What is bottle necking my system?

I have the following:

i7 720QM CPU
8GB RAM
ATI 5850
OCZ SSD 120GB

I have been playing wow for some time and recently since the release of Mist of Panda's my fps has dropped and my system appears to be struggling even dropping some of the options down such as shadows, water reflections and shadows.

My wife has a new Asus system which is running.

i5 2.5ghz
Nvidia 635m
6gb RAM
750gb HDD

Her system runs wow very close to ultra settings where mine is a mixture of good, high and fair settings.

I am trying to work out if I need to replace my GPU or CPU, my ATI5850 has been overclocked to 740/1050 (down volted) and it still has trouble.

Any advice would be welcome.

 

nothing is bottle necking your system. make sure temps are fine and make sure the laptop not dropping into stealth mode. btw is that ssd drive the agility 3 ?

 

you shouldnt have to undervolt that gpu for the OC you have. I can easily get a stable oc of 750/1100 for endless hours of gaming max temp 75c with worn out/dirty thermal pads and my poor paste job. I understand all cards are different to an extent. Brw what drivers are you on? I've tested several drivers up to 12.6, with 11.7 being the most stable and best performance. Havent tried the newer drivers. What are your temps like?

 

I'd take khetiks advice and check your drivers.

 

My temps do not exceed 75c on the GPU and I cannot see that anything is throttling the computer.

I have tested the latest ATI beta drivers which didn't make any difference at all.

Stealth mode is off

My SSD is the Agility 2 if I recall for the guy that asked.

I'm still puzzled, does anyone else play wow with this card???

 

The last updates made to WOW were pretty much about graphic quality, it could be time to get a different card but make sure you press the stealth mode while in the game to see if there is any changes to the performance. Also here are some gaming tips from our support team.

 

Try unplugging your ac adaptor from the laptop and plugging it back in while in game. This solved my "stuck in stealth mode" issue. another option is download GPU-Z and watch the clock speeds tab while running the game. you should be 700mhz gpu and 1000mhz Vram. If you are 150/300 or 300/400 (cant remember exactly the numbers) then you are in stealth mode and you need to check you power etc settings. Video drivers are also huge. I just download the AMD mobile catalyst package and it installs and runs perfectly for me.

 

The 635M shouldn't have anymore horsepower than the 5850 but it is a newer card with a more efficient modern architecture which obviously will work better with new features in games. The match up however should still be in the 5850's favour especially with an OC.

Also in the CPU department although you have twice as many threads on your i7 your wife's i5 can run 4 threads at a much higher frequency. Many games rarely tax a 8 thread processor meaning a faster clocked i5 could deliver better performance over fewer threads.

To answer your original question therefore which noone has done yet it seems. Your CPU is the bottleneck. Please get a 920XM. There are brand new ES and QS chips for sale on ebay at bargain prices. The 920XM can literally double your performance as it can be OCed to over 3ghz even when running 8 threads, whereas the i7 720qm is limited to just 1.73ghz max over 8 threads. That is nearly a 100% boost in performance not to mention you get a little extra lvl 3 cache up from 6mb to 8mb. The cooling in the M15x for the CPU is excellent and can cool the chip very well. 3.33ghz across all 8 threads is attainable and stable!

 

are you being serious ? a i7 720QM CPU is the bottleneck in his system running a i7 720QM CPU ? most stupidest comment i've ever read on this forums, no offense "king of interns". i know a great deal of friends that play that game with far less spec laptops without issue period ! it will be a driver issue. but the cpu is NOT the bottleneck period.
his system specs are very good, espically for wow.
op needs to check his drivers, make use a different ati driver, just make sure you remove older driver correctly first.

ps. just so you know as much as i hate wow i have it install and runs flawlessly on my Nvidia gtx260m for my kids.

 

you are looking at this from wrong angle. are you saying that 920Xm would not improve the system speed at any task at a noticeable degree?

 

i guess my reply to "king of interns" comment was/is somewhat aggressive and i must appologies for it, it was not my intention. but the ops specs are perfectly fine to play the game.
"dovy" a cpu upgrade to a 920XM would be a very large improvement over the 720QM as would say upgrading his 5850m to say 6970m or even the 7970m, i think everyone will agree that goes without saying.
but in the ops comments it sounds like he just wants to play the game without issue, and if that is just the case a full upgrade to thoses specs is expensive and not required if its just to play that game as his specs are more than good enough.
but if the op was after a upgrade to do other things as well as play the game, then sure i believe both mine and other peoples reply would be different.


World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria System Requirements


Minimum System Requirements
PC MAC
Operating System Windows XP/Vista/7 with latest service pack Mac OS X 10.7.3
CPU Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2 Intel Core 2 Duo
Video NVIDIA GeForce 6800 NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Memory 2 GB RAM (1 GB Windows XP)
Storage 25 GB available hard drive space
Internet Broadband internet connection
Input Keyboard and mouse required. Other input devices are not supported.

Recommended System Requirements
PC MAC
Operating System Windows 7 64-bit with latest service pack Mac OS X 10.7.x (latest version)
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.6GHz or better Intel Core i3 or better
Video NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or better ATI Radeon HD 5670 or better
Memory 4 GB RAM
Input Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel.

 

I answered the OP's original question honestly. The CPU is indeed the bottleneck in his specced M15x. If I am wrong please point that out. Stupidest comment on the fourm? I think not!

The 720qm should be able to play WOW no problem but that wasn't the question I read in the title of this thread and to be honest I didn't read about him playing WOW (must have skim read past that). However even WOW in its latest iteration can tax a multi core processor when there is alot going on so an upgrade wouldn't be that shabby.

Don't worry batfinks we all get carried away sometimes I know I have!

 

I had the "stuck in stealth mode" issue and unplugging and plugging back in the charger works.

usually stealth mode is the issue for most dip in frames, MoP didn't get that big of a visual upgrade from cata

 

I play wow with a similar setup, and routinely play with 50-100 fps. Stealth mode seems to toggle itself on automatically, so I make sure to turn it on and off several times to make sure it is off. My son also plays wow with his alienware, 720qm, 260m card, and his fps were averaging between 20-30. When he used my ac adapter his fps went way up. We called Dell and got him a new adapter, which solved his problems. Another thing you can try, which sounds silly but can make a huge difference is disabling add-ons. Even basic ones like recount can have a huge impact on your in game performance.

Tom

 

games like wow won't benefit more with a faster processor, bottlenecks op is experiencing could be a number of things.

anti virus running on the background, driver issues, read/writes on the hdd.

there's also the lack of information with regards to when the fps drops like during raids? in towns with over 100 players? or even if you're alone casting a spell and your fps suddenly drops.

I suggest to backup everything first and do a clean install with fresh drivers and minimal programs running, this way you can isolate the issue by software then hardware (even wow add-ons could affect fps)



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