Am I expecting to much from a notebook?

Hello all, thanks for clicking first off.
Recently I received my m9750 and being a wow geek, that was first on my list. Well, after installing it and loading it up I was disappointed to say the least.

At max resolution with the in game settings to a medium level I get lots of fps drops, and in crowed areas it just chugs. Am I expecting to much from a notebook? I have never been a notebook owner before and not sure what kind of performance I should be seeing.

Done quite a been of tweeks to help the issue. Including getting rid of vista and loading XP on the PC. SLI on, SLI off does not seem to make a difference. Gone through a few different graphics driver versions as well.

Read a few folks with this notebook giving it rave reviews with everything maxed out. Being mainly desktop gamer, perhaps I am expecting to much.

This 9750 has the dual 8700GT's. FYI. Once again, thanks. Any tips are very much appreciated.

Current setup
WinXp SP3
Forceware ver 175.32
2GB DDR2 RAM (dual)
C2D

 

With Wow (once an addict) alot of it has to do with your internet connection. But if you have a good internet connection i think you should see some better performance. Wow is quite the easy game to run.

What CPU did u order?

 

As he mentioned, your internet connection may be an element: especially if the down-quality you're seeing happens primarily in crowded areas and major cities like Shattrath and IF.

Each time a new player or object comes within your vicinity, your computer has to wait for the server to send all relevant information about that character or object, and then it has to load in all of the relevant 3d assets (geometry, textures, and shader inits) for the new object.

If your internet connection slows you down during the first step (receiving all the information), WoW will occasionally lock up to prevent laghacks and illegal movements. On a decent internet connection, this is extremely rare, but on a subpar connection (dialup / proxy) or a high-bandwidth high-ping connection (satellite and some DSL services), you'll notice it when in crowded areas.

On the other hand, any time your computer is loading 3d assets for a new character, the program has to decide whether to freeze everything to make it all load faster, or just load it [slowly] in the background. When you're in a less-crowded area, WoW will usually just background load everything, so you don't notice any problems, but the first time you set foot in Shatt or another crowded zone, it will usually lock up and let the computer just load everything in the foreground, so you aren't just walking around in an empty city while you wait for everything. XD

Even on extremely fast computers, 3d asset loading is an intense task that will almost always cause a noticeable choppiness. Most programs cover this up by showing you a loading screen, but WoW uses a hybrid background-loader and "freeze loader". That's why you get a little bit of choppiness, even after the initial loading screen.

A SSD hard drive will reduce these hybrid loading times more significantly than most other hardware upgrades, although you might notice some improvement with a better processor and RAM, and a better graphics card will also yield a small improvement.

Once everything is loaded, though, your framerate should return to normal. "Normal" here depends primarily on your graphics card, followed by your processor (as long as you aren't bottlenecking at RAM). On my old m15x (8800 GTX, 2.40GHz, 4GB), I got about 25 fps at max settings (1920x1200) in Shatt, 35 fps in AV, 40 fps flying over outlands, 45 in arena, and upwards of 50 in Ironforge and the old world. At lower settings, I would very rarely drop below 40 fps.

To answer your question simply: you might be expecting too much. Running WoW at 1920x1200 with full settings is much harder than you might think: the Burning Crusade expansion is pretty graphically intense, and WotLK will probably be even more so. The biggest thing you can to do improve speeds is lower your resolution: you'll probably notice a huge difference just by dropping to 1440.

 

Thanks for the replies. CPU is T7200. 2ghz
I could perhaps see how you could say lag, however the desktop systems spec's are not too far off my this notebook and it is almost flawless. (same inet pipe) Although the graphics card in it is almost the same size as this notebook. =)

Desktop = C2D 6600 (2.4) (I know, upgrading soon)
Nvidia 280
2 GB DDR2

Both at the same resolution.
I did notice a jump in video performance on the desktop system when I upgraded the graphics from a 512 memory board to a 1GB, due to the high res. But that was only in heavy areas. Its just when I compare the two almost identical systems together, something just don't add up.

 

Well tell us on which driver are you now, because i really can max out WoW with my 1mbps connection.

 

Runs flawlessly on both of my systems should do well on yours. Hell up until recently I ran it on a 5-6 year old machine (with a good net connection) it was perfectly playable, not a demanding game at all

 

whos your internet provider Rion? and are you running broadband and if so what mb speed should you be getting.