WoW bad fps on MBP?!

[Sptz]

Hey I have a 2.4 SR MBP with Leopard 10.5.2 (updated firmware) and I am having a bit trouble with WoW, I remember in Tiger it used to be pretty fast, almost like Windows, but now it sucks bad, for example I'm in Thrallmar, there isn't alot going on but my fps drop to 6 fps, and the fans aren't even full blast... which is odd. my settings are 1440x900, 2x AA, everything max, except texture filtering at about 70 or 60% ... So ... is this normal in every MBP ?!

Ps. Another anoying thing is, after I quit wow, it disables the exposé and dashboard shortcuts, which are F9,F10,F11,F12.. the default ones... how can I prevent this instead of going to keyboard preferences everytime I leave the game...

 

[colocolo]

You will get a lot better framerates by disabling anti-alias.
That said, fps shouldn't be that bad to begin with; I get much higher with my 2.2 MBP

 

[Sptz]

Which is why it's strange... I run HL2 and UT3 on WinXP bootcamp just fine. So I don't see why it's running so bad on Leopard... I remember in Tiger it was really fast... for god sake it has a 8600M GT and I can't even apply some AA? I used to play everything max with full AA with my x1600 mobile on my old notebook...

 

[colocolo]

This is not the first time AA issues have been discussed regarding MBP and WoW on these forums; I'm not sure if it is some kind of bug or an OS performance issue, all I know is that it does kills fps .

Oh, and I forgot to ask, but I assume you have vsync disabled... right? (I don't think it matters below 30fps but its a possibility)

 

[ReanimationLP]

Depending on what your looking at, your framerates can take a nose dive.

Espically if you're in town and theres a crapton of people.

Trust me, I found this one out with my X1950 Pro.

Have all the settings maxed at 1920x1200 at around 55-70 FPS.

Go into Stormwind, look at all the people, boom, drop to 17 FPS.

 

[lordjonny]

set your AA to x1 then it will work a treat, I'm pretty sure its x1 but due to maintenance i can't check my settings....

 

[Mackilroy]

Yep, it's the 2x AA. Turn that to 1x and you'll be gold, according to Blizzard there's a bug that when you have anything higher than 1x and Full Screen Glow enabled, it kills the framerate.

 

[kapowaz]

In my experience Mac OS X itself simply isn't as efficient a subsystem for games to run in as Windows; comparing it to BootCamp you'll always see a difference (a negative one) in OS X. I've seen the same on both my MacBook Pro and Mac Pro; for WoW itself, I'd always use BootCamp on a MacBook Pro, as it literally makes the difference between it being barely playable and unplayable (depending on where you are).

For what it's worth, cities are always a performance drain, due to the vast number of character models wearing different sets of armour; it's like a double-whammy of lots of 3D geometry to draw, and lots of textures to load (hence the 'stuttering' effect you might see). And if you think Thrallmar is bad, you should try Shattrath!

 

[iPapa]

The first thing you should disable, is the Full Screen Glow Effect. With this off, you should see better framerates. Also try to turn down the AA to 1x. These are the settings I used (albeit with all the other sliders set to minimum or in the middle) on a 2.1GHz 20" G5 iMac with the ATI Radeon X600 XT grahpics card. I got a steady 15-35fps on that machine. Anywhere. Except in Shattrath where I could get framerates as low as 0.5-0.8 (highs there were some 10-11fps).

Now I've got a Mac Pro with the 8800GT graphics card, and there is no real noticeable framerate drops even with Full Screen Glow enabled. However the AA seems to be a framerate killer even on this system. With AA set to 1x I get framerates between 150 and 300+, but they drop to stay always between 40 and 90 when I choose 2x AA. 4x AA gets slightly lower framerates than this, normally 30-60 fps.

I've not run into the trouble with Expose and Dashboard. Another thread discusses this particular problem. Maybe you could get some help from the official WoW forum (the Mac section there) for tips on both the Expose / function keys trouble and the low framerates.

 

[Sptz]

I just turned AA to 1x and it improved alot... with 2xAA when looking at the floor it was at 38 fps or so ... now it's 150fps.... what the hell?! I remember it wasn't like that before... but I stopped playing april 2007... maybe it's because of the latest patches that ruined the game's performance on mac ...

 

[alkar]

It's because in Tiger enabling FSAA 2x + GLOW wouldn't actually enable FSAA... It'd still stay in 1x, that's all.

On the contrary, WoW is running better every patches.

But I think Rob Barris is wandering on this forum : I'm sure he'd tell you the same : OpenGL in OSX is ****** so WoW uses a slower rendering path to render FSAA + GLOW, that's all.

Hopefuly Apple will move their *** real quick, because it seems even 10.5.3 doesn't fix this.