My wife would like to get a mac, but we've always been pc users.
Is there a mac (any type) under $2k that could play this game well?
07/22/2016 07:40 AMPosted by TallgeeseMy wife would like to get a mac, but we've always been pc users.
Is there a mac (any type) under $2k that could play this game well?
Play well, possibly, but only if you dial down the settings to at or near their lowest, assuming you're aiming for 60 FPS territory. If you're OK with between 30 and 60 FPS most of the time, you can get away with settings of about 3 on the main slider with a couple tweaks for preference.
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No disrespect intended by yeah why Mac? If you're a PC user Native like myself... and you don't have a critical need for Mac OS (work, school, design etc..) then there is absolutely no reason NOT to build a Windows based PC. If gaming is a concern at all that is.
I just told someone else.. for 2k you can built a pretty hot PC right now.
I just told someone else.. for 2k you can built a pretty hot PC right now.
07/22/2016 10:06 PMPosted by SplatterrorNo disrespect intended by yeah why Mac? If you're a PC user Native like myself... and you don't have a critical need for Mac OS (work, school, design etc..) then there is absolutely no reason NOT to build a Windows based PC. If gaming is a concern at all that is.
I just told someone else.. for 2k you can built a pretty hot PC right now.
This isn't a Mac vs. PC thread. It's about gleaning the most usefulness out of the Mac you do have or might have if you intend to get one anytime soon.
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To limit the frame rate, rather than setting it with "/console maxfps 60" you can go to the Advanced tab and move the "Max Foreground FPS" slider to 60. Since everything else in the guide involves changing settings in the System controls, that one might as well too. I don't remember when they introduced that slider - maybe with WoD - and I'm assuming that command is a vestige of the original guide.
Also, it might be worth mentioning that with Mac Retina displays, the default Render Scale is now 50%, to account for the fact that the pixels are basically twice as dense. So you can play the game as if your display was 1440x900 (instead of 2880x1800), which your graphics card can actually handle, without having to set the game to 1440x900, and thus without having your OS resize the screen and move windows every time you launch or quit the game.
Also: great guide, I've used it for years.
Also: great guide, I've used it for years.
07/24/2016 03:10 PMPosted by EillesthisTo limit the frame rate, rather than setting it with "/console maxfps 60" you can go to the Advanced tab and move the "Max Foreground FPS" slider to 60. Since everything else in the guide involves changing settings in the System controls, that one might as well too. I don't remember when they introduced that slider - maybe with WoD - and I'm assuming that command is a vestige of the original guide.
Good point, and you're correct. The slider's been there since MoP, and I forget it's there every time I make edits to the guide.
07/24/2016 03:20 PMPosted by EillesthisAlso, it might be worth mentioning that with Mac Retina displays, the default Render Scale is now 50%, to account for the fact that the pixels are basically twice as dense. So you can play the game as if your display was 1440x900 (instead of 2880x1800), which your graphics card can actually handle, without having to set the game to 1440x900, and thus without having your OS resize the screen and move windows every time you launch or quit the game.
Also: great guide, I've used it for years.
Ah, thanks. I don't actually own a retina display Mac, so I wasn't aware of this. I'm on vacation at the moment, but I'll see about editing the guide with this info.
I updated my mac pro to 16GB system memory few weeks back, to be ready for Legion. However, after the patch my macbook pro is running the game at 5-8 FPS.
I'm deeply happy...
I'm deeply happy...
Just some observations between DX11 and Metal. I have a Hack with a GTX 980 and triple boot between OS X, Linux, and Windows 10. On DX11 the nVidia recommended settings are to set color depth to 8x and use the render scale to go to 180% as opposed to using DSR as it doesn't have to scale the UI and make it look fuzzy.
When using Metal on OS X, however, using 180% render scale causes a massive performance penalty. The MSAA 4x setting however works just fine and I don't notice the performance impact (stays at 60 or higher at 1080p).
Just an interesting observation that the render path seems to be quite a bit different. As nVidia DSR doesn't work in OS X I haven't been able to find a hack or workaround to test simulating DSR and downscaling to 1080p. I suspect it's just a Metal quirk. Otherwise, I believe I'm getting superior performance out of Metal as opposed to DX11 (sans of course ultra on AO as nVidia HBAO+ is either not featured in Metal either/or not implemented in the Metal renderer).
When using Metal on OS X, however, using 180% render scale causes a massive performance penalty. The MSAA 4x setting however works just fine and I don't notice the performance impact (stays at 60 or higher at 1080p).
Just an interesting observation that the render path seems to be quite a bit different. As nVidia DSR doesn't work in OS X I haven't been able to find a hack or workaround to test simulating DSR and downscaling to 1080p. I suspect it's just a Metal quirk. Otherwise, I believe I'm getting superior performance out of Metal as opposed to DX11 (sans of course ultra on AO as nVidia HBAO+ is either not featured in Metal either/or not implemented in the Metal renderer).
Just want to say thanks. Was debating a WoW return, tested on my iMac, performance sucked, found this post, and it helped a lot. Now I have a dilemma....
I have a Mac Book Pro and I'm tradin er in to build a PC!!!! Rip APPLE!!!! RIP!!!
Okay, I have great news for anyone thinking of upgrading your Mac -- assuming you can afford $2999. We took delivery today of our new iMac 27 with 2TB Fusion Drive ($2299) plus $700 upgrades to 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, 16GB 1867MHz DDR3 SDRAM, and AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB video memory.
Playing with System settings, I found that recommended settings between the Advanced and Graphics tabs affected each other. Alternating back and forth settled down after a few iterations, leaving me at Graphics Quality 7 with native 5120 x 2880 resolution at 50% render scale, getting 65-75 fps. (I'm not sure how that would differ from 2560 x 1440 at 100% render scale, but that attempt cut me down to 15-16 fps so I went back to 5120 x 2880 and 50%.)
Pushing the limits, just to see what would happen, I found that bumping the Graphics Quality to 10 still left me with a perfectly acceptable 45-50 fps.
Now, these readings are at Stillwhisper Pond, and I fully expect different environments (including Raids and Battlegrounds) might get very different results. I'll adjust accordingly, but right now I am a very happy camper.
P.S. I don't know if it will make a difference, but I have an additional 2 x 8GB RAM coming in the mail tomorrow from Amazon for about $80 more.
Playing with System settings, I found that recommended settings between the Advanced and Graphics tabs affected each other. Alternating back and forth settled down after a few iterations, leaving me at Graphics Quality 7 with native 5120 x 2880 resolution at 50% render scale, getting 65-75 fps. (I'm not sure how that would differ from 2560 x 1440 at 100% render scale, but that attempt cut me down to 15-16 fps so I went back to 5120 x 2880 and 50%.)
Pushing the limits, just to see what would happen, I found that bumping the Graphics Quality to 10 still left me with a perfectly acceptable 45-50 fps.
Now, these readings are at Stillwhisper Pond, and I fully expect different environments (including Raids and Battlegrounds) might get very different results. I'll adjust accordingly, but right now I am a very happy camper.
P.S. I don't know if it will make a difference, but I have an additional 2 x 8GB RAM coming in the mail tomorrow from Amazon for about $80 more.
Okay, I have great news for anyone thinking of upgrading your Mac -- assuming you can afford $2999. We took delivery today of our new iMac 27 with 2TB Fusion Drive ...
I also have the 27'' iMac 5k with the 4.0 GHz upgrade but the 2014 version with the AMD R9 M295X (4GB).
This machine is absolutely amazing! I love the 5k IPS display. The only drawback is the build in GPU as I was used to upgrade the GUP every 2 years. I hope I can sell the iMac for a good price and get one with a newer GPU once I am no longer happy with the gaming performance.
But I would not recommend the fusion drive option. Go for the lager SSD and use external drives.
If you are as annoyed as I am by the constant spinning noise of the fusion drive, I recommend to reinstall osx with the drives separated only then the physical drive will spin down if not used. I also got a 1TB external SDD in a 35$ USB 3 case and the drive is amazingly fast. You can even boot osx or windows (not via bootcamp) from an external hdd if you find the internal ssd to small.
Next time I will definitely not go for the fusion drive option. I am done with physical drives. Especially the 3,5 inch ones are way to noisy for me even as external drives. And waiting for the spin up is also extremely annoying. I almost don't use the internal hdd at all and unmount it to avoid waiting for the spin up when doing a spotlight search.
2016 iMac 21.5"
2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor
8GB RAM
1TB hard drive
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
I run this brand new machine on fullscreen, max res, average fair-good graphics settings, and get 40-95 FPS depending on what i'm doing...
The only real issues I'm having:
-Load screens are unbearably slow, and player models (including mine) and world models take at least 30 seconds to fully load.....and it is really disappointing....I will log in and after a 1 min long load bar, I can't see anything for at least 30 seconds....I'm assuming this is the 5400 drive I have? Should I/can I have gone with the 1TB Fusion Drive? Would it really make that much of a difference?
-In Draenor, Warspear, and some instances that I haven't ever been in on this new computer, or have been in rarely, sometimes my graphics will either freak out and freeze, or just plain freeze, and my computer force restarts itself saying "There was a problem and the computer had to restart..." How is a game literally crashing my brand new iMac....this is really disheartening....
2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor
8GB RAM
1TB hard drive
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
I run this brand new machine on fullscreen, max res, average fair-good graphics settings, and get 40-95 FPS depending on what i'm doing...
The only real issues I'm having:
-Load screens are unbearably slow, and player models (including mine) and world models take at least 30 seconds to fully load.....and it is really disappointing....I will log in and after a 1 min long load bar, I can't see anything for at least 30 seconds....I'm assuming this is the 5400 drive I have? Should I/can I have gone with the 1TB Fusion Drive? Would it really make that much of a difference?
-In Draenor, Warspear, and some instances that I haven't ever been in on this new computer, or have been in rarely, sometimes my graphics will either freak out and freeze, or just plain freeze, and my computer force restarts itself saying "There was a problem and the computer had to restart..." How is a game literally crashing my brand new iMac....this is really disheartening....
Same here...!
It looks like every MAC user or almost of them have this same F*ck*# issue
It looks like every MAC user or almost of them have this same F*ck*# issue
08/27/2016 12:35 PMPosted by Expertease2016 iMac 21.5"
2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor
8GB RAM
1TB hard drive
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
I run this brand new machine on fullscreen, max res, average fair-good graphics settings, and get 40-95 FPS depending on what i'm doing...
The only real issues I'm having:
-Load screens are unbearably slow, and player models (including mine) and world models take at least 30 seconds to fully load.....and it is really disappointing....I will log in and after a 1 min long load bar, I can't see anything for at least 30 seconds....I'm assuming this is the 5400 drive I have? Should I/can I have gone with the 1TB Fusion Drive? Would it really make that much of a difference?
-In Draenor, Warspear, and some instances that I haven't ever been in on this new computer, or have been in rarely, sometimes my graphics will either freak out and freeze, or just plain freeze, and my computer force restarts itself saying "There was a problem and the computer had to restart..." How is a game literally crashing my brand new iMac....this is really disheartening....
I'm about to pitch my Mac Book Pro out the window. Before pre-legion patch it ran perfectly. Since then, and currently, it runs 95FPS....until it freaks out and stutters down to 4-5FPS. It straightens out for a few seconds, or as long as I don't move.
Render: 50%
Max foreground FPS: 63
Max background FPS: 30
Graphics Quality: 2 :(
MBP Retina, 15 inch, mid 2014
Processor: 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 1536 MBA
Any suggestions?
Render: 50%
Max foreground FPS: 63
Max background FPS: 30
Graphics Quality: 2 :(
MBP Retina, 15 inch, mid 2014
Processor: 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 1536 MBA
Any suggestions?
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
Processor 4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB
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GAH, Help. Any suggestions for me as well? Having a difficult time finding something that isn't the size of a postage stamp...
Processor 4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB
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GAH, Help. Any suggestions for me as well? Having a difficult time finding something that isn't the size of a postage stamp...
I have an old Mac that I got back in 2011. However, I can't use it now with legion's update. I was wondering if anyone could help me out and guide me on what computer should I get so that I could play?-exp. Alienware, Intel, etc....
This thread is much appreciated, and I'm hoping that one of you can help me out. I'm running WoW on a 2016 Macbook (yeah, yeah), and the game is surprisingly playable. However, with the rendering engine set to Metal, I get ugly black textures all over the ground in zones like Stormheim. If I switch the engine over to OpenGL those ugly textures go away, but my FPS takes a nosedive (30-35 fps from 40-50fps).
I disabled all of my add-ons and dropped my graphics settings down to "1", just to make sure it wasn't something else. Anyone else having this issue, or know how I might solve it?
Thanks.
I disabled all of my add-ons and dropped my graphics settings down to "1", just to make sure it wasn't something else. Anyone else having this issue, or know how I might solve it?
Thanks.
People keep saying Metal increased their FPS. But I'm on a late 2013 Macbook Pro and I have the opposite. Metal drops my FPS almost by half. Especially in the ares with the Nightmare corruption effects on the ground (the World Quest where we have to clear corruption around sleeping green dragon in Val'sharah). With OpenGL I have 20 FPS in that area, but with Metal only 8 FPS!.