Relatively Poor WoW Performance on Core i7 iMac?

[Kelmon]

Hi Guys,

I'm hoping that someone can answer the following 2 questions for me:

1. Should my World Of Warcraft FPS be this poor?
2. If not, any idea what the problem might be?

Clearly a few details are in order to help you determine the answers to my question.

Firstly, I'm running WoW (4.0.3) fullscreen on a Core i7 27" iMac (Rev G) 2.8GHz with Radeon HD 4850 512MB and 8GB RAM. Having come back to WoW after about a year or so and from a C2D MacBook Pro with Radeon X1600 I was expecting that my new iMac would be delivering WoW with all the bells and whistles turned on. But I'm not.

For the purposes of this discussion I have WoW setup according to Blizzard's recommendations for my system using the native 2560*1440 resolution as described at the following article:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/969747052

With this setup if I go for a jog around Ironforge then I'm looking at about 18fps. Oddly, if I take the game out of fullscreen mode and into windowed mode then I'm looking at around 62fps, which is more what I was expecting for what is a relatively old game these days.

Cheers,

Kel

 

[bokdol]

try completely turning off the sunshaft. i do know that causes problems in frame rates.

 

[Kelmon]

Crickey, that seems to do the job. With Sunshafts disabled completely the framerate in fullscreen goes up to the same 62fps that I'm seeing in windowed mode.

I do wonder why my FPS is so low in fullscreen mode with Sunshafts set to Low when it is quite respectable in windowed mode yet you'd expect the the FPS to be lower in windowed mode. Reading a few articles on WoW Mac performance it sounds like I've got the sort of performance associated with a PowerPC G4 system rather than a Core i7. Bizarre...

 

[spice weasel]

Crickey, that seems to do the job. With Sunshafts disabled completely the framerate in fullscreen goes up to the same 62fps that I'm seeing in windowed mode.

I do wonder why my FPS is so low in fullscreen mode with Sunshafts set to Low when it is quite respectable in windowed mode yet you'd expect the the FPS to be lower in windowed mode. Reading a few articles on WoW Mac performance it sounds like I've got the sort of performance associated with a PowerPC G4 system rather than a Core i7. Bizarre...

Actually, running a game full-screen puts more strain on the graphics card than running it in a smaller window.

Still, Mac users should be able to have sunshafts turned on. Blizzard needs to tweak things a bit, and I hope they get to it soon.

 

[MercenaryTX]

Now that you have turned off sunshafts and already had liquid to low, you can set your other environment settings to ultra and still run at decent fps.

 

[aussie_geek]

Also shadows - turn down to fair. You can't really notice any difference in the quality but is increases your frame rate. THey are in the Advanced menu pane.

aussie_geek

 

[mulo]

Also shadows - turn down to fair. You can't really notice any difference in the quality but is increases your frame rate. THey are in the Advanced menu pane.

+1 shadows kills fps, but make little difference in the game.

 

[mark28]

Actually, running a game full-screen puts more strain on the graphics card than running it in a smaller window.

Still, Mac users should be able to have sunshafts turned on. Blizzard needs to tweak things a bit, and I hope they get to it soon.

WoW in full screen runs perfectly on ultra ( MBP though at 1680 x 1050 ).

In windowed mode, it gets a bit choppy at Dalaran when it's crowded.

So full-screen is actually better, atleast for WoW.

Edit: I notice my fans kick in if I play WoW in windowed mode, but in full screen the MBP is quiet.

 

[Hemingray]

In windowed mode, it gets a bit choppy at Dalaran when it's crowded.

Sorry, but... Dalaran? Crowded? Post-cataclysm? LOL.

 

[Kelmon]

I'm pretty sure that it is generally acknowledged that windowed gives lower performance than full-screen in any game. However, at present I'm not seeing any change in the FPS so I guess it is all good.

Knocking the Shadows down to Fair doesn't seem to make a difference so I'm thinking that I've hit a limit elsewhere. Still, with the FPS at 62 and everything turned up (aside from the Sunshafts) it runs great. A bit of a shame that I don't see the new water effects anymore but I can live with that and I'll keep an eye out for future patches or system updates that suggest that the problem has been solved.

Cheers for all the help, folks.

 

[wolfsokta]

Hopefully 10.6.7 addresses some of the driver issues and you will be able to run with everything maxed at decent FPS. I'd buy the i7 iMac now if it'd do 30+ FPS on ultra settings in heavily populated areas. Currently I'm waiting to see what happens with 10.6.7 and on rumors of an updated iMac in the next few months.