FPS Issues with nVidia 8600M GS

[ho0dzy]

My roommate and I both play World of Warcraft. We are both using HP dv9000us laptops, except he seems to get around 50 frames per second on average, where as I only get about 30 on average. The only thing he claims to do to pump out the FPS is to switch from "Balanced" to "High Performance" on his power settings. We have matched our video settings, and he still gets far superior FPS.

I've tried using the NVidia Omega Drivers without any luck in increasing performance. I have 4 gigs of ram, I'm using Windows Vista 64 bit edition, and my graphics card has 512 mb dedicated video memory. I haven't tweaked witht he video settings at all on the card, and I'm hoping someone here has some advice for pumping out more FPS without sacrificing *TOO* much with my in-game video settings.

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by ho0dzy

My roommate and I both play World of Warcraft. We are both using HP dv9000us laptops, except he seems to get around 50 frames per second on average, where as I only get about 30 on average. The only thing he claims to do to pump out the FPS is to switch from "Balanced" to "High Performance" on his power settings. We have matched our video settings, and he still gets far superior FPS.

I've tried using the NVidia Omega Drivers without any luck in increasing performance. I have 4 gigs of ram, I'm using Windows Vista 64 bit edition, and my graphics card has 512 mb dedicated video memory. I haven't tweaked witht he video settings at all on the card, and I'm hoping someone here has some advice for pumping out more FPS without sacrificing *TOO* much with my in-game video settings.

Is he also using the same OS? Are you both using the same driver version? You could always OC the card a little.

[ho0dzy]

Yes and Yes. I haven't tried overclocking the card just yet. I'm upgrading to the new 181 drivers that I just saw listed here, as I believe openGL runs WoW better than D3D does after doing some testing. It's giving me an error though when I attempt to run it, even though I'm using an 8600M GS card (which fits the specifications of the drivers).

[erocker]

Most likely you are running a lot of background programs. If you want to make Vista faster and clean up your machine, have a read here: http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/supertweaks.htm

[ho0dzy]

Originally Posted by erocker

Most likely you are running a lot of background programs. If you want to make Vista faster and clean up your machine, have a read here: http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/supertweaks.htm

I will go ahead and do that thank you for the link.

Also, I just downloaded the latest drivers offered by HP here

[timta2]

3-25-2008 are the newest drivers? You might want to visit the Nvidia site and download from there. Sometimes manufacturers don't keep up with updates from other companies.

[ho0dzy]

Originally Posted by timta2

3-25-2008 are the newest drivers? You might want to visit the Nvidia site and download from there. Sometimes manufacturers don't keep up with updates from other companies.

unfortunately (from what I'm seeing on the nVidia website) there is no updated driver for the 8600M GS. It's a mobility card, and drivers for these kinds of cards seem to go the way of the dodo on the official website. There are drivers for the 8600 GS but not the 8600M GS.

[erocker]

The latest Nvidia drivers should still work.

[Black Panther]

High performance, both in the Nvidia control panel and in the laptop's configuration, will be making a difference. FPS will improve if you opt for "performance" and not for "quality".

Try to put both your laptop power settings and your nvidia panel on performance, and check the fps then.

Also, don't download your drivers off the nvidia site. They manufacture laptop cards yet don't support any drivers (I don't know how they get off with it but anyway).

The best drivers you can get are from laptopvideo2go or directly from the HP's laptop site. I'd personally vouch for laptopvideo2go because they update recent drivers and work great for for my laptop too.

[ho0dzy]

Unfortunately I don't see much of a difference, even when setting the card to max performance.

I have included a -opengl in the "target" section of the shortcut. The graphics in this setting seem to be significantly increased, but somewhat spikey at times (jumping from 40 to 15 FPS and back to 40).

Downloading those graphics drivers you suggested Black, going to see how they work out. Also decreased most of my vista settings which should help eek out at least a little more in the way of FPS.

The biggest hit I seem to take is particularly during 25 man raiding - because everyone is doing their thing, I drop to something like 15 - 8 FPS