I finally got WoW running in native M1 mode on my new Mini. I set the quality settings to MAX, using the default 1680x1050 resolution, and went into a busy city with 100 people in sight, and the frame rate is generally at 59 FPS, with brief drops to 45 FPS for no apparent reason.
Then I upped the resolution to 3360x2100 (I think that is the max) which is a little under 4K resolution (my 20 year old monitor is not 4K, I think it’s just 1080P) and then the FPS dropped to 22 FPS, but when I changed the quality settings to MEDIUM the rate rose again to 37 FPS.
This is not bad at all. This is very good. The last numbers I provided show that this performance is not as good as a decent, discrete GPU, but wow, this is still really good. And it will probably improve as Blizzard improves its support over time.
I’ve never been fussy about getting high FPS rates for WoW, but I do care about resolution. I think this is enough to justify me going out to buy a 4K monitor for my Mini now. I’ll probably set the game’s quality to something that will get me between 40 and 50 FPS.
My current iMac is 3.5 years old and beginning to show occasional hardware crashes, which I think are related to the Intel CPU or memory. I think this new Mac Mini will be my replacement, as soon as I get a 4K monitor. I will miss the 5K monitor of my iMac, but I can settle for 4K.
I wonder why the max resolution of Wow on M1 is 3360x2100. That’s not a number I’m familiar with. Can anyone explain it?