630m performing worse than my 4 year old HD 4850?

So I bought my wife a new computer, settled on an ultrabook-type that I 'thought' would be able to play games like Sims3 or SimCity on occasion, nothing major since shes not really a gamer, so I didn't even consider shopping for a high end video card, just something that she could use on occasion. Long story short, I thought a DELL XPS 14 would be a perfect fit for her, since it had a dedicated GPU (albeit an understandably lower-end type) and is a fairly recent model (wanted initially to get an XPS 13 but didn't see one with anything but Intel 4000).

Anyways, I installed WoW on it to get a real-world comparison with my MSI GT-725 laptop. It has an HD 4850 that I run on windowed, full-screen settings at 1680x1050 resolution (its max) and on the game's internal "GOOD" settings (medium) and I get a good 30-60 fps depending on zone, mind you this is also on a 17" screen.

On her XPS 14 (with a 14" screen) the default "GOOD" settings are virtually unplayable, I've tweaked a few of the settings before giving up in frustration because the graphics look terrible and the framerate still suffers. Even on "LOW" setting I cannot seem to get it to even match my 4850 laptop that I purchased back in 2009. Is it really THAT bad a card? I've gotten rid of all the DELL bloatware and updated drivers through both NVIDIA and Windows8 and the results are still...hideous. Feeling a great deal of buyers remorse on an otherwise pretty sharp system, please tell me I'm doing something wrong.

 

Despite being an older card, the 4850 is still marginally better than the 630 judging from notebookcheck.net's benchmarks. Have you checked the Nvidia Control Panel to make sure it's running on the dedicated 630m instead of HD 4000? What is the screen resolution of the XPS? Size doesn't determine the performance, but resolution does.

Here are links to both 630m and 4850 benchmarks and info on notebookcheck. NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M - NotebookCheck.net Tech AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850 - NotebookCheck.net TechIt's a decent resource to see if your card is performing up to par. The 630m should be able to handle WoW on high settings.

 

Well the 630m is basically among the lowest end of the 600 family. It may be low end but it is still slightly capable, and a stronger solution compared to HD4000 from intel. However, it is not on the same level of your Mobility HD4850. That GPU was high end when it launched, and right now it's on the mid range of notebook gaming performance. Depending on the clockspeeds and memory interface of the Dell laptop you bought, the 4850 can by around 50% faster. The HD4850 might be comparable to low end in the upcoming generation of video cards, but right now it's still in the mid range.

If you plan on gaming ocassionally, NEVER buy the lowest end card. A 640m would be a substancial jump in performance. Depending on memory interface.

Standard troubleshooting includes setting the laptop in high performance mode etc, and verifying you are indeed using the dedicated GPU instead of the integrated one. What's your CPU?

BTW screen size has no bearing in performance, only resolution.

 

The problem is that although ultrabooks seem to be the main focus of notebook manufacturers they still lack high end power. Whether it be heat or size and weight issues they just arent offering them with much power. Im sure the 630M is the best GPU available for ultrabooks at the moment (with Asus being maybe the one exception). So if you want any gaming capability, you have to stay away from anything labeled an ultrabook. Maybe the cooler, more efficent next gen processors and GPUs will make their way into the new ultrabooks. I read an an article in the technology section of this forum about how ultrabooks sales have slumped because of their lacking power. Businesses are hesitant to invest in new machines that may be underpowered and become obsolete quickly despite their portability and designs. So basically the technology isnt there yet and its still a toss up between size/portability and raw power.

 

The older high end cards are still better than most of the workstation-class GPUs (I don't mean the quadro/firepro) of the newer lineups. The reason those newer cards do better in some of the newest games is because they can use DX11 and the older ones cannot. This might explain why you got confused.

As for WoW and speaking of DX11, try running WoW in DX11 mode. I heard it runs LOADS better than the DX9 or DX10 versions.

And finally, I think we're all forgetting something... does that machine use Optimus? If it is and WoW is running on the iGPU and not the dGPU that would explain the awful performance.

Hope this helped!

 

That's weird. My friend has a 630m in a Lenovo laptop and it runs Star Wars The Old Republic at max settings. Are you sure it's not running on the integrated GPU and not the 630m? Try disabling the integrated GPU or setting the program to always run in high performance mode in your graphics control panel.

 

My bad, I spoke of Optimus/iGPU use and failwheel said it first. Sowwy.

 

I like how failwheel and me posted at the same time and said basically the same thing. Awesome!

 

Thanks for the responses, I'll tweak it a little bit later tonight and see if anything changes.