Guest Lazaretto Posted May 2, 2006 Report Share Posted May 2, 2006 Hey all, I just picked up a new Dell XPS M170 with a 2.0 Pentium M, 2 gigs of ram, and a Geforce 7800gtx card. I'm running WOW at 1900x1200 with pretty much everything maxed settings wise. For the most part, I'm getting framerates in the 35-55 range pretty much everywhere. However, every now and then my fps drop momentarily down to like 8 and the system chugs like either an application is running or something else is up. I can't figure out what the deal is. I have notice my CPU pretty much rans at 100% most of my wow session and I've tried different drivers for the video card as well as killing Mcafee and most tasks in the task manager that I could kill. Does anyone else have a problem with fps spikes? It's not like it does it in raids or at certain predictible points it just does it randomly from what I can tell. What can I do to fix this? Shouldn't I be silky smooth in WOW pretty much all the time with this laptop? Thanks, Laz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fabrice Roux Posted May 2, 2006 Report Share Posted May 2, 2006 I don't play or know WOW but I guess the cause of spikes: I bet on background access to the hard disk drive to load the next surrounding cell/object/player. 100% CPU usage is like the basic value on video games... you'll need to cap your FPS really bad to ease on your ressources. The resolution you are playing the game is pretty extreme... if you used to play in 1024x768 the graphic card has 3 times more pixels to calculate per frame. Is this issue WOW specific? If it's not it could be a powerdown or an overheating of your GPU. The powerdown occurs when your power supply in on it's knees and the overheating when the cooling system hits its limits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Horseless Headman Posted May 5, 2006 Report Share Posted May 5, 2006 I'm having the exact same issue with Call of Duty 2. Running on a barebone with a Pentium M 760 2.0GhZ with 1GB of DDR RAM on a GeForce Go 6600. With maximum performance and all settings maxed (Dx 7, AA 4x, Antrisophic Filtering 8x, 1280x1024 and Textures set to Ultra) I can still get a decent 100FPS pretty much all the time, with the exception of a periodic drop to 20-40FPS. I think for CoD 2 background access to the hdd is out of the question. Now I've been trying to tweak the sh*t out of the little f*cker for almost a month now, and I seem to be able to 'minimize the damage' by ticking VSync at 72Hz, no AA / Antrisophic Filtering whatsoever and seriously scaled down textures. However, things are still far from smooth (and this is on a server with the no smoke/fog modification) and decreasing resolution or anything at all really doesn't seem to matter (although the intervals seem slightly longer). As far as I know WoW and CoD 2 use completely different rendering methods but I figured it was worth a shot :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sunstone1 Posted June 11, 2006 Report Share Posted June 11, 2006 Does the fan kick in heavily when the spike occurs? Usually this is a heat issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThE NiTz Posted June 12, 2006 Report Share Posted June 12, 2006 its most likely loading look at ur hd light thats what happens to me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted June 14, 2006 Report Share Posted June 14, 2006 same thing happens with me with wow. at first i thought i might have a short in my ac cord or something, but im not really sure. also i know its not a wow issue because i get it during ut2k4 too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Posted June 29, 2006 Report Share Posted June 29, 2006 It must be overheating or some other program is running, my brother runs the game with the same card/laptop and I think only 1 GB of RAM but this doesn't happen to him, a screenshot from task manager might help us. Sounds like you have some shoddy CPU hogging processes running. He runs it everything maxed at 1920x1200 with no speed issues, he even has a few programs running in the backround. Its kinda your responsibility to get rid of any CPU hogging junk off of your PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Zach Matus Posted August 20, 2006 Report Share Posted August 20, 2006 I also have a Dell XPS M170 with a 2.0 Pentium M, 2 gigs of ram, and a Geforce 7800gtx card. I dont play WOW but I play a similar game, EQ2. I too, am finding that I spike every so often for a few seconds. Other PC's on my network won't spike so I know the issue is not network related. I've looked at the processes and nothing seems to be taking up a lot of processor memory usage. I also tried turning off my virus scan software. Anywho... I thought I would just complain about the same problem =p Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddneal Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 I'm not an expert - just an intermediate level guy. I've been researching the same issue on the Nvidia site and WOW support forums. Appears it is a somewhat common probelm to have FPS lag in WOW. I had it really bad - like 3-7fps while playing, but with the help of the great LV2G folk I have my system running fairly smooth. But I have similiar issues with sudden FPS drops periodically. Maybe it is an issue with these types of games. Could the LV2G folks bring your extensive knowledge to bear on this problem and offer a solution? Thanks T Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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