Hey!
I saw some old posts about WoW being a CPU hog, but according to the forums, the issue was fixed with a patch. I’m still having big problems with my iMac, though. I get really long loading screens and it takes a long time for textures to load, (which is a new problem with BfA, but I’ve also read that some people say that’s due to the fusion drive?). The fan revs up a lot, and when opening the Activity Monitor, it says WoW is consistently using anywhere from 150-225% of the CPU, and that… doesn’t seem quite right.
I didn’t realize there was a big problem until I tried to stream WoW, and the stream became very choppy, which led to me checking the Activity Monitor.
I’m running the game with the Graphics Quality slider set to 5 (which is what the game “recommends” to me), and I’m in Fullscreen (Windowed), 2560 x 1440. I also have the BattleNet launcher set to fully close when I launch WoW, if that matters.
Here are my iMac’s specs:
Retina 5k, 27-inch, Late 2014 (I know it’s getting old)
4GHz i7
24GB 1600MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon R9 M295x 4GB
OS 10.14.6
Is it common for WoW to be using so much CPU, or is something wrong here?
Thanks all!
Slow loading screens/textures/yada yada is the result of using anything other than an SSD drive. Mojave and later use APFS as the default file system and it was written for SSD drives. Fusion drives are out for a reason on the latest configurations. As are fixed disk drives (platters).
CPU usage may be through the roof as it tries to compensate… I haven’t bothered to look as I know it takes my machine a while just to switch back to the desktop while running or exiting WoW. A super load has been imposed onto the system.
I believe the game itself is much more bloated than it has ever has been. Coders seem to believe that because storage seems endless and so does RAM, that the days of writing code within limits is a thing of the past. You know it’s partially a coding thing when you see the difference in load times in places like old Dalaran verus new Dalaran… even when both are basically devoid of any actual players.
Consider getting an external SSD drive.
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OS X reports CPU percentages additively, per core. That means if WoW is using 100%, it is using a single core at max or the load is divided among two or more cores totalling 100%. If WoW is using 150%, at least two cores are in use, possibly three. It uses a multithreading engine now, so it should be utilizing more than 100% CPU on multicore machines (i.e. every Mac supported). It is the same on Windows machines, except that unlike OS X, Windows reports CPU use as 100% for all cores combined, which makes WoW look like it’s using less CPU on Windows even though it really isn’t.
It’s just a matter of how the OS reports CPU usage. OS X will show up to 400% on quad core machines, 800% on 8 core machines, and for those nifty Mac Pros with 28 core Xeons, OS X can show up to 2800% CPU usage. 
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All the stuff about wow requiring an SSD is basically true though… CASC and APFS aer a bad combination all around. Even an ultra fast NVMe drive can have slow loads over time unless you peridically delete all data and redownlod it, basically just too defragment it. You’d think this wouldn’t affect ssd speeds but it does. Random read is still slower than sequencial raid, especailly with the way casc updates. any time it updates a file it doesn’t place it back into same archive, it literally put it at end of last archive, and there are like 31 of them. so on a fresh install you might have clean archives where if you are in elwynn forrest the game only needs to use archive 1 because all assets for that are in same place. but if blizzard so much as moves a tree there, the updated tree will be in archive 31, so now when in that zone it needs two archives. over time it becomes 3, then 4 etc. it basically needs to access data increasingly less efficiently unless you wipe data and start again (because fresh data is always back to being neat and sequential)
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Thank you for all of the replies so far. I appreciate the help and info. Sounds like I should invest in an external SSD before Shadowlands. Would this allow me to stream the game without the choppiness as well? Or is that a different issue?
Your CPU should be able to handle 1080p streaming fine. Your upstream bandwidth will determine the maximum resolution for streaming though. If your stream is close to maxing out your upstream (5/10 Mbit/sec in most markets and speed tiers for cable), then WoW will suffer because its data stream isn’t getting through in a timely manner, causing the client to stutter as it waits for packets to arrive.
The external SSD will help tremendously with loads though, so that should be a priority. One thing to be careful of though, is that if you are using external hardware in your streaming setup and it is connected to a thunderbolt port, it needs to be on a port that is on a different controller if possible, as TB ports on the same controller chip share bandwidth, which will impact your SSD significantly. Perhaps Omegal will have more specific advice, as he does have a streaming setup for the odd occasion he streams.
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