Low FPS Intel 965

Hi, I've been having some problems palying World od Warcraft on my notebook and I don't know where else to turn. The WoW tech support has been useless and the computer manufacturer was not better (basically told me to turn off all progs in the system tray and then try).

The problem is I get really low fps (around 7-12) in many areas, and especially if there are more than 10 characters on screen, which is a bit of a problem for an MMO. I have tried updating to the latest drivers but they were terrible and every so often I would get the message "igfx stopped working" so I went back to the dirver version that at least worked. I have tried everything and can't boost my fps in any way. I have the game played on the lowest video settings.

My system:
2GB RAM
Intel 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo
Intel 965 Chipset with integrated GMA graphics

People on similar systems seem to be able to get a solid 20 fps in crowded areas, going up to 30-40 in other places.

Any suggestions (other than getting a new computer)?

 

turn the gfx settings down more.

and check for driver updates

 

Well, I am getting about 15 on mine, and mine is 855GM chipset which is much worse than yours. What is ur graphics setting?

 

I honestly can't turn the gfx settings down any further, they are as low as possible. The strange thing is that the fps stays the same no matter what resoltuion I play the game on - 800x600 gets the same fps as 1200x768.

There are driver updates but they make the problem worse. The latest drivers (28/5/2008) have the same fps issue but every 5 minutes I will get an igfx error and and a black screen. The answer to that was to use older drivers but the fps is still terrible.

Should have mentioned I play on Vista Home Premium 32-Bit.

 

I used to play WoW on a GMA900 (even did a ZG, sure I had to look at the ground, but being a healer it kind of worked lol). Can you take a screen shot of your graphics settings? I would like to look at a few things. Also make sure you are on in "Power Saver" mode. Click on the battery icon to the left of your system clock. Set it to Performance or Balanced.

A few things to turn off, is Screen Glow Effect, and Smooth Mouse.

 

Here you go

 

I see your problem, turn down the resolution (1280 X 768) and you can up the details settings a bit. that would solve the problem

 

Agreed!

1024x768 should suit you nicely!

 

He said

so turning down he resolution as some of you suggested does not help him.

 

1. What's your OS?
2. The latest drivers fix the crashing issue. More correctly, I also used to have graphics crash in WoW, but enabling and then disabling hardware T&L/VS seems to have fixed it. Search this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=128777
for triggering the software/hardware mode.

Read Post #589 for enabling/disabling hardware T&L/VS mode.

The default mode for WoW is software rendering, but you should try changing it to hardware and run it, and change it to software and back. I think the way the driver integrates itself into the whole computer might be sometimes bad and switching modes manually could fix it.

3. You can't do much about your frame rate. I am using E6600(2.4GHz/1066FSB/4MB L2 cache) desktop CPU along with 2GB DDR2-800 and G965 desktop motherboard and sometimes my frame drops to the level that's unbearable(one place in particular is hellfire ramparts instance). I did use high-medium settings and putting everything to near low makes everything playable, but your laptop CPU and GPU combo is much weaker than mine.

 

Yeah changing the resolution has absolutely no effect. I get the same fps playing on the lowest res and I do playing on the highest. That seems very odd to me. Maybe my system is throttling the GPU when I'm playing WoW.

I tried the regedit thing but it didn't help either.

 

Yea, because the bottleneck is somewhere else the resolution doesn't impact your performance.

The regedit thing is just for stability.

 

I'm still stuck on this and I've even considering downgrading to XP to see if that helps. One things that I haven't been doing is uninstalling my old graphics driver before installing a new one. Could this be the problem? And can anyone tell me why it's better to uninstall the old driver first? Doesn't the new driver just write over the old files?

 

New driver installation don't always do a through job when overwriting files, you'd best try a proper install by getting rid of the old drivers first.

 

Are you absolutely sure that you are not in "Power Saver"?
Also, I cannot compare your frames to the frames I was getting when I owned a laptop with only a GMA900, because this was long before BC, hence long before Shat. What type of frames do you get in IF?

 

Tried turning down the multisampling in the video menu all the way down on low 16-bit just to see if that helps?

 

Turning down multi-sampling doesn't help either. I'm convinced that it's a problem with the computer rather than the game as the in-game setting don't change my fps at all - don't even make it worse if I turn them up!

Tusin: Current power plan is High performance. FPS in IF is usually about 5fps better than in Shatt so it's around 12-17fps but then IF is less crowded that Shatt.

 

It's not really that IF is less crowded then Shat, it is more that IF is so closed off compared to Shat. I wish I could be of more help, it's just odd to me that when I used to play on a GMA900, I could actually play. I mean you could always try XP (maybe do a dual boot, use XP just for your WoW). Not really that hard to do, and easy enough.

 

My fps goes down the more people are on screen. For example, I went into the uaction house in IF early in the morning and there were about 4 or 5 other players in there and I was getting 46-50 fps. When I went in later in the afternoon with probably 15-20 other players in there my fps was 17-19.

I want to try running it on XP. Could you tell me a little more about it or point me to a reliable source? Do you have both OS's running at the same time because surely that's a drain on resources. I have a huge amount of free hard disk space so tht isn't an issue but I'd worry about the RAM being taken up.

And is it just as easy to remove XP if it truns out that the OS isn't the problem?

 

Oh, sorry I probably misspoke. What I mean is that you will see less FPS in Shat due to it being much more open compared to IF. But yes, you will always see a huge drops in FPS the more people/spells/mobs/reindeers on the screen.

Now that you are saying you get 46-50 when not much is going on, that leads me to believe everything is alright. But with that being said. XP is so much lighter on resources then Vista, and WoW is a memory hog. Yes 2GB should be enough, even with Vista. But include the fact that you have a IGP, so that is trying to borrow some system ram, etc....

Here is the guide that I used the first time I did a dual boot, it is great! They have one for XP or Vista being installed first. Here is the one for Vista installed first:

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vista_and_xp_with_vista_installed_first__the_stepbystep_guide.htm

 

yeah i get way more fps using xp. in some games 20fps more!

 

Thanks Tusin, I'll give this a go. One quick question, how much disk space would you recommen I allocate for the XP installation? Basically all I need it for is to run WoW and maybe SPSS (a stats package I use for work, my version doesn't run on Vista). I have 70GB of free disk space but obviously I'll be using Vista for everyday applications so would like to leave as much as I can in the Vista partition.

I would kill to see a 20fps increase Jisaac! Even 10 would be a huge difference.

 

don't expect a miracle. your performance seems about right for your computer.

 

That may be the case but others seem to get a better fps on similar machines so I'd like to give it a go. I know the 965 isn't a good GPU but WoW isn't a resource-heavy game, in fact I think it's one of the least resource -intensive games out there and Intel claim that the 965 should run such games reasonably well.

I'm also going to do a physical clean of my fans and vents. I did blow them with compressed gas but I didn't open up the machine and do it.

 

Actually WoW is a little more resource heavy then most people think. It is a memory HOG, and although you make be able to auction house, grind, quest. Once more stuff starts happening on the screen (Raiding, Arena, etc....) the fps will plummet. I had a laptop with a Go7400, C2D T5500, 2GB of ram. And in larger raids, my fps would drop down to the 20's. And that was with almost all graphical options turned way down.

Regardless, I still think you should be seeing better performance then you are. For a strict WoW XP install. I don't see why any more then 20GB is needed.

 

Another option I have is using a different laptop. I have an older Acer laptop with a P4 CPU and an ATI 9000IGP graphics chip running on XP. Is that ATI chip better than than the Intel 965? I could easily get 2GB of RAM for the Acer and use it basically as a WoW machine.