Crashing, freezing, and stuttering after 8.3 [Intel GPUs]

I finally got around to getting an eGPU and the difference is night and day. I haven’t tried seeing how far I can increase the settings yet, but they’re already significantly improved.

I have tried doing the things that made my client crash when using the iGPU and so far haven’t even had a stutter. As an added benefit, the fans on the macbook do not seem to ramp up at all. The eGPU fans do run, but they are quiet enough to ignore.

One thing I did notice is that particle density seems to be automatically disabled every time I relaunch the client. Strangely, although the effects are disabled, the particle density setting remains unchanged. I can work around this problem by changing particle density to “disabled”, clicking “apply”, and then changing particle density to “good” and clicking “apply” again. I have to do this every time I relaunch the client.

Another thing that I did, although I don’t know if it matters, is change Game Menu -> System -> Advanced -> Graphics Card from the automatic setting to specifically the eGPU.

MacBook Pro (14,1)
MacOS 10.14.6
WoW Client 8.3.0.33369 (x64)
Intel Core i5 2.3 GHz (2 cores)
16 GB RAM
Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 580 8GB in an OWC Helios FX 650 Thunderbolt 3 enclosure

Hmm, I’m very tempted to pick up an egpu for my 13” MacBook Pro (no Touch Bar). Are you on the new MacBook Pro model, and are you using an external monitor? (I’ve read that it they may not work well with the Internal monitor) It sounds like that is a big upgrade, and I’m tempted to follow your lead. I guess I just have a feeling that with my luck, they’ll patch it the day after I buy one. On the flip side, do you think it would be a solid investment even if it was patched just for the performance upgrade?

The MacBook Pro I’m using is a 2017 model with no touch bar. I’m displaying WoW on an old Apple Cinema HD Display (1920 x 1200) attached to the eGPU. The built-in display is still being driven by the Intel iGPU. I haven’t tried playing WoW on the built-in display, but I can have other apps on that display while playing WoW on the external.

I think this solution is a middle ground between quitting gaming and building a gaming PC. It’s not as good as a gaming PC, but it’s less expensive and less obtrusive. (I don’t have to find a place for a PC on my desk.) The improvement in WoW’s graphics performance is like night and day to me.

I also like that the eGPU takes the gaming load off of my MacBook. CPU temps are significantly lower when playing on this configuration and the MacBook’s fan doesn’t seem to run at all.

All in all, I think this was a worthwhile upgrade even if they do fix this bug tomorrow.

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Great thank you for all of the information! I’ve got a Razer Core X ordered. I’ll try it with both my internal monitor and an external monitor, and I’ll post the results if I remember, just in case anybody else is considering getting one for their internal monitor. Should get here Wednesday!

They seem to be back?

They who? what?

What’s being done? Unbelievably, lots of people are spending extra money on hardware fixes, for something that Blizzard should never have shipped, knowing it wouldn’t run on a lot of Macs. smh

My computer just restarted. I was tabbed out. No warning, no beachball…just the mouse motion froze while an audio continued. My char was sitting in the AH. Then, restart with no error report.

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This doesn’t really effect me, as I’m on MacOS but not on an iGPU on either of my machines but I am in shock at how players are ordering eGPUs to fix an issue that Blizzard should be fixing. I just upgraded my GPU and was gonna give my uncle, who has a 2015 iMac with an entry level GPU, my old one so that he could play WoW with better settings. We are looking at the cost of an enclosure and that alone is in the 250-400 dollar range, and that’s not including an RX 570/580 minimum, which will bring the cost anywhere from 400 to 650 dollars (at that price, you could build a Mac desktop that would be better than a 13 inch dual core MBP + eGPU). Blizzard has players that want to play this game so badly that they will spend hundreds of dollars to “fix” it. I wish Blizzard showed the same amount of desire to fix the game as some of their MacOS playerbase possesses.

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Note to self: Take “Crash Lighting” off the toolbar. Locks up in an instance. (All graphics set to min, and particle density disabled).

And twice now, locked up coming into the boardwalk at the Darkmoon Faire. Two different chars. 3 minutes later, I’m still getting audio from the fair, but the screen is frozen.
7 min…
12 min…
18

1 Like

I’m experiencing the same issue and wanted to share more details:

2017 MacBook Pro 13", Touch Bar, Intel Iris Plus 650, 3.1 GHz Core i5, 8GB DDR3, MacOS 10.15.3
Hardware tests: pass. Blizzard Client: updated. WoW: 8.3.0.33369.

Issue occurs during combat with any graphic setting. “Beachball” appears, game freezes, followed by computer crash and automatic restart.

Temporary fixes:

  1. During “beachball” command tab works after 5-10 seconds. Command-tab to return to game unfrozen. Issue will repeat after initiating any combat.
  2. After a crash, re-launching the game will not crash again unless ANY graphic setting is changed. However, in this state particle effects are completely disabled. Spells have no effects. This is only fixed by changing the graphic settings which again, lead to crashes during combat.

Hello. I have a radar filed with Apple. Bug report below. This is on an iMac Pro with full Radeon 56 with 8GB DDR. These crashes occurred with 8.3 and never before and played full screen in 5K res with settings cranked to 7 still getting 60FPS. There are many sysdiags on that radar grabbed when the game crashes the entire systemUIServer causing the iMac screen to fog completely black. After a period of time the screen will come up again, Wow is disconnected and at launched screen. It is reproducible in any of the new content but I can reproduce 100% fighting the boss in the shadow side area in a horrific vision, which makes me waste my entire vessel.

rdar://problem/59295179 World of Warcraft unplayable - Metal - non Intel GPU

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DMFaire Boardwalk crash again. A different char than the first two. All three times, the char was entering the boardwalk from the west end. May have something to do with the vertical columns of light.

And of course, still no fireworks. For those of you that missed it, you can’t do the Firebird daily. The rings don’t appear. (Actually, I can hit 3-4 rings from memory, that are close to the launch. Do that five times and you can get the daily. Spend 5 tokens, instead of the usual 1. gg)

3 Likes

Are u guys gonna help me use particles again???

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Still occurring, worse in raids/pvp, which gets you a deserter debuff. Thanks Blizz, amazing work.

2 Likes

so was trying to do a bt smog run for my missing warglaive when I crashed so hard it restarted my computer
panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f94840ad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 120 seconds
service: com.apple.logd, total successful checkins since wake (2000 seconds ago): 201, last successful checkin: 0 seconds ago
service: com.apple.WindowServer, total successful checkins since wake (2000 seconds ago): 189, last successful checkin: 120 seconds ago

Backtrace (CPU 2), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff91330ab820 : 0xffffff801373bb2b
0xffffff91330ab870 : 0xffffff80138734d5
0xffffff91330ab8b0 : 0xffffff8013864f4e
0xffffff91330ab900 : 0xffffff80136e2a40
0xffffff91330ab920 : 0xffffff801373b217
0xffffff91330aba20 : 0xffffff801373b5fb
0xffffff91330aba70 : 0xffffff8013ed2b25
0xffffff91330abae0 : 0xffffff7f94840ad5
0xffffff91330abaf0 : 0xffffff7f948407e6
0xffffff91330abb10 : 0xffffff8013e6739b
0xffffff91330abb60 : 0xffffff8013e70443
0xffffff91330abca0 : 0xffffff8013822d12
0xffffff91330abdb0 : 0xffffff80137419d8
0xffffff91330abe10 : 0xffffff8013718635
0xffffff91330abe70 : 0xffffff801372f0e5
0xffffff91330abf00 : 0xffffff801384b575
0xffffff91330abfa0 : 0xffffff80136e3226
Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
com.apple.driver.watchdog(1.0)[053A5D15-51D4-3E61-978B-EB435FA4BD0A]@0xffffff7f9483f000->0xffffff7f94847fff

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: watchdogd

Mac OS version:
19D76

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 19.3.0: Thu Jan 9 20:58:23 PST 2020; root:xnu-6153.81.5~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: A8DDE75C-CD97-3C37-B35D-1070CC50D2CE
Kernel slide: 0x0000000013400000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff8013600000
__HIB text base: 0xffffff8013500000
System model name: iMac18,1 (Mac-4B682C642B45593E)
System shutdown begun: NO
Panic diags file available: YES (0x0)

System uptime in nanoseconds: 209828957795392
last loaded kext at 207772090208732: >usb.cdc 5.0.0 (addr 0xffffff7f9722b000, size 28672)
last unloaded kext at 207923401812540: >usb.cdc 5.0.0 (addr 0xffffff7f9722b000, size 28672)
loaded kexts:

!ATopCaseHIDEventDriver 3430.1
AudioAUUC 1.70
AGPM 111.4.2
!APlatformEnabler 2.7.0d0
X86PlatformShim 1.0.0
@fileutil 20.036.15
@filesystems.autofs 3.0
!AHDA 283.15
!AUpstreamUserClient 3.6.8
!AGraphicsDevicePolicy 4.7.2
@AGDCPluginDisplayMetrics 4.7.2
!AHV 1
|IOUserEthernet 1.0.1
|IO!BSerialManager 7.0.3f5
pmtelemetry 1
@Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X 7.0.0
!A!IKBLGraphics 14.0.4
!A!ISlowAdaptiveClocking 4.0.0
!AThunderboltIP 3.1.3
eficheck 1
!ASMCLMU 212
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!A!IPCHPMC 2.0.1
!A!IKBLGraphicsFramebuffer 14.0.4
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|!ABCM5701Ethernet 10.3.5
!ASDXC 1.7.7
AirPort.BrcmNIC 1400.1.1
!AVirtIO 1.0
@filesystems.hfs.kext 522.0.9
@!AFSCompression.!AFSCompressionTypeDataless 1.0.0d1
@BootCache 40
@!AFSCompression.!AFSCompressionTypeZlib 1.0.0
@filesystems.apfs 1412.81.1
!AAHCIPort 341.0.2
@private.KextAudit 1.0
!AACPIButtons 6.1
!ARTC 2.0
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!AAPIC 1.7
$!AImage4 1
@nke.applicationfirewall 303
$TMSafetyNet 8
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!UAudio 320.49
!AHIDKeyboard 209
!AMultitouchDriver 3430.1
!AInputDeviceSupport 3430.1
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IO!BHIDDriver 7.0.3f5
@kext.triggers 1.0
DspFuncLib 283.15
@kext.OSvKernDSPLib 529
!AGraphicsControl 4.7.2
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!ASSE 1.0
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X86PlatformPlugin 1.0.0
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IOPlatformPlugin!F 6.0.0d8
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@!AGraphicsDeviceControl 4.7.2
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!ASMBus!C 1.0.18d1
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@plugin.IOgPTPPlugin 810.1
!AThunderboltDPInAdapter 6.2.5
!AThunderboltDPAdapter!F 6.2.5
!AThunderboltPCIDownAdapter 2.5.4
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!A!ILpssI2C!C 3.0.60
!A!ILpssDmac 3.0.60
!A!ILpssI2C 3.0.60
!AThunderboltNHI 5.8.6
|IOThunderbolt!F 7.6.0
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mDNSOffloadUserClient 1.0.1b8
corecapture 1.0.4
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usb.networking 5.0.0
usb.!UHostCompositeDevice 1.2
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|IOSerial!F 11
|IOSurface 269.6
@filesystems.hfs.encodings.kext 1
|IOAHCIBlock!S 316.80.1
|IOAHCI!F 290.0.1
usb.!UXHCIPCI 1.2
usb.!UXHCI 1.2
|IOUSB!F 900.4.2
!AEFINVRAM 2.1
!AEFIRuntime 2.1
|IOSMBus!F 1.1
|IOHID!F 2.0.0
$quarantine 4
$sandbox 300.0
@kext.!AMatch 1.0.0d1
DiskImages 493.0.0
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!AEffaceable!S 1.0
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KernelRelayHost 1
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IOSlaveProcessor 1
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usb.!UCommon 1.0
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I hope you will hire talented people. Because this problem showed that Blizzard has not solved a problem (Mac Issue) for more than 2 months (still crashing!!!). You don’t deserve the money we pay.

4 Likes

Crashed in Org. Nothing happening…no spells going off…the area was empty. Is this problem getting worse?

I see Blizz advertising “GET YOUR CLOAK”.
How’s it going with your cloak?

3 Likes

I’ve managed to get a ssd with windows on it, and the game has frozen twice in the last six hours for only about ten seconds each time. I don’t like having to essentially restart my computer just to play one game, and restart again to get back to everything else I do, but not sure of any other way to go about it.

With Windows, on a ssd, I get infrequent ten-second freezes where the game then continues normally. Exact same graphics card. Obviously it’s not a problem with NVIDIA or any of the other components of the computer…

2 Likes