World of Warcraft and PowerBook G4

i have a powerbook G4, 1,67Ghz with 2 Gb of RAM.
-Graphics: ATI Radeon 9700 Mobility.
my OS is 10.3.9, and i play with only x-pearl addon.

-drivers updated
-pram and nvram have been reset
-i (try to) play in windowed mode
-opengl ev test run and found no problems

follow the list of video options setup
-resolution 1152x768(wide)
-refresh 60hz
-multisampling 24-bit color 24-bit depth 1x multisampling
-vertical sync Disabled
-windowed mode Enabled
-maximized Disabled
-Hardware cursor Enabled
-Use UI scale Enabled
-Use desktop gamma Enabled

-Terrain Distance Near
-Terrain Detail Low
-Spell Detail Low
-Environment Detail Near
-Ground Clutter Density Low
-Ground Clutter Radius Near
-Texture Resolution Low
-Texture Filtering Low
-Weather Intensity Low

-Specular Lighting Disabled
-Full-Screen Glow Effect Disabled
-Death Effect Dsabled
-Character Shadows Disabled
-Level of Detail Enabled

Interface Options
-Reduce Input Lag Enabled

to make a long story short ALL video options at very low

>Results: 14-15 fps on my main charachter outside cities, 6-7 fps inside cities, 3 fps inside raid instances, 1 or 0.5 (record!) during fights in raid instances

well i played wow on this with decent frame per second before tbc, even in 40men instances.

i've looked on all forums, FAQs, guides and ancient dusty macintosh spellbooks. No clue to grow fps rate for more than 1.

i've tried to update the graphic board but (and this is the funny part of the story) ATI company doesn't recognize the existence of a Radeon 9700 "mobility", Apple says that the 9700m is equipped only on rare models of powerbook and don't exist drivers from third parts.

Blizzard's technical forum simply didn't help

feel free to ask me any specification about my PB if this can help someone of you in bringing light on our mac-psychodrama

thank you for the quick answer

Does your (op) ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 have 128 mb gfx memory? Didn't they make 64 and 128 mb versions of it?
i have the 128 version
make sure your power settings aren't set to automatic or low.
done, they were set to max
- reduce screen resolution right down - try 800x600 and work your way up.
done, but it does worse: from 4 fps at Org gates to 2.3
- turn multisampling off.
if u mean FSAA multisampling, yes i had already turned off from Ati Display
- run a system cleaner (Cocktail or SterMachine)
done but nothing changed
- reboot and dont load any other apps before playing.
i do this everytime

- check your login items - maybe you are loading unneccessary stuff on login
how can i check which programs my mac loads on startup?

i've done a test with xbench1.3 (hope to not spam too much in pasting results )

Results 20.16
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.3.9 (7W98)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,6
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.67 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.67 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type Hitachi HTS541080G9AT00
CPU Test 42.59
GCD Loop 79.21 4.18 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 26.83 637.42 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 91.93 3.66 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 62.24 2.05 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 24.65 4.29 Mops/sec
Thread Test 55.99
Computation 50.75 1.03 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 62.44 2.69 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 21.24
System 15.51
Allocate 94.41 346.72 Kalloc/sec
Fill 12.44 604.63 MB/sec
Copy 9.76 201.66 MB/sec
Stream 33.67
Copy 39.77 821.52 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 41.07 848.45 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 32.21 686.16 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 26.12 558.85 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 36.40
Line 32.16 2.14 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 34.67 10.35 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 35.44 2.89 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 36.98 932.69 beziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 45.08 2.82 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 30.94
Spinning Squares 30.94 39.25 frames/sec
User Interface Test 6.52
Elements 6.52 29.92 refresh/sec
Disk Test 31.79
Sequential 52.52
Uncached Write 56.43 34.64 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 47.22 26.72 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 52.50 15.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 54.89 27.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 22.80
Uncached Write 8.16 0.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 46.24 14.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 60.44 0.43 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 68.06 12.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]

i've also another question: if my graphic is 9700 mobility why opengl extension viewer says that i have "Renderer:ATI Radeon 9600 XT OpenGL Engine" ????

i really wouldn't spam but maybe the openGL EV report may be of some help:

Renderer: ATI Radeon 9600 XT OpenGL Engine
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Memory: 128 MB
Version: 1.5 ATI-1.3.42
Shading language version: N/A
Max number of light sources: 8
Max viewport size: 2656 x 2656
Max texture size: 2048 x 2048
Max anisotropy: 16
Max samples: 0
Max draw buffers: 0
Max texture coordinates: 8
Max vertex texture image units: 4


Extensions: 77

GL_APPLE_client_storage
GL_APPLE_element_array
GL_APPLE_fence
GL_APPLE_float_pixels
GL_APPLE_flush_render
GL_APPLE_packed_pixels
GL_APPLE_pixel_buffer
GL_APPLE_specular_vector
GL_APPLE_texture_range
GL_APPLE_transform_hint
GL_APPLE_vertex_array_object
GL_APPLE_vertex_array_range
GL_APPLE_vertex_program_evaluators
GL_APPLE_ycbcr_422
GL_ARB_depth_texture
GL_ARB_fragment_program
GL_ARB_fragment_shader
GL_ARB_imaging
GL_ARB_multisample
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_ARB_occlusion_query
GL_ARB_point_parameters
GL_ARB_point_sprite
GL_ARB_shader_objects
GL_ARB_shadow
GL_ARB_shadow_ambient
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
GL_ARB_texture_compression
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
GL_ARB_texture_env_add
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3
GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
GL_ARB_vertex_blend
GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
GL_ARB_vertex_program
GL_ARB_vertex_shader
GL_ARB_window_pos
GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate
GL_ATI_blend_weighted_minmax
GL_ATI_separate_stencil
GL_ATI_text_fragment_shader
GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_blend_color
GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate
GL_EXT_blend_func_separate
GL_EXT_blend_minmax
GL_EXT_blend_subtract
GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements
GL_EXT_fog_coord
GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
GL_EXT_rescale_normal
GL_EXT_secondary_color
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color
GL_EXT_shadow_funcs
GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_env_add
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp
GL_EXT_texture_rectangle
GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip
GL_NV_blend_square
GL_NV_light_max_exponent
GL_NV_texgen_reflection
GL_SGI_color_matrix
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp
GL_SGIS_texture_lod

Core features
v1.1 (100 % - 7/7)
v1.2 (100 % - 8/8)
v1.3 (100 % - 9/9)
v1.4 (100 % - 15/15)
v1.5 (100 % - 3/3)
v2.0 (60 % - 6/10)
v2.1 (0 % - 0/3)

OpenGL driver version check (Current: 1.5 ATI-1.3.42, Latest known: 1.5 ATI-1.3.36):
i Latest version of display drivers foundi0 line According the database, you are running the latest display drivers for your video card.

i Compiled vertex array supporti0 line This feature improves OpenGL performance by using video memory to cache transformed vertices.

i Multitexture supporti0 line This feature accelerates complex rendering such as lightmaps or environment mapping.

i Secondary color supporti0 line This feature provides an alternate method of coloring specular highlights on polygons.

i S3TC compression supporti0 line This feature improves texture mapping performance in some applications by using lossy compression.

i Vertex array range supporti0 line This feature improves performance in some applications by using AGP for dynamic vertex transformation.

i Texture edge clamp supporti0 line This feature improves texturing quality by adding clamping control to edge texel filtering.

i Vertex program supporti0 line This feature enables a wide variety of effects via flexible vertex programming (equivalent to DX8 Vertex Shader.)

i Fragment program supporti0 line This feature enables a wide variety of effects via per pixel programming (equivalent to DX9 Pixel Shader.)

i Texture anisotropic filtering supporti0 line This feature improves the quality of texture mapping on oblique surfaces.

i Occlusion test supporti0 line This feature provides hardware accelerated culling for objects.

i Point sprite supporti0 line This feature improves performance in some particle systems.

 No OpenGL Shading Language support0 line This may break compatibility for applications using per pixel shading.

 No Frame buffer object support0 line This may break compatibility for applications using render to texture functions.

Extension verification:
 GL_APPLE_element_array 0 has the entry point 

glMultiDrawElementArrayAPPLE 0 missing!line GL_APPLE_element_array 0 has the entry point  glMultiDrawRangeElementArrayAPPLE 0 missing!line

GL_APPLE_aux_depth_stencil 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.16 0 line GL_APPLE_flush_buffer_range 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line

GL_APPLE_object_purgeable 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.16 0 line GL_ARB_draw_buffers 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line

GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line GL_ARB_half_float_pixel 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.16 0 line

GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.16 0 line GL_ARB_shading_language_100 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.16 0 line

GL_ARB_texture_float 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line GL_ARB_texture_rectangle 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.0 0 line

GL_ATI_point_cull_mode 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line GL_ATI_texture_float 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.16 0 line GL_ATIX_pn_triangles 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line

GL_EXT_depth_bounds_test 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.28 0 line

GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.28 0 line GL_EXT_framebuffer_object 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.16 0 line

GL_EXT_geometry_shader4 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.16 0 line GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.16 0 line

GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.16 0 line GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line

GL_EXT_texture_compression_dxt1 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.16 0 line GL_EXT_texture_sRGB 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.16 0 line GL_EXT_transform_feedback 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  2.0 ATI-1.5.24 0 line

GL_NV_fog_distance 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.0 0 line GL_NV_register_combiners2 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line GL_NV_texture_shader3 0 was not found, but is available in driver version  1.5 ATI-1.4.26 0 line

i also would like to try those famous omega drivers but seems impossible to find anything for mac

updated to 10.4.11
result: gained about 5 fps outside cities and instance
same fps inside them
this mac is driving me crazy