Mac Support Update -- November 16

Sadly I tried to use my HomePod with my mini and 55”. There is a lag in sound when gaming :frowning:

We’re pleased to have native day one support for Apple Silicon.

Thank you so much, this is fantastic. As a (very) long-time Mac user, I’m very used to being a 2nd class citizen, espcially for gaming. But Blizzard has always been there for us, and we appreciate it very much.

I have an M1 Mac Mini on order, can’t wait to see how she runs.

I realize this is just pipe-dreaming anyway, but we’d see Apple offer a TVOS app/front end on a $699 Mini long before we’d see TVOS support a game like WoW.

Good news is you can get a Mini and AirPlay it to an AppleTV to play WoW. Can’t guarantee the input lag would be the greatest though.

Please post how she runs Shadowlands pls pls pls. I cant wait to see real world performance so I can save up for the Mac M1 desktop

here is a video of someone benchmarking the game in native Arm form.
https://youtu.be/Cu8gEq-Os_E?t=199
Seems to get decent fps for a laptop. Next question would be around battery and thermal

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In short, the test above was using the M1 version of WoW (on MacBook Pro) which was released yesterday, and if you don’t want to watch the video, the results were 60 FPS in medium quality and 45 FPS in ultra quality 1080P. This test was in a starting area so it might be lower in a busy location or in a raid. But overall it’s a good result for an initial release and it can get only better as Blizzard learns to optimize for M1. Thanks Blizzard, my Mac Mini M1 arrives any hour now.

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There’s a way to correct for drift, although it’s a workaround and not perfect yet:

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/18/mac-system-audio-stereo-paired-homepods/

There’s also 3rd party apps like Airfoil that might allow better control over this connection. I don’t use them right now but I have in the past and they have some good additional features.

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I never thought that this would get supported. Really looking forward to how the later M chips perform in WoW once the new iMac is released.

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65FPS at medium quality in open world on a MacBook Pro 13" M1. I wonder what the next gen M1 MBP 15" or 16" will bring… Would be nice to have 1 laptop to do it all!

What I find interesting about this is that on my i7 Mac Mini + eGPU, the FPS difference between medium and ultra is much greater than 15 FPS (or a 25% reduction).

I also wonder if 16GB would perform better than the 8GB he’s using here, given the unified memory.

I don’t know if 16GB is better, but I’ve ordered the 16GB and it’s due to arrive at my house this afternoon.

EDIT: I’ve just received my Mac Mini M1 model and have spent the last two hours trying to download the Blizzard installer, but it won’t install. I’ve read dozens of troubleshooting posts on this website and none of them have the solution. I guess I can’t play WoW on a Mac Mini M1. I opened a ticket with Blizzard support.

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I don’t have anything to back it up, but I’d bet that there’s a certain threshold on settings where I/O starts being a problem with eGPUs, with everything needing to be piped from the SSD to memory to the CPU to the eGPU, with the last of those being capped at PCI-E 4x. With the M1, even if the computational power of the iGPU is limited, none of that copying around is needed thanks to the universal memory pool, plus there’s no Thunderbolt 3 bottleneck.

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I had trouble with the Battle.net installer on my M1 MacBook Air—it got stuck at 90%. I rebooted and tried again, and then it installed just fine, and I was able to download and play WoW. So try rebooting if you haven’t already. Good luck!

Performance was great on the M1 MacBook Air (8 core GPU, 16 GB RAM) by the way. Medium 5 settings, running at 75% resolution scale, was getting 60-100fps doing dailies in Icecrown. Fighting rares was fine and less laggy than my Windows desktop. MacBook Air stayed completely cool to the touch. Thank you Blizzard Mac devs!!!

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Thanks! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for…totally torn between the Air and the Pro. Were you running on an external monitor or just the laptop screen? What resolution?

Thank you! I don’t know how I missed that!

Just gonna say this is why I became a Blizzard fan early on and why I have stayed. Been a Mac guy since the 80s (even when I worked for their competition for 16 years) and happy they support Apple (I wonder if this is why their art is always one of the best parts of their games?)

I have been a bit frustrated lately with things like current event, but seeing the full support for Apple easily outweighs anything else.

Thanks again Blizzard.

Screw it…I ordered the Air with 16GB and a 1TB drive. I also have an iMac Pro from 2017 that I’m retiring so I’ll post results tomorrow from both. I have an 27" Dell UltraSharp i can plug into the Air for some additional info.

I’m super curious to see what the real-world differences are between the M1 and the Vega 56.

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I mean I am floored. I just played a little BFA on my shammy. Resolution 2560 X 1600 – everything “high” some “ultra”. Detail and visibilty jacked up to 10, 10, 10. Getting avg 50fps - 60fps – depending on the zone. In true game play its usually sitting at 60fps. (FYI I have it set to vertical sync set to enabled). Im just floored. gaming with barely a noise from fans is an unreal experience. Im using a MBP 13 16GB M1 machine. Thanks Blizz and well done!

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I’m curious - if you have the time, would you please do some testing for me? I’m really trying to decide whether I should order a mini on Friday. :slight_smile:

I use the WoD garrison to do framerate testing - normally I stand on top of the stair, with my camera level and facing out toward the garrison (town hall behind me).

My machine:
2012 2.3GHz i7 Mac mini, 16GB RAM, RX 580 8GB video card.

2560x1600 is 4096000px. As my monitor is a different ratio, I rendered at 2694x1516 for 4084104px resolution.
Resolution scale of 100%
MSAA 8x
Vsync off.

Windowed. Waited about a minute for all assets to load.
Full UI reset performed beforehand - renamed interface, WTF, deleted cache.
UI elements on or off (the second number is with the UI off)

@ Graphics quality 10 I get:
18, 18 frames per second

@ GFX 8
30, 31 fps

@ GFX 6
35, 36 fps

@ GFX 4
58, 60 fps

I do have Hallow’s Eve ghosts which may result in slightly lower performance, but I’d expect it to be close to negligable.

I will try this tomorrow with a 2nd monitor but I am going to tell you without hesitation - the M1 Mac mini will blow the above out of the water. I have been playing all night…I am stunned. I don’t know what Apple has done here but its some voodoo stuff inside this laptop.

To put this in perspective - I have played on a Dell XPS 15.6 with an Nvidia 1650 AND a MacBook Pro 16 with the AMD 5600m. I have all of these machines… this 13 inch crushes the Dell. While I can crank the 16 inch up to all Ultra settings using the AMD 5600M the laptop runs fire hot and the fan is louder than a jet. I would choose this 13 inch over both of them. 60 - 65 fps…is what I am doing in BFA over water with mountains. I have SSAO off - everything else high.

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