Intel gm965 mobile and World of Warcraft

drake22 · ‎10-09-2008

I just got a new laptop (sony vaio VGN-FZ150E) and want to play World of Warcraft on it. It seems like I am not getting the performance that I should out of this laptop. I am getting roughly 10-25 fps at 1280x800 and minimum settings. Normally, I would be fine with this performance and just assume that is all that this laptop can do.

However, I tried playing WoW on a similar laptop with a slower processor (1.66 vs 2.00 ghz dual core) and a last-gen intel graphics chip (gma950 instead of 965). I get the exact same performance on that laptop with the same settings and in the same areas. This baffles me since the 965 has hardware T&L and the 950 does not. Shouldn't the performance be better on mine? Why isn't it?

My first guess is that the memory that the DVMT allocates on mine is less and that is slowing it down. According to msinfo32, my laptop is using 128mb memory. The other laptop is using 254mb. Is there any way I can manually adjust how much memory my laptop is allocating? I have plenty of memory (2gb) and would be fine permanently allocating 384mb for this graphics card. Especially since I dual boot windows xp and vista, I could just set XP to do 384mb (the only reason I use XP is for WoW) and Vista to use DVMT's auto-allocation.

My other guess is that for some reason WoW is still using software T&L even though HW T&L is available. Is there anyway to check that or manually set the card to always use hardware T&L?

Thanks.

7oby · ‎10-10-2008

Well, actually Software T&L is in certain cases faster on X3100 (GM965) than Hardware T&L, which can be seen by reading this document:

http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/whitepaper/318888.pdf

This document also includes some benchmarks SW T&L vs. HW T&L for particular games. And it claimes World of Warcraft runs better with Software T&L. Indeed if you check your installation (e.g. the registry or your graphics driver .inf file), you'll see that WoW is ran with Software T&L:

HKR,, ~WoW.exe, %REG_DWORD%, 1

If you want to try HW T&L the easiest way without messing with the registry is to rename your WoW.exe e.g. to WoW_HWTL.exe

By reading section "Dynamic Video Memory" in this document:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gma-3000-and-x3000-developers-guide

you do understand that DVMT works quiete different in XP compared to Vista. Since the DVMT allocation for XP relies on the BIOS, which you can hardly change, I suggest trying Vista. In this case you'll have the full 384MB allocated for WoW in case it should turn out that's necessary.

You wrote "the only reason I use XP is for WoW". Why not playing WoW with Vista? Are the current Vista v15.11.2 intel drivers not good for WoW?

delons · ‎10-10-2008

Quoting - drake22

I just got a new laptop (sony vaio VGN-FZ150E) and want to play World of Warcraft on it. It seems like I am not getting the performance that I should out of this laptop. I am getting roughly 10-25 fps at 1280x800 and minimum settings. Normally, I would be fine with this performance and just assume that is all that this laptop can do.

However, I tried playing WoW on a similar laptop with a slower processor (1.66 vs 2.00 ghz dual core) and a last-gen intel graphics chip (gma950 instead of 965). I get the exact same performance on that laptop with the same settings and in the same areas. This baffles me since the 965 has hardware T&L and the 950 does not. Shouldn't the performance be better on mine? Why isn't it?

My first guess is that the memory that the DVMT allocates on mine is less and that is slowing it down. According to msinfo32, my laptop is using 128mb memory. The other laptop is using 254mb. Is there any way I can manually adjust how much memory my laptop is allocating? I have plenty of memory (2gb) and would be fine permanently allocating 384mb for this graphics card. Especially since I dual boot windows xp and vista, I could just set XP to do 384mb (the only reason I use XP is for WoW) and Vista to use DVMT's auto-allocation.

My other guess is that for some reason WoW is still using software T&L even though HW T&L is available. Is there anyway to check that or manually set the card to always use hardware T&L?

Thanks.

Maybe you guys couls help me, I am running Autodesk Maya 2008 on a HP6710b compaq with 3gb ram and winxp, i have just updated my intel 965GM drivers and now, no matter what opengl settings i use it crashes with this error..............PLEASE COULD YOU HELP

Maya Crash Report
//=====================================================

Exception code: C0000005: ACCESS_VIOLATION - illegal read at address 0x00000000
Fault address: 165155A3 in C:WINDOWSsystem32ig4dev32.dll
0001:000145A3 Logical offset (see .map file for location)

Registers:
EAX:00000000
EBX:00000000
ECX:00142418
EDX:179201C1
ESI:00000006
EDI:1639AD98
CS:EIP:001B:165155A3
SS:ESP:0023:0104EA28 EBP:00142418
DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:003B GS:0000
Flags:00010206

Call stack:
(0) section:offset Address Frame
0001:000145A3 0x165155A3 0x00000000
End of stack

//crash file = C:DOCUME~1DelonsLOCALS~1TempMayaCrashLog081007.2024.log
//version =
//cut = Mon 02/25/2008, 200802250025

//====================================================
//Memory usage:
// 2048.000 Mb Free Memory
// 2048.000 Mb Free Swap
// 187.809 Mb Current
// 26.250 Mb MEL
// 0.131 Mb arguments
// 0.313 Mb Data Blocks
// 0.124 Mb Transforms
//====================================================

drake22 · ‎10-16-2008

To first answer your question about Windows XP, I wanted to play WoW on XP because in my experience games run about 10% faster on XP than Vista. I do not really know why, but it is pretty much universally true. Seeing as how this is not the most powerful laptop to ever exist I want to squeeze every last frame I can.

Tried using HW T&L, but you (and Intel) were right. It ran slower. I guess I am stuck using Vista for WoW, not the worst thing in the world but it just means I am running slightly slower than I could.

Which leads me to the next issue. WoW tech support suggested trying WoW in OpenGL mode, but I get an extremely similar error to delons when I try that (in both XP and Vista). Any suggestions? Thanks.

David

EDIT: Instead of that error (since the 3.0.2 patch to WoW), wow appears to be running since the sound is playing and everything, but it just shows a picture of the desktop staticly (cant move the cursor etc). If I alt-tab out of WoW and back into it, it shows a black screen and stays there. The game is running since I can hear the sound, but graphics aren't functioning in OpenGL mode.

7oby · ‎10-17-2008

I've read multiple times now that the OpenGL 2.0 enabled drivers fail on some games, which haven't been failing with some older OpenGL 1.5 driver. E.g. here (although it's XP, but the OpenGL driver code is at least 99% shared between XP and Vista).

If you're very patient you might want to try the drivers before OpenGL 2.0 support. I guess that's v15.9.2 or something like that.

drake22 · ‎10-20-2008

Thanks guys! You have been a huge help. I am currently using my graphics drivers provided by the manufacturer that came from the laptop ( from 5/15/2007) and they work great! I am getting better performance overall (1-2fps more) and better opengl support (WoW in opengl mode plays, but not as well as in DX). Thanks.

games965 · ‎04-05-2010

I just felt like I had to tell you guys about my progress from readign these solutions, especially the HW T&L one!

Im using windows 7 ultimate 32-bit and as my name says, I got the mobile intel 965 express chipset.

I've had low framerates in wow before, I topped like 50 fps in a non-crowded room. I installed the latest drivers for win7 and renamed wow.exe > wow_HWTL. The game runs great, 25-40 FPS outdoor "world" and The game is somehow smoother now.

So thanks alot for this solution :)