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World of Warcraft. Macbook PRO Santa Rosa nvidia 8600GT

Mine has some of the same issues (the 128ddr model), which look like an Nvidia graphics driver issue in OSX to me.

I have also noticed that if I turn on Anti-Aliasing in WoW it incurs a massive performance hit (from 30 - 40 fps down to 10 - 12 fps) which should not happen with such a high end Nvidia chipset.

I guess that I will just have to wait and see; these issues tend to get ironed out with device driver updates. I am also going to try installing WoW in Windows XP using boot camp and see if the same problem occurs.
 
jordan.hogan said:
Mine has some of the same issues (the 128ddr model), which look like an Nvidia graphics driver issue in OSX to me.

I have also noticed that if I turn on Anti-Aliasing in WoW it incurs a massive performance hit (from 30 - 40 fps down to 10 - 12 fps) which should not happen with such a high end Nvidia chipset.

I guess that I will just have to wait and see; these issues tend to get ironed out with device driver updates. I am also going to try installing WoW in Windows XP using boot camp and see if the same problem occurs.
Click to expand...

Thats what I'm curious about.. What is the performance like in bootcamp 1.3 XP with WOW. Anyone?
 
djinn said:
Thats what I'm curious about.. What is the performance like in bootcamp 1.3 XP with WOW. Anyone?
Click to expand...

It runs extremely well in XP. I turned all of my graphics settings up, including AA, and put AF in the middle, and still get 50-80fps depending on where I am.

In OSX i keep AA and AF down and get 30-60fps...which is good enough for me, and more convenient than switching to XP.

But it's definitely unfortunate that it runs so much better in Windows :/
 
Well in this case I would say that Apple did a below average job on the device drivers for the 8600. Since Boot Camp most likely uses Nvidia’s Windows driver it would not suffer from this problem.

The good news though is that in my experience manufactures (Apple in this case) tend to release new device drivers that correct these issues in a timely fashion.
 
I've just played for several hours on mine and, crikey, I'm warm now! :D The MBP has cooled itself right back down since I logged out, though, surprisingly quickly.

I play under OS X and the experience really is very good. I can second that 30-60fps number, haven't seen it go below 30fps yet. I get juddering when I first log in for a bit, probably due to the 5400rpm hdd (?), but once i'm going it's smooth and enjoyable. Doing underwater stuff with the trackpad was, erm, interesting, but other than that it was excellent :D As these machines are so new I'm hoping software updates will only make things even better in the future :)
 
Im getting my MBP SR next week on thurday i think, but unlike you guys i quit WoW. I think now im going to have to reinstall and start all over again.. horray.
 
For the SR MBP, what are the normal FPS with what settings? Just curious if the new MBP blow my MBP out of the water with game performance.
 
Here is what I found...

Testing System:
Machine: Apple MacBook Pro
OS: OS X (10.4.10) / Windows XP Pro SP 2 (Boot Camp 1.3 Beta)
CPU: 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (Santa Rosa June 2007)
Memory: 2 GB 667 Mhz DD2 SDRAM
HDD: 160 GB (123 GB MacFS / 25.72 GB FAT32)
Video: Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT 128 MB

Game Settings:
Screen Resolution: 1440x900 Full Screen
Color Depth: 24-bit
Shedders: All on
Trilinear Filtering: On
World Appearance: All possible settings set to high

Test Description:
Basically I installed WoW on both the OS X partition and the Windows partition and recorded the average frame rate in the same area in both operating systems. Please note that the frames per second (FPS) recorded here are not exact. I basically wrote down the number that I saw occur the most often while watching the game run.

The Results:
Area: Stormwind in the middle of the Trade District between Justine Demalier (NPC) and Melris Malagan (NPC).
Apple OS X:
AA 1x = 50 – 60 FPS
AA 2x = 20 – 25 FPS
AA 4x = 19 – 22 FPS
Microsoft Windows XP Pro:
AA 1x = 58 – 60 FPS
AA 2x = 49 – 52 FPS
AA 4x = 43 – 45 FPS

Area: Just outside the front gates into Stormwind looking out into the forest.
Apple OS X:
AA 1x = 38 – 40 FPS
AA 2x = 10 – 20 FPS
AA 4x = 10 – 15 FPS
Microsoft Windows XP Pro:
AA 1x = 59 – 60 FPS
AA 2x = 50 – 51 FPS
AA 4x = 32 – 33 FPS

Notes:
As you can see from the numbers above, WoW runs a lot faster in Windows using Boot Camp. This is most likely because of a driver issue in OS X (Boot Camp is using Nvidia's 6.14.11.134 driver). Hopefully Apple will have this cleared up soon since, as you can see, the hardware in the MacBook Pro is capable of much faster speeds then it is showing in OS X.

The score on the last test is also interesting. OS X didn’t show much of a performance change between 2x and 4x AA where as in Windows there was a rather large drop. Windows still managed to score almost twice as fast, but the lack of a change in OS X makes me think that changing the setting did not actually cause a change in the image being rendered.

Another interesting point to note is that WoW actually made available 8x AA when running in Windows under Boot Camp. This rendering option was not available in OS X.

I also noticed that when you have AA on when running WoW in OS X it will sometimes render artifacts (areas of the screen that turn into garbled colors). The higher you set the AA the more often these artifacts would appear.
 
jordan.hogan said:
Here is what I found...
Click to expand...

That's cool! Well done!
Now, anyone with a 2.4 SR MBP wanna do the same? ;)

Well, that gives a lot of hope that the newest of new games will run. True, WOW doesn't have that high system reqs, but when you can play with 30+ frame rates with absolutely everything on fullest of full, hope is given.
 
It's a shame about the inferior driver situation.

I have to say though, I excpected the 8600M GT to show a little more improvement over the X1600 than it does - this isn't to say I'm not happy with it though. Best card for mobile gaming on the Mac since the first appearance of the Mobility 9700 in the PowerBook. Hopefully Apple will assess real-world gaming performance of the card versus Windows and adjust the drivers to improve performance...

I'm praying that we get both the latest GeForce 8 and Radeon HD 2900 cards when the Mac Pro's next update rolls around...Please, Apple! It is exactly one year till my next purchase, and it will be a loaded Mac Pro. Good job so far, but keep it up!
 
WoW actually is not a very good application for performance testing; the image being displayed tends to change very often as new players come into view. Does anyone know of a 3D benchmarking tool that runs on Windows and OS X?
 
A real interesting test would be in the Outlands. Supposedly there are more polygon counts and the texture is more detailed.
 
WoW actually is not a very good application for performance testing;
Click to expand...

It is perfect because this thread is about WoW performance. Realworld numbers in this case are much better than synthetic numbers.
 
First of all you are missunderstanding something about the performance.

Its not about the driver, its about the API blizzard used.

The driver that OSX has for the NVIDIA is far good enough.
As you have probably seen, performance in native OPENGL code runs pretty much as smooth in windows as in OSX or Linux.
Check out Doom3 or Quake4 for example.

World of Warcraft was programmed natively for DirectX, the microsoft implementation of 3D api used for most of windows games.

Blizzard has ported the 3d engine from directx to opengl. They have done a nice job, and in the last updates they have optimized it alot, but its still a blizzard issue.
So let's just hope that blizzard works a little bit more in that stuff and hopefully we will have a Wow with similar performance in windows and osx.
 
senc01a said:
World of Warcraft was programmed natively for DirectX, the microsoft implementation of 3D api used for most of windows games.
Click to expand...

You make a good point, although I don't think that World of Warcraft was initially developed for DirectX and then ported to OpenGL. Blizzard tends to develop the two platforms at the same time which allows them to ship hybrid disks that work on both platforms. But that is beside the point, it is very possible that Blizzard has some issues on the 8600M with their OpenGL API. When I get home from work tonight I will force WoW to run in Windows using OpenGL (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww0793p2) and run my test again.
 
The Results:
Area: Stormwind in the middle of the Trade District between Justine Demalier (NPC) and Melris Malagan (NPC).
Apple OS X (OpenGL):
AA 1x = 50 – 60 FPS
AA 2x = 20 – 25 FPS
AA 4x = 19 – 22 FPS
Microsoft Windows XP Pro (Direct3D):
AA 1x = 58 – 60 FPS
AA 2x = 49 – 52 FPS
AA 4x = 43 – 45 FPS
Microsoft Windows XP Pro (OpenGL):
AA 1x = 38 - 40 FPS
AA 2x = 36 - 40 FPS
AA 4x = 10 - 11 FPS

Area: Just outside the front gates into Stormwind looking out into the forest.
Apple OS X (OpenGL):
AA 1x = 38 – 40 FPS
AA 2x = 10 – 20 FPS
AA 4x = 10 – 15 FPS
Microsoft Windows XP Pro (Direct3D):
AA 1x = 59 – 60 FPS
AA 2x = 50 – 51 FPS
AA 4x = 32 – 33 FPS
Microsoft Windows XP Pro (OpenGL):
AA 1x = 54 - 56 FPS
AA 2x = 29 - 30 FPS
AA 4x = 28 - 30 FPS

Running WoW in Windows using OpenGL seems to be have produced results closer to the ones I have seen running the game in OSX. In some cases OSX was actually faster then Windows when running in OpenGL. In other cases it was not, keep in mind though that the load on the WoW server is different today then it was when I last ran this test. So the results are likely not as even as they should be. But just comparing how WoW runs in Windows between OpenGL and Direct3D shows that the game definitely runs faster under Direct3D then it does under OpenGL.

Thanks to senc01a for pointing out that the default rendering engine for WoW in Windows is Direct3D. :)
 
Got a brand new MacBook Pro 2,4Ghz, 2Gb ram with GeForce 8600M GT 256MB.
World of Warcraft is a pain to play T_T
Tried to start from full details to low details... the game of course runs better but still jerks too much.
I put GLFaster "2" into the Config.wtf file as suggested by Blizzard, but the perfomance is crappy anyway.
Moreover... where is the antialiasing effect?
If u want I can post some screenshot to explain my feeling...
 
I've been playing WoW on a 15.4" 2.4GHz MBP for a few brief periods, and so far I'm very impressed. One thing I have done is to make use of the maxfps attribute. I've set it to 30 (with everything set high, full screen glow off, no AA or AF), as that gives perfectly smooth play, but it's not wasting resources by rendering faster than that. The upside of this is that everything runs much cooler, and the fans don't run anywhere nearly as loudly, plus I still get great looking graphics :).
 
As u told me i put maxfps = 30
What do u mean with AA and AF ?
And... what kind of multisampling are u using? 24-24-1x ?
With max 30 fps and all details to high it doesnt work very nice...
Can u please copy and paste your Config.wtf ( inside \warcraft\WTF folder )
We have the same machine, it has to work!
Thanks a lot mate, I wait your reply.
 
grossimassi said:
As u told me i put maxfps = 30
What do u mean with AA and AF ?
And... what kind of multisampling are u using? 24-24-1x ?
With max 30 fps and all details to high it doesnt work very nice...
Can u please copy and paste your Config.wtf ( inside \warcraft\WTF folder )
We have the same machine, it has to work!
Thanks a lot mate, I wait your reply.
Click to expand...

AA= anti-aliasing, what WoW call multisampling :). I generally run at x1 (i.e. none), but I'm considering tuning it to x2 now I've capped the FPS.

Not sure what you mean by "With max 30 fps and all details to high it doesnt work very nice..." - works beautifully on my machine.

Here are the relevant parts of my config file:

SET gxColorBits "24"
SET gxDepthBits "24"
SET gxResolution "1440x900"
SET gxRefresh "60"
SET hwDetect "0"
SET fullAlpha "1"
SET doodadAnim "0"
SET lodDist "80.000000"
SET SmallCull "0.010000"
SET DistCull "350.000000"
SET frillDensity "48"
SET farclip "777"
SET particleDensity "0.300000"
SET gxMultisampleQuality "0.000000"
SET shadowLevel "0"
SET pixelShaders "1"
SET mouseSpeed "1.4500000476837"
SET Gamma "1.000000"
SET profanityFilter "0"
SET weatherDensity "3"
SET ffxGlow "0"
SET ffxDeath "0"
SET cameraYawMoveSpeed "180"
SET cameraYawSmoothSpeed "180"
SET cameraDistanceMaxFactor "1"
SET gameTip "75"
SET uiScale "1"
SET ShowTargetCastbar "1"
SET guildMemberNotify "1"
SET gxVSync "0"
SET MusicVolume "0.40000000596046"
SET SoundVolume "1"
SET MasterVolume "1"
SET AmbienceVolume "0.60000002384186"
SET minimapInsideZoom "0"
SET autoSelfCast "1"
SET checkAddonVersion "0"
SET minimapZoom "0"
SET showToolsUI "0"
SET specular "1"
SET EnableMusic "0"
SET preferredFullscreenMode "1"
SET M2UsePixelShaders "1"
SET MaxFPS "30"
Click to expand...

Hope that helps :).
 
Dunno what was the problem... I just copied and pasted your config file, and now the game just runs better.
I only added SET GLFaster "2" to your config.
I also tried to put multisampling 2x but this time game performance decreases.
Anyway thanks!
Im getting Leopard these days, I wanna check what they did with OpenGL.
 
grossimassi said:
Dunno what was the problem... I just copied and pasted your config file, and now the game just runs better.
I only added SET GLFaster "2" to your config.
I also tried to put multisampling 2x but this time game performance decreases.
Anyway thanks!
Im getting Leopard these days, I wanna check what they did with OpenGL.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear it helped :). How does it run with GLFaster=2? I haven't bothered with it because apparently it's still experimental, but if it makes some noticeable difference, I might try it out.

Dave.
 
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