2019 iMac, processor 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, graphics card Radeon Pro Vega 48 8 GB, running Ventura 13.0.1
Every so often today while playing Dragonflight content my computer has been freezing up and then restarting. Have never had this issue with WoW before, seems to be taxing the CPU like crazy based on Apple report after crash. Hoping for a fix or any advice on how to adjust graphics settings to help.
I’ve been workin with blizzard on certain macs crashing due to a remaining memory leak and it’s been narrowed down to a leak somewhere in Metal 2 or AMD driver that’s occurring on macOS Ventura
Doing memory dumps showed it wasn’t actually any of wows system, it was all external memory. it also doesn’t occur on Metal 3, which is default for newer AMD gpus, apple silicon, and even intel IGPs that are older. Only a handful of AMD gpus apple decided not to support Metal 3 and instead they run on Metal 2 instead. The 2019 imac is one of them which i why a LOT of 2019 imacs on Ventura are crashing and lagging.
What this means going forward. Have not found a work around yet, other than if anyone is on a mac that does NOT support Metal 3 (check this document https://www.rprna.com/electronics/apple/apple-unveils-list-of-supported-devices-for-metal-3-apis/). AVOID Ventura.
If youre already on Ventura, restart wow often because it will leak memory very badly.
I still think it’s pretty bad how apple supports Metal 3 on 2017 and 2018 macs, skips 2019-2021 though (mostly imacs)
EDIT: I do want to add this is separate to a memory leak that WAS a wow bug but was fixed weeks ago. That one was related to specific api calls leaking memory when wow was not visible. That issue is unrelated to this one, before the trolls show up going "oh I guess that wasn’t fixed after all. I also expect trolls to show up blaming wow for this one, but i can literally post memory dump reports showing THIS leak isn’t app memory, it’s system.
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I guess this explains a lot, as I’m on the same computer and specs as the OP (and many others in this forum with issues), but I’m actually on Monterey and the computer has been jacked since I updated from Catalina. I experience red screens, freezes, kernel panics in all sorts of applications. I do notice a lot more CPU overuse warnings and wakeups in the diagnostics since the prepatch as well. I notice the crashes happen less frequently without the second monitor attached (see below response to OP).
Does this mean my computer is just an expensive heap of junk at this point? Apple replaced the hardware twice and are clueless, want to send me for a third repair just for formality and potentially replace the machine with a current iMac, but it would be a downgrade because they don’t make 27" monitors anymore.
Do you have a second monitor attached to your iMac, out of curiosity? I still have issues, but notice the crashes happen less frequently without it, which is still not ok since the monitor has worked well with the setup for two years prior with no issue. It’s a Dell monitor from 2016 which has worked well with every Mac I’ve ever used since and still works well with my Macbook pro from 2020. I still get CPU warnings without the second monitor, however. I’m just curious to get more info from those experiencing any kind of issues on this machine.
That’s a sign of serious overheating and/or a failing GPU. Having both “red screens” (or screens of any “color”) coupled alongside kernel panics indicates a fairly serious hardware issue.
More like you got a lemon, it got replaced with a lemon, and you’re likely going to go down the lemon hole again with another replacement. At this point you may be better served by a new iMac as replacement for the defective one you have now and using a 27"+ external display and using the SET gxMonitor "1" line in your config.wtf file to force WoW onto the larger display (just avoid Ventura like the plague as that OS is extremely WoW unfriendly on virtually all hardware).
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Can you check memory usage of wow during play and if it keeps climbing. If so it means it’s NOT limited to ventura.
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Thanks all for your responses!
Marwenna, I do have a second monitor attached, but I haven’t had any problems since updating to Ventura with anything other than Dragonflight. If anything I’ve found certain apps work better now, Music for instance seems to have had quite a few bugs fixed.
Was checking the temp as I’ve played today using Terminal, and noticed that at the point my system crashed the CPU temp suddenly jumped up to over 90 C, it had mostly been in the mid-70’s until that point. Dunno if that has anything to do with memory dumps or whatnot, I can’t say I’m hugely literate to the inner workings of this system. Hopefully that info helps someone looking into this stuff though. In the meantime I’ll probably just restart the game every so often.
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Both the original poster and I have the Radeon Vega which is listed as being capable of running Metal 3 from the link you shared.
And yeah, unfortunately I think restarting every once in a while is going to be needed when I hear the fan kick in.
Did Shadowlands use Metal 2 while Dragonflight uses Metal 3? I’m going to look into finding out if it is possible to revert to Monterey.
You’d be better served by using iStat Menus or MacsFanControl to create a custom fan curve profile that you can set for when you do CPU intensive tasks like gaming. You want those fans kicking in early to prevent the overheating in the first place. Apple’s preset curves leave the fans off until it’s so hot that it’s too late and the machines literally cook themselves to death.
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It’s Vega and up… So the OP’s Mac does support metal3.
Thanks for your response and additional expertise on the matter, and I think you’re probably right. I was hoping not to have go that route, but it may be the best option. When the issues started occurring it was primarily GPU restarts in the diagnostic logs, the graphical abnormalities varied so much and almost worsened after each repair. Now, my diagnostic report logs are muddied with “file backed memory dirtied,” “exceeding CPU resource limits,” “excessive wakeups” in Chrome, Agent, WoW, WindowServer, Battle net, WoWVoiceProxy, etc. which were never an issue before (I have additional apps closed when I play, but they create logs when open).
The reason I attributed Monterey to the is that the issues started after I updated and got progressively worse over time, and my 2020 MBP on Big Sur is entirely unaffected, but it is possible it was a coincidence.
I am on a bit of limited income now (was not when I purchased the computer), so buying a larger monitor may not be in the budget for the time being, but I may have to look into options. I was also hesitant to go on M1 and lose access to bootcamp as a backup plan. It’s still not entirely guaranteed they would approve the replacement, but it was something that was discussed.
It’s bizarre because I can go days without crashes but then suddenly crashing every hour for a day.
I waited a bit to respond to this so I could take a look at my activity monitor while I played last night. I normally look at the CPU pane and diagnostic logs, but don’t track this directly. Upon character launch, WoW uses about 3GB give or take. While it could fluctuate a bit up and down, over the course of 3 or 4 hours, it was using about 3.7 steady by the end. I’m not sure if that creep is considered enough to be a memory leak, but I will keep an eye on it. I do start up my computer fresh every morning since I started having issues.
There were other posters on here having issues with our computer and were also using a second monitor like myself, so I was curious. I still have massive crashing in Hearthstone without the additional monitor, but it seemed to improve WoW a bit to remove it, although not a long term solution.
I’m glad updating did something positive! Did you upgrade from Monterey to Ventura or were you on a previous OS?
That’s normal RAM usage. WoW can easily go up to 8 GB used in heavy texture scenarios (e.g. zones full of people and/or Ardenweald), but usually it clocks in between 3.5 and 5 GB used. I’d say yours isn’t leaking.
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So it’s not metal 2 memory leak then, something else here. I didn’t realize there were any 2019 macs in the metal 3 list.
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I made the mistake of reverting to the original OS I got with the iMac so I could go back to Monterey. It “deleted” my files and now I’m having to pay for an app to help me recover files. I used to have a fan program like an earlier poster mentioned on my Mac Pro. Thanks for that tip to re-download that.
Yeah, the wording in the table isn’t the best. But the RDNA MacBook pros from 2019 support it too.
I am running a 2020 27" imac on Monterey 12.6.1, 72GB of ram, 3.8ghz 8-core with radeon 5700 xt16gb. I have had wow crash and restart my computer twice over the last few days. Next time, I play, I’ll take note of memory usage… but I do have a LOT… so that might not be the problem.
van your issue not likely related to leak but probably overheating would be my number one guess. Would need panic log since it sounds like an actual forced reboot/panic.
Just throwing on an update, I had a couple freeze scares the second day of playing, but have had no freezes or lag since (aside from the few random disconnects that seem to happen in the first few weeks of every xpac launch). No memory leaks, temp gets high on occasion but comes back down. Seems like whatever the problem was has been corrected.
I hope those of you who also were having issues have had similar luck!
Did you install the latest software update when things changed for the better?