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Need some advice on 2.3 vs 2.6 for playing WoW

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Daisytbr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 27, 2014
13
0
Hi everyone,

This is my first post here. I'm upgrading from my early 2011 15" Macbook Pro that has broken (2.3 i7, 8GB RAM and 750 GB HD). Apple is replacing it under AppleCare as it has had so many issues.

My question is should I opt for the 2.3 or 2.6 processor? I'm going to have 16GB RAM and the 1TB SSD. I play a lot of World of Warcraft on my laptop and then some usual Internet browsing. They are shipping me the 2.3 model but I could exchange it for a 2.6 if I pay the difference. I could afford the upgrade, but like most people I'd have to save a little bit first.

Will I see an improvement in my WoW game play with the 2.6? I plan to keep this laptop for 3 years. Just looking for some opinions on my needs. I have read many threads on this subject for others needs.

Thanks in advance for your help :)
 
Daisytbr said:
Hi everyone,

This is my first post here. I'm upgrading from my early 2011 15" Macbook Pro that has broken (2.3 i7, 8GB RAM and 750 GB HD). Apple is replacing it under AppleCare as it has had so many issues.

My question is should I opt for the 2.3 or 2.6 processor? I'm going to have 16GB RAM and the 1TB SSD. I play a lot of World of Warcraft on my laptop and then some usual Internet browsing. They are shipping me the 2.3 model but I could exchange it for a 2.6 if I pay the difference. I could afford the upgrade, but like most people I'd have to save a little bit first.

Will I see an improvement in my WoW game play with the 2.6? I plan to keep this laptop for 3 years. Just looking for some opinions on my needs. I have read many threads on this subject for others needs.

Thanks in advance for your help :)
Click to expand...

There's not going to be any improvement.

The only situation where you'll see a performance improvement is when doing video editing or heavy Photoshop work. Even so, I don't think the difference will be much.

But go ahead for the 2.6GHz if you can afford it :)

Here's the performance comparison between the 2.3GHz i7-4850HQ and 2.6GHz i7-4960HQ: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/450391?baseline=503811
 
yjchua95 said:
There's not going to be any improvement.

The only situation where you'll see a performance improvement is when doing video editing or heavy Photoshop work. Even so, I don't think the difference will be much.

But go ahead for the 2.6GHz if you can afford it :)

Here's the performance comparison between the 2.3GHz i7-4850HQ and 2.6GHz i7-4960HQ: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/450391?baseline=503811
Click to expand...

Thank you for your help and for the link :)

I had heard a rumor that WoW was mostly CPU intensive. I'm not particularly savvy when it comes to understanding beyond the basics of CPU and GPU functions so I was unsure if it was true or not!
 
Daisytbr said:
Thank you for your help and for the link :)

I had heard a rumor that WoW was mostly CPU intensive. I'm not particularly savvy when it comes to understanding beyond the basics of CPU and GPU functions so I was unsure if it was true or not!
Click to expand...
WoW most certainly is CPU intensive, but honestly the difference between the two CPUs in question is pretty minor. The i7 in the MacBook Pro is pretty fast to begin with, so I'd be surprised if that was the bottleneck.
 
JoelTheSuperior said:
WoW most certainly is CPU intensive, but honestly the difference between the two CPUs in question is pretty minor. The i7 in the MacBook Pro is pretty fast to begin with, so I'd be surprised if that was the bottleneck.
Click to expand...

Yes I believe this is true. WoW to a certain extent relies heavily on CPU because there is a certain crunching of data that needs to be done since it's a MMO and not a typical FPS. Along with the ram and caching RAM, you'll be fine since these problems have long past the usual requirements that have been listed for the game since it's original launch.
 
JoelTheSuperior said:
WoW most certainly is CPU intensive, but honestly the difference between the two CPUs in question is pretty minor. The i7 in the MacBook Pro is pretty fast to begin with, so I'd be surprised if that was the bottleneck.
Click to expand...

Alright sounds good! Thank you for the advice and clearing that up for me :)

Lunfai said:
Yes I believe this is true. WoW to a certain extent relies heavily on CPU because there is a certain crunching of data that needs to be done since it's a MMO and not a typical FPS. Along with the ram and caching RAM, you'll be fine since these problems have long past the usual requirements that have been listed for the game since it's original launch.
Click to expand...

Sounds good! Thank you for your help, I'm going to opt to just stick with the 2.3 :)
 
Daisytbr said:
Hi everyone,

This is my first post here. I'm upgrading from my early 2011 15" Macbook Pro that has broken (2.3 i7, 8GB RAM and 750 GB HD). Apple is replacing it under AppleCare as it has had so many issues.

My question is should I opt for the 2.3 or 2.6 processor? I'm going to have 16GB RAM and the 1TB SSD. I play a lot of World of Warcraft on my laptop and then some usual Internet browsing. They are shipping me the 2.3 model but I could exchange it for a 2.6 if I pay the difference. I could afford the upgrade, but like most people I'd have to save a little bit first.

Will I see an improvement in my WoW game play with the 2.6? I plan to keep this laptop for 3 years. Just looking for some opinions on my needs. I have read many threads on this subject for others needs.

Thanks in advance for your help :)
Click to expand...

You should play ESO like a real man. :)
 
If you enjoy WoW, give Wildstar a try. The game is surprisingly good. I can't say anything positive about ESO.
 
Daisytbr said:
Hi everyone,

This is my first post here. I'm upgrading from my early 2011 15" Macbook Pro that has broken (2.3 i7, 8GB RAM and 750 GB HD). Apple is replacing it under AppleCare as it has had so many issues.

My question is should I opt for the 2.3 or 2.6 processor? I'm going to have 16GB RAM and the 1TB SSD. I play a lot of World of Warcraft on my laptop and then some usual Internet browsing. They are shipping me the 2.3 model but I could exchange it for a 2.6 if I pay the difference. I could afford the upgrade, but like most people I'd have to save a little bit first.

Will I see an improvement in my WoW game play with the 2.6? I plan to keep this laptop for 3 years. Just looking for some opinions on my needs. I have read many threads on this subject for others needs.

Thanks in advance for your help :)
Click to expand...

Neither will make any difference to your gaming performance on WoW. It's not a very demanding game, and most games are limited by the graphics card, not the processor.
 
marddin said:
ESO is light years more enjoyable that WoW. I highly suggest it.
Click to expand...

I'm playing both on my rMBP now, and I still prefer WoW to ESO. Don't get me wrong - I do enjoy ESO, but there isn't enough to differentiate it from other MMOs, and it feels too much like they added multiplayer to Skyrim IMO. Some people will have different opinions, but my take on ESO is that they didn't do quite enough to truly differentiate it.
 
I watched a friend streaming ESO for a little while. Might be something to try for those times I go through WoW bordem!

Incase anyone reads this thread in the future about WoW gaming on this laptop, I received my 2.3/16GB/1TB 15" MBP today and WoW runs well on it. I currently have my settings as the following:

nLojwrJ.jpg


I limited my FPS to around 80, but with these settings I'm sure you could be higher. I get ~50-60 FPS in 25m raiding from this. Could pump them up higher, I'm sure it would run well on "Good" and potentially some things on "High" but its already burning my legs as is :p

And it is correct, I'm not even seeing my CPU working that hard, its the GPU thats a bit of a downer I think. But overall, much happier with this MBP than my old one. The retina quality is insane! Makes the game look fantastic. My only gripe is that when I'm in windowed fullscreen mode, when I tab out it puts me on the default retina resolution (I usually scale to 1680x1050) but thats not too horrible.

Thanks everyone for the advice, glad I stuck with the free 2.3!
 
The only MMO I ever got hooked into was Anarchy Online. They're supposed to have a new engine for several years now, but I can't wait!

I never played ESO, but have been thinking about it. I used to play a little WoW, but after several friends quit, I decided to stop as well.
 
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