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New Mac Pro + World of Warcraft (WoW)
- Thread starter BigJuicyVan
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I would be interested to find out if the fans on the 8800GT stayed quiet on extended wow play.
I have a Mac Pro 3GHz Quad with a X1900XT, it used to be that after 30 mins of wow, the fans on the X1900XT would speed up and make a significant increase in noise. I installed the Arctic Cooling fan and it is now whisper quiet.
I was wondering if the 8800GT remains whisper quiet or gets louder after a few mins of play like the X1900XT did.
This is all assuming that they update the firmware so that I can upgrade the card on my pre 2008 Mac pro.
I have a Mac Pro 3GHz Quad with a X1900XT, it used to be that after 30 mins of wow, the fans on the X1900XT would speed up and make a significant increase in noise. I installed the Arctic Cooling fan and it is now whisper quiet.
I was wondering if the 8800GT remains whisper quiet or gets louder after a few mins of play like the X1900XT did.
This is all assuming that they update the firmware so that I can upgrade the card on my pre 2008 Mac pro.
The fans on the 8800 stay whisper quiet even after 4 hours of 25-man raiding
Seriously whisper quiet, its so awesome. Another 4 hour BT raid tonight
I love how I can leave it on overnight in my bedroom and not be disturbed by its noise. My old PC sounded like a freaking jet, I had to use headphones sometimes.
Mind posting your specs? Resolution, settings, realm, etc? I max out at about 80fps when flying in the middle of nowhere with these settings:
1920x1200
24 bit color, 2x multisample
All other settings Max
~15mb worth of interface addons
Vsync off
Cenarius
Checked mine last night. I had a few drops in framerate down to 20fps in **** with the 8800 but I am running it on a 30" display in windowed mode so I can web surf on my other monitor. If I go fullscreen mode, lowest framrate I saw was 54fps.
Coming from an old G4 Quicksilver I am sooo loving the new machine. I can actually have my 'distance' setting cranked up and see beyond 5 feet in front of me. It's like a whole new game. And I fly off in the wrong direction a lot less lol.
Coming from an old G4 Quicksilver I am sooo loving the new machine. I can actually have my 'distance' setting cranked up and see beyond 5 feet in front of me. It's like a whole new game. And I fly off in the wrong direction a lot less lol.
I will say that I do not max everything out. I personally prefer the fluid motion that seems to come from such high frame rates vs every little bit of eye candy.
I'm at 1680x1050 (Native Resolution of my 22")
24 bit color, 1x multisample
Vsync off
No addons
Terrain distance 1 slide from minimum
All other settings about medium.
I've set it to all max... and I get 60-80fps... but it's just not as smooth... weird... I know people say you can't tell a difference past 30fps... but maybe I'm just crazy... and if I think I can tell a difference... then damnit I can
I will say that I do not max everything out. I personally prefer the fluid motion that seems to come from such high frame rates vs every little bit of eye candy.
I'm at 1680x1050 (Native Resolution of my 22")
24 bit color, 1x multisample
Vsync off
No addons
Terrain distance 1 slide from minimum
All other settings about medium.
I've set it to all max... and I get 60-80fps... but it's just not as smooth... weird... I know people say you can't tell a difference past 30fps... but maybe I'm just crazy... and if I think I can tell a difference... then damnit I can
Ah i see what you have done, the minimum terrain distance accounts for a big chunk of your FPS. I like seeing as far as possible
I'll try this out tonight and see if I can match your 300fps.
The first thing I did when I got WoW up and running on the new Mac Pro was log in on my druid, shift to swift flight form, and go flying low around Shattrath City. I was getting at least 50 fps everywhere. I'm seeing a steady capped 60 fps everywhere else, since Vsync was enabled without my doing so (FSGlow and Death Effect too, check your own settings).
Regarding fan speed, I don't think I've heard them rev up yet, while playing WoW or rendering video. In fact, at first I thought that this new Mac had improved the audio in the game as well. I was noticing things I hadn't heard before. Now I'm thinking the old G5 jets were just obscuring what I could hear.
Sure, no one needs 60+ fps to play the game, but it improves immersion. Everything is so smooth and "heavy" now. Hard to explain. Fun to play. This Mac is for my work, but the improvement for WoW is a nice side effect for my spare time.
Oh, and apparently no problems with Leopard 10.5.2 and the Leopard Graphics Update either.
I posted a question on a different forum and found my answer here. I am having a tearing issue... I did not know what to call it until I got a good response on the WoW Mac forum. I have a single CPU 2.8ghz Mac Pro with the 8800GT card. I have been seeing FPS from 40 in Shatt to 250 in HFP... I notice from time to time a shearing of the image when I am turning from side to side.
This post was great in discussing the problem.
I have a couple questions though....
One poster indicated that he liked having FPS > 60 for a more smooth effect.... Do you actually notice a FPS > 60 in the game... I have read elsewhere and maybe here that if the refresh rate is 60 the most it can draw is 60 per second? Am I mixing things up?
Also, if tearing is based on refresh rate and the FPS, why doesn't everyone who gets a high FPS experience tearing?
Thanks
Carl
This post was great in discussing the problem.
I have a couple questions though....
One poster indicated that he liked having FPS > 60 for a more smooth effect.... Do you actually notice a FPS > 60 in the game... I have read elsewhere and maybe here that if the refresh rate is 60 the most it can draw is 60 per second? Am I mixing things up?
Also, if tearing is based on refresh rate and the FPS, why doesn't everyone who gets a high FPS experience tearing?
Thanks
Carl
Tearing is due to the monitor refreshing different frames because you're sending it more than it can handle. Enabling the Vertical Sync will limit the computer to the maximum refresh of the monitor.
In reality anything over 60fps is kinda overkill, especially for WoW. I got by with 5-6fps at one point
In reality anything over 60fps is kinda overkill, especially for WoW. I got by with 5-6fps at one point
Anyone know how the ATI radeon HD 2600XT card runs WoW? I still havnt received my 8800gt card. =(
At one point while I was deciding whether to get the 8800 or not, I came across an article comparing the two. Based on the article, the ATI card can run WoW along with most (if not all) graphics intensive games. They compared the results of ATI vs Nvidia using many popular games. The results where that the 8800GT is 4 to 5 times better in most of their categories.... So, based on research and not experience.... yes it can.
I don't get FPS and what causes a drop. I can be in a very graphics intensive area with fire blowing out of the ground, two or the mobs on me, a vortex over my head and my FPS would be in the 100's.... then I fly to Shatt and stand on a ledge with a dozen NPC's and players in my view and FPS drops to 40.....
Anyway, I turned on VSync last night and did some visual comparisons around Outlands.... The difference between 200FPS and 60FPS visually is nothing. I could determine a difference. Based on that, it was an easy decision to turn on Vsync and get rid of the tearing. I also was able to disable the stats on my screen... looking at a solid 60FPS is not too exciting.
Thanks for the replies.
Carl
At 1920x1200, everything maxed in-game other than multisampling at 2x and no full screen glow, I'm getting anywhere from 30-150fps on average. Generally I'm hovering around 40-50 when questing around. I think it's only in Shatt that I would dip below 30, but probably only to about 20 at the lowest. But that's to be expected. I'm pretty sure that Blizzard chose the name of Shattrath quite specifically when they "****" out the design for it..