M17 lagging in Aion and other mmo games

hi there not sure if im suppost to put thread up or reply to another sorry. but this problem im having with my M17
with my m17 i purchased it a month ago but, notice it struggles to play any games ie mmo Aion,wow,RF online i got basic package as i couldnt afford the best stuff init, but still the basic sounded good and i cant understand why haveing this problem,, the problem is i seem to laggg in the game to a point where i cant move and then i have to quit game and then going bk to the desktop it lags and take ages to close down just wondering is it my Aw M17 and vista 64 causing, i know its not my broadband cose im and telecom engineer and also i have a Tower rig which good spec and dont problem with it playing my mmos. would be nice for some advice and
help please seems like alot people on here know there stuff .

 

Looking at your spec I'd say its a combination of RAM (most MMOs love more than 2GB of RAM), your CPU (yes, MMOs love CPU too) and your graphics card, the 3870 in a laptop is weaker than a desktop 3850

If you're playing at 1920x1200 this will be even more obvious. First thing to check is if you're RAM/CPU bottlenecking though, open up the process manager in vista (CTRL-ALT-DEL) while playing the game, and see if your memory usage is above 2GB, and see if your CPU is showing as maxxed out.


ALSO, update your drivers. The stock ones are a bit...err...rubbish

 

hi i got the latest drivers from AW site 8.57 and done all the updates on vista to everything seems to be in order with the drivers i guess, but u think its my spec dam i thought ddr3 2g was better than ddr2 3g, can i buy from anywhere to upgrade or do i have to stick with AW.

 

Alienware's Video Drivers are super old:

Go here: http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php

Follow the instructions on the bottom of the page using the ATI Catalyst v 9.9 Drivers from http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

Try turning down the resolution from 1920x1080 to something smaller and see if that helps, but definately get the drivers installed first.

 

As mentioned by Marv, the AW graphics drivers are pretty old...Like almost a year, which means support for very recent games like Aion is lacking, you could wait until Catalyst 9.10 come out though, Aion has only just released so Id imagine they're only really just getting into optimising for it

On the plus side dont worry about RAM, if you find out it IS the RAM, it's pretty cheap to replace. I got 4GB of decent stuff for a bit less than £50. Swapping out the RAM in the machine is damned easy.

Follow the steps I mentioned to see if your RAM/CPU are the causes of your slowdown (bring up the process manager, minimise it and start the game, play for a few minutes, then minimise the game and check your RAM usage, and see if the CPU monitor is showing as previously around 100% on either of the 2 cores).

 

2gb is not enof for a 64 bits vista so i think it's prob more this than anything else

when i recieved mine it was lagging on anything except window it self and if you take a look at my spec it's not a little build but i ordered it with 2gb so vista took like 1.8gb and when ever i started a game it lagged

the drivers will help also but if your's avent crashed yet yit's not likely to be the problem mince crashed right out of the box i was forced to upgrade to 9.8

 

Thought that I should give my imput here as I am a M17 owner and also play Aion. My system is running crossfire, however the CPU is just the base dual core. After I recieved my laptop I did do a memory upgrade to 4 gigs. It does make a difference.

As for Aion itself, it has alot of server issues. At one point they were using a program called gameguard that was causing all sorts of people to lag and even rubberband. Since they have removed that lag has decrease alot but not completely. Alot of these servers are hitting their max population and people are being put in que. With that much of a load on the server it does't surprise me that it is causing you issues. It does for me. When I play durning prime time sometimes it get so bad that I have to log off. So the issues you may be having may not be you machine to a degree

However Aion uses the Crytek engine. That graphics engine is somewhat demanding on video cards if you turn up the graphics. What you might do is back off on some of your setting some which should reduce the load you m17 is experiencing. Then just do what do, do upgrades to the M17 as you can afford them.

I hope this helps
If your wondering I Play on Ariel.

 

Aion and M17, you should not be lagging with the hd 3870. Yes there are other later and greater video cards but the 3870 should play it fine. And no it is not less than the desktop hd 3850. I would make sure you have AA turned completely off and AF as well. Network connection and server connectivity play a big part. OH, below are the standard desktop specs for the 38xx series... So we are equal to the 3850. ltr, StevenX

RADEON HD 3870 Specifications

Core clock: 775 MHz
Unified processors: 320
16 texture units, 16 blending units
Effective memory frequency: 2250 MHz (2*1125 MHz)
GDDR4 memory
Memory size: 512 MB
Memory bandwidth: 72 GB/sec.
Maximum theoretical fill rate: 12.4 gigapixel per second.
Theoretical texture sampling rate: 12.4 gigatexel per second.
Two CrossFireX connectors
PCI Express 2.0 x16
2 x DVI-I Dual Link, 2560x1600 video output
TV-Out, HDTV-Out, HDCP support, HDMI adapter
Power consumption: up to 105 W
Recommended price: $219

RADEON HD 3850 Specifications

Core clock: 670 MHz
Unified processors: 320
16 texture units, 16 blending units
Effective memory frequency: 1660 MHz (2*830 MHz)
Memory type: GDDR3
Memory size: 256 MB
Memory bandwidth: 53 GB/sec.
Maximum theoretical fill rate: 10.7 gigapixel per second.
Theoretical texture sampling rate: 10.7 gigatexel per second.
Two CrossFireX connectors
PCI Express 2.0 x16
2 x DVI-I Dual Link, 2560x1600 video output
TV-Out, HDTV-Out, HDCP support, HDMI adapter
Power consumption: up to 95 W
Recommended price: $179

 

Errr, your clock speeds are LOWER than the desktop 3850 IIRC, 625Mhz/800(or is it 850) Mhz ram, IIRC from pictures? So yes you are below the desktop 3850, not a HUGE amount, but a single mobile 3870 is definately weaker, core clock speeds play a big part in ATI cards, I'd guess a single mobile 3870 is ~5% slower than a desktop 3850.

It's not a massive difference, but its not right to give the wrong impression.

 

i followed the steps to update the driver from driver heaven had few problems but i managed to update the driver with the tool modder but for some reason i cant get ccc to work tho doesnt show in lower tray, but it shows that the driver is 8.650 and date 13/08/2009 hope this works with my game also can u tell me where i can get ram from for my AW m17, ive look on the AW site but i cant seem to find page on parts only the whole system. also i think when i bought the M17 i got 2g but i think its 1g sticks x2 so does that mean i will have to trade them in for x2 2g sticks or can i buy another x2 1g sticks

 

looking at my task manager it shows on performance tab memory 1.82g
and cpu usage jumps from 67%- to 99% up and down like a yo yo. is this good or bad

 

sorry when i run aion or other games

 

Any of these should work:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...09121118 1309239101&name=DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)

As far as the CCC you download the complete 9.9 package I assume. You can try doing this:
In Control Panel -> Programs and Features
Click ATI Install Manager, and Select Change. Click Next, and then Uninstall all ATI software components and reboot.
When it comes back you may get some screen resolution changes that seem to never end. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and then just return to desktop (sometimes I have to do this twice) to get it to stabilize. Then simply Reinstall the Modded Drivers that should still be in the ATI folder (Hopefully you didn't delete them yet. That should fix your CCC Issue.

 

As already mentioned, any brand new 2GB DDR3 1066 SODIMM (make sure you get SODIMM!) should fit, 2 of those and your laughing. If you're hitting 100% CPU as well, then there are places where you are CPU limited. Hope that makes sense.
RAM is the easiest and cheapest upgrade though; Vista and Win7 do like thier RAM for supercache etc

 

Ok, I will agree.. 5 percent less. I think we both agree he should be able to play Aion without lag. Each machine (m17) seems to have games that it plays well and others that cause issues. For me all games are great, including ARMA2 with the exception being Crysis. The ram upgrade will help the machine out as a whole. Good Luck, StevenX

 

Hey Rock in Red, I would start with an upgrade in ram as Alex and the others have mentioned, 2 gigs is really weak in this day and age with the way games and OS's are heading. You could also consider overclocking your CPU if you are comfortable doing so and it appears to be your bottleneck. There are some good guides out there, and an alienware specific Newbie version on this site even. Squeezing out a few more cycles per sec is rarely a bad thing Then if all else fails, get yourself a new viddy card, but I would try the somewhat cheaper options first.

 

I doubt its an issue with ATI, the problem at the moment seems to be Aion's coding so dont expect any dramatic changes with 9.10 (im hoping for some but i know it probably wont happen). We have to wait for them to release a patch for Aion that fixes ATI issues like stuttering/performance and crashing in big cities (crashing hopefully can be resolved with the drivers).