet and play RT/AT you lose so much FPS.

Thanks and I hope someone comes out with a resolution for this as I purchased the R2(i7) to play OLDER games on the road. I did not expect to this to handle modern games but it actually handles it much better than it does FT..

 

Yes, I believe we're in the same boat. I'm up for some TF2, LoL and HoN but I really wanted to see Dota fly on my i5 m11x and instead get the worse performance of the lot. I hope a resolution is forthcoming. The single player data point is interesting. I didn't think it would run well if not on bnet. My fps numbers were running AI dota in a LAN room so it doesn't appear to be a bnet centric thing.

 

Using Fraps, I get 60fps on max settings, but I get really annoying mouse lag. The cursor moves about .5 seconds after I move the mouse or touchpad. I tried different mice and they're all wired. It's definitely a graphics problem.

I'm using the latest nVidia driver as well 258.96 or something?

EDIT:
I'm temporarily running WC3 with the Intel chip which runs at about 20-30 FPS but at least there is no mouse lag. Meh.

 

Wow, that's impressive. What did you do to get the 60fps? Are you playing dota or a different WC3 game? Sorry to bother but I'd be really interested in the settings you have to achieve this feat. I've whitelisted the app and adjusted the settings in the nvidia control panel to max performance and single display. If you could list the settings you're using or perhaps a screenshot, that'd be really helpful.

In terms of the mouse lag, I experience that too. Try windowed mode, it seems less laggy there.

 

Using NVIDIA's Optimus GPU Test Viewer, I can see that it does in fact switch to the Nvidia GPU when wc3 starts. On Bnet, it remains on so the question of whether it is on is answered.

How did you get 258 drivers? I was only able to get 257.30 from dell.com.

As for the mouse issue. It only happens if I use the trackpad, but if I use a mouse, wired or wireless, it works flawlessly.

EDIT:: I want to ask has anyone reformatted their systems and gotten better performance?

 

The viewer indicates that it's on but the performance tells otherwise. It may be active but somewhere along the pipe, it's not kicking in.

The 258 drivers are from nvidia but the instructions for installing them are in these forums.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...r-258-96-whql-discussion-relating-m11xr2.html

So the lag was only specific to trackpad. That's a good data point. I haven't tried a mouse session yet so I'd be happy to know that it's just a trackpad driver issue.

 

Oops, I was wrong. I didn't actually get into game. On the menu, I get 60fps. When I get into game, it hovers around 20fps. I have a feeling that the game switches back to integrated graphics during transitions like the loading screen or something, because I have mouse lag in the menu, but there is no mouse lag in game.

Do you think the Optimus would change graphics processors during in-game transitions like that? That's the only way I can make sense of why I have mouse lag during the menu, but no mouse lag in game.

 

Yeah, menu I get high FPS but what does that matter lol. Single player mode, I get 50-60FPS, everything on high. On Bnet, I only get a max of 30FPS, average 20, med/big battles, 10's and usually hitting 5FPS. I have to go to an isolated spot to micro my units smoothly lol.

Yes, it is reported that the Nvidia GPU is on but performance wise, I would say it switched back to Intel.

This is a big problem that needs to be addressed. My SC2 works just fine, around 40FPS. Funny how it handles SC2 better than WC3..These are the only 2 games that I can test.

 

random thought, since the keyword here is battlenet, probably to add bnet in the whitelist?

 

That's a good thought except that I get the same bad performance when playing a lan game so I don't think it's battlenet specific. Plus, I don't know how you can just add battlenet to the whitelist.

 

Just an update to this old thread. The latest nvidia drivers (260.89) fixes this issue (finally!) so I can get 60fps at max visual settings for wc3. Yay!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alie...rts-11xr2.html