[bbpoint20]

Hello, as you can see I am pretty new to these boards - but a lifetime Mac user. My question is what can I do to improve WoW on my current system set-up. This is what I have:

1 Ghz PowerBook G4 17"
1 GB RAM
64 MB nVidia GeForce4 MX

I usually get about 20+ FPS but tried to do a raid the other day and it was completely unplayabble. According to Blizzard I have a good enough system to run this game but I didn't think I'd only be able to run parts of it. BTW I keep all settings at lowest and play in non-widescreen mode.

Thanks for any help any of you can give to me.

darkjade
Eonar

[a2daj]

There isn't really a whole lot you can do because the video card you have, well, sucks, particularly for WoW. You just barely beat the minimum CPU requirement, but for all intents and purposes, you're right on the line (77 MHz isn't going to make that big of a difference in WoW). Your card is also the bare minimum in terms of power. Yes, you have 64 MBs of VRAM but the video chipset is essentially lowend equipment from 4 years ago.

[bbpoint20]

With that being said, is there anyone here who has upgraded their PB video card and seen a good increase in performance?

Furthermore, if you did upgrade what did/would you upgrade to?

[a2daj]

You can't upgrade the video cards in PowerBooks. They're soldered onto the main board. The most you could hope for is a logic board swap with a newer model, but there may be internal differences that might make it improbable. And there's also the cost....


Well, maybe the cost isn't as much as I was expecting:

http://www.dttservice.com/appleporta...umupgrade.html

[Osirisis]

Key thing you want to do is drop the terrain distance as low as you can. Because it's a circle around you the increase in distance is exponential. That load hit's your CPU. I had to trim the video settings a whole lot on my old DP 800 with a Geforce 3 which is a comparable card to yours. Just remember you don't need pretty graphics to raid

[bbpoint20]

Thanks for all your help so far everyone! I am in the market for a new desktop as I do a lot of video editing and such - If any of you have a G5 PowerMac or iMac could you please pot your settings and how the game runs? I would appreciate it a great deal.

I should be able to get a new desktop by June - anyone hear of updated specs by then for the PowerMac?

[a2daj]

Originally Posted by Osirisis

Key thing you want to do is drop the terrain distance as low as you can. Because it's a circle around you the increase in distance is exponential. That load hit's your CPU. I had to trim the video settings a whole lot on my old DP 800 with a Geforce 3 which is a comparable card to yours. Just remember you don't need pretty graphics to raid

Actually, the GF3 in your system is significantly better than the GF4MX cards. The GF4MX were suppose to be released with the GF3 line, but I think they took so long they introduced them as GF4 generation cards.

[a2daj]

Originally Posted by bbpoint20

Thanks for all your help so far everyone! I am in the market for a new desktop as I do a lot of video editing and such - If any of you have a G5 PowerMac or iMac could you please pot your settings and how the game runs? I would appreciate it a great deal.

I should be able to get a new desktop by June - anyone hear of updated specs by then for the PowerMac?

I have a currently top of the line G5 with an X800 and I run everything maxed except Terrain Distance. I keep that in the middle. I can get playable framerates at max, but I prefer a bit smoother game play. If you search the forums, I'm sure there's an already existing thread regarding performance and various setups.

[redJag]

Is turning down your draw distance a good idea when raiding, really? I always have mine maxed. Seems like you would spend a lot of time loading as people came in and out of your radius. With it maxed, after the initial load, you have pretty much everyone loaded into memory.

[Arkham_c]

Raiding performance is terrible right now. When the honor system debuted Tuesday, there were 200+ people in Tarren Mill. I have a dual 2GHz G5 with 2GB of RAM and a Radeon 9800, and I was getting 5fps in places with occasional 1-2second pauses.

I'm not sure if it's an OSX limitation or a game limitation, but the lag from Ironforge has spread out into the world. I'm gonna just stay inside instances for the next few weeks. I need Kromcrush's chestpiece anyway, and that Ornate Adamantium BP is one Scarlet Strat run away.

[bmuki]

Are you guys aware that when WoW 1.3 came out, something "broke?" It's documented in the WoW technical forums. After the patch that fixed lag in small places (ie, Ironforge) came out in 1.2.something, I was getting 30 fps near the Ironforge bank. After 1.3, it dropped below 10 fps.

In the technical forum, I learned this problem is solved simply by tossing away the WTF and WTB (WDB?) folders in your WoW directory. I did exactly that. Now I'm back to 30 fps near the Ironforge bank.

(If you're wondering if any of this is relevant to version 1.4, it is. Initially, I was afraid to toss the WTF and WTB folders because I thought all my button and UI preferences would be lost. They weren't; though other preferences were lost, like key bindings. Furthermore, I had hoped that 1.4 would fix the lag problem. It did not. You must toss the WTF and WTB folders.)

[ViviMaster]

i had a 1ghz g4 sawtooth with 896 ram and a 9000pro. ran great with everything at low graphics@ 1600x1200 20-30 fps. i think a desktop computer would be best for playin wow. wow is more the less based on processor power to having a nice video card.i would think with evertything on low it should be very playable but not perfect

[sniffer]

It should say right on the box: You preferable need a Power Mac G5 with upgradable GPU to play this game.

It doesn't matter how I tweak the graphic settings with my FX 5200/64 MB card. It runs stable from 18fps and up all the time, but drops quickly below 15-10fps as soon as it gets more than ten players on the screen at the same time. Running iTunes or small apps in the background doesn't make much of a difference for my 1.33 GHz CPU, so I assume the game is not CPU bound. I know that my GPU isn't all that for a gaming GPU, but you would imagine it *should* make a big impact in gameplay to go from default settings (w/1024) and down to the lowest settings possible (800x600 lowest distance etc), but the difference is very small.

I wonder how it performs on a Pentium M (around 1.33+/- GHz) with similar graphic card. I would not be surpriced for a second of it performed better, like it is the usual case with any Windows to Mac port.

However, there have been some noticeable improvments from game patches since I bought the game a couple of months ago IME.

Edit: One strange tidbit I've noticed is that in game it reacts on active corners, like with "show desktop". It doesn't actually show the desktop, but it moves the game screen off screen. I can also move the mouse off my main screen and into the other screen (dual confiuration), which is pretty odd and shouldn't happen.

[cheerios]

Ed's a dual 1G G5 with teh mid-grade card from 1yr ago and he runs WoW FINE. I load the auctioin house and IF with no problems. that said, the gig and a half of ram makes a HUGE difference.

[a2daj]

Originally Posted by sniffer

I can also move the mouse off my main screen and into the other screen (dual confiuration), which is pretty odd and shouldn't happen.

I hope you've emailed the Mac team at Blizzard about that. Best way to get something fixed is to let them know about it.

[ViviMaster]

ive had 4 different graphics cards in while playing wow. each on made not much of an effect on fps. basically just let me run higher resolutions a lil better add more detail would still slow it way down. going from my 1ghz g4 to my 2ghz g4 i can now run everything on high and still runs better than it did with everything on low with the 1ghz

[sniffer]

Originally Posted by a2daj

I hope you've emailed the Mac team at Blizzard about that. Best way to get something fixed is to let them know about it.

I think I will. Unfortunately it looks like the web-form page is down right now.

[Cipher13]

My PC plays WoW fine with everything maxed. I still lag at times, but that's usually because the system starts to page a lot. I reboot, purge the RAM, and everything is perfect. Put the money into building a PC for it. I'm terribly sorry to say it, but Mac's just can't keep up with gaming... the cost is prohibitive, and even without that limitation, PCs still win.

My machine isn't über or anything, but as soon as I get a a striped RAID going and bump my RAM to a gig of DDR2, it'll play WoW perfectly.

My system is:

GA 8I915P Duo Pro
ATi X600 Pro
120GB 'cuda
3GHz P4
512MB DDR400

The bottlenecks on my system are, without doubt, RAM (capacity) and HD (speed).

[ViviMaster]

pc's nativily run WoW better than macs. but building a pc just to play the game is not seem worth it to me. all the other crap you have to deal with on a pc that i dont on my mac makes it just that much worth it. i will never own a pc! my mac runs wow just fine. with the raptors i have coming that will be raided should bump up my speed a bit more

[sniffer]

Originally Posted by sniffer

I think I will. Unfortunately it looks like the web-form page is down right now.

An update to my case further up. I discovered the performance improved significantly when I just played the game on the internal screen without the external screen enabled. I suspect WOW doesn't dedicate all the VRAM available when runned on dual configurations. I've submitted a bug report to WOW-Europe, including reporting that the support webform doesn't work at all with Safari. It just pops out a lot of error messages. (Just try it for your self in the quoted link. ^^)

[webb3201]

Originally Posted by sniffer

An update to my case further up. I discovered the performance improved significantly when I just played the game on the internal screen without the external screen enabled. I suspect WOW doesn't dedicate all the VRAM available when runned on dual configurations. I've submitted a bug report to WOW-Europe, including reporting that the support webform doesn't work at all with Safari. It just pops out a lot of error messages. (Just try it for your self in the quoted link. ^^)

Sniffer,
I thought that when you have multi-monitors connected, the Vram will always be split, even when the other screen is blank. I thought this was the way the OS handled things. You note would lead me to believe that may not be the case?

[a2daj]

In OS X, VRAM is not split evenly. Each display uses only as much VRAM as it needs. It's been like that since 10.0. I don't know why System Profiler still displays the memory as being split evenly when Apple engineers have stated several times in developer lists that VRAM is no longer split evenly like it was in OS 9.

[sniffer]

Originally Posted by a2daj

In OS X, VRAM is not split evenly. Each display uses only as much VRAM as it needs. It's been like that since 10.0. I don't know why System Profiler still displays the memory as being split evenly when Apple engineers have stated several times in developer lists that VRAM is no longer split evenly like it was in OS 9.

That could be the case, but it's the first time I've heard it. In any case the performance difference is noticeable. E.g. I can run trough X-roads in 1024x768 without fps dropping below 10 versus 800x600 in dual configuration and +/- 10 fps is almost the norm. Regarding how WOW (or the OS?) dedicates VRAM from one monitor to the other, it might be possible to get some answer from programs like OpenGL Driver Monitor apparently part of the developers tools. (Never used it my self, just heard of it.)

[a2daj]

Consider it something new you just learned. I learned of it back in the 10.1.x days when one of the ATI engineers corrected me in the OpenGL development mailing lists. Quote from his email:

"The division of VRAM into two pieces when you have two displays on a
dual-head capable graphics chip (like the laptops) is a limitation under
MacOS 9 only.

Under Mac OS X, all of the VRAM on the device that is either currently
un-allocated or that can be de-allocated is available for any VRAM
allocation request (color buffers, depth buffers, textures, etc)."

[wuzup101]

The game runs fine on my 1.5ghz 128vram powerbook from the last generation. I have all my settings maxed w/ distance all the way down. I believe I also have AA turned off. I often hook up to my 19" LCD via DVI while playing so that I can play on the powerbook (windowed mode) and serach thotbott on the other monitor. Now that I'm home though I simply run 2 computers... my powerbook and a gaming PC. Oddly enough I run the game on the powerbook and use the pc to browse the net

[sniffer]

Originally Posted by a2daj

Consider it something new you just learned. I learned of it back in the 10.1.x days when one of the ATI engineers corrected me in the OpenGL development mailing lists. Quote from his email:

"The division of VRAM into two pieces when you have two displays on a
dual-head capable graphics chip (like the laptops) is a limitation under
MacOS 9 only.

Under Mac OS X, all of the VRAM on the device that is either currently
un-allocated or that can be de-allocated is available for any VRAM
allocation request (color buffers, depth buffers, textures, etc)."

Thanks for the quote. Sounds like a good forward-looking solution, but I can image it could potentially give some headache to game developers if their apps can't get full control over the VRAM. But what do I know? I am no video driver, game or OpenGL developer.

I got a reply from wow-europe/Blizzard:

Hello,

Thanks for your email. It sound like you are running your two displays in extended desktop mode, you can change these settings in your system preferences to mirrored displays instead so that your active corners wont interfere with your gameplay during full screen play of World of Warcraft.
If you just want one display running. You do not mention if you have an external mouse and keyboard, if you do here are one article at Apple webpage on how to use your PowerBook G4 with the display closed http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86286.


Best regards

Blizzard Entertainment Europe

It almost sounds like that they are aware of some issue with dual screen configuration as they present a workaround as the answer for my submission. Pretty cool the the web support form now works in Safari btw.

[a2daj]

Originally Posted by sniffer

Thanks for the quote. Sounds like a good forward-looking solution, but I can image it could potentially give some headache to game developers if their apps can't get full control over the VRAM. But what do I know? I am no video driver, game or OpenGL developer.

If the game "captures" the display properly it should have access to all of the VRAM. However, not all games capture the display properly *coughHalocough* due to various reasons so resources are shared with other apps.