My i9-14900HX with an RTX 4080 laptop is struggling with WoW at 10 graphics settings and ray tracing on at 1440p 170hz.
FPS in Orgrimmar is around 110-140.
I’m beginning to regret not spending a little more for the 4090 laptop variant.
Does the low fps issue sound normal or am I expecting too much, as I keep hearing the old saying “WoW can run on a potato PC”?
Probably related to your CPU and GPU being laptop variants. Setting 10 is pretty demanding, and WoW is heavily CPU bound. The laptop version of your processor is about 400 single-thread rating behind the desktop version.
Oh they definitely aren’t alone. I haven’t been playing much for a while and when I do play, I usually cap to 80fps because why waste the power when it’s more than enough. Just to experiment around a little, I uncapped my fps and here are some metrics from a 13600kf and a 7900xt with barely anyone around in Org and with zero addons running…
https://imgur.com/a/jIP9Nxh
Slider 10 settings and no RT. They definitely screwed something up with the main thread and for me to be the one saying this, as someone that debunks a lot of issues on here, is usually a bad sign… The CPU bottleneck is apparently real…
EDIT: Out in the world, it’s behaving alright. Flying around Ardenweald and am staying in the 120-200fps range with the same settings. I kind of remember complaining about this during the anniversary event near the hub.
You would most likely also be disappointed with the 4090 version. Have identical computers spec wise one a desktop and my laptop. The laptop performance is very close to 60 percent of the desktop.
how did they put a rtx 4080 in a laptop??? there’s not enough airflow to run that card at like 30% power for more than a minute, no matter what you do, i can’t think of a logical reason to put a graphics card that big in a laptop, except to sell it to some poor guy with too much money
Wow is CPU bound, GPU is almost irrelevant to large scale performance.
14900HX is a base TDP of 55 Watts, up to 157 Wats under Turbo boost.
RTX 4080 is at max 110 Wattts TDP, some peaking at 160 Watts TDP
There is a design consideration when the laptop is being desinged called Total system TDP, since they can only disipate so much heat out of the miniscule heatsinks. Typically between 200 to 280 watts’s. Some vendors sneak higher baselines and slightly larger boots for “Marketing” purposes, but they all fall back quickly to lower TDP after short bursts.
So without knowing the specific laptop you have I can’t tell you.
The problem lies in here; they all come with standard baselines and don’t account for silicone quality. You may be able to get more “umhppphh” out of your system by actually undervolting your GPU to keep total wattage consumed down, letting your CPU have more headroom to stay at its baseline longer.
Look up undervolting for your specifc laptop.
You can even turn off E-cores while gaming to bring that number down lower.
Basicly the CPU has a cap, the GPU has a cap, and the system as a whole, this includes fanc, LCD, and all the bells and whislts are part of that “Total” TDP.
You can try playing around with a program called “Throttle Stop” to see the exact reasons its capping you. The whole idea is to run the minimum required voltage to these systems so they hit what you want them to. Lower voltage means lower wattage, giving you more TDP room. The idea is to use the TDP budget more efficiently.
Get a nice laptop cooler, it really helps.
Undervolt, turn of some e-cores you arent using for much in gaming, and make sure the balanced plan is what you are using (This is important in 13th and 14th Gen Processors). The laptop moves power from one system to the other as needed. Haveing it set to full performance judt causes all the systems to hit their cieling and retreat fast to their base.
As for FPS, the game really doesn’t push pixels that hard at maximum settings fully unleashed mode i can get my 3090 to hit 889 Watts,with wow. My GPU an hit 1,000 watts if I wanted. Pointless, as its jsut pushing you up to a refresh rate your monitor can’t use, and adding to your TDP budget rendering frames that will never be seen. Match your FPS to what your monitor can actually display + maybe 5 more FPS. This makes sure the game isn’t wasting power rendering scences your screen is physically incapable of rendering.
Look into Unervolting and disabling a the E-coreS see where it lands you. Lots of Info out there.
Thanks a million 
!
The problem is that most laptop manufacturers lock down any UC/OC or voltage related options on the CPU and GPU. You should still be able to drop the max power on the GPU, using tools like Afterburner where you set it to like 90% or w/e min it allows, and for the CPU, you can use Windows power options to set the min/max(if max isn’t 100%, turbo boost will be disabled) percentage processor state or Throttlestop to cap the max multiplier(disables turbo boost if you set it to anything other than the max). Outside of those options, the only way to get around TDP issues is to simply lower the graphical load or cap the frame rate to something lower, or some combination of the two.
3 posts were split to a new topic: Best affordable laptop
Then it isn’t a true “Gaming” laptop.
Also, Nvidia always allows acess to the VF curve on their mobile GPU’s.
My laptops GPU is sitting under volted as we speak with no exraordinary measures to tune othern than Sliding the Nvidia V/F curve down and hitting apply.
“Locked Down” laptops are more, casual machines. The OP is asking about “Gaming Laptops” wildly different animal.
The ability to turn off E-Cores is also a “Gaming” feature as some games perform badly with E-Cores on, especially many older titles. There is litteral functionality built into the bios to turn them off by simply hitting the Scroll Lock button. No need to go fishing for settings in BIOS, its called “Legacy Compatibility Mode”
In summer months I use it while playing WoW as they are the most voltage hungry animals on a 14th gen.
Thanks to everyone’s feedback and help.
I turned down the settings to 7, and it fixed my struggling FPS. It’s now buttery smooth in the high 200’s, at 1440p, 170hz.
Special thanks to Aalliyah for the breakdown on some BIOS settings - undervolting.
It now runs cooler in the 70’s Celsius, while WoW is running.
I also wanted to share these tips from Intel…
To make your CPU run at turbo frequencies more consistently, you can adjust several BIOS settings:
Enable Intel Turbo Boost Technology:
This allows the CPU to operate at higher frequencies.
Set the Power and Performance Policy to Performance: This prioritizes performance over power saving.
Set the CPU P-State Control to Performance:
This ensures the CPU runs at higher performance states.
Disable Energy Efficient Turbo:
This prevents the CPU from entering lower power states when utilization is high.
Set Boot Performance Mode to Max Performance:
This ensures the system boots in performance mode
Have a good time in WoW!
I agree wow is more CPU bound than GPU bound though some advanced GPU capabilities are supported by the game and can be more demanding. In general it feels like WoW favors AMD over Intel as AMD typically has less bottleneck between the CPU and ram with newer Ryzen variations. Many of them even have quad channel memory interfaces with LPDDR memory that runs absurdly faster than a DIM. I have a Ryzen 7940HS laptop CPU with an RTX4070 mobile variant and it crushes WoW even on ultra though I have to keep things like AA off.
If all else fails, Drop the resolution and use your GPUs upscale features to squeeze a little extra performance out of it at minimal graphics quality loss.