Hi all,
I’m installing WoW on a new Mac for the first time. I think I remember seeing some posts regarding making sure certain settings are set for a Mac to reduce latency, and maybe another tip or two, but I can’t honestly remember which posts had this information. Any thoughts for a seamless setup?
I have a Mac mini M4 Pro. I can provide additional spec info as needed.
Thanks!
No specific settings needed, usually WoW sets a recommended graphic settings based on your specs upon starting the game. If it does feel a bit laggy, you can set the graphic quality to 6-7 or reduce Shadow Quality.
Personally I didn’t do anything special. Just installed the game and played.
I didn’t like the default graphical settings so I used my own which I have figured out after some trial and error.
Since you have a M4 Pro, you can probably get away with fairly high settings - compared to the baseline M4 which is kind of weak on the GPU core and memory bandwidth front.
I fired up WoW without tweaking any settings, and I noticed that the M4 Pro Mac mini seems to be running pretty hot. I think I remember reading something about having to adjust the fan with third-party software to help with this issue?
it just werks™ for me
Oh, it’s all working for me, too, but I don’t like how hot the M4 Pro seems to be getting.
I did a little searching around on old posts and found some references to third-party software called “Macs Fan Control.” I’ll look into it.
oh thats right use the super resolution ai upscale feature, makes the game run with less resources.
system > graphics >advanced
I render the actual game a little bit above 1080p but turn this on
If you want to have any control over the fan speed you’ll need to use third party software. Macs Fan Control seems to be the best option right now - you can use it free but you have to pay to unlock some of the more advanced functions like custom presets.
I used to use the fan control built into iStat Menus with my M1 Studio but it doesn’t always work properly on M3 and M4 processors & it never worked on my M4 Max Studio. smcFanControl used to be a good free option but doesn’t appear to have been updated in a few years & I’m not sure if they ever incorporated Apple Silicon support.
I don’t know of any other options off the top of my head.
I don’t know about messing with fan speeds unless you know what you are doing.
You can use a <100% render scale to reduce load - with FidelityFX for scaling.
If you want a barebones config that still looks OK,
| Graphic Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Shadow Quality | High |
| Liquid Detail | Fair |
| Particle Density | High |
| SSAO | Low |
| Depth Effects | Low |
| Compute Effects | Low |
| Outline Mode | High |
| Texture Resolution | High |
| Spell Density | Essential |
| Projected Textures | Enabled |
| View Distance | 10 |
| Environment Detail | 7 |
| Ground Clutter | 4 |
It’s what I use on my iMac with 50% render scale. With a Pro chip you can probably up the Liquid Detail to “Good” or better.