let the head scratching commence

[SteeleDragon78]

ok, im writing this post for aethian, she is getting some really lousy frame rates in WOW, on her laptop, doesnt matter if she is wired or wireless. weird thing is her mom has the same laptop and it runs fine on that one. i tinkered with the graphics settings and squeezed 1 fps out of it. im at the end of my ability to ts this, she downloaded a new graphics driver from intel, but vista wont let her update it. laptop is a Toshiba Satellite P305-S8837, 2.16Ghz dual core, 4GB mem, and windows vista 64bit. any help would be appreciated,

[Broomjockey]

Jokes about WoW and the futility of laptop gaming aside, diagnostic questions time:

1. Did it previously run fine, or was it like this from the start?
2. Are there any background processes running on hers that aren't on Mom's?
3. What message does it give when Vista won't allow the update?
4. Is WoW completely patched on both?
5. Are all of Vista's patches applied? (Including SP1)
6. What's the ping like while running the game? High lag could translate to bad FPS. Wired and wireless numbers.
7. Does running it on different graphical settings make a difference? Windowed vs. full screen? If not, it's not the graphics card.
8. Find a way to get the CPU/GPU usage monitored. Does it top out at 100% for everything? Is only one core being used?

That's all I can think of for the moment, but that should give a pretty good indication of where the bottleneck is. The possible locations are 1: The CPU. 2: GPU. 3: Connection. 4: RAM

The problem with the RAM being the bottleneck is going to be the fact that there's no real fix beyond "Run less stuff, and at lower settings." Games just aren't programmed yet to even take advantage of as much RAM as can be put in a system, so even if you're not topping that out, if the game hits the programmed max, you're effed.

[SteeleDragon78]

Jokes about WoW and the futility of laptop gaming aside, diagnostic questions time:

1. Did it previously run fine, or was it like this from the start?
2. Are there any background processes running on hers that aren't on Mom's?
3. What message does it give when Vista won't allow the update?
4. Is WoW completely patched on both?
5. Are all of Vista's patches applied? (Including SP1)
6. What's the ping like while running the game? High lag could translate to bad FPS. Wired and wireless numbers.
7. Does running it on different graphical settings make a difference? Windowed vs. full screen? If not, it's not the graphics card.
8. Find a way to get the CPU/GPU usage monitored. Does it top out at 100% for everything? Is only one core being used?

.

1.from what she said, its been like this from the start.
2.not sure, ill have her do a side by side next time her mom is there.
3.ill let her answer that one since she is back home.
4,5,6 see #3
7, i squeezed 1 fps out of it running full screen vs windowed.

[Broomjockey]

7, i squeezed 1 fps out of it running full screen vs windowed.

Yes. But what about changing the actual settings? There should be several presets. Low, Medium, High, etc.

Also, what area was she in? Some areas are overly crowded, and just absolutely kill framerates.

[SteeleDragon78]

Yes. But what about changing the actual settings? There should be several presets. Low, Medium, High, etc.

Also, what area was she in? Some areas are overly crowded, and just absolutely kill framerates.

we set the presets to the lowest we could with no difference. she was in silvermoon city durring a quiet time. she cant go to outland because it drops the framerate to 8 or 9 from 20

[Broomjockey]

Okay, definitely going to need to do the CPU monitoring thing then. If you can also get a network traffic monitoring program going at the same time, then you can compare any spikes to see if there's correlation.

[SarcasticJerk]

Most of what I can think of is things Broomkockey has already said.

Open task manager and check CPU usage. With nothing else open, it should be sitting at around 1%. Is it higher? Not just 2-3%, but really high - like 50%? If it's really high, something is amiss. Could be several things, such as an AV program, bad driver that's doing strange things, or malware of some type.
Leave TM running, then go into WoW for a few minutes. Pop back out and check TM. Was the CPU pegged at 100% while it was running? (Especially on both cores.) Standing around in Dalaran, I get both cores running in the 60-75% range. Pegging out both cores while in a low traffic area (like Silvermoon) would be a sign something isn't right.
Try to do all the updates and see if it helps. Especially the graphics driver one. I'm guessing it wouldn't aloow it before becasue of the Admin issue in Vista. (I have Vista, but still don't know my way around it well. I'm good at poking around til I figure it out.)
No idea of how you access the settings, but try looking at the graphics settings for the X3100. Maybe the memory usage is set too low?

Thought of something as I was typing something else: Does it have problems with any other games? Or is it just WoW? Try running a game that's a bit stressful on both laptops and compare. Or something like 3dMark (free version). This would help tell if it's a WoW issue, or something else.

Different sublect:

Jokes about WoW and the futility of laptop gaming aside...

Running WoW on a laptop isn't always futile. I play on a laptop, at 1920x1200, with most of the settings cranked up. Getting 40-45 fps in Dalaran, at the moment. Rarely see anything lower than 30, usually get around 60 when running around. Of course, most laptops don't have the luxury of dual 512MB graphics cards running in SLI. My other two laptops (I'm triple boxing) don't come near that in Dal, but are fine everywhere else. Admittedly, the settings are turned way down on those two. (GeForce 7600 in them, and one only has 1GB of memory.)

[Broomjockey]

Running WoW on a laptop isn't always futile.

Sorry, two different sets of jokes. There's the WoW jokes. Then there's the jokes about gaming on a laptop.

[Aethian]

1. Did it previously run fine, or was it like this from the start?
2. Are there any background processes running on hers that aren't on Mom's?
3. What message does it give when Vista won't allow the update?
4. Is WoW completely patched on both?
5. Are all of Vista's patches applied? (Including SP1)
6. What's the ping like while running the game? High lag could translate to bad FPS. Wired and wireless numbers.
7. Does running it on different graphical settings make a difference? Windowed vs. full screen? If not, it's not the graphics card.
8. Find a way to get the CPU/GPU usage monitored. Does it top out at 100% for everything? Is only one core being used?

1. From the start.
2. Mom has MORE now and her speed fr is still higher then mine. Not by much now but still better.
3. I'll get a screenshot...
4. Yes but I had to take it off Mom's since it was only a test.
5. All that I know of...
6. Latency 85, FR 14...as of right now. And thats for both.
7. Nope...so not graphic card huh?
8. Uh....How? See this is why I wanted you to post something while I was there Steele...

[Broomjockey]

Well, task manager has a CPU usage function. Run in windowed mode, and you can have task manager show over the game. For the GPU, you'll have to download a program that will manage it. Sorry, no suggestions.

And no, it doesn't sound like it's specifically your graphics card. The non-working update may help a bit once it works, but it doesn't sound like your card is crippled.

[lordlundar]

Also check your RAM usage. It's a common issue with laptops , as the integrated GPU shares RAM with the CPU, which might be causing problems as well.

[Aethian]

Also check your RAM usage. It's a common issue with laptops , as the integrated GPU shares RAM with the CPU, which might be causing problems as well.

Ummmmmm ok?

[SteeleDragon78]

Also check your RAM usage. It's a common issue with laptops , as the integrated GPU shares RAM with the CPU, which might be causing problems as well.

checked that while she was here, with wow runing it only used 2.29gb out of the 4 installed.

[Aethian]

Loaded up WoW with Task Manager up one CPU was MAXED while the other never got over 20%. When it fully loaded and I was in the DK starting area on a brand new toon on a sever I'm not normally on....I was using 60% to 80% CPU with the one being maxed and the second...not so much.

So are my two CPU's not talking to eachother right? Loaded a movie up on Mom's and watched her CPU usuage...both moved at the same time and the movie ran fine. Loaded the same movie up on mine and for a few seconds that one CPU maxed and the other did nothing and then both quieted down.

[lordlundar]

When you say not so much, can you give a range? It's not uncommon for one to be high and one to be lower, but if one's near max and one's sitting at a constant 5-10%, then the cores aren't being optimized.

(I just tested on my dual core, a difference fluctuating of 30% is not uncommon)

Have you also checked on the WoW tech support boards? If it's just WoW doing this, then they might have more info.