Thank you Gryphonmd for the info. I too am considering the new Vega 20 MBP so I really could use some quick input (sale price through tomorrow). Are you saying 50% scaling looks terrible? How about if you set WoW to run in “low resolution mode”? As I understand it this should be 1680x1050. Does that look and play well? And by well I mean 60fps locked outside of main cities with vsync on and medium/high settings
I don’t lock vsync; I just don’t like the fact that I get 30 or 60 FPS and usually just 30…
I’m not sure what “low resolution mode” is. I run Windowed Fullscreen at 100% scaling; any less than that, it becomes hard to read text. The OS is set to default, which is “looks like 1680x1050” and WoW doubles each dimension because, well, it doesn’t understand Retina.
If you ARE going to drop $3k on an MBP, not spending the extra $350 for the Vega 20 would be foolish.
That said, if all you want is to play WoW at decent settings on a Mac, I’d honestly avoid any of the new machines and buy a 6-core 2012 Mac Pro at 3 GHz or above and either a high-end Radeon or a 1080/1080ti and a terabyte SSD. You’ll spend less and have a better-performing system – but there are still a few tradeoffs that are details for another thread.
If you’re set on a laptop but have extra cash to burn, then an eGPU would still be better-performing – IF you run it with an external monitor. Apparently using an eGPU to display back to the built-in screen drops a lot of performance.
[GryphonMD]
Thank you again. I was referring to the low resolution option the OP recommends.
This is what I get for coming in halfway through a thread… I missed that at the very start.
Ok, went and played with low-res mode for a bit. I saw some difference in FPS in places like Drustvar (peaked at 108 standing by the flight point and looking out towards the valley) but Boralus was still low 40’s. Plus it was still hard to read nameplates unless you were right on top of them. I’m not sure yet which is easier to read, in-game scaling or running in low-res, but neither is as good as full-res. I will have to wait to test it in a raid setting; none of my addons are set up right.
I wonder how much too is CPU-limited rather than GPU-limited. I keep reading that WoW is only single-threaded, though I can see two threads running pretty near 100%.
[GryphonMD]
Ok thanks again. Until 8.1 releases WoW uses mainly two CPU cores so that makes sense. Sounds like even with Vega 20 it’s still not at GTX 1050 levels in Windows. Bummer for me. Really appreciate you testing and reporting back
Triple buffer Vsync doesn’t lock you to 30 fps if you can’t reach 60.
Also, WoW can use multiple threads, but the renderer can only ever use one. 8.1 adds multithreaded rendering.
Due to the forum migration, I no longer have the authority to edit my own guide for patch changes, so I have reposted the guide in a brand new thread found here:
This thread is now obsolete.