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Aramas · Dec 17, 2004, 12:25 AM

I've been playing WoW on my G4 800 iBook, and while it's playable, it's a bit choppy - usually 10-15 fps, with drops to 4-6 fps in places.

The thing is, 800 MHz is underspec, but I suspect that it's actually the crappy video card that can't hack it, so upgrading to a 1200 with the same ATI 9200 would be pointless.

Has anyone else played it on an iBook? What are your machine specs and how does it play?

Also, in the great Apple tradition, there are more or less no video options at all - I'm surprised that Apple ownership doesn't entitle us to a lifetime ticket on the short bus, since they obviously think we're retarded. Are there any addons that let us use the usual ATI driver functions, like adjusting rendering quality vs speed etc.?

jaimzedup · Dec 17, 2004, 12:27 AM

I can't answer your question but I am curious to see the responses. I am interested in starting WoW on my 1.33ghz G4.

Abbas · Dec 17, 2004, 02:27 AM

Originally posted by Aramas:
I've been playing WoW on my G4 800 iBook, and while it's playable, it's a bit choppy - usually 10-15 fps, with drops to 4-6 fps in places.

The thing is, 800 MHz is underspec, but I suspect that it's actually the crappy video card that can't hack it, so upgrading to a 1200 with the same ATI 9200 would be pointless.

Has anyone else played it on an iBook? What are your machine specs and how does it play?

Also, in the great Apple tradition, there are more or less no video options at all - I'm surprised that Apple ownership doesn't entitle us to a lifetime ticket on the short bus, since they obviously think we're retarded. Are there any addons that let us use the usual ATI driver functions, like adjusting rendering quality vs speed etc.?

I've just bought the game and am planning on testing it out later today or tommorow. I ahve a 12" ibook with 1.05GHz CPU and the crappy 32MB Radeon 9200. Although I have upgraded the RAM to 1.25GB so lets see if that helps.

-Abbas

SteveTech · Dec 17, 2004, 03:21 PM

Looking forward to see how things go? I hope it does work well on the iBook.

-Steve

jamil5454 · Dec 17, 2004, 05:48 PM

Although the video card IS crappy, I suspect the CPU is still the main bottleneck since ATI drivers for mac aren't as optimized as their pc ones. Thus, the card isn't efficiently offloading work from the CPU to do other stuff. I'm thinking about getting WOW, too, but I have the 1.2 G4 iBook.

Aramas · Dec 17, 2004, 11:38 PM

I hope you're right

If the 1.2 MHz offers a substantial boost then I'll upgrade. If it's the video card then it's either drop an extra $1k on a PowerBook (not going to happen), or wait for Apple to put a better card in the iBook (probably a year).

Abbas · Dec 18, 2004, 04:19 AM

I had my sister purchase it me from the US and bring it back home to Dubai but apprently, they dont allow people outside the US, Canada, Australia and New Zeland to play for now.

-Abbas

Abit667 · Dec 18, 2004, 10:04 AM

It's not the Radeon 9200 that is slowing you down, it's the 32mb of ram the Radeon 9200 has to work with that is. 32mb of vram is absolutly useless in modern games where even when you turn the textures down it's still going to be caching them like crazy out of ram, which means loads of AGP work, and the gpu can never really get anything done.

jaimzedup · Dec 18, 2004, 01:58 PM

Although the new ibook specs meet the requirements listed on the box of the game, those requirements are just the minimum to have the game run. You need a system that exceeds the minimum requirements to play most of today's games.

SteveTech · Dec 18, 2004, 02:36 PM

Has anyone tried it on a 1.2 iBook yet? If so how good or bad was the performance. Thanks

-Steve

EdipisReks · Dec 19, 2004, 12:35 AM

the game is choppy on my PowerBook, and i've heard that it is bad on a dual 2.5 G5 with a Radon 9600XT. blizzard hasn't turned on a whole bunch of video features yet, which may help when the next real patch is released.

Aramas · Dec 19, 2004, 06:50 AM

The new video drivers in the latest OSX patch seem to have smoothed WoW out a bit. It seems to have gained a few fps and there's less 'snagging'.

Once Blizzard does a bit of optimisation for the new Apple drivers it should improve again.

I'd like to stress that WoW is eminently playable on my G4 800 iBook with 640MB of ram, certainly far more so than Morrowind (or even EQ - The bazzaar! Argh!) was on my Athlon 1800 with a 64MB Radeon 8600, and later, a 128MB GeForce 4 4200. WoW runs and runs well even on an underspec machine, and Blizzard have done an amazing job on it. Of course it would be nice to have a faster system so that it could run with more options turned on, but that's always the case with a new game. PvE is no problem with my system, even playing a rogue - although I suspect that PvP would be out of the question. If anyone has a G4 800 iBook or better and is still wondering whether to buy WoW - do it!

It's disappointing seeing Athlon and Centrino Windows laptops with 64MB Radeon 9600's for the same price as a bottom of the range iBook. Apple really does lag behind the rest of the market, although I still love my iBook. It's so little and pretty

Those windows monstrosities look like arse