[videian28]

Addresses an issue with Blizzard World of Warcraft in which the game's frame rate could drop considerably when in "Ghost mode," if the computer uses an nVidia graphics card.

Resolves an issue in which enabling Vertex Shaders in World of Warcraft could lead to unexpected graphics issues when using an nVidia graphics card.

Addresses an issue with World of Warcraft in which incorrect colors or unexpectedly flashing objects could appear when using an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card, making gameplay difficult.




god I hope this does something, the upgrade from 9600xt to 6800 ultra did about jack squat for performance

post your results or thoughts

[The iMac Man]

Nice to see Apple making updates to address very particular problems with games. That shows a positive move in the direction of Mac Gaming.

[Thinine]

To see the real benefit, Blizzard needs to patch WoW and reenable some features for the more advanced GPUs. At least, from what I've heard. After that, you should see a much greater improvement.

[itai195]

Ahh, I see they forgot to turn on the 'Accelerate Warcraft Ghost Mode' option in the nVidia driver

I'm also in the process of upgrading my graphics card, from a 9600 pro to a 9800 pro. My personal best guess is that performance in WoW has a lot to do with vram. I don't know how to explain the problems with 6800s that I hear, though. I've never experienced the 9600 bug mentioned above, but I do enjoy a good flashing object here and there!

[rbarris]

While you may notice some performance change with 10.3.7, it would be best to re-examine FPS on Mac WoW after the next patch from Blizzard which will go hand in hand with the new 10.3.7 drivers.

[gbafan]

Originally posted by rbarris:
While you may notice some performance change with 10.3.7, it would be best to re-examine FPS on Mac WoW after the next patch from Blizzard which will go hand in hand with the new 10.3.7 drivers.

Soonish (tm)?

[Turnpike]

I had a few issues with going into buildings and the screen going black... getting out of the building sometimes fixed it, but the most consistent fix was going to window mode and then back to full screen. this with a 9600. that doesn't appear to be the issue listed there though...

and of course, when I tried to fill out the /bug form, it wouldn't let me type enough to be useful. I hope it sent a lot more info than just the form, because I wasn't able to send near enough to be useful. that form was only useful for crashes that happened 100% of the time when doing something, not for describing an intermittent crash/bug.

[videian28]

played last night and had some very good results

on my system (specs in sig) I would get 10-70 fps depending on where and what was goin on, it was all over the place literally and very jerky

now, constant 30-45ish with some dips in the 20's occasionally, and all of the jerkyness seemed to be gone, a very good improvement

still not what I would expect from this system, but overall a huge improvement, can't wait to see if blizz can improve on this as well

running at 1680x1050 everything maxed but farclip which is at 2/3's

I have been seriously considering selling my system and buying a iMac (for everything but gaming) and PC (for gaming only) this helps the Mac case ALOT

[itai195]

Would've tried this out last night but the WoW login server was down for several hours

[Skip Breakfast]

I haven't noticed any improvement at all.

[lookmark]

It seems slightly better for me -- a few FPS, but it makes a faint but noticeable difference. Looking forward to patch number two.

Incidentally... anyone have any idea why the video options preference window in WoW would show a nVidia logo at the bottom, when I'm pretty damn sure I've got an ATI Radeon Mobility 9600? (Powerbook 15" 1.25ghz, 1GB RAM.)

Anyone else experience this discrepancy?

[::maroma::]

Originally posted by lookmark:
Incidentally... anyone have any idea why the video options preference window in WoW would show a nVidia logo at the bottom, when I'm pretty damn sure I've got an ATI Radeon Mobility 9600? (Powerbook 15" 1.25ghz, 1GB RAM.)

Anyone else experience this discrepancy?

I believe that logo is just a sponsorship thing. I think nVidia paid Blizzard to put their logo there. I could be wrong though.

[lookmark]

Is that true? How bizarre. Seems real potentially confusing to users.

[kristofor]

This is from the notes on Blizzard's next patch:

Macintosh

* The vertex and pixel shader based graphic options have been reactivated on certain combinations of drivers and GPU hardware. As Apple releases future improvements to drivers we will continue to re-test and re-activate features on a case by case basis. A more detailed list of which driver/hardware combinations are enabled for shader capabilities, along with any known bugs will be posted on the Tech Support forum. Further optimization work on the client is ongoing, and we welcome your feedback at [email protected].
* Added reverb to sound effects when a player is in enclosed spaces.

[Weezer]

here are some more exciting quotes:

-Q: when will shader based graphic features be supported in the Mac client?
-A: with the release of "Patch 2" also known as v1.2 of WoW, on systems running OS X 10.3.7.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: is a speed boost also expected from the OS X 10.3.7 upgrade?
-A: possibly a modest one, read on for more info about speed.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: what else is expected in terms of improving the performance of the Mac client?
-A: WoW's Patch 2 also includes optimizations that will improve frame rates on the Mac. This improvement will be noticeable to some extent even on older systems with non-shader-capable GPU's such as GeForce4MX or Radeon 7500. Systems still running OS X 10.3.5 and 10.3.6 will also benefit, though they will not be able to engage any shader features. These optimizations apply to all supported Mac configurations; they are not specifically tied to shader features, or to the version of Mac OS X being used.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: On which GPU's will I be able to enable the Vertex Animation Shader feature?
-A: all GPU's that support OpenGL vertex shaders on OSX - ATI Radeon 8500 - 9800 and later, and NVIDIA GeForce3, 4Ti, 5200, 6800 and later. The NVIDIA "MX" parts such as 2MX and 4MX do not support this feature. OS X 10.3.7 required.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: On which GPU's will I be able to enable terrain shading with highlights? (combine Enable All Shaders with Terrain Highlights).
-A: ATI Radeon 9600-9800 and later, NVIDIA 4Ti, 5200, 6800 and later. OS X 10.3.7 required.

-A2: However, there is a bug affecting terrain rendering on 5200 type GPU's if you turn on "Enable All Shaders" but leave "Terrain Highlights" off. If you have a Geforce 5200 GPU, we recommend for the time being that you either set these options "both on" or "both off" to avoid this issue. Be sure to re-launch the game after any such change (see below).

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: On which GPU's will I be able to enable the Death effect?
-A: ATI Radeon 9600-9800 and later, NVIDIA 4Ti, 5200, 6800 and later. OS X 10.3.7 required. 4Ti and 5200 GPU's may yield slightly different appearance on this effect, and there are known rendering bugs on the 5200 (see "known bugs", below).

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: On which GPU's will I be able to enable the Bloom effect?
-A: We recommend leaving the Bloom effect off in this release, since it does not yet function correctly with OS X 10.3.7. Apple is working on a solution for a future OS X update.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: How can I enable the shiny see-through water effect?
-A: "Enable All Shader Effects" plus "Terrain Highlights". Note it may look different on NVIDIA 4Ti / 5200 GPU's in comparison with others.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: I changed some video options and the displayed result does not seem to change. What should I do?
-A: log out of the game and then re-launch it, many of the display options require re-launching the game to take effect.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

-Q: are there known bugs to look out for?
-A: Yes. If you turn on the Bloom or Death effect on a system with a 5200 GPU, you may experience camera/view distortion problems in certain interior scenes, and you may also witness incorrect rendering of your character model in the Character panel of the UI. We recommend leaving the Bloom effect off in this release for this and other reasons (see above). It is possible that this issue may crop up with less frequency on other GPU's but we have no reported cases of that yet.

-A2: If you set "Enable All Shaders" but do not enable "Terrain Highlights" on an NVIDIA 5200 GPU, you may see patchwork terrain in some areas - we recommend setting these options either "both on" or "both off" at this time.



In regards to dual processor support:

It's basically already in there on a few levels. For example, sound processing, networking, asset loading from disk, and even some of our character animation code, all know how to utilize multiple processors. In addition the OS itself, OpenGL, and CoreAudio can utilize the assistance of the second processor to further improve things. However, the combination of these factors won't add up to double the frame rate of a single processor system.

WoW is Blizzard's first Mac title to utilize true pre-emptive threading and thus offer a measurable benefit on a multiprocessor system - this is one of (several) reasons we only offer WoW on MacOS X and not on MacOS 9.

To respond to another question about AltiVec support, there is already some in there to address the most critical animation loops, however that code is totally bypassed if you use vertex animation shaders and the GPU does the work on that task instead.

In regards to the Slow UI bug:

You've basically hit the nail on the head; one of the biggest performance improvements in Patch 2 has to do specifically with graphics code exercised heavily by the UI subsystem. So the answer is "yes there was something going on there, and we did our best to deal with it."

[videian28]

hmm, good things to hear, hope to see the benefit tonight

[lookmark]

So, any comments on WoW, 10.3.7, and the newly released Patch 2?

[gbafan]

Originally posted by lookmark:
So, any comments on WoW, 10.3.7, and the newly released Patch 2?

If anyone was actually able to download the patch I'm sure they're in-game playing; I know I would be

Can't wait to jump into the new instance! Woot! ^_^

[Weezer]

with the new patch, Im running full rez 1600x 1050 with vertex and specular shaders on, I average 25-30 fps outdoors, and its gorgeous Still room for improvement on indoors with the interface on, as turning it off can boost as much as 20 fps.

[gbafan]

Originally posted by Weezer:
with the new patch, Im running full rez 1600x 1050 with vertex and specular shaders on, I average 25-30 fps outdoors, and its gorgeous Still room for improvement on indoors with the interface on, as turning it off can boost as much as 20 fps.

Yeah very disappointing; yet a good improvement for the Mac client.

I finally had to buy a PC to play this game in all its glory. Well worth it just as a WoWStation.

[CaptainHaddock]

I've turned on all the pixel shaders, but I can't tell if it's made much difference yet.

Pros: I think I'm getting an even better frame-rate now.

Cons: The environment in Ironforge looks really crappy in the distance (bright blue), and it doesn't fade into view smoothly like it used to.

My iMac does have the 5200 FX card, which still has some problematic drivers, apparently.

Paul

[videian28]

it improved my framerate and made the water transparent, some of the textures of the group look more detailed as well... not real impressed, but a good bump anyway

I need to find someone with a fast PC and compare

[itai195]

Seems a lot better to me, I am now consistently over 20-30 fps, sometimes into the 90s on my 9800. Was even able to finally turn up the terrain drawing distance a little. Water and terrain (especially in moonlight) look a lot better now too.

[gbafan]

Originally posted by ::maroma:::
I believe that logo is just a sponsorship thing. I think nVidia paid Blizzard to put their logo there. I could be wrong though.

Dude. Where have you been? Fluke!!!!!

[Weezer]

damn you blizzard, I want my 50 cents back for the day I paid for today stupid down/laggy servers.

[greenamp]

I am now getting between 40-90 fps on my 1.8 dualie/9600pro. Before patch i was getting b/t 20-40. This is with shaders completely disabled though. With shaders enabled, fps drops to around 30-40 and seems kind of choppy.

All and all I see this as a very good patch on Blizzards part. I can live without pixel shaders, as I don't really think they are that big of a deal looks wise.

[DekuDekuplex]

Originally posted by The iMac Man:
Nice to see Apple making updates to address very particular problems with games. That shows a positive move in the direction of Mac Gaming.

Perhaps somebody at Apple finally read my article, "Why Apple Can't Afford to Ignore the Gaming Industry."

-- DekuDekuplex