Computer: A hard worker with the wrong settings, or needing an upgrade?

[erocker]

Have you made sure that you have the latest chipset drivers installed for your motherboard?
Also, be sure to have DX9 updated. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en

 

[Darren]

A new power supply "might" improve stability however it will not improve graphical performance, especially when dealing with old hardware which doesn't require much PSU efficiency. Could you provide your laptop's specification as you state that it performs better than your PC, I would like to know why.

Download HD Tach and run the both the short and long test and report back the findings. If your hard disk drive had a slow read/write transfer it could have a bearing on performance. http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

Also can you load up WOW go into a busy lobby, minimize the game press "CRTL+ALT+DEL" to access the task manager and take a print screen of the performance tab. - I want to see your CPU and memory usage.

 

[Enshou]

Download HD Tach and run the both the short and long test and report back the findings. If your hard disk drive had a slow read/write transfer it could have a bearing on performance. http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

Short test:

Long test:

Also can you load up WOW go into a busy lobby, minimize the game press "CRTL+ALT+DEL" to access the task manager and take a print screen of the performance tab. - I want to see your CPU and memory usage.

Minimized:

Not minimized:

Additionally, this is a screencap in game with the FPS and showing what it was trying to draw at the time.
[CLICK]

This is my laptop. Basically the only difference is the dualcore and the extra gig of memory.

erocker: Thanks for the link, I'll try that next.

 

[Darren]

If you've got an IDE or SATA 150 then the average speed is correct, however if your hard disk is SATA II 300 you should expect a average reading of between 60-70 MB.
From the screenshot it doesn't look like the CPU is struggling when minimized, however maximized it looks like its struggling a lot. The worrying component is your ram, approximately 1.07 GBs of ram is being used - your computer has only 2x512MB - warning flag!

Also strangely, task manager is detecting your CPU as dual core. But according to Intel's site its single core: http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-028241.htm , strange.

Edit:

It's just a regular old SATA. The harddrive came with the computer. Which, as we've already established, is embarrassingly old.

In that case the average read/write is normal, we can outrule the hard disk as a problem

It's just a regular old SATA. The harddrive came with the computer. Which, as we've already established, is embarrassingly old.
It being detected as a dual core might have something to do with its hyper threading? It's basically faking being a dual core.

Keep in mind I'm running firefox and WoW. I also have trillian running all the time. Firefox is always sucking up whatever it can! Whether or not it would affect anything to that degree, I don't know. You say its a warning flag. What of?

I dont know much about hyperthreading but it could very well be the reason why "two cores" are being detected. To be fair you should have enough ram to accommodate FireFox, messenger etc in addtion to WOW. I wouldn't be suprised it it peeked at around 1.5 GB during a long gaming session - When the computer runs out of ram it borrows from the hard disk drive which is upto 1000x slower.

I don't know much about hyper threading but it could very well be the reason why "two cores" are being detected. To be fair you should have enough ram to accommodate the allocations such as Firefox, messenger etc in addition to WOW. I wouldn't be surprised it peeked at around 1.5 GB during a long gaming session - When the computer runs out of ram it borrows from the hard disk drive which is up to 1000x slower.

Go to the start menu, go to "run" and type in "DXDIAG" and verify that DirectDraw, Direct 3D, and AGP texture is enabled with acceleration.

Edit 2:

FSAA, is the ingame multisampling. Disable it or set to 1x. FSAA eats memory Bandwidth and GPU. Im sure it will solve the bad fps your having.

100% agree.

 

[Enshou]

It's just a regular old SATA. The harddrive came with the computer. Which, as we've already established, is embarrassingly old.
It being detected as a dual core might have something to do with its hyper threading? It's basically faking being a dual core.

Keep in mind I'm running firefox and WoW. I also have trillian running all the time. Firefox is always sucking up whatever it can! Whether or not it would affect anything to that degree, I don't know. You say its a warning flag. What of?

 

[DarkMatter]

Take the cooler out and replace the thermal paste, after cleaning well both the cooler and the chip. You said a year without usig it? And after 4 years using it. Both things alone can make the paste to get dry, both combined... I bet you find something sand-like instead of a paste.

 

[elixxx]

FSAA, is the ingame multisampling. Disable it or set to 1x. FSAA eats memory Bandwidth and GPU. Im sure it will solve the bad fps your having.

 

[mc-dexter]

ok i've not read all the thread, but one thing i did notice, your slow HDD, sata at that, i've had the same problem, you dont happen to have a partition at all do you? if so back up your data, delete partitions, formated, re-install and should be fine, well near as, your hdd is prob on its way out as you might of guessed., or might just not like a partition as sata's don't do them very well.

 

[Katanai]

Well, I dunno what to say man. That computer should run WOW flawless, there's no question there and it shouldn't need any upgrades at all. Something is definitely wrong though. The only good suggestion you got in this thread is that it could be the PSU. I can think of more though... But first of all we need to know if this is a WOW specific problem or not. Do you have another game there? If not try to get hold of a new game, something like COD4. We need to know if its doing this only in WOW or in all games.

 

[Enshou]

Hey folks, thanks for the responses. Was gone for a day.

Darren: I did a directX diagnoses before, but every thing is running fine.

Darkmatter: Haha! Yeah. Most likely. But I'll leave it for now. Once other things start dying I have intentions just to replace the entire machine.

elixx: I run WoW with 24 x 24 x 1 already. I did it with 4 for testing earlier, as well as with 24 x 16 x 1 and vice versa.

Dex: I haven't noticed my hard drive being slow with anything else, nor does it make noise. Maybe it'll spontaneously combust, though. Yes, I have a partition. I use it to store data and the other to store executables so when I reformat I don't lose my information. However, I've always ran it like this, and it posed no issue in the past. Would it become harder on the hard drive as it got older?

Kat: I do, but they're even less intensive than WoW is.

Anyway, here's the weird and random information update of today. I get my FPS to stabilize at 20 and break 40, but this only occurs if I have firefox up streaming something from, say, youtube. I managed to do the same with windows media player and its visualizer.

...How exactly does that make ANY sense?

 

[mc-dexter]

Hey folks, thanks for the responses. Was gone for a day.

Dex: I haven't noticed my hard drive being slow with anything else, nor does it make noise. Maybe it'll spontaneously combust, though. Yes, I have a partition. I use it to store data and the other to store executables so when I reformat I don't lose my information. However, I've always ran it like this, and it posed no issue in the past. Would it become harder on the hard drive as it got older?

as the HDD's get older, just like anything else Hardware related, age will show signs of aging after a certain amount of time, maybe i guessed wrong about your problem, but i know im right about hardware showing signs of age, lol.

 

[red268]

There's a good chance I'm way off the ball here .... but .... could it be the graphics card isn't getting itself in to 3D mode? Do other games work ok? If it's only WoW, maybe for some unknown reason it's not kicking the gpu in properly?!

I'm just chucking an idea in here. Hoping this might make something click in someone elses brains?

 

[imperialreign]

There's no reason why your setup should be able to handle WoW just fine. As much as that P4 and 1950 are a bit old, they're both more than capable of the task.



It kinda sounds to me, after you mentioned how it's running with Firefox up, that the game isn't being prioritized correctly, perhaps your A/V software is buggaring it down, or your communication hardware. I mearly skimmed the thread so far, but I don't recall seeing anywhere a mention of what kind of connection you have . . . DSL, hard-line, or are you wireless to a router? If it's wireless, and if you've changed routers recently (or ISPs), it's possible the router is capping your in-game connection speed as well.



A couple of quick things to try real quick, though, first - when you load up the game, ALT+TAB back to the desktop, the bring up taskmanager. Click on the 'aplications' tab, highlight WoW, r-click and select 'go to process' - it should switch over and show you the exact process running, r-click on that, and go to 'set affinity,' make sure CPU 0 and CPU 1 are selected. If that doesn't cause any change, repeat the above, and make sure only CPU 0 is selected. You can also try and set the system priority of the process as well, by following the above but selecting 'set priority' instead. Try setting it to above normal or high - although this could cause other programs in the background to slow to a crawl . . .

 

[Jaisin]

Maybe you should get your laptop fixed and stop QQing. L2upgrade nub.

Or open task manager and make sure you don't have a million useless processes running, I can't tell you how many people have junked up their decent hardware with useless background processes.

 

[Wile E]

Did you update your DirectX? As far as the Catalyst not opening, make sure you have all the .NET frameworks installed.

And just by skimming the thread, and seeing your screenshots of task manager above, you are running out of ram and hitting the pagefile. Disable all the useless startup stuff, and maybe look to getting a little more ram.

 

[Enshou]

I just skimmed the last few posts because I'm in a hurry, however ...

imperial: I have cable. I'm using wireless right now but have tried it plugged directly into the line. It is not a new network, router or ISP. Everything seems normal in the task manager. I've set the priority before, but it's usually more effect with PS CS3 since I tend to do more than just WoW when it's running.

jaisin: you posted WHILE you were talking to me on AIM? About something I had already said! You're a freak show. Maybe you should fix my laptop for me and buy me new upgrades~.

wile e: the updates thing is funny here. My computer didn't have service pack 3 yet since it's been dormant since before May. However that also prompted me to upgrade everything else, so directX and the .NET frameworks are installed. As for startup programs, I have 6. The only one I would probably disable would be reader. The rest are pretty normal... ctfmon, rundll, etc.

I think the RAM part would make the biggest difference right now, like you said. As it was, nothing particularly seemed to help it. From what I can tell just messing with it the past few days, I think it might just be having difficulty processing the textures. I get no difference in my frames based on resolution or multisampling/aliasing options, nor from view distances or spell details or cranking/minimizing Blizzards new shadow features. However, there is a marginal difference (5-10~frames) when changing the texture resolutions and filtering.

Like I said, I had stuck another 512kb of RAM into the machine before to bring it to 1GB. However, it was actually my brother who went out, purchased the RAM and installed it as I was out at the time. Thusly I don't know what was actually put in. Therein might be the biggest problem! ... Which would be annoying after all this time. If it continues behaving as it is (25 average), I'll simply leave it and try WotLK on it. If it doesn't work at all, I'll likely just upgrade the entire computer. If it runs like it was running tBC before, I'll open it up and check the RAM and likely fix whatever issue arises then with the goal of a compatible 2GB. It could be something complex or it could be as simple as a HD/RAM issue. Guess we'll see!

Thanks for all the help folks, its appreciated. It certainly is an odd little device.

 

[Jaisin]

If you have a cd / dvd burner you can try loading up a live linux distribution such as knoppix and just WINE-ing the game, maybe windows is the problem.

Basically, you download the iso, burn it to cd / dvd, restart your computer and make it boot from the cd.

From http://www.wowwiki.com/Wine_(software)

Method 3. Copy or run from Win

You can also just install WoW in Windows and then copy the entire World of Warcraft folder over from your Windows installation.

Or if you've already got WoW installed on your Windows partition, you can just use Wine to launch WoW directly from this installation. There is an added benefit to doing this, if you actively multiboot between Linux and Windows, because you will only need to have one copy of WoW on your hard drive for it to run in both environments. Please keep in mind that you must have both read and write access to your Windows partition for this to work, and only the most recently released GNU/Linux distributions, are currently providing write access to NTFS (Windows XP) partitions out of the box. If you do not have write access to your NTFS partition, you will need to consult with your distributions documentation for directions on enabling the NTFS-3G driver, which adds this feature.

Note: Using this method results in there being no entries for WoW in Wine's registry, but this does not cause any issues at all with running WoW.

Note 2 : Some computers might experience low FPS , while trying to run WoW in opengl mode . In that case , removing Config.wtf file ( it is localised in WTF folder ) , running WoW to generate that file again , and then making changes ( to opengl mode ) might help. Make sure , to give read/write access to WTF folder ( otherwise WoW will crash )

Back up your important files, its worth a shot.