• Registered: 2010-09-14
  • Posts: 3

Topic: Max Performance Help.

Hi,

I have done a few tweaks to my N10j to help up the gaming performance a bit and I'm still trying to get it to run better. Here's what I've done:

-OC'd to 2.0ghz
-Windows XP Home
-Set nVidia graphics settings to performance
-Installed DirectX 10

At the moment, the game I'm trying to get running better is WoW. I just had a few questions to try and make it run overall a lot better.

-How significant would pushing an additional .1ghz out of my processor affect anything?
-Would Windows 7 be better to run? Or is there a small, lite version of Windows XP I can use?
-Is there specific things I can do in the control panel to tweak for better performance? If so what, and what does it do?
-Is the fact that I'm Dual-booting with Ubuntu affecting anything?
-On WoW's video settings, what is Multi-sampling and what should it be set at for best performance?
-Does Audio have any effect on FPS?
-How significant of a drop does Addon's have to framerate? Currently I use Sexymap, xperl, Grid, Clique, quartz,pratt messenger, bagnon, titan panel, Satrina Buff Mod, DBM and Dominoes.
-Is there a good way to tell what the bare minimum should be running in the background for the OS and a way to clean out stuff that isn't needed?

A lot of this is probably rather noobish questioning but I just want to make the best of my n10, I've also tried OCing me GPU to no real avail, thanks for you time.

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2 Reply by Solitaire (edited by Solitaire 2010-09-14 04:06:03)

  • Registered: 2009-12-04
  • Posts: 11

Re: Max Performance Help.

I use windows 7.  I don't have many issues in WOW.  I can only overclock to 1.9 but most of the time I don't even bother.  My settings are pretty modest but it still looks great and runs smooth.  Of course I play mostly low level stuff so I can't tell you anything about raiding.

I'd say windows 7 is the best I've tried if you don't mind the resolution limit.  Some people seem to be able to bypass it but the only way I have been able to get 1024x768 is on xp.

I've used xp, vista, windows 7, and even got WOW running on Jollycloud using wine.  It was playable but I wouldn't recommend it.

I didn't play WOW much in xp and I don't use add ons.  I think I just did the trial to see how it ran.  I don't think the audio settings would do much.  For me 1.6 runs fine so I don't know why you would need to really push the overclock past 2.0 unless you are one of the fortunate who can do so without any issues.

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  • From: Belgium
  • Registered: 2009-02-28
  • Posts: 621
  • User Karma: 27

Re: Max Performance Help.

I concur with Solitaire, Windows XP and 7 are mostly even-matched when it comes to game-performance. The dual-boot with Ubuntu has no effect on frame-rate, so just keep using Linux my man  wink

I'm however really curious about your claim of installing DirectX 10. First and foremost, Dx10 does not work on XP, you need Vista/7 for that. And secondly, WoW does not use Dx10, its engine is entirely rendered through Dx9 (it is an old game by any standard).

The extra 100Mhz won't do you much good and probably wouldn't be as stable. But it doesn't hurt to try of course!

About multi-sampling, I'm a bit time-constrained here so I'll explain what bells it rings at the moment, without looking anything up. As far as I know, it relates to how textures are rendered in the game. If I'm correct, there should be bilinair/trilinair options there and maybe a bunch of others. Biliniair is the least amount of work to get textures rendered real-time, but it also will look like that, if you know what I mean... Either way, it's a graphical feature that takes up system resources, so you might want to try turning it off.

Don't make me "touch" you :-D

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  • Registered: 2010-09-14
  • Posts: 3

Re: Max Performance Help.

I didn't think DX10 worked for XP either but I found it here and it didn't seem to make the game look any better, which is fine, but it did seem to run better...

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5 Reply by darkjeric (edited by darkjeric 2010-09-14 16:57:25)

  • From: Belgium
  • Registered: 2009-02-28
  • Posts: 621
  • User Karma: 27

Re: Max Performance Help.

Laalipop wrote:

I didn't think DX10 worked for XP either but I found it here and it didn't seem to make the game look any better, which is fine, but it did seem to run better...

Hah yes, I figured you might be referring to that. That project has been long since abandoned as it was just too much work for one guy alone. Besides, it doesn't do what you think it does. It does not make Dx10-effects available on Windows XP. It just looks for Dx10-code that can't be rendered by Dx9 and turns it into machine code so it can be rendered with none-Dx10-compatible hardware. Weirdly enough, this makes it run faster than Dx10, but it won't look half as good. The guy just wanted to make sure that when games started being released that were Dx10-only, he wasn't going to be forced to use Windows Vista to run them.

And coming back to my original point, WoW does not use Dx10, it hardly uses Dx9-effects (WoW is old!). So I think any improvement in performance you noticed was merely a misperception, maybe because you wanted it so bad  wink

Don't make me "touch" you :-D

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  • Registered: 2010-09-14
  • Posts: 3

Re: Max Performance Help.

darkjeric wrote:

WoW is old!

Right, but the current endgame is very taxing as opposed to the classic stuff, which was really my goal.

A bit of an update, I did a complete wipe/reinstall last night, and found a nifty thread on here to help optimize and sure enough I was walking around WOTLK areas with a full 60FPS, just got my OC working again and that seems to be all I needed to use.

Also while I'm here can I get some form of an opinion on a program called Game Booster? I can't figure out if it really does anything or not...

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  • From: Belgium
  • Registered: 2009-02-28
  • Posts: 621
  • User Karma: 27

Re: Max Performance Help.

It can help if you have lots of services and processes in the background you don't really need. All the program does really is shutdown everything you don't need to run the game. When the program was in BETA, there were sometimes problems it closed down a service needed for Wireless Internet, so the game couldn't connect to the internet. But it has come a long way since then, and now it usually works as advertised. If it will improve performance depends largely on the amount of things that you had running in the background before.

Don't make me "touch" you :-D

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  • Registered: 2009-07-26
  • Posts: 381
  • User Karma: 14

Re: Max Performance Help.

There is also TuneUp Utilities 2010's Turbo Mode, which effectively does the same thing, even turning down the pretty graphics of Xp.

I use both when gaming, but the performance gain is ~3% (in 3dMark scores). If you need every little bit of performance you can get, then you can certainly try them.

Asus N10Jc @ 2.06 Ghz - XP / 7 Dual - 2GB 667Mhz RAM - WD Scorpio Blue 250Gb - FSB:DRAM 1:2 - CVV 1.1V

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  • From: Belgium
  • Registered: 2009-02-28
  • Posts: 621
  • User Karma: 27

Re: Max Performance Help.

@Crossbourne: The TuneUp Utilities does indeed do the same thing. But as much as I loved that software in the past, the 2010 was short-lived on my PC. Since this most recent version, it runs constantly in the background with 3 services and one process, and there's no way to kill it. I don't want that running all the time, the program is great for cleaning up but I want to be in control of WHEN the tidying happens. On my N10, I've put back the 2009 edition and I gained a few percents of RAM back. Though I think on XP it wouldn't matter that much, on my Win7 install I've noticed the difference.

Don't make me "touch" you :-D

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