Wow performance on stock 20" 2.4 w/1gb

[pcorajr]

This is the performance i got on wow running on OS X

Spec's

20" iMac
ATI 2600 whatever (XT, PRO)
1GB Ram

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Basically I ran the game for about 2 hours Cranking the Shaders and World appearance to max yield about 49 FPS average in certain spots where there where a lot of particles and places where terrain distance comes into play i would get about 29 FPS

The problem was when multisampling was enabled. At 1X i would get very good FPS but once I started using 2x 4x and 6x the FPS where dramatically low.

This is not by any standards a very good benchmark but it shows what we can expect for use WOW junkies that like to play this game in OSX. I will be doing a in depth Benchmark this weekend. I apologize for taking so long but to be honest this is my first mac and I was enjoying and learning how to use iLife.

The following Thread in the WOW forums has a lot of good tips and tweaks:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=712000716&sid=1

 

[cloudstrife13]

Yeah I was reading on the WoW forums and they were saying the HD2600 in the iMac dose not have enough bandwith to do high multisampling. They recommended having it at 1x but they recommended a lot of other settings could go to high.

 

[pcorajr]

Yeah I was reading on the WoW forums and they were saying the HD2600 in the iMac dose not have enough bandwith to do high multisampling. They recommended having it at 1x but they recommended a lot of other settings could go to high.

so it is the video card not having enought juice to power the game with mutisampling? I hoping that it was a driver issue that could be fixed with an update

 

[Haoshiro]

Are you talking about AA or AF?

I'm not sure why people would care about AA if they are running in that resolution

 

[pcorajr]

Are you talking about AA or AF?

I'm not sure why people would care about AA if they are running in that resolution

Im talking about multisampling what ever that translate to (AA or AF) i did nto notice a difference when turning it on so im happy with my running at native resolution with max settings and 1x multisampling.

Here is a quote form the wow forums.

I just loaded up WoW and some other stuff on a portable external fw drive and took it to my local Apple store to try it out. They let me hook it up to the "better" 20inch (2.4gig/2600hd pro(256mb)/3gig ram), which incidentally is what I'm eyeing for a possible purchase. For reference, I have at home the first Intel iMac 17" (1.83 CoreDuo/x1600(128mb)/2gig ram). Using a flight from Shattrath to Area 52 as a test on both machines, the new machine was a minimum 10fps faster and up to 20-25fps faster. Usually averaging around 20fps faster for the most part. This was at native res (1680x1050) as opposed to 1440x900 on my old 17". The exact same config was used for both machines.

24bit 1x multisample
Terrain Distance: right in the middle
Environment detail: max
Anistropic: low
Terrain Texture: max
Texture Detail: max
Character Shadows: yes
Spell Detail: Max
Weather: Max
Level of Detail: no
Enable all Shader effects: yes
Terrain highlights: yes
Full Screen Glow: yes
Death effect: yes
Vertex Animation Shaders: Yes
Smooth Shading: yes
Weather Shaders: no

Sound: everything on

So, to say that the 2600 stinks compared to the x1600, I'd say that's not fair as far as WoW goes. It's quite a nice step up. Maybe part of that is due to the faster cpu's, but that's what you get with a whole new machine anyways.

Also If anybody is having problems with performance try this:

To everybody who's just purchased a new computer:

Spotlight indexing is probably churning away at your new machine trying to index all your files. This will cause gameplay to be "unsmooth". If you haven't already, try opening System Preferences --> Spotlight and add your World of Warcraft folder to the privacy tab.