WoW Perfomance on M1 Ultra?

Hey, I currently have an iMac Pro with Vega 64 16 GB GPU and an 8-core CPU, but WoW is super choppy when I play at 1440p (2560x1440) and I have details set to like 8/10. It gets even worse when I hit OBS and try recording a video, I get like 30 fps which is unacceptable. Would an M1 Ultra be better ? What FPS are you getting on your M-chip machines? MysticalOS said M1 Ultra is worse for WoW than M1 Max, I don’t know why, though. I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

I use an M2 Studio Ultra and my wife has an M1 Studio Max. Both easily play WoW at graphics settings 10. Everything is very smooth and even in the most intense places in game, I stay right at 60 frames per second. You will be happy with any of the current Mac Studios and performance of WoW.

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Thanks so much for your reply! I ended up buying the M1 Ultra with 64 GB RAM and 2 TB SSD! Looking forward to playing WoW on it!

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You’re welcome. Post back and let me know what you think of the difference and how WoW plays. We are extremely pleased with the Ultra and Max performance with WoW. You’ll be very pleased with the system you purchased.

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What resolution do you play at?

I play in window mode and a custom resolution. It’s 3340 x 1878.

Hi ! Not sure if you still care but I have been playing on my M1 Ultra ( 48 ) since the end of Shadowlands.

Atm i am playing on 6/10 settings with the exception of distance that is on 10. Resolution is 3840x2160.

I also have Studio Display so I am limited by 60 fps, but I am used to it. Game runs smoothly although there are few zones where I notice fps drop such as inside of Oribos to certain places in Ardenweald.

One thing I noticed is that since TWW the temperature of the Studio is higher than it use to be during Shadowlands or Dragonflight. So that’s the reason why I lowered the graphic to 6.

When it comes to noise, its still super quite even 2 years later.

might also have to do with apple lowering fan curve in later macOS 14 and 15 updates. their obsession with silence and all that. Looks good on a sticker “silent power house”.

they started fiddling with fan curves and smc control over them in I think macOS 14.3 or 14.4

I know apple really likes the silence however I am still using 12.3.1 Monterey.

that’s MASSIVELY crippling machine performance of an apple silicon chip.

Massively ?

Yes. every macOS iteration has optimized metal drivers for apple silicon and fixed bugs. they’ve done mostly opposite for AMD machines.

Also, game mode really works. especially you have so much as a chrome window open in background. it’ll reclaim wasted gpu and make sure game has all of it.

An example, say i have a twitch stream up on youtube while playing wow. game mode off, chrome will utilize 30% of gpu for gpu rendering stream, yes it can be that high. that’s because naturally you want a smooth responsive browser window and it’s right call. but then wow has 70% gpu left and lower fps. game mode determiniistically makes wow get 100% of gpu and denies it to chrome, chrome in turn will use more cpu rendering cause it is being denied gpu access…but this works fine because in most cases we have tons of unused cores at ready for it and wow certain isn’t using em…this nets a huge boost in wows performance while chrome is open.

now if you’re someone who quits every app imaginable and stuff, game mode has less impact but still.

and that’s just that. newer versions of metal also matter.

I was kinda afraid of WoW not running properly on newer OS when I bought the Studio. Everything runs well for me so didn’t really think about updates.

But I guess its time. Thank you.