WoW suddenly took 138GB of ram - Crashed my Macbook

[Bairon-azuresong]

I have the launcher set to automatically close after 10 seconds of opening a bnet app.

[Mooni-whisperwind (Mooni)]

what are the technical specs of your macbook? there is a known issue that impacts certain macs that are only capable of metal2 and running Ventura OS. the Wow memory usage increases significantly.

[Bairon-azuresong]

Um it’s a 2017 15 inch MacBook Pro 2.9Ghz processor with Radeon Pro 560

I’m running Ventura 13.1

My mac has Metal3 afaik

[Tureja-malygos (Tureja)]

I don’t think it does. Metal 3 requires the Vega architecture or later, and the Pro 560 is from the previous Polaris family of chips so it would only do Metal 2.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/712565

[Zaruhi-mankrik]

138 gigs of ram? That’s nice system. What are you running?

[Bairon-azuresong]

“When we look at the spec sheets of the Macs: all Apple Silcon Macs, Intel MacBook Pro 13", 15" and 16" (2017 and later), Intel MacBook Air (2019 and later), iMac (some 2019 models and later), MacPro (2019 and later), MacMini (2018 and later), iMac Pro (2017 and later).

This list matches perfectly with macOS Ventura (Except the MacBook 12" from 2017). Therefore, I would argue: When you can get Ventura, you get Metal 3. [2]“

^ these apple products have metal 3

[Tureja-malygos (Tureja)]

One way to find out for sure is to run the System Information program in the Utilities folder, select Graphics/Displays in the Hardware section of the sidebar, and see what the Metal Support line indicates.

[Djvoker-zuljin]

@Bairon-azuresong

I have the launcher set to automatically close after 10 seconds of opening a bnet app.

The launcher’s Agent process will still run in the background even though the launcher closed after you opened the game.

The memory leak has been an issue with the launcher since early Shadowlands at least. It’s been reported many times on this forum but so far no permanent fix has been applied. I’ve taken to force-quitting the Agent process every day or two to make sure it doesn’t take up too much memory before crashing my Mac Studio.

Here’s a link to a post on the same topic from 2022.

[Tiapriestess-whisperwind (Tiapriestess)]

@Bairon-azuresong

Um it’s a 2017 15 inch MacBook Pro 2.9Ghz processor with Radeon Pro 560

I’m running Ventura 13.1

My mac has Metal3 afaik

I’m afraid you are on a Metal 2 only Mac, and additionally, you’re on Ventura, which has an unfixed (and likely never will be fixed) memory leak with Metal 2. Your only option is to downgrade your OS to Monterey and use migration assistant to bring over your apps and settings (only available if you did this from an external/clone). There is literally no other solution available to Macs that are stuck on Metal 2 at the moment other than to avoid Ventura forever unless Apple decides to be generous and fix the memory leak in that version of the API. Don’t hold your breath though.

@Bairon-azuresong

“When we look at the spec sheets of the Macs: all Apple Silcon Macs, Intel MacBook Pro 13", 15" and 16" (2017 and later), Intel MacBook Air (2019 and later), iMac (some 2019 models and later), MacPro (2019 and later), MacMini (2018 and later), iMac Pro (2017 and later).

This list matches perfectly with macOS Ventura (Except the MacBook 12" from 2017). Therefore, I would argue: When you can get Ventura, you get Metal 3. [2]“

^ these apple products have metal 3

This would be partially incorrect. Metal 3 support is based on the GPU, not machine type.

Metal 3 is supported on the following hardware.
iPhone and iPad: Apple A13 Bionic or later
Mac: Apple silicon (M1 or later), AMD Radeon Pro Vega series, AMD Radeon Pro 5000/6000 series, Intel Iris Plus Graphics series, Intel UHD Graphics 630

The Radeon 5xx series is not Metal 3 capable.

The above information was taken directly from the Metal landing page.

[Tureja-malygos (Tureja)]

@Djvoker-zuljin

The launcher’s Agent process will still run in the background even though the launcher closed after you opened the game.

I see the Agent process running up until I select a character & log into the game at which point it goes away.

[Alÿ-dalaran (Alÿ)]

Strange, since my systems info shows me this:

Radeon Pro 560:

Chipset Model: Radeon Pro 560
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x8
VRAM (Total): 4 GB
Vendor: AMD (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x67ef
Revision ID: 0x00c0
ROM Revision: 113-C980AJ-927
VBIOS Version: 113-C9801AU-A02
EFI Driver Version: 01.A0.927
Automatic Graphics Switching: Supported
gMux Version: 4.0.29 [3.2.8]
Metal Support: Metal 3

I’m also on a 2017 Macbook Pro with Ventura, and I’ve been having massive fps issues recently as well as memory leaks. Probably time to end the era of macbook gaming in my life lmao

[Tiapriestess-whisperwind (Tiapriestess)]

Your integrated GPU (IGP) supports Metal 3. Your dedicated GPU does not. System info simply isn’t making the distinction between the two.

[Bairon-azuresong]

so should I use the I-GPU then?

When I check my system info it saays Metal 3 for both the i-gpu and the radeon gpu

EDIT nvm it has to be dedicated GPU with external monitor.

[Tureja-malygos (Tureja)]

I think you’d want to use the dedicated GPU anyways. While the iGPU might be more compatible with Metal3 its frame rate would be worse.

[Tiapriestess-whisperwind (Tiapriestess)]

If he intends to use the DGPU he’ll likely need to downgrade to Monterey. Otherwise the situation isn’t going to resolve itself.

[Bairon-azuresong]

I use the dedicated gpu all the time and there’s no issue.

This issue only happened once. If in the future I notice that sometimes wow starts to take a lot of GB in the activity monitor I’ll shut it off and restart the game that’s all.

[Tiapriestess-whisperwind (Tiapriestess)]

@Bairon-azuresong

This issue only happened once. If notice that sometimes wow starts to take a lot of GB in the activity monitor I’ll shut it off and restart the game that’s all.

That’s not “only happening once”. That’s “I’m stopping it before it crashes the system unless I forget to do so”.

[Bairon-azuresong]

It’s only happened once. I use Dedicated GPU everyday for hours all day. So yeah it’s only happened once so far.

I never said it’s only happening once. I said it’s happened once meaning it’s happened once.

I’m sure it could happen again. But it’s only reaching 8GB or so now instead of 138GB. My PC has 16GB of ram so 8GB is fine. That being said if I see it going to 8 or beyond I’ll just restart WoW.

By the by just so that we aren’t spreading misinformation or omitting anything, it’s not just macOS that has memory leak problems it’s all WoW since 10.1 - you can research low fps 10.1 or similar things like that and you’ll see that many players are experience memory leaks since 10.1

[Alordx-lethon]

I have a real question, if I buy the new M3 Mac’s with at least 24 Ram does this solve the problem or is wow broken on all Mac’s

[Omegal-proudmoore]

bumping an old thread and old memory leak.
for real advice, 24GB should is a good minimum. but I do recommend 32+ or more if you can, just purely cause it’s not something you can add more later. It’s easier to skimp on storage cause you can add external storage easily with nice thunderbolt docks.