Widescreen play kills my computer...

OK, so, I have here a laptop with a widescreen display (1280x800). Whenever I run Guild Wars in window mode so it takes up the whole screen and have Firefox up in the backgroud in full screen mode I get bad lag. As in a good half-second delay from when I do anything (ie type a letter or click ot move) to when it actually happens. Im wondering if anyone else has this issue. Im stuck with running GW and firefox in a smaller frame so as to not take a hit in performence. I have a Dell E1505 with a x1400 graohics card and 2 gigs of RAM. GW never takes up more than 60% of my CPU usage.

Same here. I guess that laptops don't really like Firefox/Guild Wars combo. Maybe it's their nature? Like I have a serious lag when I try to minimize my GW and it takes like 10-20 seconds to end. Just learn to work without Firefox in the background. Yeah, I know it's stupid... But you can't just buy new card or new chipset.

If Guild Wars runs slow with Firefox running in the background it might be due to Flash animations on web pages, like the ads on this site. Flash animations are drawn using the CPU alone and with all the fancy effects they like to put in it they can use up a lot of processing power, making stuff like Guild Wars run badly.

I always close Firefox or at least the tabs with annoying Flash crap in them whenever I play something. Runs a lot better that way.

Windows tends to allocate more memory to whats up front or maximized. While in windowed mode, it has to allocate more memory and processing power to the application, in this case guildwars, the operating system itself and any additional software your running, like firefox

Best to stick with a maximized view.

If your having memory, processing or general problems with resources, there are a few things you can do.

1. Strip all the Windows XP visuals, making it look like Windows 98
2. Increase the amount of Virtual Memory your laptop uses
3. Disable any or all unnecessary software that you have in your startup (all those annoying icons that appear in your system tray.
4. Disable the automated scanning from your anti-virus and scan manually as needed.
5. Scan for spyware
6. Defrag your hard drive

Ive tried most of that (Not disabling XP visuals though) and I think its a problem specifically related to widescreen monitors. I used to run GW in full-window mode with firefox on my older, slower computer just fine, and can run GW with firefox as long as they both take up less space than a non-widescreen monitor would have, if you know what I mean.

The video card is a little weak; it could be just choking on drawing both the Windows desktop and the game at a relatively high resolution at the same time. Lower-end cards often cheap out on stuff like memory bandwidth, which is critical for higher resolutions.

Also, ATI is pretty notorious for getting a lot of its video performance from application- and resolution-specific hacks. Maybe they just didn't think of running Guild Wars in a large window at that particular resolution?

Well its not my card. I get good FPS when I play, its just an inexplicable lag between when I give the command to do ANYTHING and when it happens. Although I DID notice that the issue is resolved at lower resolution (But it makes the game unacceptably fuzzy when I set it that low)

So your computer lag when you run GW in windows mod with firefox open and you blame the widescreen monitor?

It works fine on my computer. Either the video card is too weak to draw both properly or the video drivers are bugged.

Mine works fine. I can have multiple applications open with GW running and suffer no lag or drop in FPS.

OK, I thought it was my monitor, but since you have no problems its probably the drivers, but, unfortunately, Dell doesnt update their drivers for the E1505, and the Omegas cause problems in other games I play. Theres no solution is there...

GPU Drivers - laptopdrivers2go

They use desktops drivers with modded INF