Here’s a FIX for the Memory Leak: Go into Settings>Options>Graphics and put a checkmark in Max Foreground FPS Toggle. Set it at 60 or whatever your Mac can handle.
That fixed it for me. I sit at 7.18 GB of RAM used now. I can go out of WOW without issues. Hope this works for all of you! 
7.18 still seems way high, i don’t even go above 4GB on max settings and 200% render scale
what was your memory usage before turning max foreground on?
was background fps capped?
i did some testing and leaked memory to 12Gigs before my gpu overheated.
yesterdy I had played all day and never went over 4Gigs. only difference in my settngis was having foreground fps cap turned off today (it was on yesterday).
but it’s not likely the foreground fps cap that’s broken but the fact that the background one is, if foreground one is disabled.
There is a bug where if foreground fps isn’t set, background one doesn’t run and game runs uncapped when in background. I think this bug is triggering leak.
Mine goes way up. I don’t wish to test it again, but it was unrealistically high number. Like 580 GB, the Mac just rebooted and I couldn’t do anything.
Any chance you can give me all of settings you used, as well as mac used and location character was in game?
It’s a 2020 M1 Mac and I tested it in Orbios and Ardenweald. The settings I used for FPS are Max Foreground is 70, Max Background is 30 and Target FPS is 60. Did you need any other settings? I’ve tested this several times and what seems to make the difference is the checkbox in Max Foreground and setting it to 70.
I reproduced it changing that setting, but here is thing, blizzard still can’t reproduce it. So there must be other settings involved than JUST that setting. LIke “you need x y and z, if you only hve y and z it won’t leak”
we know max foreground is x, we need to know what else is needed for full reproduction. so any and ALL settings you are using are helpful and I can compare to my settngs to see whY reproduced it too, but why blizzard can’t.
Just to comment, I’ve noted my memory usage being higher. I’m around 7.3 GB right now where I was more around 4 GB, but it seems to have stopped there. I do have all settings to max, and 60 FPS foreground. I’ve noted a LOT higher CPU usage. Right now I’m about 300% but all is maxed, and I’m standing outside Operation:Mechagon just to test because that is a rather graphically intense area with all the people.
I’ll see if the memory and cpu % continues to rise. There are no temperature issues since this is a Mac Studio with the larger fans, but I can sure tell it’s taxing the system more than usual.
If compute is enabled, mechagon uses HEAVY compute that will max cpu out cause that is a cpu hog. it’s why i never ever run with compute on.
yeah, I can tell a HUGE increase. I’m just standing here (entrance to Operation:Mechagon) with many people and effects. I’m at about 307% cpu. I’ll disable compute effects only and see how that does. System temperature is about 149º. I’ll report back. Thanks for the tip about compute effects. I was one Ultra just to test, but can’t tell much change in graphics with it disabled.
Thanks again Omegal. Compute effects disabled sure make a difference. I’m more solid 60 FPS here as opposed to dipping into 50s periodically. I did see some lowering of CPU and temperatures.
Not related per se, but thus far I’m having much better success with Metal Legacy. Am I losing any performance or graphics quality by not being on “regular” metal? Thus far Metal Legacy has not produced even one forced closure of WoW.
At pretty much the lowest settings, I’m sitting at 3.5-4GB. Lots of crashing though. Especially in BGs.
3.5-4GB is pretty normal actually, the crashing not so much, I’d post those crash logs if you got them
Hi Omegal,
Here are the graphics settings:
Wow Graphics Settings:
Monitor : Primary
Display Mode: Fullscreen (Windowed)
Resolution: 3480x2160
Render Scale 2239x1259 (58%)
Vertical Sync: Enabled
Anti-Aliasing: Image-Based Techniques
Image-Based Techniques: CMAA
Multi-Sample Techniques: None
Camera FOV: 90
Use UI Scale: 64%
Graphics Quality: 6
Shadow Quality: Fair
Liquid Detail: Fair
Particle Density: High
SSAO: Low
Depth Effects: Good
Compute Effects: Good
Outline Mode: Good
Texture Resolution: High
Spell Density: Dynamic
Projected Textures: Enabled
View Distance: 10
Environment Detail: 10
Ground Clutter: 5
Raid Graphics Quality: Unchecked
Triple Buffering: Checked
Texture Filtering: 16x Anisotropic
Ray Traced Shadows: Disabled
Ambient Occlusion Type ASSAO
Resample Quality: Point
Graphics API: Metal
Physics Interactions: Player Only
Graphics Card: Auto Detect
Max Foreground FPS Toggle: Checked 70 FPS (the memory issue happens when this is left unchecked, my Mac will crash if I go into Safari on another desktop)
Max Background FPS: 30
Target FPS: 60
Resample Sharpness: 0.2
Contrast: 50%
Brightness: 50%
Gamma: 1
Here’s an update. Even with those settings and the Max Foreground checked, I saw a memory leak as it happened. I have had Activity Monitor opened on my 2nd desktop (WOW is on the first) and I was on Raider.IO. It got as high as 30GB of memory usage before I closed WOW. I also had a PIP running on YouTube. This Memory leak is insane!
I’m also not seeing this leak at all – what version of Mac OS are you on?
Disabled all background and foreground toggles an I am on 9GB now still rising but slowly. I have a 32GB machine so it might go up faster when it is using the SSD as Swap memory. will keep testing. I am on Ventura.
Edit: I am on 12.5GB have opened a dozen Safari’s, Chrome sessions and the Civ6 game which is Rosetta so actually using the SSD as SWAP memory now so it is slowly going up but not that fast.
BINGO! Went to 128GB lol, I was running the game in my native monitor resolution, changed that to a scaled resolution and BOOM the big memory leak occured.
Edit3: Managed to get the leak again, but it really takes time on my machine for it to occur, I really have to start multiple apps to make sure the swap memory is being used (I have 32GB). Anyways if my logging is needed or whatever let me know.
The latest. Ventura! Just updated the day before WOWs update. When the memory leak happens, it goes up 1GB every few seconds, so it’s easy to see if you have Activity Monitor open! But it’ll skyrocket and make the Mac unusable, then it restarts or you have to force it to restart. As Long as I remain in WOW, it doesn’t do it. Just when I go into another app! I may play around with the resolutions to see if that helps!
You can go to other apps, you just can’t hide wow. If you hide it, or the space it’s in, it leaks.
that’s my finding.
Was able to reproduce the leak with following steps:
Configuration:
Also, can confirm when switching Max Foreground FPS toggle ON (e. g. set to 60) memory stops leaking, so I’ll keep it like that for now.