Powerful Laptop, Terrible WoW Performance

ASUS G73JW-XB1; 6 Gigs DDR3; 1.5g Video Ram Nvidia Geforce GTX 460m; i7.

I'm getting ~12-15 FPS even with things like shadows and sunshafts disabled. This is terrible. I'm stumped. It runs other games fine. WoW isn't intenseive. It should easily max out at 60. Any suggestions?

 

Latest drivers? What are your temps? Check with HWINFO.

 

Drivers are updated. Other games run fine. Don't know the exact temps, but it's definatly not hotter then usual.

 

What is the usual? WoW with all the settings on will probably push the card to its limits, the game may not look great but blizzard modding an old engine that many times requires great power from your GPU to produce the results.

 

WoW runs at stable 60FPS on Full HD / Max Details. on my G73JH with i7, ATI 5870 1GB, 6GB RAM and G.Skill SSD. Without vSync it goes generally above 200FPS~ and more. Your system is in general faster so it should run at least with stable 60FPS in any zone / situation.

I run since over 5 years a private WoW server and noticed that Blizzard changed / upgraded the engine often. Important is a decent amount of RAM (At least 2GB on populated servers) and a strong GPU, the CPU is not that important. I could explain now the technical details but I try to keep it so simple as possible here:

WoW Vanilla (1.x.x) / WoW TBC (2.x.x) = Low requirements, runs even on a decent Pentium 3 PC with a GPU like the Nvidia FX5200 PCI smooth at higher details.
WoW Wotlk (3.x.x) = Moderate requirements, runs still on all common systems smooth. A Intel HD 3000 GPU can run the game on low details at 30-40 FPS in populated zones. The loading times are way lower since 3.x.x by the way.
WoW Cataclysm (4.x.x) = High requirements, requires a decent system especially in populated zones. A NB with a normal i5 CPU, ATI Radeon 5650 1GB and 4GB RAM is in general enough to run it at high details on Full HD.

The rumour that the WoW engine is "outdated" is partially wrong, at least when we talk about WoW Cataclysm (4.x.x). The engine is very stable and optimized for modern systems, it is very different compared to the engine of 2004 (1.x.x).

 

Ultra full HD in a Raid and outside at 60-200+fps? I guess that is just you then because I dont know anyone else that can get that with the 5870M at Ultra.

Also your mention that the OP's setup is better is wrong the 5870M is more powerful than the 460M GTX.

Also comparing a low populated private server will be vastly different to a highly populated in game server.

The game engine is the scrubs as well they are still producing a game that looks 2004 but requires 2011 hardware with only mediocre benefits, yes the game looks better now but it is based on a very old engine.

 

I know you said you updated your drivers, but did you update your wifi driver? Especially if it's an Atheros wifi card?

V9.2.1.432 from here is good - G73/74/53 Series Driver and Application Reference

 

Well with vSync enabled the G73 runs very relaxed with Cataclysm on the retail servers. The 5870 does a good job and the WoW client seems to be using it quite effective.

I guess I overrated the performance of the 460M in that case, but the difference shouldn't be that big maybe 10-15%?

It may surprises you but there exist private servers which have several thousand players online and you see easily hundreds of players in the same city. That is possible with new core structures which support "multi-processing", each single process supports additionally "multi-threading". A decent dedicated server with 8 Quadcore CPUs can support 10.000+ players that way on the same machine with a dedicated database server on another machine. That is off-topic though, lets focus on his client performance issue.

The engine can't be compared to modern engines but does still a good job, you can play WoW Cataclysm on low-end machines with Intel HD 3000 graphics (Low details / 1024x768) smooth.

@m4a1steaksauce: Disable your WLAN card and stop all unimportant applications, be sure that your NB is running in "High performance mode" and has "Powerplay" in the driver disabled. Reply here if that fixed your issue, then we can investigate the issue better.

 

Wifi driver would effect my FPS? I'm open to try anything to make it run better, but I find it hard to believe it's a driver issue considering other games I play run perfectly fine. ~12-15 FPS is unplayable. My 3 year old desktop runs WoW at 60 FPS no problem. Solid. There's no excuse to why WoW shouldn't run at 60+ FPS. With that being said, I'm not the only one with this issue. There's been a few other threads I've seen where one with a high end gaming laptop can't perform well on World of Warcraft, when it's game with such small demands. So I'm puzzled on what exactly to do.

 

How exactly would I disable my WLAN card, and disable "Powerplay" in the driver? I'm not too familiar, thanks.

 

Well normally "FN+F2" should disable it, else go in the device manager (Right click computer -> manage -> devices) and disable it there in the device list.

To disable Powerplay make a right click on your desktop and select "ATI driver properties", then go to the Powerplay tab and disable it there by removing the "Enable Powerplay..." cross.

You can also check your NB latency with this tool DPC Latency Checker (It shouldn't go in the red area if your drivers are correctly installed)

 

I know it's not a latency issue though, just FPS. Should I still try this?

 

His laptop does not have an ATI card. It has an nvidia gtx460m. I don't think it has powerplay.

 

Yes it is worth a try, this tool is not measuring your internet latency by the way.

Well that is indeed a good point Then he could check at least if his GPU isn't running in "battery mode" or anything similiar. A reset of the driver settings can be also helpful sometimes.

 

BTW, OP could try running the laptop on AC power without the battery and see if it still lags?

 

I'll try. I'm beggining to think its some sort of compatibility issue. I don't know.

 

Any updates?

 

I came home from work, turned it on, started it up. 60 fps. Hmm. Strange but I'm not complaining.

 

Just curious, did you ever update that WIFI driver ? That old driver causes all kinds of lag that you wouldn't expect came from the wifi.

 

No I did not sir, before I tried any of the suggestions I logged on to find WoW running as should be.