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goMac · May 24, 2006, 10:42 PM

Keep in mind this isn't my machine. This is a friend's machine. He is in an AQ 20 group, in the dungeon, and his framerate drops to 8 fps. He's got 1 gig of RAM.

Any ideas? This is his first real Mac.

Shaddim · May 25, 2006, 10:09 AM

Yes, the Macbook sucks in games.

Tell him to lower the resolution and graphics settings... or send it back and get a Pro.

Chuckit · May 25, 2006, 10:58 AM

By all accounts I've heard, the MBP isn't bad for games.

Make sure the full-screen glow effect is off. That's supposedly bugged on the Mac client in a way that murders framerates.

zmcgill · May 25, 2006, 12:42 PM

Originally Posted by MacNStein

Yes, the Macbook sucks in games.

Tell him to lower the resolution and graphics settings... or send it back and get a Pro.

I suggest you read the thread title

Duracell · May 25, 2006, 04:14 PM

I can't offer much (read: any) first hand advice but..

Ask him to lower the resolution, view distance, spell detail and turn off any shaders he may have on. WoW runs fine on my iBook with 1gb of ram untill I enter an end game instance with 40 people. I combat this by throwing all the settings to the lowest possible, then it's just almost playable

Warhaven · May 25, 2006, 10:41 PM

Interestingly, Apple's OpenGL implementation is pretty piss-poor compared to Windows' implementation , even on the same computer. I think someone did a WoW test on a MacBook under OS X, and again under XP, and XP had about double the FPS.

As for something other than this useless bit of info...sorry, can't help you.

a2daj · May 26, 2006, 12:30 AM

The two biggest performance hits on the Mac come from Terrain Distance and Full Screen Glow. Set Terrain Distance to no higher than half and turn off FSG. Also, turn off Multisample (set it to 1x). There's a bug in the drivers that will cause the system to randomly freeze if FSAA is enabled. I've played some WoW on a 2.0 GHz MBP and it can hold its own against my Dual 2.5 G5 with X800. at the same settings at lower resolutions.

Chuckit · May 26, 2006, 11:33 AM

Originally Posted by Warhaven

Interestingly, Apple's OpenGL implementation is pretty piss-poor compared to Windows' implementation , even on the same computer. I think someone did a WoW test on a MacBook under OS X, and again under XP, and XP had about double the FPS.

1) Just because an OpenGL implementation is better suited to WOW doesn't mean it's better all around.

2) Are you sure he was using WOW in OpenGL mode in Windows?

LeeG · May 26, 2006, 10:09 PM

I can confirm that these are huge bottlenecks on the mac WoW client-

I am running iMac CoreDuo, X1600-256Mb, 2GB ram.

Full Screen Glow
1x multisampling
terrain distance at 1/2

making those changes improved my framerates by 2-3X.

Now in the 20-50 range

L

Warhaven · May 30, 2006, 02:22 PM

Correction to my previous post. It's not the OpenGL implemention, it's OS X's threading. Aparently, OS X doesn't handle massive numbers of threads very well. A limitation of BSD. At least, from what I've read.

dimmer · May 30, 2006, 08:04 PM

Of course, there is no "Windows Open GL" mode - Microsoft tried to knife OpenGL badly. You may have ATI Open GL on Windows or Nvidias', but it ain't Windows. You may be thinking stinking of DirectX, which is a whole different horse, with no "Open" to run around in.