Greetings, Mac Family! I’m going to be pulling the trigger on a 16”MBP M1 Max due to the great sales at the moment, and despite scrolling through this forum, Reddit, and YouTube for WoW specific tests, but haven’t really found any info around the benefit from a 24 core to a 32 core GPU for the benefits of WoW. For reference, I play Classic and Retail.
Anyone in this group have a good resource to check or personal experience on this? Thanks in advance!
32 core definitely worth it. it was only like 300 more for 33% more power on gpu front. it’s not upgradable later, so make your machine last just a little bit longer.
Thank you so much- I didn’t realize it was 33%- that’s not insignificant. Appreciate it.
32GB might also not be a bad idea if you plan on keeping it for years. CPU and GPU share the same memory pool so if you plan on keeping this for a long time it might be worth it.
another strong point.
I do want to add as well, we’re closer to the release of M2 versions than the release of M1 version, i bought my M1 version at launch, but it’s been 12 months and rumors are of a refresh soon using M2.
you’ll get way more bang for buck waiting a few more weeks at most and getting an M2 Max instead of M1, then you’d get 40 gpu cores that are also faster.
That’s assuming there aren’t issues with availability. I remember when M1 Max launched it wasn’t until late January that you could reliably find certain models.
I was lucky enough to get my M1 max with one week delay and only because store was suck a mess I kept getting time outs/errors during ordering that by the time my day 1 estimate pushed through, it wasn’t day 1 anymore it was 2 weeks after.
But even if OP doesn’t get an M2 Max in refresh, refresh will drive down prices of M1 Max.
Solid points all around. I wound up snagging the 32 core for $400 off, fully knowing that the M2 Max appears to be “imminent”. Luckily, if they do happen to be announced prior to the end of my return window (10/20), I’ll be able to return this one and grab an M2 Max version if I’m lucky to get an order in early enough. Even if there’s a small gap in ownership, I have a backup older windows laptop I can use to do dailies and M+/level in Wrath, and would be good to go prior to DF prepatch/launch.
Thanks for the advice, everyone!
This is actually what I was waiting for but it looks like they might be delayed until March of next year :(. I’m curious, do you know if the M1 max is capable of playing at 9+ settings on a 5k monitor at 60hz, with FSR at 50% resolution scale? I’m considering pulling the trigger on an M1 max prior to Dragonflight launch.
I play on a M1 Max 32/32 with no scaling everything on high except compute off and 10/10/10 on 4K 60 FPS so I guess it will work.
Ah damn. Good to know. Thanks!
I am running the M1 Pro 14" - with the binned 8 core/ 14 core gpu. I have EVERYTHING maxed in WoW and run 60fps. It is amazing. Anything you get with the max will blow it out of the water.
Now if I could just figure out keybindings. I used Shift+1-12 for everything on Windows and I cannot figure out Mac at all…I am so frustrated but I love this MacBook.
To access a wider range of keybinds, I suggest enabling the F-keys in keyboard settings to be able to unlock at least F1 thru F6 keys. Yes, it may inhibit some macOS features but it’ll open up more ways to assign keybinds.
Older macOS versions had the ability to enable F-keys only within WoW but not outside WoW. Can’t confirm if macOS 13/Ventura brought that back that nifty feature.
In addition to using Shift, you can also use the CMD, Alt, or Ctrl keys as modifier for extra spells/use items.
This feature is in the game client itself now which is great!