World of Warcraft

[flynz4]

I currently have a 2009 Rev C SSD MBA and also an 11.6" Ultimate. I'll be getting a new MBA as soon as they are released. My wife will keep one of the MBA's and my daughter will get the other.

My daughter is trying to decide which of the two machines 2009 or 2010 would be better for WoW. Since I do not play games... I am wondering if anyone has experience playing on either machine.

/Jim

 

[reclusive46]

2010. The 320m graphics are much better.

 

[DeusInvictus7]

Yeah, the 2010 model will be loads better because of the 320M. The 11" should be able to play WoW on low, maybe some medium settings. My 13" plays it on almost all medium, but some major things like shadows and water detail set to low.

 

[Oppressed]

The 320m plays it just fine. 11 inch included. You will fetch around 30-35 FPS on lowish settings, but you can have some settings on high like spell detail which I find is a must.

 

[cypherpunk]

If your WoW player does any end-game content (10-25man raiding and battlegrounds) the Air will infuriate them.

The Air is fine for very casual play, but it cannot even handle trash pulls in a raid.

 

[Oppressed]

If your WoW player does any end-game content (10-25man raiding and battlegrounds) the Air will infuriate them.

The Air is fine for very casual play, but it cannot even handle trash pulls in a raid.

What are you talking about? I raid 10/25 almost nightly without problems. Even 40 man Isle of Conquest and AV. Could you elaborate?

 

[flynz4]

What should she expect if she chooses the 2009 Rev C 2.13 SSD? Would it really suck for WoW?

/Jim

 

[jmcgeejr]

What are you talking about? I raid 10/25 almost nightly without problems. Even 40 man Isle of Conquest and AV. Could you elaborate?

I am a bit curious guys as to how you can get wow to run on the 320. I just got a mac mini a couple of months ago, and I tried to play wow on it. No dice, even dropping it down to low settings at 1280x1024. My MBP runs it just fine.

 

[Oppressed]

Are you using 10.6.7? If so did you install it through a combo update or software update?

 

[falcor87]

I am a bit curious guys as to how you can get wow to run on the 320. I just got a mac mini a couple of months ago, and I tried to play wow on it. No dice, even dropping it down to low settings at 1280x1024. My MBP runs it just fine.

That's interesting, I was always able to get 30 fps on my old macbook core 2 duo during casual play on low settings. Forget the v-card that was in it (intel something or other) but I know it was crap, the computer was a 2006 or 2007 I believe. The game should be playable on the mini on low settings if you stay away from raids.

 

[Yankee125xt]

I just installed windows 7 on my MBA and it runs on ultra at 30 fps...

 

[3lfk1ng]

I had a Mac Mini with a 320m and it played WoW much better in Windows 7 than it did in OSX (Nvidia 320m). I was able to raise the graphics settings without sacrificing overall playability. During a 25man raid I had to drop the settings down to medium though.

 

[Xgm541]

OSX has crappy nvidia driver support. I have 1.4ghz/4gb ram 2010 mba and wow runs at 60fps on low/medium settings. I get 40 fps in 10 mans and 20-30 in 25 mans.

 

[Nautilus007]

It plays

It plays but the fans kick up quite a bit

 

[Alvesang]

I am a bit curious guys as to how you can get wow to run on the 320. I just got a mac mini a couple of months ago, and I tried to play wow on it. No dice, even dropping it down to low settings at 1280x1024. My MBP runs it just fine.

That's odd, I've been playing on the stock mini 2.4 GHz and 2 GB RAM on my TV at 1920x1080 pixels and I wouldn't call the framerate spectacular, but I squeezed 30-40 fps at low to medium settings out of it, excluding heavily frequented regions like Stormwind. Playing it while sitting on the couch bugged me, so I went back to playing it on my MBP or MBA 11" which are both able to handle it as well.

 

[tungry]

I still don't get people who buys a 1500+ ultra portable Mac laptop and puts windows on it so they can play games on it...

Get a clue and buy a proper gaming laptop instead.

-END OF STORY-

 

[travishill]

I still don't get people who buys a 1500+ ultra portable Mac laptop and puts windows on it so they can play games on it..

Because then you can use the same Boot Camp partition with VMWare or Parallels to run other Windows applications, and have the flexibility to boot into Windows natively to run games when you want.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with having the option to run both OS X and Windows to do what they're good at...

 

[Yankee125xt]

I still don't get people who buys a 1500+ ultra portable Mac laptop and puts windows on it so they can play games on it...

Get a clue and buy a proper gaming laptop instead.

-END OF STORY-

Mac sucks for gaming... I only use windows for SC2, Wow and Assassins Creed...

I'm damn sure I spent my money well and I sure as hell don't need someone like you telling me what to do.

Now go get a clue.

 

[tbobmccoy]

Mac sucks for gaming... I only use windows for SC2, Wow and Assassins Creed...

I'm damn sure I spent my money well and I sure as hell don't need someone like you telling me what to do.

Now go get a clue.

Actually, Blizzard (World of Warcraft, SC2) has very, very good support for Mac gaming, although EA and Ubisoft suck at encoding for Macs, so Assassin's Creed sucks on a Mac (same with EA games).

 

[tungry]

Because then you can use the same Boot Camp partition with VMWare or Parallels to run other Windows applications, and have the flexibility to boot into Windows natively to run games when you want.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with having the option to run both OS X and Windows to do what they're good at...

Are you telling me Macs are 'good at' virtualizing windows and playing games than actual native windows PC machine? Macs does certain things better i'll give you that but virtualizing windows and playing games aren't in that list.

 

[tungry]

Mac sucks for gaming...

You said it yourself, GG?

 

[PaulWog]

I currently have a 2009 Rev C SSD MBA and also an 11.6" Ultimate. I'll be getting a new MBA as soon as they are released. My wife will keep one of the MBA's and my daughter will get the other.

My daughter is trying to decide which of the two machines 2009 or 2010 would be better for WoW. Since I do not play games... I am wondering if anyone has experience playing on either machine.

/Jim

If your daughter wants purely to game (play WoW) on a computer, then you are likely better off selling the 2009 Macbook Air for whatever you can get for it, and purchasing a Windows 7 based laptop instead.

However, if she wants to use the Macbook Air for additional reasons (ultraportability, aesthetics, notetaking, etc, etc), then the 2010 Macbook Air would suffice for WoW + those things.

For $600-$650, you can find a laptop with a Radeon 6550 graphics card (or equivalent) with an i5 processor in it, so long as you look for something on sale. Likely the screen quality will be slightly worse (not significantly) than the Macbook Air from 2009.

That's just a recommendation. It sounds like you want your wife to be using the 11-inch Macbook Air if at all possible... maybe I'm guessing wrong though.

The main thing though is that the Macbook Air isn't much of a gaming machine. The 2010 Macbook Air can casually deal with games, but if someone wants to play WoW, they'll get more for their money with a W7 machine if it's primarily gaming they will be doing.

 

[flynz4]

If your daughter wants purely to game (play WoW) on a computer, then you are likely better off selling the 2009 Macbook Air for whatever you can get for it, and purchasing a Windows 7 based laptop instead.

However, if she wants to use the Macbook Air for additional reasons (ultraportability, aesthetics, notetaking, etc, etc), then the 2010 Macbook Air would suffice for WoW + those things.

For $600-$650, you can find a laptop with a Radeon 6550 graphics card (or equivalent) with an i5 processor in it, so long as you look for something on sale. Likely the screen quality will be slightly worse (not significantly) than the Macbook Air from 2009.

That's just a recommendation. It sounds like you want your wife to be using the 11-inch Macbook Air if at all possible... maybe I'm guessing wrong though.

The main thing though is that the Macbook Air isn't much of a gaming machine. The 2010 Macbook Air can casually deal with games, but if someone wants to play WoW, they'll get more for their money with a W7 machine if it's primarily gaming they will be doing.

Actually, she is a grad student in Vancouver BC. She has a 27" iMac that she uses daily for school, and currently uses a HP Mini for note taking. She will be replacing the HP Mini with the MBA.

She does play WoW on her iMac, but she doesn't travel with it very often because of the size. She tends to come back to the states fairly often, and would like to still have access to WoW while she is visiting... hence loading WoW on the MBA. She is pretty confident that either MBA (2009 or 2010) is fine for her classwork. She is unsure about playing WoW. It is really only a minor consideration in any case.

My wife doesn't care at all which one she gets. She is happy with her current 2009 Rev C SSD model, and would also be happy with the 2010 Rev D. She basically is leaving the decision to my daughter.

/Jim

 

[travishill]

Are you telling me Macs are 'good at' virtualizing windows and playing games than actual native windows PC machine? Macs does certain things better i'll give you that but virtualizing windows and playing games aren't in that list.

Nothing of the sort. Virtualizing is not a good way to play games.

I'm just pointing out that you can use the same Windows partition in a window (virtualized, for office stye apps) or boot into it natively for things like games. It allows a user to use whatever OS is best for the task at hand.

Native Windows is still better than OS X today for games, primarily because of driver optimization- that's where the games market is (what's left of the PC Gaming market, anyway) so that's where the dev focus is...

 

[orfeas0]

I still don't get people who buys a 1500+ ultra portable Mac laptop and puts windows on it so they can play games on it...

Get a clue and buy a proper gaming laptop instead.

-END OF STORY-

Why even buy a 1500$+ pc if you don't play games? A 1000$ will email+surf+play videos just as well ...
People buy macbooks not MAINLY for gaming, but they also want to have the possibility to game on it, and why not?

Are you telling me Macs are 'good at' virtualizing windows and playing games than actual native windows PC machine? Macs does certain things better i'll give you that but virtualizing windows and playing games aren't in that list.

Virtualizing windows , actual native windows what are you talking about?
Windows in Boot Camp (on a macbook) runs just like in any other windows-using laptop! And even better!