New 20 Inch iMac and World of Warcraft

[Stevez0r]

I plan on buying a new iMac 20 inch soon, but I was wondering what owners have to say about WoW on the 20 inch iMac. What problems have you run into if any that would make you get the 24 inch iMac. Also if possible can you post your video settings?

 

[mrgreen4242]

On my 20" 2.4ghz iMac I set everything to max, except I disable full screen glow and use 1x AA (can't remember what WoW calls it, but it's the setting with the color depth in the upper right of the video pane). With these settings I see 35-55 fps outdoors and 80-120fps indoors when if full screen mode, higher in windowed (don't know off hand since I don't play windowed).

If gaming is a large concern for you and you want an iMac, get the 20" 2.4ghz model. The extra CPU power of the 2.8ghz 24" isn't a big help for gaming and the GPU is the same in both models, but it has to push significantly more pixels to drive the 24" screen at native resolution.

 

[reno55]

Hmmm I can tell you on my brand new 2.0ghz iMac I couldnt get near 40-50fps during anywhere in the game unless I boot into windows and run at a lower resolution.

 

[hankolerd]

Should run fine

i have last years model. Runs it fine. I don't have it installed anymore so I can't put up a screen of my settings, I am pretty sure I had them all maxed out though and was never below 30fps. be sure to get at least 2gb of ram. i have the 256mb x1600. 2.16Ghz C2D. The only thing is there's been reports that the new 20" imac screens have been having problems. I don't know if that has been all sorted out yet or not, you might look into it. Seems like i read that the bad screens were being replaced, but i don't remember. As far as running it though, you shouldn't have a problem....at all. The updates they did to it last fall (or spring or whenever) for intel compatability in os x made it run much much better.

 

[reno55]

Im wondering if the problem is that my iMac has the 128mb video card?

 

[ethernet76]

Hmmm I can tell you on my brand new 2.0ghz iMac I couldnt get near 40-50fps during anywhere in the game unless I boot into windows and run at a lower resolution.

It's probably a combination of things. Try decreasing your terrain distance. Outland will give less FPS than the old world.

 

[reno55]

Well I havent gone to outland yet just starting the game back up. I do have 2gb of ram. Also I was reading on the WoW forums to do the following:


/console glfaster 0
/console maxfps 30

Also to run it in a window....how do I run wow in a window? They also mentioned decreasing the resolution

 

[risc]

Im wondering if the problem is that my iMac has the 128mb video card?

If you have the new iMac 2.0 GHz the video card is an ATI Radeon 2400 XT. That card isn't exactly fast.

 

[Azmodon]

I've been playing WoW for 2 years on a powerbook g4. The thing ya gotta know about wow is that you don't "need" a great computer to play. If you really care about fps, then sure, by all means, but in all honesty you don't need it to enjoy WoW. I run at 20 fps most of the time and I love it.

 

[lasuther]

What problems have you run into if any that would make you get the 24 inch iMac. Also if possible can you post your video settings?

The biggest problem you'll have is your screen will be 4" smaller .

Currently, I play on a 20" iMac but I wish I had the bigger screen. The bigger screen is really nice when you play in windowed mode. Always upgrade your graphics card to 256MB.

Bigger is better, get the 24".

 

[HiRez]

Well I havent gone to outland yet just starting the game back up. I do have 2gb of ram. Also I was reading on the WoW forums to do the following:


/console glfaster 0
/console maxfps 30

Also to run it in a window....how do I run wow in a window? They also mentioned decreasing the resolution

Just press Command-M (or Apple-M or "Cloverleaf"-M) while in the game, and the same to toggle back to full-screen mode. Personally I like WoW a lot better in FS mode, but windowed is good when you are multitasking.

maxfps helps to smooth out framerates and avoid overheating (it'll use less CPU). I keep my old dual-G5 at 25 maxfps.

 

[cubist]

hankolerd mentioned it only in passing, but the RAM is critical for WoW (and many other games). I'd say 768MB is the minimum for acceptable performance, and 2GB will help a lot.

The interesting thing about RAM is that Mac OS X swaps much more nicely than Windows. In Windows, when you start swapping, performance goes to a near-stop (less than 1fps) and you know you have a problem. In the Mac, you might still get 10fps.

 

[redsteven]

WoW performance

You'll be fine. I played WoW for over a year on a first revision iBook G4. 933 MHz with 1.5 gigs of RAM 32 megs of VRAM. AV ran at 2 fps with a lot of people lol, but if it wasn't crowded the game was still lots of fun (with graphics turned down, of course).

About a year ago I got a first revision 20" intel iMac. Almost all settings are turned up and it runs fine in outland.
I did notice a significant performance increase when I upped the ram on the iMac to 2 gigs from 1 gig.
This iMac has an original Core Duo running at 2 GHz, 2 gigs of ram, and the Radeon X1600 with 256 megs of VRAM.

I'd recommend you get 256 megs of VRAM and 2 gigs of RAM (go to dealram.com... don't buy the ram through apple, it's usually very expensive).

 

[Stridder44]

hankolerd mentioned it only in passing, but the RAM is critical for WoW (and many other games). I'd say 768MB is the minimum for acceptable performance, and 2GB will help a lot.

The interesting thing about RAM is that Mac OS X swaps much more nicely than Windows. In Windows, when you start swapping, performance goes to a near-stop (less than 1fps) and you know you have a problem. In the Mac, you might still get 10fps.

x2