general performance question when playing World of Warcraft.

Question

I own two Dells now. My first was built to play Doom3 (I like games...) and is a desktop with 3.2 P IV 1G ram and high end graphics card. It plays World of Warcraft without breaking issue. I just purchased an Inspiron 6000 with a 1.5 Celeron, 512MB ram and the only graphics available. I now am addicted to World of Warcraft (WOW) and play in the evenings. I will not be playing it on the laptop much but based on the modest requirements of WOW and the specs of the Inspiron I assumed it would run fine. I loaded it last nite and got the 220MB of patches installed only to find that it was choppy play. The lag meter did not show a network problem and it did not act as though it was a network delay issue. It was consistently choppy in movement and was pounding on the disk the whole time. I stayed in for about 5 minutes and it got no better. It was as if I was watching a slide show instead of smooth play. The lag throughout the time I was in was between 150MS and 180MS (similar to the lag on the desktop).

Anyone have experience with WOW and an Inspiron? I would have thought the laptop could play the game, it is no where near the complexity of most newer games.

Some of my thoughts. Maybe the game can't get enough of the memory to cache and is reading from the disk too much. Maybe I did not stay in long enough for it to cache enough. Maybe I need the defrag the disk after loading the game for smoother data access.

Any other ideas? I am not going to play the game much on the laptop but I am now more concerned that I purchased an underpowered laptop for the money....

Thanks for any feedback.

Carl

Drassnia · Answer

Good ideas...

- defrag after every patch, takes a while but it's worth it.

- be sure to have at least 2 gb free on your HD, the more swap space the better :)

- Be sure to keep a fan running...refer to the I9100 who's fan just died.

Honestly though, for a 1.5 celeron it's not gonna be particularly fast anyway..just lower the graphical options in WoW.

cmercer · Answer

Thanks for the input. I didn't even think to check the video settings in the game. I am used to games setting them based on the analysis of the system. I will check that when I can. I have also read some posts that said the built in graphics for the laptops is not powerful enough. Does anyone know if the Inspiron 6000 can accept a graphic card or am I stuck with the built-in? If it can, what is the name of the upgrade graphics card for the inspiron 6000?

Thanks

Carl

bacillus · Answer

If you bought a 6000 with an onboard graphics card then you are at a dead-end in terms of video upgrade as that motherboard will not accept a discrete video card. Message Edited by bacillus on 09-01-2005 04:59 PM

Liifer · Answer

I have a inspiron 5150, with 512 ram and a Gforce 5200. It runs fine, choppy only Sometimes in the world, but mostly always choppy in Ironforge, the main city with the most people. My friend jsut bought the XPS Gen 2 and it runs smoother than anything i've ever seen. He has 1 gig ram and the 6800 nvidia card. My Old desktop has 1gb ram but a lame 7000 ATI series card, so it runs smooth latency wise, its jsut the graphics that lags out when its choppy, and I also had to download a thirdparty patch just for it to support my card. My friend has an old 2400 dimension Dell, and the funny thing is the on board graphics is not supported at all, its one model lower than what WoW supports, and it still runs it (better than my vidcard does, and my friend had 640 ram ;)   Anyhowm you will surely need a new vid card and more ram. I need more ram in my inspiron, but reading the reviews about all the 5150s being doomed, i dont think its worth the upgrade now =/ Good luck to you, though. =)

cmercer · Answer

Thanks for all the input.  I am disapointed that I can not upgrade the graphics card.  This is a very silly design to have a line of laptops (6000) where some can accept a card and some can not.  I would have thought that that would be two different lines. I probably would not have purchased this laptop had I known. My bad for not doing the research.  I have read that being in a town can cause choppy video and when I tested it I was in Stormwind (large town) so I will use a better test area.  I will also turn down the graphics and defrag the disk.  Thanks for all the input.     Carl

cherub_genesis4 · Answer

If you're really good in upgrading stuff, you could look for a Dell Inspiron Mobo at eBay that has a slot for a video card. However, it would be an expensive and complex upgrade. Just wait for a couple months when the price starts to drop.       Cherub

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general performance question when playing World of Warcraft.

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