How much memory do you recommend with the M4 Max 40 gpu? Is 64 enough to max it’s ability to play WOW?
On my 16 CPU/40 GPU system with 48GB RAM, logged into WOW with a few other apps running in the background (Mail, Safari, Weather Radar Live, Fantastical and Folding@Home) my memory usage is around 60% according to iStat Menu. Activity Monitor shows total memory usage at 33GB with application memory at 20GB. WOW is using a little over 11GB.
Maybe I’d want more if I was live-streaming or something, but for my purposes I haven’t yet felt like I needed more RAM.
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I was shocked when the announced the M3 Ultra with the M4 Max. I had saved up for the M4 Ultra, but I’m going with the Max for this generating since it seems like the best performance value and will hold me over until there is a more interesting Ultra or Hidra or whatever they end up doing for the top end.
Makes me wonder about the long term viability of stitching together 2 chips that are increasingly smaller and more complicated each year.
I have my new Mac Studio M4 Max set up and running. Becky is beautiful.
Totally impressed with the quality and performance.
System: M4 Max with 48GB ram, 40 core graphics, 1TB SSD, 144Hz monitor.
Graphics Settings
Resolution: 3840x2160
Render Scale: 66%
Vert. Sync: Enabled
Low Lat. Mode: Disabled
Anti Aliasing: None
Graphics Quality: I set this to 10 and adjusted Ground Clutter to 5 (because I don’t like ground clutter).
Frame rate varies depending on the zone. But nothing to complain about.
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Same system as Tavlina above for me, though I use a Studio Display instead.
Runs flawlessly from what I’ve seen so far at native res with 50% render scale, quality 7 but with Compute turned off. Finally able to power through water shader issues with this machine.
Yeah was raiding this weekend with 25+ people heroic and the performance is just amazing, 100-120 fps average on 4k that is crazy and with Elvui and lot’s of WA’s. Looks like a big jump from my M2 Max. CPU gains are crazy for raiding.
My guild raid last night was about 22-24 players and fps was a steady 144 which matches my monitor refresh rate.
Something else I forget to mention. My monitor resolution is set to 2560x1440. The game resolution is set to 3840x2160 @ 66% render scale. This brings it back 2560x1440. This produces a really crisp image. Crisper than when set to 2560x1440 @ 100%
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Thank you everyone for posting your numbers.
However I am VERY curious to see the difference between a M4 Max vs M3 Ultra. I’m guessing no one has this information yet? The price difference is huge so this info would be incredibly valuable.
I’m guessing M4 Max would be the better choice as CPU gains matter more for WoW than GPU. But dang, the M3 Ultra is just crazy nuts 32 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores.
I’m also wondering if a M3 Ultra would be better long term for other “heavy” games like BG3 and soon to be released Cyberpunk 2077.
And crazy expensive. 
Flying around Donegal (which is one place where my frame rate seems to be lowest), my CPU load from WoW is about 240% on a 16 core Max according to Activity Monitor, so that’s not coming anywhere close to maxing out the CPU; for comparison, when I have all 12 performance cores running full throttle on a computing task the load is 1200%. I can get the GPU load up pretty close to 100% (this is with all the game settings cranked up to max at 4K). You might benefit from the extra GPU cores in the Ultra depending on what resolution & settings you want to run at, but I don’t think the extra CPU cores will do anything for the game. My M4 running at 4K seems to be getting frame rates somewhere in the same ballpark as my M1 did running at 1440; so far I haven’t felt it necessary to dial anything back to get higher rates.
It’s all about single core, and if a core get around 80% than things get messy. My M4 Max gets not even close to that.
M3 Ultra will probs be better for CP2077 but BG3 they left their Mac team at patch 5 i think performance is crap.