wow on a laptop

davew · 19 May 2007 at 21:45

i've got a dell 6400 laptop with a pentium 2 duo 1.6mhz cpu, 1gb ram and a ati X1400 graphics card, i've installed wow and even on the lowest settings the game is stuttering and is virtually unplayable, i know that this is no gaming machine but i've heard of people with lower spec machines that play it ok.

TakeoverBid · 19 May 2007 at 21:47

Hmm....virtually the same specs as you - Duo 1.6, 1gb and X1400 and it runs fine at MAX settings. Are your drivers up to date? You sure its performance stuttering and not lag?

Zefan · 19 May 2007 at 21:50

That should blitz it you're right.

davew · 19 May 2007 at 22:02

maybe it is lag how can i tell ?, when my character runs its as though he takes a few steps and then stalls, i did notice that when i dropped all the graphics setting to low it didn't make any difference at all, what i have noticed is that if i have the meter up on the screen that shows how much memory you are using its on 85% , i've not updated anything driver wise i've only had the laptop about 3 days it's brand new and i've not touched anything on it

Zefan · 19 May 2007 at 22:05

What's your ping like? The coloured bar just left of your bags shows your response time in ms. A red/yellow bar is bad.

Sounds like network lag.

Scrutinize · 19 May 2007 at 22:12

davew said:
i've got a dell 6400 laptop with a pentium 2 duo 1.6mhz cpu, 1gb ram and a ati X1400 graphics card, i've installed wow and even on the lowest settings the game is stuttering and is virtually unplayable, i know that this is no gaming machine but i've heard of people with lower spec machines that play it ok.

I had a Dell 630m last year which would play wow no problems and that was a 1.7 centrino, intel 915 integrated graphics and 512mb memory. Its may be worth you doing a reformat of your system, latest drivers etc etc if you can.

Sounds like a network issue though.

TakeoverBid · 19 May 2007 at 22:18

davew said:
maybe it is lag how can i tell ?, when my character runs its as though he takes a few steps and then stalls, i did notice that when i dropped all the graphics setting to low it didn't make any difference at all, what i have noticed is that if i have the meter up on the screen that shows how much memory you are using its on 85% , i've not updated anything driver wise i've only had the laptop about 3 days it's brand new and i've not touched anything on it

Yep its lag! What's your connection?

davew · 19 May 2007 at 22:27

ok, dont think it's lag, the latency in game is around 40ms, forgot to add that i'm on vista if that make a difference, i've had a look at the resource monitor and it's showing loads of hard faults in the memory over 100 and the used physical memory is at 92% thats if the game is just sitting idle, when it's not in the game and the laptop is sitting idle its on 49% which seems a lot to me.

smithy83 · 19 May 2007 at 22:57

davew said:
ok, dont think it's lag, the latency in game is around 40ms, forgot to add that i'm on vista if that make a difference, i've had a look at the resource monitor and it's showing loads of hard faults in the memory over 100 and the used physical memory is at 92% thats if the game is just sitting idle, when it's not in the game and the laptop is sitting idle its on 49% which seems a lot to me.

seems so your on vista turn of the gadgets off when playing games should work fine then

davew · 19 May 2007 at 23:11

smithy83 said:
seems so your on vista turn of the gadgets off when playing games should work fine then

that is with the gadgets turned off.

smithy83 · 19 May 2007 at 23:13

davew said:
that is with the gadgets turned off.

disable some of the start up items i had to turn off a few bits to get the best out of it

Butters · 19 May 2007 at 23:52

Your laptop is pushing it for Vista imo and there are so many processes associated with vista that its no wonder your gameplay is poor. I would be inclined to see how the same game runs under XP on your laptop.