World of Warcraft on the T4x - can it be done well?

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Gendou · #1 Post by **Gendou** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:27 am

T-Models are business-class, and as such are not designed for gaming. However, the Thinkpad design is so brilliant and well-thought-out that I fell in love with one the instant I picked up a T43 here at work.

I'm thinking about this for games like World of Warcraft and Civilization IV - not Quake IV or Half-Life II.

I've heard varying opinions on the gaming matter, ranging from 'decent gaming' to 'no way in hell,' even with a decent video card.
Problems I've heard of range from games not working with the FireGL cards (resolveable with Omega drivers?) to overheating and subsequent downclocking after extended gaming sessions (resolvable with a laptop cooler?)

So, who has any experience whatsoever gaming on Thinkpads - particularly those with the workstation-quality graphics cards? What is your opinion?

Has anyone run into any overheating problems? How long did you play on your T42/42p or T43/43p?

In World of Warcraft, what kind of resolution / eye-candy can be turned on with the higher-end graphics cards? What kind of frames-per-second can I expect? This is not just the workstation cards, but even the x700, x1400 and 9600 cards that some of the T-models have.

I'm looking for some specifics from the WoW players - what are the specs on your machines, and what were your graphics settings and frames-per-second?

Bols · #2 Post by **Bols** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:41 am

BF2 (which is of the more CPU and graphics-intensive games, I guess) worked OK on my T43 w/ X300. I overclocked the GPU from 300/230 to 400/300 without experiencing overheating. The OC gives an additional 20-30% performance in graphics-intensive games, which is a real bonus. I used the omega drivers, but the standard drivers has pretty much the same performance. Install ATITool on top of the standard drivers if OC is required.

1GB of ram is a definitive must for BF2, but possibly not for other games. HLII should run pretty well.

Gendou · #3 Post by **Gendou** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:26 am

Bols wrote:BF2 (which is of the more CPU and graphics-intensive games, I guess) worked OK on my T43 w/ X300.

What kind of frame-rates were you getting, and what were your graphics settings and resolution set to?

AIX · #4 Post by **AIX** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:14 am

I play Civilization IV on my T41 (1.6 GHz, 768MB, Radeon 7500 32MB), low details, large maps. It's ok for me (decent performance). The CPU temperature is ~70 Celsius degrees, measured with Mobilemeter.

stgreek · #5 Post by **stgreek** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 7:08 am

Gendou wrote: In World of Warcraft, what kind of resolution / eye-candy can be turned on with the higher-end graphics cards? What kind of frames-per-second can I expect? This is not just the workstation cards, but even the x700, x1400 and 9600 cards that some of the T-models have.

On my T42, with the 9600 and 1 GB RAM, I get constant 40 FPS on 1400x1050 with everything on except max terrain distance, which I tend to put towards the left end of the slider. Graphics are smooth, game is playable and the high-res is beautiful for screen estate and viewing pleasure.

If you get a model with 1024x768 I suspect that you will always be at the artificial maximum of 60FPS, so dont worry about it too much. Hell, I even managed to play it on my X31, albeit at 800x600 and with all eye-candy off

WoW is MUCH more memory intensive than it is graphics intensive (the difference between 512 MB and 2 GB RAM cannot be covered by *any* gfx card on the market).

Gendou · #6 Post by **Gendou** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 8:01 am

stgreek wrote:On my T42, with the 9600 and 1 GB RAM, I get constant 40 FPS on 1400x1050 with everything on except max terrain distance, which I tend to put towards the left end of the slider. Graphics are smooth, game is playable and the high-res is beautiful for screen estate and viewing pleasure.

That sounds about the way I have it set up to run on my home PC, actually. Wow.
So, a T42, 1gb RAM and a 9600 will run it fine... excellent.

Anyone else have any experience with this?

Paul Comeaux · #7 Post by **Paul Comeaux** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:27 am

I ran Anarchy for a few months (before realizing that this was a major time drain and colassal waste of time, but that's another story).

I did not overclock, I did not think about frame rates, etc. Anarchry is very graphic intensive, and I had to experiment with the game graphic settings. Anarchy has an extensive number of tweaks that can be made to what you see--background, shadows, distance at which object appear, resolution of foreground objects, and others. I ended up with things like shadows turned off, lower middle background resolution, etc., to get to the point where I experienced no lag.

Here's the point I want to make: With all options at highest resolution, my impression was "Wow!" For about 10 minutes after tweaking to lower settings, my reaction was, "golly, that kind of sucks." After about 10 minutes, I didn't even notice, and the lower graphic settings did not affect my enjoyment of the game at all. So if gaming is a secondary use for your computer, consider whether super graphics is really that important to you. Different story, of course, if multimedia and gaming is a primary use for your computer.

Chrispy · #8 Post by **Chrispy** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:50 pm

I have the computer in my sig and I can play WoW at 1024x768 with medium draw distance and shaders turned on and it runs at about 25 FPS. It is very playable unless I am in a very large city. You should be ok for WoW I would imagine.

greghead · #9 Post by **greghead** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:09 pm

I've run Halo on both a T41p and a T43. The T41p was a bit smoother (older GPU but 128 MB vs. 64 MB) but really they're pretty close. I've never experienced lag or jerkiness except multiplayer due to connection issues (the connection not the laptop).

In fact a couple colleagues and I have taken over the lobby or exec lounge at more than a few Hiltons overseas, all 3 of us with ThinkPads. We get weird looks, but whatever.

christopher_wolf · #10 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:08 pm

I have played Half Life 2 and a variety of other games on my T43; smooth as silk.

Tried out WoW and got pretty much the same results.

aaronpropst · #11 Post by **aaronpropst** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 1:24 pm

I play WoW on my old T41 on occasion.. (it's got 1.5 gigs of ram) it handles it alright.. surprisingly. It doesn't run the smoothest, but it's quite functional. (runs pretty hot.. i'm assuming because it really taxes the processor)

Gendou · #12 Post by **Gendou** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:55 pm

Paul Comeaux wrote:So if gaming is a secondary use for your computer, consider whether super graphics is really that important to you. Different story, of course, if multimedia and gaming is a primary use for your computer.

I always tell myself that it isn't... but in the end, it is.

Tempted · #13 Post by **Tempted** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 1:10 am

Nice to know that there are WoW players on the forum. I had to quit due to a very busy schedule and the game was getting boring for me.

Good luck!

burtonman · #14 Post by **burtonman** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:38 pm

No problems. It does run hot, but it's never been an issue for me.

Gendou · #15 Post by **Gendou** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 7:51 am

burtonman wrote:No problems. It does run hot, but it's never been an issue for me.

What model do you have?

stgreek · #16 Post by **stgreek** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 6:55 am

On a similar subject, has anyone tried to play WoW using a PCI/PCI-E card through the dock?

If WoW is playable with such a system, I will give my T42 to my girlfriend and use a dock to play on my X31. T42 has been relegated from my main machine to a gaming rig, [censored] X31 is soooo nice.

If the advanced Lenovo dock supports my X31, I was thinking of putting a PCI-express in the dock and try it like that, otherwise an ATI 9550 or ATI 9250 PCI in the Dock-II is my only option. Anyone tried any of these?

deforest · #17 Post by **deforest** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 2:47 pm

We're using a T23 on a dock where the dock has a pci ati radeo card.

Lucky · #18 Post by **Lucky** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:01 pm

Are system requirements for WoW higher than those for WC3?

I assume AOE III has higher system requirements than WoW?

deforest · #19 Post by **deforest** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:52 am

I'm using the docked T23 for AOE III too.

Jiro · #20 Post by **Jiro** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 9:56 pm

Yo, I play WoW and i use a T41 1.6ghz 640mb ram with radeon 7500 and it runs fine, for me, but runs pretty hot. Extremely stable too I like have office open and winamp and browse at the same time. I had only a toshiba 4200rpm harddisk at first though so but saw major improvement when i went to a 7200rpm drive. My settings are kind of low though. but didnt stop me from getting rank 14 pvp.

This is probably is a newb question:

When I unplug my AC power for my laptop when im playing WoW i get serious drop in FPS its really unplayable... basically down to 5 fps. when i plug in the AC it goes up to like playable fps... I put the computer on max output like totally unconserving battery life and set it to max performance. Why does it do this, and is there anyway around it?

AIX · #21 Post by **AIX** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:06 am

Jiro - check your BIOS settings.

Jiro · #22 Post by **Jiro** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:34 am

Everything is now at maximum performance in bios but still no change

desdinova · #23 Post by **desdinova** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 8:06 am

I run WoW and Civ4 on a T*30* and it's playable.
WoW more than Civ4, imo. I think with more VRAM WoW would run quite well, 16M is actually below the minimum specs.

Teerex · #24 Post by **Teerex** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 8:40 am

I play CS Source on my T43 with x300.

If I go higher than 1024*768, the game isn't really playable in a competitive game where others get quicker frames on their machines.

Rex

kam_ · #25 Post by **kam_** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 2:30 pm

I've played Fable, and BF2 at 1600x1200 with the FireGL V3200 on my thinkpad T43p. No overclocking and medium-high (BF2) graphics settings or max (fable) graphics settings.

The only killer is anti-aliasing, which really is unecesary on 1600x1200 on a 15 inch screen!

I recently tried Elder scrolls IV: oblivian. It stutured a bit at 1600x1200, but ran ok at 1280x1024 - looked like 20 to 30fps.
Any lower res and it runs really smooth 40fps+ from what it looks like.
At any res tho it takes 100% CPU and gets realllly hot.

I tried Elder Scrolls III today, which was made in 2002 - and that also hit 100% all the time. It looks like there's something strange in the game engine on their particular games.

All in all tho i'm very impressed by the graphics card!

Oh and it was 1GB with BF2 and Fable, and 2GB with oblivion.

Mantra1318 · #26 Post by **Mantra1318** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:45 pm

I am looking at purchasing a T43 Thinkpad with a 1.8-2GHZ CPU, 1gig of ram, and a 64mb video card. How well do you think a machine like that will be able to do running Half-Life II and Counter-Strike Source? Will I be able to play in large multiplayer games online (in HLII or CS: Source)?

Bgradid · #27 Post by **Bgradid** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 2:40 pm

all games will take 100% cpu usage as they are trying to produce as many frames as they can in a second.

christopher_wolf · #28 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:36 pm

Bgradid wrote:all games will take 100% cpu usage as they are trying to produce as many frames as they can in a second.

Not quite, it depends on how they are designed to use the CPU and at what priority they are set at for resource consumption. It varies from game to game.

kam_ · #29 Post by **kam_** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:17 pm

Yes exactly, they shouldn't be throttling the CPU at 100% consistantly. You should see dips as resources are released to windows processes with higher priority.

don't get me wrong i'm not expecting it to drop to 30% or anything, but a solid 100% all the time - even on the start screen isn't normal.

World of Warcraft on the T4x - can it be done well?

World of Warcraft on the T4x - can it be done well?

Re: World of Warcraft on the T4x - can it be done well?

Re: World of Warcraft on the T4x - can it be done well?

T42p runs WOW great

Re: T42p runs WOW great

HL2 on a T43?

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