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Running WoW on 27" iMac with i7???
- Thread starter OCBulldogs
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I am willing to try it, but it is going to be hard to have to readujust to NOT right and left clicking at the same time.
To the OP: After transferring everything via Time Machine yesterday I did fire up WoW. At 2540x1440 the core i7/4850 combo seemed to work quite well. I don't have numbers off the top of my head (at work atm), but full screen at ultra settings (1xAA only) I was seeing at least 60fps. V-Sync was checked so I don't know if the card was limited by the setting or if it was naturally stopping there (Forgive me for not testing more rigorously since I spent most of the time gawking at the amazing display). Also, my CPU meter wasn't pegged so there were plenty of other cycles for other things.
Im on a 27 i7 4gb ram, and I have pretty bad "flickering/Horizontal tear" (only in WOW), and I keep messing with the settings, up and down... But I can confirm, Its pretty bad with gloweffect on and 2 msampling 
Anyone been tinkering, and tweeking settings?
I tried locking it at 60fps, but then alot of the times it goes straight to 30fps.
Anyone been tinkering, and tweeking settings?
I tried locking it at 60fps, but then alot of the times it goes straight to 30fps.
I dont know what you guys are doing to get such high frame rates, but if i turn up all the setting on my 27" I7 with 8gigs of ram in 25 man raids like Twins Heroics I am lucky to get 10 FPS running using the strat my guild uses which is stacking at the door. And even in Icecrown on some of the boss I dropped down to 15-20 FPS.
My old dell computer with Core Dou @ 2.45mhz, 4gig of ram with an ATI 4980 in the same 25 man raids I get between 30-40 fps. I experience no lag what so ever at all.
So I know the problem is not my internet connection as I have optimum online 50/10 cable connection and I only experience lag with my Imac 27 I7 and not my old dell at all. My Imac has much faster processor and more ram and the only difference between the 2 computers are video card and monitor. My Dell monitor supports up to 1980x 1080 and even setting my Imac at that same screen size does not help at all which only leaves the difference in graphic cards. And I have a felling 4850 mobile is **** compared to 4980 desktop card no offense and my dell I got last year as X-Mas so it not like I have a top of the line graphic cards in my dell.
Now on both my Imac and Dell I get no lag what so ever in 5 or 10 man raids and i normally get over 60 FPS in those raids and I normally get over 150 fps in Stormwind or Iron Forge. Yeah in Dalaran on both my computers it lag but I lag worse on my Imac as I get durning prime as low as 5fps in Dalaran and my dell never get lower than 15 fps in Dalaran.
So not sure why my Imac blows in wow compared to my PC and other people in my guild who uses mac's also have lag problems in 25 man raids vs most of the people on PC who tend to have lag issues are having them cause of ****** internet connections and are lagging in both 10/25 raids and not hardware as all 4 mac users are either on cable or Fios(10-50mb download and 2-25meg upload) connections and some of the people on PC with lag issues are on ****** DSL connections with less than 500kbs of upload streams.
Another Macbook Pro user in my guild who has an older PC has no lag at all on his PC yet lags like crazy on his Macbook Pro. So like him I do 25 man raids on my PC and everything else on my Imac.
My old dell computer with Core Dou @ 2.45mhz, 4gig of ram with an ATI 4980 in the same 25 man raids I get between 30-40 fps. I experience no lag what so ever at all.
So I know the problem is not my internet connection as I have optimum online 50/10 cable connection and I only experience lag with my Imac 27 I7 and not my old dell at all. My Imac has much faster processor and more ram and the only difference between the 2 computers are video card and monitor. My Dell monitor supports up to 1980x 1080 and even setting my Imac at that same screen size does not help at all which only leaves the difference in graphic cards. And I have a felling 4850 mobile is **** compared to 4980 desktop card no offense and my dell I got last year as X-Mas so it not like I have a top of the line graphic cards in my dell.
Now on both my Imac and Dell I get no lag what so ever in 5 or 10 man raids and i normally get over 60 FPS in those raids and I normally get over 150 fps in Stormwind or Iron Forge. Yeah in Dalaran on both my computers it lag but I lag worse on my Imac as I get durning prime as low as 5fps in Dalaran and my dell never get lower than 15 fps in Dalaran.
So not sure why my Imac blows in wow compared to my PC and other people in my guild who uses mac's also have lag problems in 25 man raids vs most of the people on PC who tend to have lag issues are having them cause of ****** internet connections and are lagging in both 10/25 raids and not hardware as all 4 mac users are either on cable or Fios(10-50mb download and 2-25meg upload) connections and some of the people on PC with lag issues are on ****** DSL connections with less than 500kbs of upload streams.
Another Macbook Pro user in my guild who has an older PC has no lag at all on his PC yet lags like crazy on his Macbook Pro. So like him I do 25 man raids on my PC and everything else on my Imac.
Well I am still confused how you both get no lag in 25 man raids and I do only on my Imac and not on my PC.
By lag I mean even my computer seems to go into slow motion and takes a couple of seconds to respond at times to my keyboard commands or I need to smash the keys to get it to do what I want it too. I do not have the same problems on my PC at all. Both computers are connected next to each other using hardwire ethernet cables sharing the same 1000 gigabyte hub. I have the problem with nothing else on my network running at all except the computer I am using and nothing in the back ground either.
I figured the new Imac I7 would not suffer for this problem at all and was the main reason I special order the I7 after buying 27" dou and returning it to best buy. I will admit the I7 lag less and normally has higher frame rates everywhere than dou did as dou would even lag in some 10 man raids but the problem is clearly the graphic cards as if I turn down most of the setting on my I7 in 25 man raids I tend not to lag as badly or often but I prefer to just switch to my PC honestly.
The problem seems to steam from the fact the Imac I think can not handle all the textures mapping fast enough for the extra 15 players as for example I will have no lag on 10 man Heroic twins at all and run over 40 fps constantly yet in 25 man I am lucky to break 10 FPS. Lord Marrowgar 25 Icecrown is another good example in 25 man raid I tend to lag also on my Imac and never get over 20 FPS with it dropping as low as 10-15 at times but on the 10 man raid I never go below 40 FPS either. And my PC can handle Lord Marrowgar 25 man raid at 40-50 FPS with it dropping as low maybe 30 FPS for a few secs but not longer.
By lag I mean even my computer seems to go into slow motion and takes a couple of seconds to respond at times to my keyboard commands or I need to smash the keys to get it to do what I want it too. I do not have the same problems on my PC at all. Both computers are connected next to each other using hardwire ethernet cables sharing the same 1000 gigabyte hub. I have the problem with nothing else on my network running at all except the computer I am using and nothing in the back ground either.
I figured the new Imac I7 would not suffer for this problem at all and was the main reason I special order the I7 after buying 27" dou and returning it to best buy. I will admit the I7 lag less and normally has higher frame rates everywhere than dou did as dou would even lag in some 10 man raids but the problem is clearly the graphic cards as if I turn down most of the setting on my I7 in 25 man raids I tend not to lag as badly or often but I prefer to just switch to my PC honestly.
The problem seems to steam from the fact the Imac I think can not handle all the textures mapping fast enough for the extra 15 players as for example I will have no lag on 10 man Heroic twins at all and run over 40 fps constantly yet in 25 man I am lucky to break 10 FPS. Lord Marrowgar 25 Icecrown is another good example in 25 man raid I tend to lag also on my Imac and never get over 20 FPS with it dropping as low as 10-15 at times but on the 10 man raid I never go below 40 FPS either. And my PC can handle Lord Marrowgar 25 man raid at 40-50 FPS with it dropping as low maybe 30 FPS for a few secs but not longer.
If i'm not mistaken the iMac is running a "mobile" version of the 4850 GPU. I played WoW on my early 09 15" Uni with the 9600 GT and experienced the same "lag" issues with it. If your maxing out everything it can run WoW ok. The MBP/iMac's are all running mobile graphics cards, it's just not meant for all out gaming. Even my 2 yr old 2.4 Duo core with a 8800 GTS w/768mb ram will out perform my i5 iMac gaming wise. Stated before WoW is not using but 2 cores and relying on the GPU, a 2 yr old desktop model vs the 4850 mobile which is probably year old tech already.
I think anyone buying a Mac knows (or should know) it's not a gaming rig. It does fine for what it is but expecting some super machine just because it has a Quad core CPU is overlooking the rest of the tech involved.
Well I bought the I7 based on this thread and some people clearly do not do 25 man raids, or have no idea what lag is as if you read the reviews from this board a few people stated that Wow runs great on I7 which might be true till you enter a 25 man raid. Then Imac graphics card simply can not map out all the textures fast enough and you start to have lag making those raids harder than they need to be. I happen to be in a guild that is top 3 on my server and my guild will just replace you if you if you happen to lag out or die to lag all the time.
A good example of how the Imac lags is on Northern Beast in Heroic mode in 25 man because of lag the fire will spawn under you and you wont see them till you are dead at times that never happen on my older PC which is much slower but has ATI 4980 graphic cards which by no means is a top of line graphic card and can be found online today for like $120-150. Hell go try and do Heigan the Unclean dance on Imac I7 and you will lag durning the dance and die to green **** but then do the same thing on a PC with just a decent graphic nothing special like 9800GT card which can be found online for under $100 bucks and you will see you will not lag at all.
Sure on 5-10 man raids/heroics Imac will run just fine and most places excluding dalaran the Imac will run just fine with max settings etc but clearly this is not the case once you get into 25 man raids as lagging in raids is not normal and should never happen unless you are a bad internet connection or have a sub par graphics cards.
Again I am not knocking the Imac, I love the computer much better than my PC but anyone expecting the Imac to be a decent gaming machine is going to be very disappointed and the people on here telling people Imac run Wow great obviously do not raid in 25 man raids or think lag is normal.
Haven't played since last June, but here are a few tips that are hopefully still relevant:
FPS killers: Full Screen Glow, High Shadows, Max distance
WoW Mac video settings sticky:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4028094861&sid=1
From that sticky:
Late 2009 Core i5/i7 iMac with ATI 4850 Graphics Card
Resolution:
24-bit Color, 24-bit Depth. 2x Multisampling.
Vertical Sync: OFF
Triple Buffering: OFF
Hardware Cursor: ON
Reduce Input Lag: OFF
Effects:
Video Quality: Custom
View Distance: 80%.
Environmental Detail: Maximum.
Texture Resolution: Maximum.
Terrain Blending: Maximum.
Ground Clutter Density: Maximum
Texture Filtering: Minimum
Particle Density: Maximum.
Ground Clutter Radius: Medium.
Weather Intensity: Maximum.
Shadow Quality: Minimum.
Player Textures: Maximum
Shaders:
Specular Lighting: ON
Full-Screen Glow Effect: ON
Death Effect: ON/OFF (User Preference)
Projected Textures: ON
Notes: Expect an average of 90-110fps depending on CPU.
On a personal note- I quit cold turkey, and have 15k gold and 4-5 bank tabs full of rare Gems and ore, and a lock that's 11k kills short of the 100k mark...everyday struggle to fight this terrible addiction
FPS killers: Full Screen Glow, High Shadows, Max distance
WoW Mac video settings sticky:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4028094861&sid=1
From that sticky:
Late 2009 Core i5/i7 iMac with ATI 4850 Graphics Card
Resolution:
24-bit Color, 24-bit Depth. 2x Multisampling.
Vertical Sync: OFF
Triple Buffering: OFF
Hardware Cursor: ON
Reduce Input Lag: OFF
Effects:
Video Quality: Custom
View Distance: 80%.
Environmental Detail: Maximum.
Texture Resolution: Maximum.
Terrain Blending: Maximum.
Ground Clutter Density: Maximum
Texture Filtering: Minimum
Particle Density: Maximum.
Ground Clutter Radius: Medium.
Weather Intensity: Maximum.
Shadow Quality: Minimum.
Player Textures: Maximum
Shaders:
Specular Lighting: ON
Full-Screen Glow Effect: ON
Death Effect: ON/OFF (User Preference)
Projected Textures: ON
Notes: Expect an average of 90-110fps depending on CPU.
On a personal note- I quit cold turkey, and have 15k gold and 4-5 bank tabs full of rare Gems and ore, and a lock that's 11k kills short of the 100k mark...everyday struggle to fight this terrible addiction
Lol I am using those setting and yes expect average 90-100FPS except blizz expects you spend more times outside of 25 man raids than in 25 man raids. In 25 man raids like I said I tend to lag on my Imac and other people in my guild who have both Imac and Pc also only lag in 25 man raids on Imac/MB Pro yet using the same internet connection never lag on a PC.
Like I said I am not knocking Imac, if you just arena the Imac will work great as their are never more than 10 people on the screen etc but in 25 man raids the graphic card simply can not process all the textures fast enough as their are 25 textures alone from other players in the raid plus whatever textures need to render by the boss encounter which could be another 10-15 textures or more depending on the encounter. And sure in encounters where most of the players tend not to move you will lag less too as graphics card is not always re-rendering those textures but in fight like twins where they are tons of orbs flying around and 25 players doing stuff forget it, the Imac graphics cards just can not keep up. I will be honest I can maybe think of 5-6 encounters only where that happens but that is 5-6 too many and blizz will continue to make encounters which are just not Imac/MB friendly as that is what players want. They want encounters that look prettier and prettier unfortunately until apple put a regular non mobile graphic card into the Imac it just won't be able to handle those encounters well.
Again I love my Imac but anyone considering getting an Imac I7 to replace a current semi decent PC rig to play Wow will be disappointed in the performance you will see in some 25 man raids. If you happen to do just do 10 man raids or heroic then you will not be disappointed with Imac I7 at all.
Are you playing WoW in Bootcamp? One way to test and see if it is actually the graphics card is run it in Bootcamp.. if it lags like that than it is the card and not the OS itself.
I bought an Imac because I am tried of Windows crashing on me or freezing etc while Windows7 is better Vista it still crashes. No I am not running boot camp on my mac and the problem is not the operating system either as the Mac operating system is much more efficient that windows and uses much less overhead.
I know people with older Mac Pro dou's who have desktop version of 4870 and GT150 which is why I thought when people on this forum said Imac 27 I7 run wow fine it was true considering the I7 is much faster which made up for the slower graphic card.
WoW does not run perfectly (60fps) on the i7 at native res with all the settings maxed out. In a LOT of places it does, but not everywhere. Especially not with shadows on and draw distance at full. No way, no how. WoW is still a very taxing game on the iMac hardware. But it sure does look pretty.
Again, some places run at 60fps with no trouble, but others just don't, especially with a lot going on. But that's to be expected with a mobile GPU.
Again, some places run at 60fps with no trouble, but others just don't, especially with a lot going on. But that's to be expected with a mobile GPU.