So I fire up Activity Monitor and open the CPU meters. Get WoW running in a window. Yes, I DO see activity in all 6 cores that I have (but not 12 threads…). Swear to the man upstairs, I do not “feel” any different playing then before 8.1 dropped. Anyone notice anything different?
I’ve noticed significant difference, but it really depends on cpu and more importantly on gpu. the two work hand in hand but the weakest link is always the bottleneck. So for example if your gpu was already under max load prior to 8.1, then you’ll see virtually no change. but if your gpu was constantly finding itself waiting on cpu, then 8.1 will see huge gains. Biggest gains would also be in cpu bound areas like boralus but you’ll see next to no gains out in less busy and less object heavy areas like stormsong since those areas weren’t that bound by cpu.
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I used to sit around 45-50fps in Boralus during peak time in 8.0 but can now hit a pretty solid 60fps in 8.1.
It’s really a night and day improvement.
There are still a ton of areas (which I assume are GPU limited, turning down water quality gives a massive fps increase) which drop to sub-40s, however.
most places in game I can get around 90-120fps, but few spots like boralus dip down to 60fps. because i’m type of person who is sensitive to fps fluxuation, even though i have a 144hz monitor, i actually use 60hz instead because it’s only hz/fps i know I can get EVERYWHERE. I was finding that using 120hz mode or 144hz mode wasn’t working for me if my fps bounced between 60-144/120 on the regular.
Above 60hz is only useful with variable refresh imo
metal supports variable refresh. it’ll sync any framerate on vsync. but some people can still be sensitive to fluctuation. Monitor still has to fill the missing frames
Unless you mean on monitor level like freesync and gsync, yeah sadly it’s a freesync monitor and I got a nvidia gpu. if I had gsync I’d try it again. but for now 60/60 matching is for the best.
Yes, I mean FreeSync/GSync, otherwise you get the judder of duplicate frames and unevenly paced new frames.
Triple buffering can smooth out the severe stutters of being hard locked to 33ms/16ms frame times, but you can never remove the judder without proper monitor variable refresh.
Using a GTX 980. Looking more and more that whatever new box I get, it’s going to be a winblowz box, I really think they have lost their way…
who has lost their way? not blizzard. Their mac support is second to none. In fact, it’s because of their mac support that windows even got dx12. The dx12 support was ported from Metal (since they are so similar). a lot of the groundwork for the support was already done.
if you mean apple? they haven’t focused on gaming in MANY years. which is odd because metal is a great API, they just can’t get the hardware right.
Although you can’t really complain about 2010 or 2012 hardware performance on metal, even if it has a modern gpu, because the cpu, bus, memory is all MUCH slower than what todays stuff demands. the old mac pro hardware can only go so far.
Do we need to add these values to our config.wtf to take advantage of Mutli Core support or was this something for the PTR only?
SET gxMTPrepass “1”
SET gxMTOpaque “1”
SET gxMTDisable “0”
SET gxMTBeginDraw “1”
SET gxMTShadow “1”
No, it’s enabled by default. Enable the console and you’ll see it.
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I will say this – I’m on a 2009 Mac Pro 12-core 3.46 GHz w/ a GTX 1080.I’m getting a ~25 percent fps bump in Boralis (from about 28 to 36 – I’m running at 2560 by 1600, 60 fps max) on Graphics settings 10. Most places I get a solid 60 fps on 10.
So yes, a cMP can get a sizable bump from the changes in 8.1, but I’m pretty much at the theoretical max for the system. It will make it through the expansion but then I’m not going to have much choice – it will need to be replaced.
If we ever get nVidia web drivers for Mojave I’ll be a bit better off, but the writing is on the wall for the machine. It’s survived almost 10 years – I can’t realistically expect much more from it.
I second for the old Mac Pro. I have a 2009 with a RX560 and I have been able to push the settings almost to the max (at 1080p) and everything works great everywhere. I think I pulled back on shadows and a few other things, but otherwise the game runs great on this 10 year old machine!