World of Warcraft performance question

Well, i did a few searches, and it seems and i feel like my WoW is not running as well as it should on my lap top. (or mayb im expecting too much)
I have a hpdv5t (set on high performance)
Vista 64bit
3gb ddr2 ram
nvidia 9600m gt
Intel Core 2 duo T5800 2.00 GHz

I got my laptop 2 weeks ago, i haven't done a clean install but i have uninstalled alot of junk, currently my vista is running around 53 processes. (too much)

My world of wacraft is running on 1028x768, medium to low settings!
I get around 40 fps in a city, 25+fps doing 25 man vault, and wintergrasp is about the same.

After undervolting, my cpu never gets hotter than 70 C', but on an interesting note my gpu hasn't gotten hotter than 65 C', when i hear of people reaching gpu temperatures of 80-90 C'.

Any suggestions would be awesome.

 

70C for a CPU is very warm, GPU should be warmer, are you sure you are not mixing up the temps?

Learux

 

53 processes isn't "too much" for Vista.

Have you tried updating your video card driver? See this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=258626

70C is very hot for a CPU. If its temps are getting that high for your CPU, it might be downclocking to compensate, causing your performance to drop.

You can also try overclocking your card. See this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=219954

 

you doesn't have any problems with Wow and Vista 64

 

positive i'm not mixing them up, and i'll check for a new driver soon.
I'll also definitely work on reducing my cpu temperature and let you guys know.
Anyone have any experience with a similar video card and WoW? Should i definitely be getting better fps / settings?

 

Here is the best place to get your drivers, http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_drivers.html

 

Yes, definitely, however with my college's horrible internet, it'll take me 2 hours to download the 140mb driver. Can it really be the driver, will updating it really cause the enourmous increase i am expecting from the given benchmarks? BTW im using HW moniter to check my temperatures, i hope that is accurate.

 

Are you playing WoTLK, or just BC. Because i know with BC i could max out at 1680x1050, with the same specs except i have a 2.26ghz processor (p8400)

 

WOTLK-

Turn off all shadows. They are broken. Even on my 8800GTX's I cant max without garbage fps and glitching.

 

i cant believe the shadows make this much of an impact on performance thats pretty intense.

 

It worked for you RD?

 

oh wow, k shadows + driver and hopefully i will be getting what i expect.
Ya, it is definitely weird that my gpu runs cooler than my cpu, i'll let u guys know if it'll be fixed tomrw, thanks!

 

Probably the shadows dropped your frames because I have the WOW:BC, vista 32bit and 256MB DDR2 8600M GT overclocked and I am getting more frames than you, which I shouldn't. My settings are 1280x800, all high, 2xMultisampling, shadows though zero, low or medium-low depending what I am doing. My frames are around 50-60 fps. I think 256MB more graphic memory would have helped a lot in terms of performance. Also, I think the CPU is just right, anything below that would struggle when you are in crowded places or in battlegrounds. Maybe you shouldn't undervolt your CPU then (but it is unexpectedly very hot). As a final note, I have to add that I did a clean installation of the Vista and after some changes in the services I have now 39-43 processes running which it does make a difference in the responsiveness of the laptop (I am not sure about gaming).

 

Well the driver definitely helped, and i've been hearing scattered reports on the WoW forums that it may be the WoW client at fault. Do you guys have any programs you can suggest i use to benchmark my laptop's video card?

 

3dmark06 is a very good general tool and since everyone is using it, it's a good way to compare your results with others. Just when you compare, pay attention to the screen resolution of the benchmark and the version of the 3dmark. But you can also check the windows experience index (WEI). It's not good but it is quick and gives you an idea if something is wrong with your card. I know that your graphic index will increase if you overclock your card so it does show roughly how fast is your card. My graphic index is 4.9 and the gaming index 5.3.