WoW Performance Woes: OS X vs. Win XP

[odinsride]

Hi all, I am having some problems running WoW in OS X, specifically in the Outlands. I recently hit level 58 and was able to finally go into the Outlands, but I was shocked and disappointed that the game became a slideshow pretty much. Even turning the video settings ALL the way down made the game barely tolerable.

I went to XP via bootcamp to see if it was the same, but no, the game ran fine under XP - with all settings maxed.

I realize WoW runs in Direct3d under XP and OpenGL under OS X, but it shouldn't be that drastic of a difference. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

For now I am forced to stick with XP to play WoW...which sucks.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

 

[Keytachi]

you play with the macbook or macbook pro? (since in your signyou have both listed)

 

[odinsride]

you play with the macbook or macbook pro? (since in your signyou have both listed)

Sorry, this is with the Macbook Pro

 

[odinsride]

Also, I would say that almost any other area in WoW other than the Outlands is very playable under OS X

 

[nick004]

I play WoW on my MBP, one revision behind yours and it runs beautifully for me. I only ever play in OS X, although started playing XP.

I'm not a frame rate freak but it runs much better than I need. Don't see why you would be having issues, unless your using your MB. Your MBP should be much smoother than mine due to the graphic upgrade.

There must be something else wrong.

 

[Keytachi]

i agree with nick, something else must be wrong. Try running a permissions and disk verifications. if anything shows as wrong, repair it and try WoW again.

 

[cc bcc]

You didn't install an extra addon by any chance, at the same time as going to the Outlands? My MBP 17" 2.33 runs WoW just fine, in or outside the Outlands.

 

[Rydther]

on my SR 15" MBP connected to my 22" LCD, WoW runs great, in fact haven't booted my winxp machine since getting my mac

must be some sort of config issue, I researched (not at home so dont have links) a few performance tweaks. Try that and the other suggestions here?

do you use addons? Try disabling them and see if problem persists? I use a few and have no issues

 

[WillJS]

Outlands run very well on my, macbook, there I said it.

 

[miniConvert]

Just to confirm, Hellfire Peninsula works fantastically on my 15" SR MBP. It's awesome. I hope you can fix your problem!

 

[Keytachi]

odinsride, try to disable all your addons (backup your WTF folder if you dont want to loose the preferences), close all your applications, and run the disk/permissions verifications with disk utility.

And now, a bit offtopic, WillJS what are your preferences? i have everything on low, with many addons (under 15MB) and i get a lousy preformance :S i use wow on windowed mode. how do you have it?

 

[odinsride]

I will try the things suggested here, thanks. I also read on the WoW mac forum that there's some issues with the SR MBP 1.1 video card update or something and they're recommending people to rollback to 1.0 - is this true?

 

[ezekielrage_99]

Outlands run very well on my, macbook, there I said it.

Me too, it also runs very well on my iMac.

Also I have found it really depends what realm your on, I have had characters on different realm and the performance varies significantly. In my experience the Asia/Pacific realm have killed my performance massively.

 

[cluthz]

It runs very well in outlands on osx on my SR MBP but it runs much better in windows.

 

[WillJS]

odinsride, try to disable all your addons (backup your WTF folder if you dont want to loose the preferences), close all your applications, and run the disk/permissions verifications with disk utility.

And now, a bit offtopic, WillJS what are your preferences? i have everything on low, with many addons (under 15MB) and i get a lousy preformance :S i use wow on windowed mode. how do you have it?

I play on full screen mode. Prefs set to default I guess (I haven't changed them). They look good to me. On a 17" monitor.. 1080x1024, so I'm not pushing that GMA950.

http://sixpop.com/images/file/16660734.png

Me too, it also runs very well on my iMac.

Also I have found it really depends what realm your on, I have had characters on different realm and the performance varies significantly. In my experience the Asia/Pacific realm have killed my performance massively.

That would make a difference. I play on a normal server, Aggramar.

 

[odinsride]

Ok so I found that it's a major bug acknowledged by Apple, nVidia, and Blizzard, and currently Apple/nVidia are investigating. As such, it only applies to the newer SR MBP's with 8600M GPU.

More info here http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=942814498&sid=1&pageNo=1

Hoping they provide a fix asap!

 

[HiRez]

Ok so I found that it's a major bug acknowledged by Apple, nVidia, and Blizzard, and currently Apple/nVidia are investigating. As such, it only applies to the newer SR MBP's with 8600M GPU.

More info here http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=942814498&sid=1&pageNo=1

Hoping they provide a fix asap!

Yes, I have been bitten by this bug as well, it's very annoying, basically making WoW unplayable. So I switched back to my old dual 2.0 G5 with creaky 64 MB Radeon 9600 Pro and the game runs great again. I had to dial down settings to medium-ish and cap the frame rate at 30, but it's smooth at 1280x1024. I knew there was a reason I was keeping that thing around.