Vista - Trouble with New Laptop and games

Hey Guys,

I just bought a new laptop with vista preloaded on it and am having trouble
getting world of warcraft to run smoothly on it (2 year old game that runs
perfect on my desktop with a gforce57000, amd 2800, 768) Here are my new
laptop specs:

AMD Turionâ„¢ 64 X2 mobile technology TL-50
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 (288 shared)
1GB PC2-4200 DDR2
120GB Serial ATA hard drive

It will run, but is constantly choppy from what I feel is it bottlenecking -
is there anything I can do to better optimize vista running in the BG or is
the problem unrelated?

Thanks for any help
- Brandon

"Brandonk" <Brandonk@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:14186291-9704-48A1-9BB9-EF9AAF801B3E@microsoft.com...

> I just bought a new laptop with vista preloaded on it and am having
> trouble
> getting world of warcraft to run smoothly on it (2 year old game that runs
> perfect on my desktop with a gforce57000, amd 2800, 768) Here are my new
> laptop specs:
>
> AMD Turionâ„¢ 64 X2 mobile technology TL-50
> NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 (288 shared)
> 1GB PC2-4200 DDR2
> 120GB Serial ATA hard drive
>
> It will run, but is constantly choppy from what I feel is it
> bottlenecking -
> is there anything I can do to better optimize vista running in the BG or
> is
> the problem unrelated?

The GeForce 5700 is the faster chip outta the two, especially in WoW,
sharing the PC RAM only slows the 6150 down even more.

I play World of WarCraft on my M200 Tablet PC, which has a 1.8Ghz Pentium M,
1GB of RAM and a 32MB GeForce Go 5200. I need to turn everything off, and
then even in busy spots it is borderline unplayable, that's the same under
Vista and XP.

Other than making sure anti-aliasing and all the detail sliders are down
there's not much you can do other than waiting for newer drivers which may
boost performance a little bit. It's a pretty low-end card.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*

Thanks for the reply paul.

Do you think if I bought a gig more ram it would help? or is it just a gfx
card issue.

Are laptop grfx cards upgradable?

thanks,
brandon

"Paul Smith" wrote:

> "Brandonk" <Brandonk@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:14186291-9704-48A1-9BB9-EF9AAF801B3E@microsoft.com...
>
> > I just bought a new laptop with vista preloaded on it and am having
> > trouble
> > getting world of warcraft to run smoothly on it (2 year old game that runs
> > perfect on my desktop with a gforce57000, amd 2800, 768) Here are my new
> > laptop specs:
> >
> > AMD Turionâ„¢ 64 X2 mobile technology TL-50
> > NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 (288 shared)
> > 1GB PC2-4200 DDR2
> > 120GB Serial ATA hard drive
> >
> > It will run, but is constantly choppy from what I feel is it
> > bottlenecking -
> > is there anything I can do to better optimize vista running in the BG or
> > is
> > the problem unrelated?
>
> The GeForce 5700 is the faster chip outta the two, especially in WoW,
> sharing the PC RAM only slows the 6150 down even more.
>
> I play World of WarCraft on my M200 Tablet PC, which has a 1.8Ghz Pentium M,
> 1GB of RAM and a 32MB GeForce Go 5200. I need to turn everything off, and
> then even in busy spots it is borderline unplayable, that's the same under
> Vista and XP.
>
> Other than making sure anti-aliasing and all the detail sliders are down
> there's not much you can do other than waiting for newer drivers which may
> boost performance a little bit. It's a pretty low-end card.
>
> --
> Paul Smith,
> Yeovil, UK.
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
> http://www.windowsresource.net/
>
> *Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*
>
>

I'm also curious if a memory upgrade would help as well. Did you upgrade the
memory and did it help? Have you tried newer video drivers?

Thanks

"Gruss" <Gruss@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1362B602-AA36-4621-8B36-956AABCF488A@microsoft.com...
> I'm also curious if a memory upgrade would help as well. Did you upgrade
> the
> memory and did it help? Have you tried newer video drivers?
>
> Thanks

A memory upgrade DEFINITELY helps (especially if you have < 512 MB of RAM
installed). Before I had 512 MB of memory and as soon as I plugged in the 1
GB stick of DDR2 RAM into my laptop, giving me 1256 MB of system memory,
there was a significant boost in performance. Vista recognized the new
memory upon startup and enabled Vista Aero theme and also boosted my Windows
experience index from 2.9 to 3.7!

My programs began to load much faster now, including my games. I'm a pretty
big Counter-Strike: Source player and my frame rate drops are almost
nonexistent now. Lucky for Vista if the RAM didn't work for me I was going
to go back to Windows XP, it almost wasn't worth it for me.

If you want a new stick of RAM, go straight for the 1 GB stick. They're very
inexpensive now. I got mine from Newegg for about $40. Just make sure you
get a RAM stick that is compatible with your system. Newegg.com has an
online database of computer-specific RAM requirements so I definitely
recommend that website if you plan on purchasing RAM, or at least to
research what you need if your manufacturer's website makes it too difficult
for you to find out.

Good luck,
KSib

Thanks for the response, I have 1 GB right now, but I still think an upgrade
will help.

What I read on other sites is that the NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 drivers aren't
optimized for Vista yet (supposedly) and that's part of the problem.
According to their website they don't have drivers apart from the
manufacturer (like HP/Compaq) so hopefully that will help when they come out.