iMac screen freezes 5 - 20 seconds then resumes

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1

I really need help.

My relatively new iMac purchased in spring of 2020 has been having an increasingly frustrating problem when playing World of Warcraft Classic. The screen will periodically freeze from anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds. During the freeze, the rainbow colored cog is spinning. After the freeze, the gameplay resumes.

This is a big problem because I am main tank for my raid group, and this has contributed to wipes which means I am not only letting down myself but my raid group as well. I really need to fix this. Last week was the last straw when I froze during the Hiegan dance and then again the same day in a later AQ20 on the last boss.

One thing interesting to note: When the screen freezes, apparently my character can still move and do actions. I know this because my gf sits right next to me when we play together, and when I froze on Heigan, I could still see my movements could be executed by viewing myself on her iMac (which doesn’t freeze and ironically is older, lower spec).

Here is what I have tried so far:

  1. uninstalling all add ons
  2. putting the settings on the lowest settings in the World of Warcraft interface
  3. ran a diagnostics on the iMac at start up screen (hardware reported as fine)

None of these prevented the freezes. Sometimes the freezes occur 5 or 6 times in a three-hour period, and other times they don’t happen at all. It’s hard to predict when it will happen.

Here are my iMac specs:
iMac 27-inch, 2019
macOS Big Sur Version 11.1
Processor 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
Memory 32 GB 2667HGz DDR4
Graphics Radeon Pro Vega 48 8 GB

I’ve noticed that this problem has been increasing over the past few months. At first it might not happen at all during a raid, or maybe just once. It has been happening more frequently to the point where I am becoming a burden on my raid group I feel. I really want to fix this problem so if anyone could help me, I would be grateful.

2

There is another thread similar we have had going on for months about this. Your gpu is crashing and restarting itself. The only thing we have found to reduce this is to disable hardware acceleration on every other running app. Discord, firefox, chrome, etc. after that it won’t happen as frequently. We haven’t figured out a permanent fix and blizzard hasn’t responded after half a year.

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3

I am experiencing the exact same issue, very annoying.

And FYI this was the other thread, where we can tell this is a common problem happens to many Mac users. Freezing of screen (GPU crashes) retail and classic - #102 by Bellexandria-exodar

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