World of Warcraft on TP X60s

[sonne]

I have been playing World of Warcraft with my X40 a lot and everything was fine. So when I got my X60s I thought it would be much better and faster with the new system.

But it seems the support of the Mobile Intel 945GM Express chipset is not very stable. I keep crashing out of the game with the error "ialmrnt5 driver has stopped working" and need to reboot the whole system. Google shows a lot of results concering ialmrnt5 running into trouble with popular games. I already tried the latest Intel drivers and the Thinkpad System Update but without luck. I can still play WoW in windowed mode which is what Intel suggested as workaround for the Sims game, but I really hope they will eventually fix the problem.

Anybody here with the same problem?

[RS_003]

But you do get more FPS ?

Howmuch more ?

[sonne]

Well, I can tell you that all in all it is a LOT faster, but its hard to give definite numbers because it depends on the video settings (how much detail, texture etc.), the number of objects (including other players) around you and of course RAM. My X40 had 1GB DDR whereas the X60s has 1,5GB DDR2. With the X40 I had to reduce the video settings as much as possible and still had terrible (graphics) lag in Ironforge and also on a 40 people raid. Now I even can keep the default video settings without FPS ever going down too much.

However, here are some vague FPS values I remember:

Ironforge next to the mailbox, between bank and auction house
X40 1-6 FPS
X60s 5-12 FPS

Empty room in Ironforge
X40 20 FPS
X60s 40 FPS

Outdoor area
X40 12-15 FPS
X60s 19-25 FPS

Molten Core with 40 people raid
X40 2-12 FPS
X60s 8-23 FPS

[grouch808]

I'm thinking about getting a X60, but have some programs (my car's service manual and some diagnostic tools) that require a cd in the drive.

Do you hook up an optical drive or did you mount an iso using DAEMON tools? If you have an optical hooked up, which one do you use?

Thanks.

[sonne]

I have successfully hooked up a cheap external CD/DVD-RW drive with USB and used it for installing things and burning. No trouble at all. Just plugged it in and went ahead. I can't remember the brand name of the drive and I don't have it here, but I think all external cd/dvd drives with usb should be okay (especially if they claim to support any PC with Windows XP and you did not remove XP Pro from the thinkpad).

Edit: Just saw your subject. No, WoW does not require a CD to play. But I have used both the external CD/DVD-RW drive and ISO images on the harddrive for running other programs which require a CD in the drive during work.