Mac Pro and WoW Performance?

[Fenix16]

My current Mac Pro setup is:

2x 2.8GHZ Dual Quad Xeon
6GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DiMM
Slot-1 ATI Radeon HD 3870
Slot-2 ATI Radeon HD 2600XT (For future Displays)


Displays:
24" Samsung LCD with 20,000:1 CR and 5ms RT at 1920x1200
20" LG 2000:1 CR and 5ms RT at 1680x1050

I currently am an avid WoW player and for some reason I thought the performance would be better then what im currently receiving. In the middle of Dalaran with all settings cranked running at 1920x1200 res I see approx 25-30fps consistently.

In raids (Naxx, Malygos) I see around the same but some times some screen lag that reduce the fps to nearly 5-9. But im usually around 20-25.

Am I just being greedy or do these numbers just seem low?

 

[Mackilroy]

Part of that are the new shadows implemented with the latest patch - you're looking at a halving of performance right there. The other half is you're playing games with the 3870 instead of 8800, which is better at gaming.

 

[palebluedot]

If you look at the WoW tech support forums for Mac you will see that EVERYONE is having insane problems with the new 3.0.2 patch + WOTLK. Like even on low settings people are getting horrible FPS, crashes, stuttering, etc. Something is seriously botched and it's probably on Apple's end (drivers/GLSL/etc) but either way - we are all having problems so it's not just your MBP.

this doens't help I know but it is an fyi, lol

 

[bushwakko]

ahh

this is very good to know, because I just got the new mbp and I've been hacking around with the settings all day, and I get lik 25-30fps in dalaran. And this is the same from 800x600 to 1440x900, with high or low settings. The new shadows do give worse performance though, other than that, tuning the other stuff changes the fps 5fps in either direction. I really *REALLY* hope this is going to change.

 

[cluthz]

The Dalaran numbers seems oki, but the raid fps sounds abit low. I'm on a full server and Dalaran is giving me 20-25 fps with drops down to 10 inbetween.
In raid on the other hand i get a lot better, even with running the builtin fraps i maintain 20fps ++ and no hiccups.

I do run on a MBP 2.2GHz with a 1680x1050 scrren with the 1440x900 builtin screen on for vent, msn and browser.

However I still use low shadowquality and no FSAA

 

[rbarris]

Running something lower than maximum draw distance in crowded areas is recommended.

 

[HiRez]

That sounds about right, really, for that resolution and those high-ish settings. I have noticed that even though WoW is using more RAM than it used to, something seems off with the cacheing mechanism, as it's hitting the hard drive a lot more than it used to. That's where a lot of my stuttering/frame dips is coming from. It's particularly bad while flying, where my frame rate often dips into single digits. Otherwise, I get a pretty steady 25+ fps, but I have the rate capped at 30 (3.06 GHz iMac, 8800gs).

 

[bushwakko]

but I shouldn't have the same fps in 1440 and in 800, that just seems wrong, and same with high textures or low.

 

[Tastannin]

Didn't see anything regarding your drives. Do you have a striped RAID or even a Velociraptor? Like someone else mentioned, WoW seems to hit the hard drive more lately. That might be something to look into.

You won't see much of a gain, and it doesn't make fiscal sense upgrading your 3870 to a 8800, IMHO. From what I see on Bare Feats it seems that the 8800 has about a 10 fps edge on the 3870 in most games.

Your money would be better spent getting a 4870x2 and using it for WoW via BootCamp. I'm sure that'd make a big boost in your framerates.

Otherwise, down the res on your screen until you can get 60 fps average.

 

[Krevnik]

Weird, I've been getting decent performance (over 60 fps) with the proper selection of settings in most places other than say, the Draenai city in Zangarmarsh. Unfortunately, I haven't quite been able to play around in Northrend just yet.

In Azeroth, I get over 100 fps, in Outland I get about 80 fps.

This is in a 2.8Ghz Harpertown MacPro, with an 8800GT in it. My MBP with a 9600GT in it gets similar performance with the settings turned down a little.