Help me!

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DarthFerret

Guest
Ok, I know that there are some pretty computer savy people here, so I will ask it here as well as some other tech forums.

I am using a Toshiba Sattelite L305 laptop. I play World of Warcraft on it. It has an integrated graphics card (by intel). And I am seeing a horrible framerate recently. I have read a couple of things about changing memory allocation in the BIOS, but have not determined if this is what I need to try. It seems as if most of the time the refer to Windows XP. Unfortunately, I am running Vista. Will this work to dedicate more physical memory to the video card so that everything runs smoother. I know vista is a memory hog, and I really need to get this issue fixed.

Why? Because I am extreemly competitive in WOW. I am the 5th ranked mage on my server, and I am in the top 75 overall. I do not want to lose that status because of a computer issue. If I had the ability to do so, I already would have installed XP on this computer, however I do not own a copy of it and do not have the financial resources to get one at this time. (not even sure if they sell it anymore). I know a laptop is not the ideal gaming device, however it is what I have. I have never had an issue with this before (and have played for over 2 years). Any ideas guys?
 
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Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I have no idea but...

When you say "recently", you mean you've been playing with this setup for a while now and it's just started? You haven't added or changed anything to the laptop, software or hardware-wise?
 
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EricBess

Guest
Yeah, I have the same question as Spidey. If it has been working on this laptop for some time, then what has changed?

As for the question - in general, the graphics for games like WoW are very memory intensive, so increasing the amount of memory makes it run smoother because it doesn't need to do as much swapping. However, since you are running a laptop, you don't have the option of simply getting a better graphics card and you are running on a limited amount of memory. If the OS gets slowed down in an attempt to speed up the video, it won't help much, but you can experiement to find how much you can allocate before that happens. You can try adding another memory card if that's an option.

Because you are allocating normal RAM to video, it still travels over the bus, so you are limited by the bus speed as well, which is not as fast as direct memory, so even if you balance it, it won't be as smooth as if you had a better graphics card.
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
The only change was a recent game patch to wow. That was put out by Blizzard (and is required to run). Also just found out that it might be a video driver issue. Some of the drivers (especially those by NVIDIA, but that is not what I have) will actually allocate the memory themselves. According to my chip-set properties, the range of memory that it can use is from 8M - 358M. However, because of the way vista works and the way the integrated chip works, this is a fluctuating memory. Also discovered that the physical memory is on a first come first served basis. If something calls up that memory, nothing else can have it. Still looking for solutions. I am not currently at home at my laptop, so will have to try to test a few things out this afternoon.
 
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Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
So the game was running fine, you ran the patch, and the now the game is slow? Is that correct?
 
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EricBess

Guest
If it is a recent patch to WoW, then there may be (or soon to be) an update to the driver as well. Blizzard holds a lot of weight, so if a driver isn't compatible with WoW, you can bet that the hardware producers take that seriously.

If you know what your video card is, find their website and see if there is an update to the driver. You would be surprized how often they put out driver updates and the only way to know about it is for you to look for it. I guess they figure that if something is working well enough that you don't need to look, then it really doesn't matter if you have the update or not.
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
I actually finally got around to that. Blizzard is now working with me directly to find out what the issue actually is. I sent them a ton of error reports and log reports today. Maybe they can figure this out.
 
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Modus Pwnens

Guest
From what I've been able to find out, the GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) from Intel isn't really suitable to play games on. Have you tried going down to lower graphical settings?
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
I actually have the game fully set to the lowest possible settings. Blizzard has assured me that it "should" run fine on my system. Not blazing fast, but playable. As I said, thier tech support is working on my problem.
 
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