I have an Alienware Area 51 7700 that seems to stutter on WOW.

Here are the specs for the comp.

P4 3.6ghz
2 gigs OCZ ram
2 7200 rpm HD in Raid 0
Nvidia Geforce GO 6800 ultra
1600 x 1050 display
yadda yadda yadda

Wow stutters on my laptop when fighting, mostly in instances. I can understand when I run through Org and have to load up 100 chars if it pauses for 1 second, but when I'm running a lowbie through Marauden 5 man, and it freezes for a second in a 5 man instance... well it drives me nuts.

I've tried everything I can think of to fix the stuttering problem, I belive it's driver related, but I can't seem to find ANY drivers that fix the problem.

I've tried every stock driver that Alienware offers, as well as other modded drivers from laptopvideo2go.com and guru3d.com even tried the drivers from Dell for their 6800 ultras.

Can anyone with a similar system confirm the stuttering?

I've had the video card switched out, as well as the mobo, I've switched ram, the only component I haven't replaced is the hard drives which I'm fairly certan they aren't the problem. They benchmark just fine.

This game dosn't feeze or lag like that on my two other systems one of which is a laptop that is alot worse hardware wise, the other is a desktop that's alittle nicer.

Both other systems never freeze or chop ever, but both use ATI video cards.

I've tried changing every graphical setting in the game, no shaders, no lighting, no smooth mouse, no tripple buffer... every combo and it still glitched.

I don't think it's the soundcard because i've switched from onboad sound to a usb sound card same results.

If anyone has a similar laptop with now stuttering please post what drivers your using.

Thanks for your help all!... THIS PROBLEM IS DRIVING ME NUTS.


Another note... I thought it was the soundcard for a while, but i've sence tried playing with a usb soundcard and have the same problems... so I think that eliminates that...

Does it stutter throughout the instance or just at the beginning when your loading up?
Are you running any UI mods, that can suck up system resources like crazy. Ive never had any problems running WoW with a lower end desktop. (video card was a radeon 9600) The only issue was in Ironforge because of the population.

That's another game i haven't played. I'm going to have to get WoW. is it really all that?

In the World of Warcraft character screen there is a button on the bottom left for "Addons." In there you will find a setting for how much RAM to allocate for addons, set it to something like 64 or higher if you are running a lot of them.

Also, if you are using the Khaos/Cosmos package (or any package that might have this) disable the Libram addon. I've personally had problems with that one along the lines of pauses when doing simple things like accepting a quest or opening a pane.


And yes WoW is all that.

As I staited before the game runs fine on my crappier laptop, and never freezes ever on my desktop.

I do run addons, but I've disabled them and tested it... with the same results. The UI addon's are not the problem. I've also given them 100mb of memory.

Here is a better description of the problem.

I thought it was sound related, because when i would attack a character it would freeze a second right when the new sound effect would load. Or when Other people start fighting. But then it runs smooth for a while... it's almost like it's trying to pull the sound effects off the HD, and that's what's pausing it. But, I used a different sound card (USB sound card) and it still has the same problem. I even disabled the sounds in wow, and it still stutters.

It also lags when I do other little things, like open my backpacks for the first time, and seems to be worse when i'm in a party than when I'm running solo.

The pauses are only for a split second, but just enough to annoy me, and some pauses are longer than others. None are longer than a second.

I did try running the game using opengl drivers last night, and from what I noticed it was gone... although I didn't have alot of time to test it, and the game is based on directx not opengl so the frame rate was about 10-15 fps lower using opengl.

I'm fairly certain it's graphical drivers... i just cant find a way to fix it.

I will try older drivers, I hear the 69 series work ok... cause 70's and 80's aren't workin at all.

Please if you read anything about this, or know a solution to this let me know.

You have 2gb of RAM try disabling your page file so the game doesn't have to access the HD as much. I have my system setup that way and I never get lag (except for 1 or 2 seconds when entering/leaving ironforge on a gryphon).

If that starts causing other problems (or doesn't help) you can try setting your RAM CAS to 2.5 as WoW is quite picky about RAM timings when you want it to work flawlessly.

I have already tried turning off my pagefile... no luck. Still the same problems.

I can't edit the cas timings to my knowledge on my alienware system. There are no settings that are adjustable on the user end.

Yeah, after browsing through the WoW Tech forums it seems the game is having poor performance/weird issues with 6000 series Nvidia cards. This is also compounded with it being a mobile implementation of that series. (Blizz also isn't supporting laptop issues apparently). I would try as many drivers as humanly possible if you haven't already, or wait for a fix from Blizzard's end that addresses the 6000 series problems.

Some people have had luck with the Omega drivers (we can't officially recommend or support that), and another random Blizz post suggests rolling all the way back to the 66.xx forceware

If it's just WoW giving you these problems and the ATI's play the game fine on your other comps, it might just be the 6000 card not playing nice with WoW.

You're certainly not alone on this one, but from quickly looking at the other posts/known issue threads it could be considerably worse.

Yea, thanks for your help...

I run an IT business, and have built/maintained my own pc's now for the last 10 years...

I've been in the over clocking/using modded drivers scene for a while... it's just the support for mobile chipsets are horrable. I was hoping someone would post "Use (insert driver series here) they work perfect" but it seems nobodys figured this problem out.

I've tried everything you can think of except installing every driver made... (though I have tried probably 8 different ones)...

It's not a huge problem, i'm sure there are a few hundred thousand people out there that would love to have my system, and not bitch at all with the little stutters every now and then, but I'm used to a desktop machine that puts up 8k on 3Dmark05, and never stutters once ever... even in Razorgore with 100+ characters on the screen... and what's sad is I"m considering building a SLI rig even though I don't need to... Muhahaha.

Thanks for your help, it's now time to download, and install every nvidia driver since 50 series...

NVIDIA FTL.

Well at least with WoW NVIDIA 6000 series FTL. Even the older 5000 series users aren't getting many problems and the 7000 series are running along nicely (7800GT here with no probs.)

Hopefully Blizz/Nvidia figure it out and get a fix going soon.

Good luck