M17x and World of Warcraft

For a long time i was looking for a laptop that would run WoW, and a guildie pointed me to Alienware.
I watched several reviews and read reports, but i can't seem to find anything specificly on running WoW.

Does anyone know how the M17x runs wow? If it works well or its really bad like other laptops?

 

You will get around 100fps or even more ...

 

ok. tyvm. thats better than my last laptop =P

 

Any Mid range laptop can play wow at 80fps.

 

My M17 lags like crap in WoW.

I barely get over 30 FPS and screen freezes every few seconds....

Running 9.4 drivers..

 

Then I say something wrong with your system DHC. On the older verson of M17x I play Lord of the rings with 61.7 fps. That game higher res game then wow.

One thing I would look at is Crossfire config.

The other thing is is bits. I seen this with 16 bit to 32 bit change over. Now it 32 bit to 64 bit which take about 10 years.

 

Since the day im received the M17 i have been having issues with it and WoW.

The stock drivers crashed the game after a few seconds/minutes of logging in.

I did not however, notice any lag then.

I have tried 9.1 drivers, and recently upgraded to 9.4.

The problem i have now is, that in order to play the game normally i need to put the game details to low so i don't lag.

Playing it in a raid (with 25 + people) its just 1 big slide show for me...fps drops below 10.

Outside a raid it just lags, fps jumps between 20-80 and those 80 is when i am alone on the screen looking at the floor .

I have also random crashes, so i need to re boot the system and the lag spikes what i was talking about is, you play normally for a while then the screen just freezes for a second and goes on again....this is random and happens everywhere.

I have monitored my temperature details while the laptop is in idle (just IE open):

Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T9600 hardware monitor

Temperature sensor 0 47°C (116°F) [0x35] (Core #0)
Temperature sensor 1 46°C (114°F) [0x36] (Core #1)

ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2 hardware monitor
Temperature sensor 0 46°C (114°F) [0x2E] (GPU Core)

ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2 hardware monitor
Temperature sensor 0 48°C (118°F) [0x30] (GPU Core)

In WoW the temps of the CPU are around 60 and the GPU's go vary from 70 to 80 (with some peaks at 90).

I really dont know what to do...maybe try other drivers or apply new thermal paste?

sorry to ninja this thread btw...

 

Change your Laptop to single gpu. Wow is a older game let me know what happens.

Beleave me I know what happen in dual gpu and single gpu. Some times taking it slow helps.

We might have to find software or drivers to make that game better. or it could be your internet. But it not me to say.

 

I am looking at your laptop config. Vs a 64 bit os and a 32 bit software. I seen a few issues of older software. With 16 bit software like Elite vs 32 bit ultima games. I think you are having the same problem

A idea is have Dual boot which I did with windows 3.1 and windows 95

World of warcraft is a old game. But a great game. But when you change from 32 bit to 64 bit the best idea is check on wow on how they did the change over.

 

I will try it out, thanks for your help

 

Just our of curiosity. Whats your AA setting at DHC ? If its x4 or x8 then it explains it. High resolution with that amount of AA will pretty much kill your fps.

Im at 1920x1200 with everything maxed except shadows and using 2xAA. Never had any issues so far. Some ATI drivers have issues with WoW (crashing every few minutes randomly). The ones ive been using without any issues is the 8.12's and 9.5.

 

The other thing I would look at is your internet provider. They say they are good and it 3x as fast as dialup. And it was my system when I bring in a M17x I ask them to check it to the Internet they shut up. I went for Atnt connection.

The problem was they had 2 T1 Lines and 54 people. Which is a hair faster then Dialup.

Coolmine Mine at 8x and it dont slow it. With Lotr Mine of the moria.

 

Hay CooLMinE My laptop is slower at 2.4 ghz and my res is the same as yours and my laptop getting 61.7fps in most of Lord of the rings Mines of moria and that game alot faster and requre more gpu power. I have 2 or 3 areas that stress my system. Like the old forest. But 80% of the time I am at 61.7fps. It farts at 40fps once in a while. Every thing is MAX OUT. Shadows AA and everything else.

What I think it is older game 64 bit could be the issue.

 

IMO, coming from a 7950gtx, ATI is crap at AA on notebooks I instantly see 20-30fps loss from setting it to 2x AA in most games, i wont comment about 4x or 8x.

Shadows maxed and still get 60 fps ? Thats amazing considering desktops cant even do that.

Not to mention there are spells and places that bug with x8 AA (not sure if its the same for nvidias). A place near Naxx and in UK i think ? (the boss with the waves, that blue "fire" pretty much kills the fps if you got 8x AA. Cant remember which other things "bug" performance

Edit: Just noticed. We are not talking about the same game....... WoW shadows and LOTR shadows are not the same and by the same i dont mean quality wise, i mean the way they react to your hardware.

That and the fact that WoW isnt the best friend of SLI/crossfire systems. As i stated above almost noone uses shadows at max since in WoW they still need work since it pretty much drops your fps by more than 80%.

As for 8x AA im talking about raid environments in WoW and not just hopping around Two different games, not designed the same way.

 

That why I was looking at crossfire. Older game. Internet. I know this one. Games. Wow been out what 6 years. It like playing Pacman on a high end computer. I am not trying to down wow. It been a great game for Millions of people.

What I am looking at is OS 64, Ram and Cpu. Windows vista 64 is hard on any game that 32 bit even Lotro. It why I have not change to a 64 bit os.

If they did the change like they did with 16 bit to 32 bit with 95 to 98 the issue would be fix now. Low cost.

What they want to do is blank this or that it is 64 bit. For people it like what can we do. Then charge us.

 

Hay CooLMinE I hope to play with you more. Yes I agree with you more. We are dealing with two differnt games. I was pointing out the wow is older but still fun.

 

Too Funny....this thread was totally hijacked...The M17X is a very different system to the M17 and the driver support for NVidia cards is much better than ATi's so I believe this system should run WoW with ease.

 

Just thought I'd add that WoW, though a very old game, just got a patch not too long ago that allowed for extreme res textures and new artwork for alot of items (gear/weapons/mounts). The game has steadily increased it's graphical demands since the release of the most recent patch, and when you're in Northrend (new continent), frame rates plummet. So for those who might not play anymore or don't play at all, it's hard to compare it to other games when I myself get better framerates in Crysis than WoW when it's set to Ultra (desktop).

On another note, I recently ordered and recieved a Dell M1730 with 8700 GT's in SLi and wow was so craptastic on it (any quality setting!) I returned it and forked out $1k more for the new M17x. I'm not messing around this time, lol.

 

Oh, and that's all Vista 64 by the way, runs beautifully on my desktop with a single 512MB 8800 GT (9800 GT) @700MHz and a Core 2 Quad Q6600 @3.33GHz.

 

Crap, keep leaving thoughts out of the equation, lol. So AA is not an option in WoW (must be forced on through hardware drivers to override), but AF is, up to 8x (not by default though). If your Crossfire setup is sucking butt, I recommend above all else, a resolution drop. 1920x1200 seems to be a tough res for wow in my experience, but I haven't tackled any ATI drivers for it either...

 

I hope that it runs it well.
My desktop runs wow with really high/maxed setting but the notebook I had couldn't not handle even at low settings.

I have tested wow out with decent settings on the dell xps studio 16 and it had one 512 MB ati card it and it held its own quite well. It exceeded my expectations...

I will be really upset if the M17x can not handle WOW. I am confident that it should handle the game with no issues.

Whenever I get mine, I can let you know how it runs..
BTW with the recent patches when they added particle density, that is a very taxing setting on the GPU. It looks sweet but in 25 man raids it can slow lots of computers to a crawl on FPS.

 

Well since we can run WoW pretty much maxed on older cards "my guess" would be that m17x would do fine with the newer cards Even with one of them

 

Nop there are serious crossfire problems with WoW or at least it scales horrible (more or less like Crysis). (m17)

But the new and the old m17x are powered by Nvidia and as far as I know the SLI scaling is not bad @ WoW

Greetings
Julian

 

Hm I am not quite sure how the Q9000 will performe with WoW, e.g in 3DMark06 it isn't quite good and I like the comparison between 3DMark06 and WoW.

I know that synetic benchmarks normlay say nothing^^ But I read in some WoW forums that they can be compared quite well (played WoW untill RotLK).

Greetings
Julian

 

Guess it depends if WoW can utilize more than 2 cores, if it can then doubt its gonna be an issue.

WoW doesnt support Quads, but the again it doesnt support crossfire either but you still gain +70% fps

 

On my desktop I have noticed two cores being utilized when playing the game but never over 20% max (think there were some anti virus updates going too in the background) for them when playing wow. Not saying wow is effectively using both, just when playing I have watched my cpu meter and never seen it go higher.

So I am sure the base quad in the m17x will be ok..

Now on the GPU side, I have seen it be taxing...

 

Taxing? Öhm what do you mean?

As far as I know it needs quite NO cpu and can only use 2 cores (but because of the first even a single core can handle it

Greetings
Julian

 

lmao at the idea of buying an 1800 dollar + laptop to play WoW.

 

Jealous you don't have the money to do the same?

 

The new M17x will handle wow with ease, wow is not a graphically demanding game and can be ran on almost anything. when i played it ran on my macbook pro (8600m GT) with everything maxed out around 50FPS. wow was designed with 2004 hardware in mind, this is now 2009.

 

I keep seeing these threads about issues with ATI and WoW - and, to be honest, I don't get it... I have stock drivers, stock crossfire setup, nothing tweaked/overclocked/modded in any way, and haven't had any issues whatsoever - I'd say maybe something hardware specific, but we all have pretty much the same hardware, so I'm stumped....

What is supposed to be the issue with ATI/ crossfire cards and WoW?

 

Low performance but you are right, what I read here is all positive!

Greetings
Julian

 

wow is not as easy to run as it seems with the graphical updates and the dip in fps when u max shadows. the post above is how to run it smoothly and get high fps. 2xAA and turn shadows to low, max everything else. these are the settings i use on a 1920 res monitor.

 

SLI doesn't work good with WoW disable one card while playing

i can max devery thing but shadows n get 100fps easy normal ill pop into 300 sometimes

 

there is no issue with Xfire and WoW on the other hand

 

omg - my 6 year old toshiba will run wow @ 1600x1200 at more than 20 fps. The m17x will probably run it as well with the integrated graphics card - I think it's a 7400 or something. With the lowest graphics card it can come with (nvidia 260) you will be able to run WoW at 50+ fps at least.

 

yes i have played on a macbook pro on the 9400m

 

I think you all should check this website http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/258991-33-4870

Yes it desktop computers but it seem some people have the same issue with Wow and ATI. The one thing I hear from that website is wow is more a cpu dependent than gpu.

 

have been playing WoW since the end of 2005, ALLOT!! My first laptop that I played it on was a Dell Inspiron single core with a 128mg Nvidia card and it ran it beautifully, at first. As the game got patched and then with the release of the Burning Crusade that lappy struggled. Then I got a Dell XPS m1210. With a 256gb Nvidia card and it ran WoW very well, for awhile. Again patches/updates lead to that lappy overheating and WoW became almost unplayable once the lappy got hot.

So I went and purchased my first Alienware laptop, the giant mALX, WITH SLI (1GIG Nvidia card). Except for a few hiccups which updated drivers handled it played wow magnificently, with SLI disabled! WoW does not like SLI Config!! Now with the release of WOTLK, my mALX started having lag/fps issues, especially in Dalaran. Remember the mALX is single core. Luckily or perhaps "smartly" I had purchased the m15X last summer and so I started using that for WoW in January-09. It has absolutely no problems running WoW on two monitors (2 seperate accounts)! I have a 512gig Nvidia card and the rest of specs you can see down in my sig. When I only use just the main screen I get about 60fps even in Dalaran, I am very pleased with it.

I have ordered the M17X mostly maxed out because my buddy has a desktop that runs WoW at 60plus fps even with 3 windows opened, so I wanna best him, lol, actually I also have other purposes as well

So there you have it, my history with WoW and laptops, lol hope this helps

 

The m17x will EAT WoW alive. I'm playing its competitor, Lord of the Rings Online, which is more visually intensive, at 1440x900, ultra high graphics, maximum AA and AF, DirectX10, and my FPS never dips below 40. And that's on the less graphically powerful M17.

 

What world are you on EviLCorsaiR in lotr. I have the M17x frist gen with dual 9800gt. 61.7fps area of slow down is rivendell and Bree, old forest. Everything max out.

Let not make this Tread LOTR VS WOW. They are both great games.

 

Ugh, don't remind me of the fan wars I think they are just petty, both games are great, it's just personal preference...

I'm on Firefoot, on the US server. I play creep side on Brandywine. I very rarely drop below 40fps.

 

Dang I am on Meneldor. I just email it to u lol

 

That's in SW...Dalaran , around 60fps

M17x with 260M, 6gb of ram

Then I did a /console maxfps 75 ... The power supply was getting a little hot.

 

I am loving WoW with my M17x! Game is so much nicer with details maxed and 8x sampling. Broke 8k achievement points and got the 10 Uld drake Yogg kill on it the other night. Such an upgrade with Sli 260s over my old 7900GS go lol.

 

I cant wait to install WOW on my m17x....if it could arrive faster.

 

i got mine reinstalled

 

What drivers are u guys using and what res?

Runing 1900x1200 8xaa shadows low and glow effect spectacular lighting off i can get like 35 fps in the heavy traffic area's in dala and 60 in the none, but nothing like 60+ all around,

Specs Core 2 duo T9600 @ 3350 mhz
4gb ram
SLI 280M 1GB

Using the 190.38 drivers.

Any suggestions? DIsabled sli got worse performance.

 

I thought you would get more than 35 fps with your maxed out spec...Hmmm...I dont know, it could be the drivers.

EDIT: well not maxed out, but very good

 

I'm getting a max of 40 in AB, 65ish in Storm Peaks, 30ish in Dalaran. =/ Got my SLi enabled, though. Are you running a single card config?