Being bored at work, I decided to try and see what I could do to improve the performance of my (very, very, very old) gaming laptop so as to be able to play WoW with acceptable FPS and at a decent resolution during my long hours of inactivity at work.
Here’s my laptop’s specs:
Toshiba Satellite 1950-801
• TYPE: DESKTOP REPLACEMENT LAPTOP
• YEAR: 2003
• CPU: Intel Pentium 4 @3.066 GHz with HT, 130NM Northwood, Single Core, Hyperthreaded, 512 MB Cache (1 Core – 2 Threads)
• Month & Year CPU produced: November 2002
• CHIPSET: Intel 845 PE Brookdale
• Chipset Produced: 2nd Quarter, 2002, FSB: 533 MHz
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce4 460 Go, 150 NM, Direct X 7 compatible, 64MB Video Memory, AGP 4X.
• GPU produced: 2nd Quarter, 2002
• RAM: DDR-SDRAM, Single Channel, 2GB @ 333 MHz
• AC ADAPTER MAX OUTPUT: 90W
• 16.1 inch XGA TFT screen@1280X1024.
• OS: Windows XP Home SP3
[In case anyone wonders why I still use this laptop, 1.it has got a 16 inch screen, 2. it is a gift from my father and 3.I do my job just fine with it].
HW info screenshot for the curious:
To be fair here, I’d like to note that this laptop constituted the very…high end for back in…2003 when it was sold. My father had bought this for around $2k.
a.CPU:
First thing you want to look at is –reasonably- overclocking your CPU. This, in old technology Front Side Bus using laptops like this one, is done through manipulating the FSB via freeware called CPUFSB.
In my case, I found out that my laptop automatically UNDERclocked the CPU by 13 MHz and the FSB by 2 MHz. By using CPUFSB I have been able to bring both the FSB and the CPU to run to their normal specs. Unfortunately, I have not been able to overclock it yet (not that I try too hard). We will see.
NOTE: FOR PPL WHO HAVE NO PROBLEM DUMPING (VERY) LITTLE MONEY ON AN ANCIENT LAPTOP
My laptop originally came with the Pentium 4 Northwood @2.8GHz, single core, no hyperthreading. Looking on the list of Pentium 4 CPU’s at Wikipedia, I figured that the only CPU upgrade my laptop would take would be an Intel Pentium 4 @3.066 GHz with HT, 130NM Northwood.
Unfortunately, my BIOS’s last update was done on 24 Jan. 2004, which means that all Prescott 90nm Pentium 4’s were out of the question (no CPU instructions in the BIOS) and in addition my chipset did not support 800 MHz FSB Northwoods.
To install a Prescott P4 on this laptop, I would have to find a donor TOSHIBA laptop BIOS, extract the CPU instructions, paste them on the latest official BIOS for my laptop, and then attempt to flash it with the modded BIOS. Even if I succeeded (there’s a chance I’d brick the motherboard), there is no guarantee that the laptop’s VRM which is programmed to supply 1.5V to CPU, GPU, RAM and Chipset would be able to cope with Prescott’s lower VID and supply it with less current (1.4V VCORE).
So, I bought the Intel Pentium 4 @3.066 GHz with HT, 130NM Northwood from e-bay.co.uk for $20 and called it a day. (I was even able to sell the laptop’s Pentium 4 Northwood @2.8GHz on e-bay for $14).
By doing this upgrade, I gained 266 MHz over the previous CPU and Hyperthreading.
Running tests with FRAPS, I discovered that with hyperthreading on, I gained 3.43 FPS average versus running WOW with hyperthreading off.
So, if you can afford it, you should upgrade your laptop’s CPU to the highest MHz CPU your laptop can take.
OVERHEATING LAPTOPS:
A cause of low performance on old laptops like this one is that the TIM (Thermal Interface Material) that exists between the CPU heatsink and the chamber heatsink has lost much of its thermal conductivity after a number of years of use, in my case 12 years, causing the CPU to throttle due to heat not dissipating properly.
After I opened up my laptop to replace the CPU, I discovered the old, 12-year old TIM that TOSHIBA had used, having being reduced to the status of hardened toothpaste. They had also put rather too damn much of the stuff too, and I found pieces of the stuff all over the socket, the chamber heatsink, and around the CPU.
Being an overclocker and PC enthusiast and having built my own system, I knew how to properly clean the heatsinks using isopropyl alcohol. I also had a supply of the excellent Arctic Silver 5 TIM which I applied on the new CPU’s heatsink.
The result was a non-throttling computer that felt like and performed like new.
So, even if you might not want to upgrade your old laptop’s CPU, opening up your old laptop, cleaning your heatsinks with isopropyl alcohol and applying new TIM will result into a much cooler running laptop and no more thermal throttling.
b.GPU:
The second thing you want to do is –reasonably- overclock your laptop’s GPU (if you are lucky enough and your laptop comes with a discreet GPU as opposed to Intel Chipset Integrated Graphics), as well as obtain the latest drivers for your GPU.
As you may know, the problem with most laptop manufacturers is that they only offer one driver, usually published in the year the laptop was originally sold. In my case, TOSHIBA only offered November 2002 NVIDIA drivers.
Using old drivers to play newer games means you will be getting lower performance than what your hardware is capable of. You may also experience other issues such as artifacts, crashes, etc.
Fortunately, there are internet communities that focus on modding original NVIDIA drivers to work with laptops, such as NotebookForums.com, where I downloaded the latest drivers published by NVIDIA for the GeForce4 AGP GPU’s, version 97.92 of 2007.
After installed the drivers, I downloaded and ran Riva Tuner Master Overclocking Arena 2009 version 2.24 in order to overclock my GPU.
Riva Tuner gave me the ability to substantially overclock my laptop GPU’s video RAM and Core Clock to 538 MHz stable up from 440 MHz and 279 MHz stable up from 250 MHz.
In addition, Riva Tuner gave me the ability to enable my AGP GPU’s “Fast Writes” capability, which gave me an additional FPS increase of 4.56 FPS average as measured through FRAPS. “Fast Writes” is an AGP-only GPU capability so it is irrelevant for modern PCI-e GPU’s.
c.TWEAKING YOUR GPU DRIVERS:
Open your GPU’s properties, and navigate to “Performance & Quality Settings” or similar.
Set everything to minimum or disabled, and set the setting “SYSTEM PERFORMANCE” or similar to “MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE”.
d.RAM:
If you haven’t already, grab at least 1 GB (I recommend 2GB’s if you heavily use Firefox) of memory for your old laptop and disable Windows virtual memory. This will net you a small performance increase and your system will feel snappier.
e. PLAYING WOW WITH YOUR LAPTOP GPU OVERCLOCKED:
Gaming with your laptop’s GPU overclocked will result into additional heat being produced. Excessive heat produced through daily heavy loads (such as gaming) will eventually cause your laptop’s GPU to fail.
To mitigate this, as well as achieve higher GPU overclocks, I recommend using a laptop cooling pad. Consider this an investment, as the cooling pad can be used with other laptops or your future laptop as well.
If a laptop cooling pad is not readily available, you can use four (4) caps from mineral water bottles to elevate the laptop from the surface so as to allow better airflow to the laptop’s air intakes thus resulting in better cooling.
I also recommend using a vacuum cleaner on the “suction” mode to remove dust and foreign objects from the inside of your laptop. Put the business end of the vacuum cleaner’s hose very close to your laptop’s air intake and exhaust and let it do its thing.
The best thing ofc is to disassemble your laptop and use canned air suitable for use on electronics to thoroughly clean-up the inside of your laptop but most ppl simply CBA (incl yours truly).
f. TWEAKING WOW:
What I wanted to do when I started working on this task at work to pass the time, was to be able to play WoW Vanilla at 1280X1024 (my laptop LCD’s native resolution) at abt 30 FPS.
I experimented with various settings and various resolutions. In the end, I concluded that 1280X1024 even with all settings at minimum, looked much better than, say 1024X768 with all settings maxed out.
What you’d want to do in order to make WoW play smoothly at higher resolutions is to simply tamper with the
* SET farclip "477.0"
setting of WoW’s “Config.WTF” file. (World of Warcraft\WTF)
This matches the Farclip (Viewing Distance) slider bar in the Game Options menu. The range is 177 to 777.
The slider in the Game Options Menu is hard locked to range 477 in WoW Vanilla and it will not allow you to set any other values between ranges 477 and 177 so you have got to manually edit it in order to set your desired value.
I set it to “300” and this resulted into reasonably smooth gameplay and around 26-35 FPS average at 1280X1024 resolution, which is not bad at all,
I understand that this setting is the most important setting in terms of performance, and adjusting it properly can make the difference of playability and non-playability for your laptop at your favourite resolution.
It goes without saying that all quality settings accessible through WoW's graphics menu should be set to minimum or disabled.
g. ADDITIONAL TWEAKS:
First of all, I recommend downloading and using “PROCESS LASSO” software. After downloading and installing it, make sure to arrange the various fields to the right in the manner you see in the picture below, i.e. with the field “CPU” first and the field “CPU AVERAGE” next to it.
You should then run WoW, then alt & tab out of WoW back to the desktop, open Process Lasso, right click on WoW.exe on the Process Lasso processes screen, and select “ENTER GAMING MODE WHEN RUNNING”. This results into a slight performance boost.
Then enter into the world and play WoW for 10-15 minutes and then alt+f4 out of WoW.
Open up Process Lasso and check the field “CPU AVERAGE”. Anything that goes above 0.50% at “CPU AVERAGE” –apart from critical system processes- should be terminated and not be running while you play WoW because it reduces your FPS.
Specifically, watch out for process “WUACULT.EXE” which is part of the Windows XP updates system. Because this process has been known to start and run continuously for 40 minutes if left alone eating up your CPU cycles and doing nothing of value, make a rule through Process Lasso to automatically forcibly terminate it if it exceeds 5% CPU for 4 seconds.
In the manner described above, you can temporarily take care of crap applications until you find the time to locate them and either remove them altogether or otherwise de-activate them.
h. ANTI-VIRUS/INTERNET SECURITY WHILE PLAYING WOW:
I use AVG Anti-Virus/Internet Security 2014. According to Process Lasso, AVG 2014 eats up around 4% CPU while I play WOW, I therefore recommend that you keep your anti-virus/internet security disabled while you play WoW in order to further increase performance and re-enable it after you finish your gaming session.
i. THE BASICS:
It goes without saying that you should use updated anti-virus software, anti-malware software and regularly scan your system for viruses and malware.
You should also keep your hard-drive defragmented. I recommend you use “Smart Defrag 2” software for this purpose and use the “deep optimize” option therein.
I also recommend that you uninstall and completely remove from your system “bloatware” and any software that you are not actually using.
j. HOW TO BENCHMARK WOW VANILLA:
You may benchmark WoW Vanilla by using the FRAPS software. To do so, select a flightpath between two points which is mostly empty of features. Rutheran Village (Teldrassil) to Darkshore is ideal for this purpose.
k. CPU/GPU Bottlenecks:
No matter what you do, old laptop or rigs like this one will always be CPU bottlenecked in areas where many toons congregate (e.g. Ironforge Bank, 40 man raids ) and GPU bottlenecked outside in the world while questing.
The only way to fix CPU bottlenecks is through overclocking. GPU bottlenecks can be "fixed" through overclocking or lowering quality settings or lowering the game resolution by one notch until performance becomes acceptable.
i. What to do if all else fails
If you have followed all the above recommendations and you are still not getting acceptable performance, then it means that your laptop (CPU+GPU) is just too weak to cope with WoW.
The thing to do is to slide down the resolution one notch at a time until performance becomes acceptable. This will fix questing and 5-10 man instances performance.
Use CTRL+R to view FPS in game.
Lag/low performance in 40 man raids/IF bank may only be fixed through overclocking as this comes from the CPU bottlenecking the system, and this may be impossible for your laptop.
I hope this guide helps ppl.
Enjoy.
