I have to run (WoW) on low graphics, what gives?

[robotrenegade]

To play the game fine I have to put the settings on fair not good or even better?

Frame rate at Good: 16
Frame rate at Fair: 65

Computer specs:
iMac
os: 10.6.5
Pros: 2.8 i7
Mem: 8GB
Graph: ATi Radeon HD 4850

 

[MercenaryTX]

That about matches my situation as well with the 4850 card. I have Firefox and email going in the background so there may be memory issues with only 4GB.

The Blizzard performance guide says it should get 60 fps, but it doesn't say the resolution. I'm running at 1920x1200. Maybe the guide is for 1650.

 

[Narse77]

I have to play in windows, With that I can run almost all ultra with my 13" MBP, only things I have to set lower is Shadows to fair and filtering to 4x antistropic. OSX is just dog slow in gaming compared to Win7

 

[Mackilroy]

What gives is that you have a two-generation old GPU pushing over three and a half million pixels. While it was a nice GPU for its time, it's going to struggle with that high a resolution.

 

[fkntotalkaos]

What gives is that you have a two-generation old GPU pushing over three and a half million pixels. While it was a nice GPU for its time, it's going to struggle with that high a resolution.

It's WOW, people are running it on $300 PC's with better fps

 

[Mackilroy]

Not at that resolution. No way, no how. Perhaps at 1680x1050 or 1920x1080, but not for $300 and at 2560x1440.

 

[Neolithium]

I have my graphics set to good (IIRC, may be the next highest setting), have the shadows turned down and then ran

/console maxfps 30

My framerates are a constant 30-ish sure it doesn't skyrocket to 80s in the empty areas but busy cities like Dalaran, etc run very smoothly and keep at a solid 30FPS. Just though I'd add that to see if it helps you out.

 

[harveypooka]

To play the game fine I have to put the settings on fair not good or even better?

Frame rate at Good: 16
Frame rate at Fair: 65

Computer specs:
iMac
os: 10.6.5
Pros: 2.8 i7
Mem: 8GB
Graph: ATi Radeon HD 4850

Have you got Anti-aliasing on? If so, switch it off.

 

[cluthz]

Im running High on my MBP i5.
Just make sure you turn down liquid and sun shafts!
On the iMac you should do ultra with low liquid and sun shafts.

 

[cerote]

Disabling the sun shafts helps the most. Next drop the liquid down till you like.

 

[MercenaryTX]

Im running High on my MBP i5.
Just make sure you turn down liquid and sun shafts!
On the iMac you should do ultra with low liquid and sun shafts.

Thanks for posting actual hints. Most people just say Macs suck and use Bootcamp.

The key was to put Liquid Detail to Fair and Sunshafts to disabled. Suddenly the fps doubles from 29 to 60. This differs from the WOW performance guide which said I could get 60 fps at the higher settings.

What is so great about this is that now I can set View Distance/Env Detail/Particle Density to Ultra and still get 60 fps at 1920x1080.
Even setting the resolution to 2560x1440, it is still 40+ fps.

Very sweet. The game looks much better now.

 

[mkelly]

Thanks for posting actual hints. Most people just say Macs suck and use Bootcamp.

The key was to put Liquid Detail to Fair and Sunshafts to disabled. Suddenly the fps doubles from 29 to 60. This differs from the WOW performance guide which said I could get 60 fps at the higher settings.

What is so great about this is that now I can set View Distance/Env Detail/Particle Density to Ultra and still get 60 fps at 1920x1080.
Even setting the resolution to 2560x1440, it is still 40+ fps.

Very sweet. The game looks much better now.

Glad to see you got it sorted out. When Blizzard updated the game engine with the last major patch, performance tanked on Macs. I have a 27" i7 iMac with 8 gigs of RAM and the 4850. Like you, I was getting 25 fps or so after the patch (previously, I was able to get 60 fps with all settings to max, at 2560x1440).

Once I turned sunshafts off & liquid down, my framerates jumped significantly.

My guess is that the WoW performance guide hasn't been updated to account for the latest "tweaks" to the WoW graphics engine.

 

[lythium]

Glad to see you got it sorted out. When Blizzard updated the game engine with the last major patch, performance tanked on Macs. I have a 27" i7 iMac with 8 gigs of RAM and the 4850. Like you, I was getting 25 fps or so after the patch (previously, I was able to get 60 fps with all settings to max, at 2560x1440).

Once I turned sunshafts off & liquid down, my framerates jumped significantly.

My guess is that the WoW performance guide hasn't been updated to account for the latest "tweaks" to the WoW graphics engine.

blizzard code has been nothing but downhill since activision got involved started putting marketing majors in charge of things they dont understand.

sigh.

 

[mark28]

To play the game fine I have to put the settings on fair not good or even better?

Frame rate at Good: 16
Frame rate at Fair: 65

Computer specs:
iMac
os: 10.6.5
Pros: 2.8 i7
Mem: 8GB
Graph: ATi Radeon HD 4850

i think something is wrong with the ATI/Apple drivers. On the 330m it runs fine on ultra with nothing turned down.

 

[Hastings101]

The 4850 is not a bad card, it's just that it's way too underpowered to give you all the performance for high details you need when it's used at such a high resolution like the iMac's 2560x1440.

That and DirectX/Directeverythingelse is just a thousand times better than the outdated OpenGL/Openwhatever stuff Apple is using. Expect some nice changes in 10.7 maybe? Especially if Apple gets serious about video drivers and keeping the OpenGL and whatever else is used up to date.