MBP & WoW

[JonnyMac]

For those of you with a MBP and play Wow, how do I lock the F1, F2, etc. keys to not serve as dimming/brightening the screen. I have the key bindings in WoW to set to the F keys but I can't figure out how to lock the keys so I can use them with the game running. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

[huck500]

For those of you with a MBP and play Wow, how do I lock the F1, F2, etc. keys to not serve as dimming/brightening the screen. I have the key bindings in WoW to set to the F keys but I can't figure out how to lock the keys so I can use them with the game running. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.


On the Powerbook at least, System preferences --> Keyboard and Mouse --> Keyboard tab --> and there's a box to check to use the f keys to control software features.

Edit: huck500 x 10 = huck5000

[GFLPraxis]

I want to see someone with an MBP benchmark it in OS X then benchmark it in Windows...:)
Huck5000 gave you the advice I would have.

[JonnyMac]

On the Powerbook at least, System preferences --> Keyboard and Mouse --> Keyboard tab --> and there's a box to check to use the f keys to control software features.

Cool- thanks. I'll try that when I get home. I'm enjoying WoW on my MBP...most recently I was playing on a iMac G5 w/iSight and now I can have most of the settings maxed and it looks great. I haven't played it on a PC, but I'd be curious to see some benchmarks too.

[GFLPraxis]

Cool- thanks. I'll try that when I get home. I'm enjoying WoW on my MBP...most recently I was playing on a iMac G5 w/iSight and now I can have most of the settings maxed and it looks great. I haven't played it on a PC, but I'd be curious to see some benchmarks too.

The cool thing with WoW is that both the Windows and Mac version are on one disk, so anyone with a dual boot setup can test it easily :)

[illegalprelude]

The cool thing with WoW is that both the Windows and Mac version are on one disk, so anyone with a dual boot setup can test it easily :)

i would presume tough the OSX version should run smoother? More native and looking for more of the right softwere :confused: ?

[GFLPraxis]

i would presume tough the OSX version should run smoother? More native and looking for more of the right softwere :confused: ?

Why would it be "more native"? Windows would be running natively, just like OS X. Full speed.

The graphics drivers would probably decide the difference. I think the Windows version might be just barely faster as they're probably more mature. But I'm not sure.

Most games will probably run faster on Windows because of poor ports. WoW is an exception because Blizzard developed it for both OS's at the same time. So I honestly don't know which WoW will go faster on.

[illegalprelude]

Why would it be "more native"? Windows would be running natively, just like OS X. Full speed.

The graphics drivers would probably decide the difference. I think the Windows version might be just barely faster as they're probably more mature. But I'm not sure.

Most games will probably run faster on Windows because of poor ports. WoW is an exception because Blizzard developed it for both OS's at the same time. So I honestly don't know which WoW will go faster on.

well the reason I say is. lets say Game X is designed to work with 20 graphics cards with Direct X encoding while the Mac is limited to only 3 graphic cards in the market that the game might or might not be directly compatible or would allow it to show its true color. does that make sense?

[GFLPraxis]

well the reason I say is. lets say Game X is designed to work with 20 graphics cards with Direct X encoding while the Mac is limited to only 3 graphic cards in the market that the game might or might not be directly compatible or would allow it to show its true color. does that make sense?

Except Apple doesn't write the graphics drivers, ATi does- so I assume that reasoning doesn't work the same. I could be wrong though.

[illegalprelude]

Except Apple doesn't write the graphics drivers, ATi does- so I assume that reasoning doesn't work the same. I could be wrong though.

no i see what your saying and this has to do with the lack of my knowledge of how the port of XP is working out because the way I see it is.

Graphic Card X is looking for a P4 chip or AMD Chip, and its able to read those because its designed on the Windows OS. So then Game X is also looking for that graphics card.

Now we suddenly have windows on the Intel Macs. It finds the core duo, but maybe Direct X cannot run because it dosent have the graphic card support it looking for or the graphics card the game is looking for isnt out for macs?

[toomuchstereo]

no i see what your saying and this has to do with the lack of my knowledge of how the port of XP is working out because the way I see it is.

Graphic Card X is looking for a P4 chip or AMD Chip, and its able to read those because its designed on the Windows OS. So then Game X is also looking for that graphics card.

Now we suddenly have windows on the Intel Macs. It finds the core duo, but maybe Direct X cannot run because it dosent have the graphic card support it looking for or the graphics card the game is looking for isnt out for macs?

What exactlly are you trying to say?

[illegalprelude]

What exactlly are you trying to say?
the way i see it, its like putting a PS2 game in a Xbox thats moded to read PS2 games. although the xbox might have the power, will all drives and hardware work right to give u the original smoothnes?

[GFLPraxis]

the way i see it, its like putting a PS2 game in a Xbox thats moded to read PS2 games. although the xbox might have the power, will all drives and hardware work right to give u the original smoothnes?

Not a valid comparison; PS2 has a completely different processor architecture, it would be physically impossible to mod the XBox that way.

And we're not talking about putting the same game in both systems- we're talking about the Windows version vs the Mac version.

[Abulia]

Listen to GFLPraxis; you guys are waaaaaay off base here.

Windows WoW is just as "native" as Mac WoW. The Windows drivers provided by Apple are ATI-sanctioned, which means they fill the same role as any other DirectX-valid driver: they are the interface layer between the hardware and DirectX calls.

The Boot Camp offering by Apple isn't some rogue "hack." Windows XP on the Mac hardware has full graphics acceleration, just like any other Windows box.

I suspect on the same machine that the Windows version would run slightly faster. I say this only because the majority of Blizzard's development is on the Windows platform; their code likely reflects this. WoW is probably the one gaming application where there's little benefit in dual-booting into Windows to play. (Edit: or not! See below!)

[Abulia]

well the reason I say is. lets say Game X is designed to work with 20 graphics cards with Direct X encoding while the Mac is limited to only 3 graphic cards in the market that the game might or might not be directly compatible or would allow it to show its true color. does that make sense?Programmers don't write to the cards/hardware specifications, they write to the API layer, in this case DirectX or Core Graphics (?). The OS and drivers handle the interaction between the hardware and the OS, so that programmers don't have to code for specific hardware; that's the entire point of having DirectX, for example.

That's also why video card manufacturers build their cards "DirectX 9 compliant" and provide the drivers. Otherwise the entire pool of software out there written for DirectX wouldn't work on their hardware.

[Abulia]

Oh, and BTW, from http://www.xlr8yourmac.com:" Hey Mike, love the site. I installed Boot Camp last night and did a little test with World of Warcraft to see how a 20" iMac's ATI chip would fare under XP compared to OS X.
System details:
- 20in 2GHz Core Duo iMac
- 1.5 GB Ram
- 256 MB VRam

One of the great things about WoW is that the settings and AddOns are transportable from system to system, even from Mac to PC. Once I copied over the "WTF" and "Interface" folders from the WoW directory on the OS X partition to the XP partition (formatted FAT32) and launched WoW, everything comes up with the same settings and custom interfaces (which I use extensively). This makes it a balanced test.

- I was seeing about 25-30 FPS in the Ironforge Auction House area in OS X. With the same settings, I was seeing about 40-45 FPS in the same location with similar crowds in XP.

- In the open terrain area just outside Ironforge (looking over the cliff just to the left of the entrance), I was seeing about 30 FPS in OS X. In XP at the same location, again about 40-45 FPS.

I have almost all settings set to their highest level, except Terrain Distance, Terrain Detail Level, and Anisotropic Filtering, which were all set to low. All shader effects and Vertical Sync were off.

I was able to set everything to its highest level, and turn on all shader effects in XP and still have 30FPS while looking over a complex terrain. This would have choked OS X to about 15 FPS.

Something else interesting to note is that in XP there are MANY more options for refresh rate and bitdepth/sampling rate.
Let me know if you want more detailed information!
-Lars "Looks like its way more than a slight improvement.