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Dr. McKay

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 20, 2010
812
110
Belgium, Europe
System requirements for the latest Wow installment, Mists of Pandaria, have apparently increased again.
Some reviews state an ATI Radeon 2600 Pro as the minimum, which is what I have in my iMac.
I am already playing Wow on Fair to Low settings (native res of 1920x1200). Does this mean I might have to put everything on Low ?
If that's the case, don't think I will bother...
 

Miharu

macrumors 6502
Aug 12, 2007
381
10
Finland
Unfortunately the game gets heavier with every expansion... I'm playing 5 mans well and doing quests with everything at almost minimum on my Macbook with 9400m which is a little worse than your specs. I'm afraid at that resolution it's gonna be tough. You could try the trial that I think they're offering to ole players.
 

lightz39

macrumors regular
Nov 30, 2012
178
3
It gets more graphically demanding as it goes. If it stayed the same from launch it would be HEAVILY outdated by now. On my maxed out retina I can get a soild steady 30fps at 2880x1800 on the good preset with textures bumped all the way up.

Don't expect too much from your system. Honestly at the end up the day maxed graphics or not its about the game play. Do you like WoW enough to play it on low or is it all about the eye candy?
 

SingularityG

macrumors 6502
Jun 7, 2012
338
0
Think about it this way. Every time new WoW expansion is released, graphics improve. More eye candy, more detailed textures, more shadows and even more trees in a goddamn forrest.

When you disable all the new eye candy like SSAO or Sunshafts, lower the Texture, Liquid, Ground Clutter details you get the prior-to-the-expansion looks and same fps.;)

WoW has its own particular visual style and best thing about it is that does not try to be stunningly good looking. Playing Guild Wars 2 on low hurts the eyes, but I know people who play WoW on the lowest to max out the grand and classic design.

It's a state of mind, really.:)
 

SingularityG

macrumors 6502
Jun 7, 2012
338
0
Already done that... Go lower still ???

You could also try to lower the resolution to 1606×1004 and set AA to 2x (I gained 10fps by doing that). The problem is that text in WoW gets hard to read on lower resolutions but you might still try 1280x800, set AA to 4x and see what that looks like.;)
 

DaveNinja

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2005
314
18
It gets more graphically demanding as it goes. If it stayed the same from launch it would be HEAVILY outdated by now. On my maxed out retina I can get a soild steady 30fps at 2880x1800 on the good preset with textures bumped all the way up.

Don't expect too much from your system. Honestly at the end up the day maxed graphics or not its about the game play. Do you like WoW enough to play it on low or is it all about the eye candy?

On my retina i was playing at 2880x1800 at Ultra and getting like 15fps, switching to Good bumped me up to 30+fps and made things lighter and easier to see. So thanks for mentioning that. Previously i had tried lower resolutions while keeping Ultra but that barely affected the fps.

on my core 2duo 24" imac (2007) i have to have the graphics pretty low and bump down the resolution quite a bit.
 

bitethis

macrumors member
Dec 21, 2012
58
88
I can understand the requirements changing but there appears to be an ingame cap on frame rates or something. I was averaging over 90 on good settings before MoP. MoP played fine for 2 days and then by the 3rd I was getting about 20fps and lower. changing the settings to fair took my fps to 60 in stormwind but once I left the city it would drop to below 20 and start to fluctuate even lower than that.

I have an 2009 27" iMac

getting 30 on good settings with macs latest hardware is a joke. there has got to be something wrong. MoP did not change that many things
 

lightz39

macrumors regular
Nov 30, 2012
178
3
Games have a hard to running in OS X to begin with. However MOP does add quite a bit of detail, effects, objects to the world. You will take a hit. Should it be that low? Probably not. Try running it in boot camp and see how that goes for you.
 

QuantumLo0p

macrumors 6502a
Apr 28, 2006
992
30
U.S.A.
Already done that... Go lower still ???

On my 2010 Mini I have all the settings on minimum except for middle setting for distance and some particle density. I also capped the fps at 30 to help keep the heat down but that's probably not an issue for you. High particle density is a killer but you need some to be able to see effects such as the kind on the ground that you need to stay out of in instances. It would be nice to have nicer looking water, shadows and such but it isn't necessary. On low settings there will be some instance situations that will be tough to maintain a decent frame rate but most of panda should be playable.

For comparison, with my custom rig that has a GTX680 and I can think of at least one raid boss where my rates go down to 38-40 fps with ultra settings. I'm sure if I backed off the more demanding settings I would have much better fps but what can I say, I like nice graphics.
 

SingularityG

macrumors 6502
Jun 7, 2012
338
0
getting 30 on good settings with macs latest hardware is a joke. there has got to be something wrong. MoP did not change that many things

You know, two years ago I had solid 30 fps in highly populated areas, with a mixture of High-Ultra setting @ 1920x1200 on 2010 Macbook Pro (latest hardware). Cataclysm (released in December 2010) did not change this. Still solid 30 fps with some dips below that in some 25 raids.

In MoP areas I get maybe an average of 15 fps with the same settings and elsewhere still mostly solid 30 fps.

But you are right, that forest outside of Stormwind is sort of an fps killer, too. They must have added branches to the trees.:D
 
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