Mini graphics handle Wow, more specifically Dalaran?

They should. Even on my Mac Pro, Dalaran is a beast to go through just like Shattrath used to be. I tend to hearth into the sewers since there is less activity up there. Plus if you're just hitting Dalaran to get to Northrend you can fly out the sewer pipe. Only need to go up top if you have to. You might also look in the Mac Support forums for WoW and see what other people have. I think there is a sticky there regarding the usability of various system setups.

Anywhere such a large number of players are gathered there's going to be performance issues. Dalaran, like Shattrath and Ironforge before it, is "lag central". I get awful performance (10 fps or less sometimes) there too. It does ALSO seem to be slightly higher on the graphics scale compared to the rest of Northrend even without a lot of players around.

At least Mage portals dump you into that little room, instead of the wide-open center of town like what used to happen in Shattrath (took forever to load up when porting out of a raid or what have you).

There are moments when Dalaran is reasonable (10fps) and others where it is a slide show and this is on my MBP. Whenever I go to Dalaran, I put the game into Window'd mode for a slight boost (a couple fps). Based on my experience, I would shudder to think of going there with a Mini.

You will be fine, as long as you don't have the settings maxed.

I used to play on my Macbook with the 9400m and 2gig of Ram, with view distance in the middle, enviromental textures low and player textures high I used to get 30-60 fps and Dalaran wasn't much lower, it took a while to load all the visuals and could chug a little but it was fine overall.

If WoW (and the odd source game) are all you play a mac mini will do fine.

I went there on an eMac that could only run normal WOW zones on everything low with about 10-20 fps. Needless to say, it made me force quit .

QuantumLo0p said:

When I first ventured to Dalaran I couldn't believe how much higher the graphic requirements are. My video spits, sputters and the frame rate may even drop down to 10 sometimes! In SW my graphics are barely ample; the exception being a raid in SW when the frame rate is poor again. Out questing my frame rate is around 50 if I remember correctly.

I know my Old Powermac with a 6800 card is sooo old but I have an opportunity to buy a new Mini, with 9400 graphics, and was wondering if the Mini can handle Dalaran and other graphics intensive areas. I know the 9400 graphics are better than the 6800 but I don't know by how much.

Any input from the WoW crowd?

Thx

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When I played on my old G4, I got 3-4 dps in Dal and 7-10 dps elsewhere .

It was playable for everything but PvP and raiding.

Sorry, I know this response is a bit late, but my Mini runs WoW great for what it is. (2 Ghz, 120 gig hdd, 3 gigs ram, 9400M)

I use it as a HTPC and have it hooked up to a 55" Samsung LED TV and run it at 1920x1080. With low-medium settings I can get 30-40 fps. In Dalaran I usually get 25ish. If I were to use a lower resolution I'm sure I could bump up into the medium and even high range settings.

It's quite playable. I'll see if I can record a video tonight of it so you can see.

just to let you know im running a 2.26ghz mp with 4870 and getting 150FPS in nearly all area big cities drop to 40fps

QuantumLo0p said:

I still want to buy the Mini I saw on Craigslist for $500 and use it for my main machine.

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Main machine for everything except gaming. If gaming is the focus and money is tight, build an $800 PC.

If you get a mini, max the RAM.

I remember "depression"-rooms in BWL on G4 450 MHz with Geforce 4MX.. pain.

All of WOTLK runs surprisingly well on the latest 9400M equipped mini - as long as you upgrade the ram to 4gb. I was getting a surprising 20-30fps in Dalaran with almost all options at max (except for FSAA and dynamic shadows which were off) running at 1600x1200. Considering the size of the mini, I was pleasantly surprised.

I know you're wondering about the mini, in which case I definitely say you NEED the max RAM on it... but you also asked how everyone else is handling the game... I'm on the high end current iMac, but I custom ordered it with the ATI graphics card, and honestly probably 90% of the time, I'm getting 60 FPS in dalaran or even higher. I have gotten 75-80 FPS there from time to time but usually pretty late at night when there's less people. I'm running the ultra graphics as well. I do think that the mini would be an improvement over what you have though. All things considered, it's a pretty decent machine. The nVidia card is a HUGE improvement over the intel ones, and it can actually handle tasks pretty well.

robsaskibum said:

I know you're wondering about the mini, in which case I definitely say you NEED the max RAM on it... but you also asked how everyone else is handling the game... I'm on the high end current iMac, but I custom ordered it with the ATI graphics card, and honestly probably 90% of the time, I'm getting 60 FPS in dalaran or even higher. I have gotten 75-80 FPS there from time to time but usually pretty late at night when there's less people. I'm running the ultra graphics as well. I do think that the mini would be an improvement over what you have though. All things considered, it's a pretty decent machine. The nVidia card is a HUGE improvement over the intel ones, and it can actually handle tasks pretty well.

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I am waiting for the new iMacs before I buy one, but it will be in a similar configuration to yours here. Since I hate fan noise, could you do a little experiment for us?

/console maxfps X

to find out which X gives us a frame rate in which the fans do not ramp up?

Thanks

QuantumLo0p said:

Wow, thanks for posting your experience and I was unaware the Mini uses system ram for graphics. Sounds like it will handle what I want it to do, although I will be running a 23" ACD. WoW seems to have fairly low graphic requirements and I won't be running Crysis or the like.

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The mini running WoW at the 23" ADC's native resolution of 1920x1200 will be quite a bit more stressful on the system since the 9400M GPU is very bandwidth limited and pushing that many pixels will not be easy for the chip. I would recommend turning the resolution to a slightly lower level, or reducing the draw distance.

Dalaran used to suck on my Powerbook G4. I have no lag whatsoever in Dal on my MacBook Pro.

The only thing I can suggest for you currently is to slam the graphics slider all the way to the left when you have to hearth back to the city. I know it sucks, and Blizzard really shouldn't have forced everyone into a major city like that, considering all the issues Shattrath used to have.

WOW on a MAC MINI 4GB?

KK I am a User from the WINTendo front, but I ´m looking forward to buy me a MAC Mini with the nVidia 9400 graphics chip. I want to build in the 320GB HD and 4GB of RAM.

Atm I am using a Wintendo with nearly the same Hardware Setup as the Mac Mini. Got a little bit less RAM and my graphic chip is as fine as the OS on the machine (very bad^^)
In Dalaran the performance of my computer(?) ranging from 30fps down to system crash.

My most intention in a Computer is atm playing WOW, and using it as multimedia fun.

So I´ve got some questions about that Mini I want to buy:
- The HD is very slow. Would it disturb in loading times etc. in WOW.?
- The FPS in dalaran. How much would it be with a 16mbit internet and the mini described above?
- Graphics compared to a High end system (graphics in wow of course )
- PvP and big Raids? Is the MINI handling this?
- looking forward for StacCraft 2 and Diablo 3 (your suggestions)


would be happy to get some answers, and would be more happy to throw my window machine out of the same....