improving performance in WoW

[louis_sx]

First of all, this game is crack...it's so addicting. And it runs relatively well on my Mac, but I'd like to get it at something up over 30-35fps in all cases (except, of course, in the cities...I know that's a big performance hit when 8million people are around). I'm usually hovering around 25fps with all the sliders set to low, and in battle it drops around 20. Here's what I have:

Digital Audio upgraded with a single 1.8GHz GigaDesigns G4
1.5GB PC133
Radeon 8500

The Radeon 8500 is a flashed card, so I'm not afraid of modding a PC video card if that's what it takes. I've been looking at the Radeon 9800 and wondering if it would help framerates. If not, I could look at selling the system and buying an iMac G5...but for now, the 9800 looks like a relatively cost-effective endeavor.

Does anyone have a G4 system that they play WoW on? And if so, have you upgraded it? What helped performance?

[OutThere]

At this point I'd guess that the bottleneck is in you graphics card, moving up to a 9800 will give you a really good performance boost, based solely on the increased clock speed and memory of a 9800. Your frames will always suck in Ironforge, but I've only seen good frames there on the best of computers.

[louis_sx]

Oh, yeah, I am not complaining about Ironforge at all. I played it on a Dell 2.8P4 with a GeForce 6600GT and Ironforge was still around 15fps on that box. It's the rest of the game I'm more concerned with.

[Jigglelicious]

A 9800 Pro should bring quite a boost to performance. I wouldn't be surprised if your framerates doubled, if not more.

[louis_sx]

Jigglelicious, how does the 9600 in your 1.42GHz eMac like the game?

So it's decided, I'll pick up a 9800. I was waiting for at least one more person to agree. :D

[Stike]

Maybe someone has a hint for me about my system:

I have an oldy PowerMac 933, but a Radeon 9800!
Which settings eat CPU, and which can I max because of the Gfx card? :)

[louis_sx]

environment and terrain distance are what eat CPU cycles, from what I can tell.

[Sdashiki]

duh.

drop the terrain distance and detail, BAM FPS jumps a ton.

but you will be "surprised" when people, npcs and monsters literally appear next to you instead of being able to see them walk up.

but in the end, you spend $ every month on it, so suck it up or get another better graphix card if its ruining your fun.

[Jigglelicious]

Jigglelicious, how does the 9600 in your 1.42GHz eMac like the game?

So it's decided, I'll pick up a 9800. I was waiting for at least one more person to agree. :D

My eMac had a radeon 7500, not a 9600. It was an older model 800mhz model which I overclocked to 1.4ghz. However, I no longer have the eMac anyway, so...

Still, it ran somewhat decently. Somewhere between 15-20fps outdoors, although this was back in beta so I have no idea how it'll currently run. Still a Radeon 9800 will really help in performance. You should be able to turn every single option to max (except maybe full screen glow) and then just adjust your terrain draw distance to your liking.

[MacRumorUser]

On the vertex shader option.

Full Screen Bloom disabled gives a good boost 10-15FPS, Terrain Highlighting and Death Effect I leave enabled as they don't seem to make a big difference 1FPS differnce.