Are Integrated Graphic Laptops Good Enough?

[Dommont-saurfang]

@Elk-thaurissan

Most new Macs have their GPU integrated but have an insane amount of graphics cores which should be fine. Then again, Mac support exists but is kinda poor.

I use a M4 iMac with a 10 CPU / 10 GPU core M4 - i.e. the full baseline chip; second slowest chip in the M4 line up.

I can hit and maintain 60fps @1260p 70% of the time. I had to turn down quite a few settings though. Off the top of my head:

Shadows - High (I hate seeing the fade in)
Liquid detail - Fair (I heard WoW’s water shader hates Mac GPUs so it sucks even on the more power Macs)
SSAO - High (I like the effect)
Depth Effects - Low (Don’t think I have enough shading power or memory bandwidth left for anything higher)
Compute Effects - Low (See depth effects)
Textures - High (I should be able to afford it with 24GiB of unified memory)
Spell effects - Most
View Distance - 8 (WoW has some nice vistas since DF)
Env details - 6 (not too taxing)
Ground clutter - 4 (because I don’t really care for it)

[Mkali-frostwolf]

@Bigshot-illidan

Looking into getting a laptop for playing games on and I was curious if integrated graphics are good enough to play WoW TTW, or are designated graphics cards a must have?

I understand the graphic settings would probably be extremely low, but just curious if its even possible or how bad it would be if there wasn’t a designated graphics card.

Use a benchmarking site like notebookcheck or logical increments to view what the graphics card you’re interested in is capable of. Chances are, most integrated graphics chipsets will be somewhere near the bottom, or mid at best. You need a dedicated GPU, which gaming laptops do have if that’s what you’re set on, but they tend to be expensive and difficult to upgrade without a full replacement.

[Eärlindë-ravencrest]

WoW is designed to be played on any modern computer. This is the main reason they refuse to update the engine to make the game look “more realistic”. That said, integrated graphics cards, even with everything as low as possible and features such as AA and Ray Tracing (which won’t be available anyway with integrated graphics) turned off, will still struggle to reach decent frame rates and you will likely notice graphic lag in raids, dungeons, or heavily populated areas.

@Dommont-saurfang

I use a M4 iMac

Apple products are just plain different. I’m a Windows user, but I have to give Apple respect, their processing abilities, both graphic and logical, are elite tier.

[Dommont-saurfang]

@Eärlindë-ravencrest

you will likely notice graphic lag in raids, dungeons, or heavily populated areas.

Doesn’t that happen to everyone unless you are running a monster rig?

[Eärlindë-ravencrest]

@Dommont-saurfang

Doesn’t that happen to everyone unless you are running a monster rig?

No. A mid-tier system can handle the game fine without lag, you just have to adjust settings to accommodate the hardware.

[Ventorath-wyrmrest-accord]

Ehh, kinda.

Raids depends on raid size. some people will struggle in a big LFR run or world boss but not in a 15-man heroic pug.

Dungeons are generally completely fine.

Populated areas aren’t really a Pc Lag issue - its a server issue, unless it’s world boss zergs which end up being 30-40+ people. People just being present doesn’t do too much if you’re around town or whatever. Even things like the Troupe are fine with lots of people because it’s not mass spell effect spam.