Gateway FX 7811 [Questions/Solutions/WoW Issues..etc] <3

A Little Intro
Hello, i've been checking out these forums for the last 2 weeks, as i been enjoying my 2 month old Gateway FX P7811. Simple issues have been solved, and some have been semi-solved.
I finally decided to make an account and join this nice community to dedicate some time to help out others, as well as recieve some help too.. .
First of all, i the laptop started getting hot, and my fps would drop while playing any game, espically World Of Warcraft was reaching 25-30fps.
3 days ago i placed it on top of a book to elevate it and noticed huge differences. I googled some cooling pads/stands, went to best buy today and bought my self a "Belkin Laptop Cooling Pad" - this works amazingly, with a nice low fan, and elevates the laptop in the correct way to make the air flow + extra air from the fan. As we speak my GPU Temperature is sitting at 44c and CPU at 47c, which isn't bad i think and in my opinion.

When I First Bought Laptop:-
Counter Strike Source i would get around 95-154fps and in some places even more.
Team Fortress 2 i would get around 50-65fps.
World Of Warcraft from 65fps to around 125fps ++ ...sometimes way more, and ofcourse in over populated areas it may drop to 45, which still isnt bad.
Later On (Not to long)
All of a sudden i was having problems, with virus's and my fps was dropping in wow to 35fps the whole time. So decided to do a Full Format about 1 week ago. Downloaded the drivers from the Gateway Website and in counter strike source and all other games except world of warcraft, was still good fps.
thats when i noticed it had to do some what of the heat..etc

I came to the forums to check for some drivers, and chose the newest ones posted in some threads, i tried "X-fastest 180.70/Dox's 180.43" .. and got some nice results with Dox's, i decided to go to the Gateway's website and drivers, and download the driver that came with the system. Suprisngly it gave me the MOST fps in every game, including WoW.

A couple hours ago i wanted to mess with some Over Clocking @ [698/988/1798] - (got these from another thread) and everything was running well, and the max temp was around 69c .

But even after all this, the FPS in world of warcraft still isnt the same was when i first bought the laptop with default settings. I am currently getting around 75fps-100+ in Instances , and a bit lower while questing, and lower in Main cities, which is very playable and very good - and these are with the ORIGINAL NVIDIA DRIVER "176.15".
Conclusion
I need your expert help in finding out which driver will suite best for me, and how i can get the fps i was getting in the beggining. - Anything will do, ill try lots of things, as i like to expierement.

Whats the most up to date/fully functional driver that will make a difference, to lots of things, and mostly WoW at the moment.

Thanks for ur time, and thanks for reading this. {i tried adding some colors..etc, since a big wall of text = negative! }

anyways, thanks alot, please just list some things and ur opinion.



Southzz <3

EDIT: still in some places, not even populated, fps isnt that high.

 

I am useing the lastest Dox 180.84 drivers, and playing Everquest 2 (which is much more system entencive) with no problems on my P-171x Fx, my two sons have no problems either with the Dox drivers. No overclocking needed. Make sure all your drivers are up to Date, like your sound ect.

 

hey bro, thanks alot for answering, appreciate it .

I'm going to do a before and after and check out my audio drivers ASAP.

...

 

Best idea southzz, is to get forceware around 160-180version, generally top of the line is always beta, so get forceware version between 170/178, I am using Nnvidia version 170.something, so far seems most stable version, anything beyond that im getting slow fps, and even 180 crashed on me, I don't game much but I was playing Source to check my fps out and had around 150 constant, and was stable

 

Don't try to overclock the video card, its powerful enough you don't need to, doing so tends to make this model unstable, just so ya know. Get yourself an 8gig USB Stick and turn it into cache for your video card, will run alot of games smoother.

 

hey - i will try the first suggestion driver, and then try rolling and old driver that runs the most stable - and im a noob at over clocking, and i bet the best way is to keep it normal like u said. I actually have an 8gig stick plugged in my laptop as we speak as i use it for personal use, i was wondering how do turn it into a cache for my video card?

thanks alot.

 

I am downloading the factory driver.
176.85 - and going to test the difference with others.

no overclocking.
original bios drivers.


EDIT :

An increase in the FPS with the original drivers, and the original 05 bios driver.



.........

Hmmm..do i smell another reformatting, and just placing all the original drivers from scratch to have it fresh,

 

Make sure you uninstall the old nvidia driver first, restart then install the new one.

 

ok will do.

what if i just install the new ones without uninstalling, can u please elaborate on how it can affect it.

and im thinking of just using the fx7811 vista cd, and reinstalling vista.

Then installing the drivers i chose from fresh, and all the games after that.


EDIT: any suggestions on making a usb stick a cache?

 

I would not go to that extreme just yet, Nvidia recommends uninstalling the old driver first, it probably is because of out files that may conflict with the new ones. I would use the drivers from LaptopVideo2Go make sure you download the right windows version for you which is Vista 64bit stock. If you are worried about bloatware loaded on your FX from Gateway, try a program called pcdecrapifier found here, http://pcdecrapifier.com/ works great, I have done it both ways, with no deference what so ever and it will save you hours of reinstalling and searching for the right drivers.

 

thanks will look into it.

its just that for the past week, i been installing, and uninstalling bunch of drivers in every aspect, so im thinking of a quick reformat, and then pop my flash drive that has the wireless driver, to start from there, and one by one download each driver.

the laptopvideo2go latest drivers to me feel like they are still beta, and haven't been downloaded a lot, thats why i would like to see your opinion and which drivers your currently using

 

The Dox drivers I am using are very stable, no problems. Make sure you make a backup of the gateway drivers, check your owners manual, I never let windows update your drivers at first, sometimes it picks the wrong ones. When I do a fresh install, I use the gateway driver backup cd for most of the drivers except the video of course. There is intel wireless lan driver I had problems with, it blue screened two of my systems with a fresh install, but vista's problem fixer program suggested a driver, I downloaded it, installed it, and no more problems.

 

As im typing, im on my fresh installed vista, with no drivers at all except the wirless driver.

Moment of truth ..haha
thinking of what driver to choose.

Not going to update the drivers, but about to do some windows updattes first.

 

Excuse me if this is stupid but you said you bought your laptop 2 months ago. Blizzard released Wrath of the Lich King on the 13th of this month which came with video options that set your draw distance to nearly double. So if you played with everything max, you're going to notice an FPS drop because of the draw distance, and also the new shadow system. I get 20 more fps turning the shadows off.

 

yeah that kind of makes sense too.
as my view distance is set up to the max.

 

Fully Formated
Reinstalled all drivers.
All Original Factory/Website Drivers.

- - - - -

downloading WoW as i type.

on counter strike source in some maps i would get around 130+
and in de_dust2 would range from 85-120, and 135 in some areas..

which i dont think is bad.

 

Long as its stable then your good, I actually regardless what computer and specs, turn the graphics down a notch to render out video "lag". Been doing this since days of Quake2, and never had a problem with graphics. It mattered to me when I was raiding in WoW as the primary healer, any video lag would cause the tank to be dead, so typically did this for good reason, same for counterstrike, all you need to lag during smoke and get popped.

Most games that don't require that kind of dedication I do run full blast, and don't care much about video lag, like Medieval 2 (Turn based game) but FPS I have always turned the max settings down a notch of what my PC can handle (most games have an automatic graphic setting) to adjust to your PC, just use this and turn down one or two things, will give you best FPS available in my opinion.

 

Well i'm actually now using the default the GPU driver, and all the bios/chipset ..etc

and everything has been well.

the formatting worked i think.

in conclusion i was getting around 65fps in CoD5 WaW @ a good nice resolution.

doing some more tweaking.

 

Great to hear!, now try Everquest 2 , lol

 

Can you explain this please? I have never heard of this.

If you are referring to Readyboost, AFAIK its strictly disk cache enhancement (and some superfetch enhancement as well), and not GPU cache.

If you are referring to something else, then Id love to know what it is!

 

I think it is used just for storage, ready boost is not needed for systems with 1 gb or more.

 

*cough* 2gb or more is where you wont see a difference with readyboost *cough cough*

 

if you know advance settings for video cards, you can set swap space on USB sticks (highly adviseable not to use harddrive space as it burns up your harddrive in process) Generally anything less then 6gigs you see hardly any difference, 8GB you will see graphics loading smoother.

Readyboost is a joke and worthless with over 2GB of ram

 

*Cough Drop* jk, here is a site to support me, little to no gain after 1gm of ram.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6167115/index.html

 

Yes. I do.

Can you be more specific?

 

Geez the best I ever get on WOW is maybe 40-50 in the wilderness, I drop to 15-25fps in cities.

 

ill conceed this time as i cant find the supporting documents that i used to have.

 

no biggy, I really think ready boost is for older computers with not too much ram, the ones that can barley run vista in the first place. I stopped using it all together, my wifes P-6860 fx has the 1gb turbo memory in the pci slot underneath, no difference in performance. Trust me I bought 4 thumb drives at first because I though Ready boost would help, it is just another thing to trouble shoot when having problems.

 

i stopped using readyboost when i upgraded my old computer (toshiba x205) from 2gb to 4gb of memory...

and since the 6860 came with 4gb ram, ive not used it since March i believe...snake oil it is.

 

So how can exactly my 8GB flash drive help me with my GPU.
what should i do?

 

it seems like now i have a sickness,

in instances i get around 95-135fps
and in cities around 50-75fps.

and yet im not 100% satisfied i dont know why lol.

 

Ready boost is a pure joke, unless your fred flintstone, your PC won't gain much from having it, even if you use a 32GB stick for swap. Here are some test results on ready boost result:

Booting into Vista (Without Readyboost):
Attempt 1: 1:10
Attempt 2: 1:12

Booting into Vista (using Readyboost):
Attempt 1: 1:05
Attempt 2: 1:03

Outlook 2007, using a 1000 meg PST file (Without Readyboost):
Attempt 1: 8,35 sec
Attempt 2: 3,2 sec

Outlook 2007, using a 1000 meg PST file (using Readyboost):
Attempt 1: 7,95 sec
Attempt 2: 3,2 sec

iTunes (Without Readyboost):
Attempt 1: 9,40 sec
Attempt 2: 4,93 sec

iTunes (using Readyboost):
Attempt 1: 12,5 sec
Attempt 2: 4,9 sec

So were talking few seconds difference here, I do believe readyboost was intended for computers with 512MB or less ram, believe it or not, but were lucky to have our 4GB in our systems, i think the standard is 512MB, and that just moved up recently around september of this year I read. (Imagine being stuck with only 512MB ram?) Just checked the benchmarks for Ready boost in games on a modern system, only 2-5 fps increase, and its random, one attempt w/ ready boost had no effect on the game.

What I use Usb sticks for is Disk Cache for my video card, think of cache page on a usb stick, an old program called SlapStick that can extend your videocard's memory onto a USB Stick (recommends keeping your usb stick near the video card far as USB slots are concerned to reduce channeling time) But I noticed a decent 10-20fps boost since using it, stable wise i'm not entirely sure - counterstrike is to old to test the stability, Anyhow I will try to get website information and post it here so some can check it out, just remember the performance gain might not be hassle of doing it if you think your specs are fine to run the games, I do remember it was a pain to setup even with a decent knowledge of hardware/software.

 

The more I think about this, it makes absolute no sense (if its even possible to set up).

If you were to try to add to your GPU cache with a usb memory stick
the access times to go through the motherboard to the USB would be horrendous compared to just grabbing it out of memory and the transfer rate would be capped at 20MiB/sec or so...

I cant see how this affects anything in a positive way, but Id love to see your information.

I cant find any information about it on any single technology site, and cant find any information on a program named Slapstick.

 

This is much older program, around 2001/2 from sourceforge, I can't find the page, might of been canceled or deleted most likely same reason your thinking, wouldn't be quite positive since going from video card to usb, to L2 would be negative - but back then idea sounded pretty decent considering the facts I reviewed back then.

 

this is a fun concept continue the ideas.

i have a 8gb flash drive, would be nice to use it as something to make this beast to a goblin

haha .

anyways i seriously have that sickness i was talking about earlier.