WoW on my iMac G5

Corsair generally do good deals on RAM, and yes for a game like WoW, assuming that's what you'll mostly be playing, it's definitely worth upgrading the RAM to 2 gigs. I played on a 2006 17' imac for 2 years and loved it, always ran very smooth for me.

Now I have an 08 mac pro which I got a few weeks ago, it just laughs at world of warcraft ! And everything else i ask it to do !!

Ramonesmania said:

Corsair generally do good deals on RAM, and yes for a game like WoW, assuming that's what you'll mostly be playing, it's definitely worth upgrading the RAM to 2 gigs. I played on a 2006 17' imac for 2 years and loved it, always ran very smooth for me.

Now I have an 08 mac pro which I got a few weeks ago, it just laughs at world of warcraft ! And everything else i ask it to do !!

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Wow will pwn your imac g5 imac g5 is bs!!!! Imac g5 belongs in the bin alnong with any other nostalgic ppc rubbish!!! get an i7!

Just Ignore that last post, typical "newbie" response.

Your G5 Mac is still very capable. Which model do you have exactly? If you got the DDR model, that memory is still pretty expensive as you will be spending to closely $50 for 2gb.

Is your iMac the one with iSight? You did say late 2005? You might be lucky to have iMac that uses the cheaper DDR2 memory so you can upgrade to 2.5gb since the 512mb is soldered to your logic board and you have one open slot.

You can purchase 1x 2gb DDR2 of places like newegg.com.

cadfaeltex said:

Hi, first post here. I have an iMac 20 inch that I got at the end of 2005. I'm not looking at the about this mac (I'm on my iBook) but IIRC it's a 2.0 gHz G5 with 512mb ram (I am sure about the ram). My wife just started World of Warcraft and I wanted to play too. Only problem is it won't load on my iMac (gives me an insufficient ram error). I plan to but a powerbook next spring but I want to play now. Is it worth upgrading the ram? If so can someone tell me a good place to get it and maybe save me the search if you have a link to a how-to on how to do it?

TIA,
Tony

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PowerBook next spring? I would look at a white MacBook instead, it would be a better performer for WoW.

Anyways, the RAM should help. I had played the trial on my 2.0ghz DC G5 and it seemed OK, but definitely ran better on my MacBook (which was odd as my MacBook has the i945 video, versus the 6600LE the G5 had).

Fret not, WOW 3.2 will run just fine on your G5.

I, too, bought mine in jan 2006 (just before the Intel chips, Doh!). Depending on if your wife wants to get into hard-core raiding, you will have to be very aware of your framerates. watch the add-ons, and dial back the video to almost minimums, disabling effects etc.

Wow works well on the Mac, and I do not get the usual D/C's a lot of other PC players get.

As the earlier poster sugggested, up the RAM to the max. I have used a chip from Corsair for the past 2 years (first chip was a cheapy from Fry's, which gave me the Sad Mac).

Look on the bottom of the stand. I thought there was a diagram on upgrading the memory there .

Yep, philips driver and an anti-static strap is all you need. Takes like 5 minutes total. Make sure you lay the iMac screen-down on a padded surface (towel on desk etc.). I used this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2266

Of course, unplug all the cables! One of the reasons I drank the Kool-Aid back then was that I didn't have to be an IT engineer to maintain the home hardware.

Now, If I could just get the wife on-board to dump Windows........

I've been playing wow on my iMac 20inch G5 for about 3 years. It plays fine on it, but I do have a lower than normal FPS.

Also I noticed with each new expansion, the game play is slower and graphiocs stutter sometime. Each expansion they come out with is more and more graphics intensive which strains the iMac, which by the way is maxed out at 2gb ram.

One major problem is when I join big raids or go to dalaran where lots of players are. Trying to walk through dalaran can be a nightmare. The imac struggles to deal with all the graphics.

You can forget doing 40+ man raids. The graphics card cant handle it after a bit. Its possible my imac graphics card is really worn, which I believe cant be replaced

I love going on raids where a huge group tries to kill thrall. Once we are all in same room as thrall, my game just locks up.

I tried to install wow wotlk on my relatives intel imac, but it gave me a warning saying game cant be installed because they only have 500mb ram

In the end imac G5 great for wow if ram maxed out and you avoid big raids

kxfrog said:

Wow will pwn your imac g5 imac g5 is bs!!!! Imac g5 belongs in the bin alnong with any other nostalgic ppc rubbish!!! get an i7!

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Sorry about that post my brother keeps using my computer!

I have an original iMac G5 20" (1.8GHz) with 1GB of RAM. I have played a ton of WoW on it for its entire life. Overall it's OK for a solo or small group player, assuming that all video settings are set to the minimum. I use no add-ons. Frame rate on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms is fine usually (20-30 FPS). Rates on Outland are not quite as high. Rates on Northrend are playable -- 10 to 15 perhaps. Except in Dalaran! Usually I was getting somewhere around one FPS. Sometimes higher, but there are frequent multi-second complete pauses (I think when new areas of the city or new player textures are being paged in).

I've done no Burning Crusade or Wrath raiding on the G5, so I don't know how that would work. Five-player Burning Crusade dungeons are OK. I have done a few Alterac Valleys on it, and if lots of players are grouped together it's unplayable (one frame every couple of seconds).

For WOW on a mac, the best way to improve FPS is to shut off the shadowing.
That will makea huge difference.

i dont mean to show off, but i have a question -
im a wow player who just bought a mac (last month)
im sort of delaying putting it on my imac because im unsure of what kind of fps ill get and what the game style is like on mac
i have the 2.66ghz 4gb ram imac
can anyone shed some light on how smooth things will run for me?
TIA

I have a 17" iMac G5 1.8ghz with 768mb ram installed. WoW runs perfectly fine under all low settings.

foofan said:

Its possible my imac graphics card is really worn, which I believe cant be replaced

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Just fyi, graphics cards are solid state, they don't get "worn"... they either work or are broken.

Turn off shadows, run on minimal settings and you should be able to get by. My brother played WoW (including 25 mans) up through all of burning crusdaes on his PowerBook.

He now plays on his new intel iMac with higher settings and higher res and loves it.

My eMac G4 could play it. Granted, all on low with a really low fps (around 15), but was still definitely playable.

dangermou5e said:

im a wow player who just bought a mac (last month)
im sort of delaying putting it on my imac because im unsure of what kind of fps ill get and what the game style is like on mac
i have the 2.66ghz 4gb ram imac
can anyone shed some light on how smooth things will run for me?
TIA

Click to expand...

WoW on a mac is essentially identical to WoW on a Windows PC. (The mac version of the client supports a few extra tid-bits, such as in-game control of the iTunes player, and movie recording [or has the latter been added to the Windows client by now?].)

The frame rate you'll see depends on the video option your iMac has, and your in-game video settings. However, even with the lowest-end graphics option, I suspect your frame rate would be on the order of a few dozen with moderate video settings in the open world. Dalaran and a 25-player raid or big battleground would be lower. 4GB of RAM definitely helps!

FYI, I have a 2009 24" iMac 3.06GHz with ATI 4850 and 4GB of memory. With the in-game video set to Ultra and 2x multisampling (and playing at 1920 screen resolution), I get 60-80 FPS in the open world (Northrend), and 25-40 in Dalaran depending on population. It's fun to see over 200 FPS in simple locations. Animations are beautifully smooth.

Tom Dahl said:

I have an original iMac G5 20" (1.8GHz) with 1GB of RAM. I have played a ton of WoW on it for its entire life. Overall it's OK for a solo or small group player, assuming that all video settings are set to the minimum. I use no add-ons. Frame rate on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms is fine usually (20-30 FPS). Rates on Outland are not quite as high. Rates on Northrend are playable -- 10 to 15 perhaps. Except in Dalaran! Usually I was getting somewhere around one FPS. Sometimes higher, but there are frequent multi-second complete pauses (I think when new areas of the city or new player textures are being paged in).

I've done no Burning Crusade or Wrath raiding on the G5, so I don't know how that would work. Five-player Burning Crusade dungeons are OK. I have done a few Alterac Valleys on it, and if lots of players are grouped together it's unplayable (one frame every couple of seconds).

Click to expand...

If you upgrade your RAM to 2GB or more, you'll notice all of those multi second hitches go away. Your frame rates won't really improve, but it should make just about most areas playable.

Tom Dahl said:

WoW on a mac is essentially identical to WoW on a Windows PC. (The mac version of the client supports a few extra tid-bits, such as in-game control of the iTunes player, and movie recording [or has the latter been added to the Windows client by now?].)

The frame rate you'll see depends on the video option your iMac has, and your in-game video settings. However, even with the lowest-end graphics option, I suspect your frame rate would be on the order of a few dozen with moderate video settings in the open world. Dalaran and a 25-player raid or big battleground would be lower. 4GB of RAM definitely helps!

FYI, I have a 2009 24" iMac 3.06GHz with ATI 4850 and 4GB of memory. With the in-game video set to Ultra and 2x multisampling (and playing at 1920 screen resolution), I get 60-80 FPS in the open world (Northrend), and 25-40 in Dalaran depending on population. It's fun to see over 200 FPS in simple locations. Animations are beautifully smooth.

Click to expand...

Wow that sounds amazing

Thanks for the explanation!