World of Warcraft "Freezing"?

Post by Sagerauru

Now, let me start off by saying I was not sure where this should be posted, so if it should go elsewhere, please feel free to move it. Second, I have already posted on the official forums and have not received an answer yet, so you won't need to redirect me there.

Anyway, ever since a few weeks ago, World of Warcraft has been acting up again for me lately. The frame rate will drop terribly, down to about 1 to 3 frames per second, and the whole game will just "freeze". I can still hear the music going in the background (It stutters, though), but the picture will stay frozen on one image for anywhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. It will then either restore itself, disconnect me, or lock my entire computer up.

I have not a clue what I should do at the moment. After looking through the technical support forum on World of Warcraft's website, I can see that I am not the only person experiencing issues either identical or very similar to mine. As I stated above, I posted on that forum two or three days ago and have yet to receive any kind of response that would help fix it.

So the other day, I was grouped with some people after attempting to run Heroic Utgarde Keep, and I brought the issue up to them. They both told me that it sounds as if it is something going on with my video card. Now mind you, I have a laptop, so getting this upgraded would be 10 times as fun as a desktop.

I spoke with Dell today twice through their online technical support chat, and I was given two answers that don't make sense together. The first representative who I talked with told me that upgrading the video card is not suggested nor recommended by Dell. However, the second representative I spoke to told me that upgrading the video card in my laptop is not possible at all (He then goes on to try to bribe me into buying an XPS laptop).

At this point, I think my video card needs upgraded. According to System Requirements Lab, my video card is not past the recommended hardware that Wrath of the Lich King upped the game to. Of course, I am not entirely sure whether or not the video card is the problem, but I am definitely leaning towards that.

So, here is where I want to know what you think I should do. This only happened to me a few months ago and it has just started acting up again. If you need to know anything specific about my laptop, let me know, and I will post it as soon as I possibly can.

Post by 276944

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Post by 267617

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Post by Sagerauru

If that isn't true... The only thing about it is I am not sure what type of video card I should look for, and I have not a clue whether or not I could go out and buy any card; I know very little of video cards, and that is why I figured I'd ask around to see if anyone could give a lending hand.

And yes, my computer is almost full (I have used up 70GB out of 94GB), so that might help, but who knows. Also, I just did try lowering the settings and it does make it speed up a bit, but I haven't played it long enough to see if it will continue to do the FPS drop and eventual freeze.

Edit:

At the moment, my computer has 2GB of RAM in it, being the most it can possibly hold. I also had downloaded drivers for my video card, but I suppose checking again couldn't hurt.

When you do mention about the RAM possibly being the problem, I had the Task Manager open (I run Windows Vista Home Premium) and was watching the Performance tab. It said:

Physical Memory (MB)
Total: 2045
Cached: 1158
Free: Bounces around from 0 to 50

Not sure if that means anything, so if there are any techies who know more than I, let me know!

Post by 267617

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Post by Sagerauru

My current video card is the ATI Mobility Radeon X1400. I just finished downloading what I think is the same driver as I updated it to already, so that was a bit of a waste.

Post by 267617

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Post by Sagerauru

Edit:

I had posted that the X1400 was my card, but the link didn't show up at first. Yeah, I was considering upgrading to something such as that, but I have no clue where I would be able to get one, yet alone if it would be compatible with my laptop.

As a side note, I was on that website earlier and was looking through those cards. :P

Post by 276944

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Post by Sagerauru

I suppose I could do that, seeing as I will be hitting the hay sometime soon. I've been looking around on Google since my last post and cannot seem to find the X1900 card available for purchase by itself, which is exactly what I would need. God only knows what I would have to do to get a hold of one... :(

Post by 276944

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Post by Sagerauru

I hope so... If I am going to have a hard time finding one of those cards, I hope defragging will be the answer for a good while. The only thing about it is when I was looking at pictures for those cards and a video that showed the card in my laptop, there was a piece on it for cooling that I didn't see on the regular cards. Any idea why that would be, or if this piece could be moved to the upgrade card if I got it?

Post by 276944

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Post by Sagerauru

Odd enough, now that I think about it, I read something about Dell editing those cards to work for their laptops. Then again, I'm not sure. I think I'm going to hit the hay now; it's 5 in the morning where I am and I'm getting pretty tired... I figure by the time I get up the defrag should be completed, so I will have to see how World of Warcraft runs proceeding that.

Oh, my Captcha thing looked like it said "oobye", but the "y" was a "v" :(

World of Warcraft "Freezing"?

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