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Bad Graphical Performance, or Expecting too Much?

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PlanEx

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2008
9
0
Hello everyone,

I bought a new Unibody MacBook Pro just a few weeks ago. It is my first computer from Apple, and I am loving it. However, I do have one concern regarding graphics performance, specifically with the game World of Warcraft. When I have it only on Medium settings, I will only get a consistent 25-35 frames per second, which seems FAR too low to me. My old PC with an 8600GT and a pentium 4 processor managed to get that or better.

I am worried that I could have a bad GPU, but perhaps I am simply expecting too much performance form my computer. I have made sure that I am running games with the Energy Savings setting on "Higher Performance."

Is there any way for me to benchmark my GPU and compare it to the results of others? I don't think that "I'm getting low FPS in a game" will convince an apple employee of anything, and again I could just be expecting too much.

I have the entry level MacBook Pro with the 2.4 GHZ processor, 2 GB of RAM and the 9600GT with 256 MB of VRAM.

Does anyone else out there have one of the new MacBook Pros that runs WoW who would be willing to list what kind of Frames Per Second they get?
 
I would say yes, that seems low to me. I don't know what the problem could be, though. Crysis, for instance, runs about that fast for me at medium/high settings (on Boot Camp, though...Mac games do tend to run slower), and Crysis is exponentially more graphics-hungry than WoW. I haven't played WoW though, so I can't tell you for sure.

Am I the only one who thinks that 35fps is enough? Any higher on anything but a first person shooter and I start to get dizzy. RTS games like Company of Heroes run, in my opinion, WAY too fast on my new unibody MBP. Maybe it's because I've been playing games on Macs my entire life and am used to those "low" framerates...
 
Barefeats.com and other mac magazines should have benchmarks and how to benchmark.
 
I'm quite happy with the performance with my MBP unibody running CoD4:MW at pretty decent settings with AA and shadows. It runs at least 30+ fps for me.

And knowing the tendency of Blizzard games being not too spec-hungry, I would suggest you try some other games and compare with the benchmarks that are already available on internet. Just to be sure.
 
PlanEx said:
Hello everyone,

I bought a new Unibody MacBook Pro just a few weeks ago. It is my first computer from Apple, and I am loving it. However, I do have one concern regarding graphics performance, specifically with the game World of Warcraft. When I have it only on Medium settings, I will only get a consistent 25-35 frames per second, which seems FAR too low to me. My old PC with an 8600GT and a pentium 4 processor managed to get that or better.
Click to expand...

If this is on OS X, have you actually switched to the 9600? it comes with the 9400 enabled by default for os x.

Check in energy saver what the graphics is set to.
 
cptrios said:
Am I the only one who thinks that 35fps is enough? Any higher on anything but a first person shooter and I start to get dizzy. RTS games like Company of Heroes run, in my opinion, WAY too fast on my new unibody MBP. Maybe it's because I've been playing games on Macs my entire life and am used to those "low" framerates...
Click to expand...

i personally find anything under around 55fps is choppy. and before somebody goes and says it, cause somebody inevitably will, 24fps is not the maximum number of fps the human eye can percieve, its the minimum required for SMOOTH AND FLUID motion.
 
DavyC412 said:
i personally find anything under around 55fps is choppy. and before somebody goes and says it, cause somebody inevitably will, 24fps is not the maximum number of fps the human eye can percieve, its the minimum required for SMOOTH AND FLUID motion.
Click to expand...

You might've gotten the double (512MB GPU) instead if you need fast as possible.
 
SWLinPHX said:
You might've gotten the double (512MB GPU) instead if you need fast as possible.
Click to expand...

i personally use a PC at home for games, and i have a pretty evga 8800gts 512mb in it, but here at work, i use a mac.

i said that post earlier, because i find it pretty much always comes up when people talk about what are acceptable framerates in video games.
 
PlanEx said:
Hello everyone,

I bought a new Unibody MacBook Pro just a few weeks ago. It is my first computer from Apple, and I am loving it. However, I do have one concern regarding graphics performance, specifically with the game World of Warcraft. When I have it only on Medium settings, I will only get a consistent 25-35 frames per second, which seems FAR too low to me. My old PC with an 8600GT and a pentium 4 processor managed to get that or better.

I am worried that I could have a bad GPU, but perhaps I am simply expecting too much performance form my computer. I have made sure that I am running games with the Energy Savings setting on "Higher Performance."

Is there any way for me to benchmark my GPU and compare it to the results of others? I don't think that "I'm getting low FPS in a game" will convince an apple employee of anything, and again I could just be expecting too much.

I have the entry level MacBook Pro with the 2.4 GHZ processor, 2 GB of RAM and the 9600GT with 256 MB of VRAM.

Does anyone else out there have one of the new MacBook Pros that runs WoW who would be willing to list what kind of Frames Per Second they get?
Click to expand...
The best way to check your 3D performance is probably to load up 3DMark'06 on Windows and compare it to the benchmarks floating around. 25-35 fps on WoW seems awfully low though - definitely try some other games and report back.

EDIT: FYI, I get over 30 fps at slightly above High settings on Fallout 3 (a brand new game), so WoW should definitely be performing better than that.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys, they've all been extremely helpful. As a new Mac user, I'm not acquainted with everything about OS X yet, so it's nice to have the imput of some experienced users.

I appreciate the FPS numbers you guys have given me for other games, it does lend credence to my theory that I may have something wrong with my GPU. I am sure that I have switched to the 9600GT through the Energy Saver settings as well, the "Higher Performance" option is selected.

If I got a consistent 25-35 FPS I might be happy, but with any MMO graphical performance tends to be all over the place depending on what you are doing. Sometimes I get as low as 10-15 FPS, other times I'm up in the 45-55 FPS range. It just seems to me that with a GPU as good as the 9600, I would be getting constant rates of 45-55 FPS.

I'll look into running windows via boot camp and benchmarking it there. I do have a copy of vista laying around. Will the 9600 GT be enabled by default when I switch into windows?
 
PlanEx said:
Thanks for all the replies guys, they've all been extremely helpful. As a new Mac user, I'm not acquainted with everything about OS X yet, so it's nice to have the imput of some experienced users.

I appreciate the FPS numbers you guys have given me for other games, it does lend credence to my theory that I may have something wrong with my GPU. I am sure that I have switched to the 9600GT through the Energy Saver settings as well, the "Higher Performance" option is selected.

If I got a consistent 25-35 FPS I might be happy, but with any MMO graphical performance tends to be all over the place depending on what you are doing. Sometimes I get as low as 10-15 FPS, other times I'm up in the 45-55 FPS range. It just seems to me that with a GPU as good as the 9600, I would be getting constant rates of 45-55 FPS.

I'll look into running windows via boot camp and benchmarking it there. I do have a copy of vista laying around. Will the 9600 GT be enabled by default when I switch into windows?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure(I don't own one) but isn't there a specific menu in whic you can enable the 9600 GT, and it isn't in the energy saver menu?
 
I have the new 2.53 MBP and this is what i find while playing WoW. in Vanilla wow i generally get about 50-60fps, BC i get 40-60fps(depending on how much sky, spell effects, other players are around, and in WoTLK i get 30-45fps.

When a deathknight casts his spells i've seen the fps sink as low as 15-20fps.

where are you testing your framerate? if you go to some place like Shattrath city or some other heavily populated zone you are definitely going to experience a drop in frame rate.

Keep the new shadow effects totally off they are a huge huge video memory hog as well a lot of group clutter effects.

oh and the fact is that the human eye perceives the typical motion as being fluid at about 18fps.
 
my 2.4ghz late 2008 MBP can't play WC3 (Dota) smoothly on the 9400. It's only when i switch it up to the 9600, that i get to play it smooth.

Looks like the 9400 isn't that powerful after all.
 
FinalCutJay said:
oh and the fact is that the human eye perceives the typical motion as being fluid at about 18fps.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's fine on paper but you can't tell me 30 fps even looks smooth

18FPS is unplayable for many games.

For me 30 fps is acceptable, over 50 is smooth.
 
nikhsub1 said:
Games tend to play miserably slow in OS X vs Windows on the same machine... I play warcraft 3, no hard core graphics by any stretch. It sucks in OS X and flies in Windows.
Click to expand...

Is your copy of Warcraft 3 a Universal binary, or is it a PPC app running in Rosetta? If it's not universal, it will run super slow.
 
Quick follow up question:

From what Ive read it is better to buy the Windows Version of COD 4 MW than the Mac Version? How much of a frame rate increase will I see?

Thanks
 
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