Running WoW on MBA

[SteveSparks]

When we get more info on the hyper threading settings that would be huge is getting the most for Wow on the Air.

Can someone post the settings for the 11" i5 and 11" i7 systems? I am wondering if the GPU on then 11" upgraded i7 is a little faster. Does the upgraded 11" get more video memory?

Thanks for all the conversation, this has turned out some great info.

 

[Oppressed]

Just got my MBA 11" today and downloaded WoW. It has a Samsung SSD and an i7.

Before I do this, can I ask why YOU don't try disabling your hyperthreading?

I returned my i5 11 inch and kept my 2010 model and it doesn't have HT.

Trust me screen shot results would have been up last night.

As for the GPU differences between i5 and i7 there won't be any noticeable difference. The only benefit would be the extra MB of L3 cache.

 

[DavidC1]

I'm afraid disabling Hyperthreading might make it run slower on WoW. You see, WoW supports up to 3 threads by default. On a quad core, enabling Hyperthreading means that there will be potential conflicts because core count is greater than the thread support and Hyperthreading would double it.

On a dual core like the ones in the Air, enabling Hyperthreading would make it perfect for 3 thread support World of Warcraft has.

 

[Oppressed]

I'm afraid disabling Hyperthreading might make it run slower on WoW. You see, WoW supports up to 3 threads by default. On a quad core, enabling Hyperthreading means that there will be potential conflicts because core count is greater than the thread support and Hyperthreading would double it.

On a dual core like the ones in the Air, enabling Hyperthreading would make it perfect for 3 thread support World of Warcraft has.

Turning off HT won't damage your system or programs. Only programs that can use the HT technology will slow down. Plus this is a preference you can turn on and off.

I'm not sure where you got that WoW runs on 3 threads, but based on the chart below anything above 2 cores is almost completely pointless.

Surprised no one has chimed in on the HT test. I really don't want to go buy the new MBA again to test this. The people at the Apple store are going to shoot me.

 

[Flagg]

I'll do it. Word of warning, though: I'm an absolute noob both with the Macs and with WoW. I just upgraded my trial account and I've never been higher than level 12. My previous computer was also a C2D with graphics media accelerator with a highest FPS of 20-30 on all lowest settings

Right now I am on all Fair settings with shadows turned to low and am getting 45-60 running around the noob zone. I actually Ultra'd it out (again, with shadows off) and got a doable 25-35 FPS. Turning shadows to fair from low seems to wipe about 15-20 FPS off of any given setup; apparently the ol HD3000 can't handle that.

 

[Flagg]

Doesn't look like the hyperthreading box remains unchecked after a restart as per Oppressor's program, unless I'm doing something wrong.

 

[Marconelly]

BUMP

So tonight I just bought an 11 inch i5/4GB/128 2011 MBA and cloned my old 11 inch 1.6/4GB/128 2010 MBA and decided to run my own test. I decided that I wanted to eliminate all variances and have a controlled measure. So I basically parked myself somewhere and took a screen shot of the FPS on one computer then logged off and then logged on with the other computer and took another screenshot of the FPS. The results are shocking based on these benchmarks:

2011 MBA: http://imageshack.us/f/143/wowscrnshot072311002408.jpg/

2010 MBA: http://imageshack.us/f/683/wowscrnshot072311002505.jpg/

2011 MBA: http://imageshack.us/f/820/wowscrnshot072311002339.jpg/

2010 MBA: http://imageshack.us/f/109/wowscrnshot072311002206.jpg/


While playing I noticed the FPS difference. Plus the FPS dropped to sub 5 during a mass res in Isle of Conquest which simply did not happen on the 2010 MBA.

What I'm beginning to see here is that the 2011 is still sub par to the 2010 MBA in terms of graphics and gaming, and I honestly have no idea where people are getting that its better.

Not only the framerate difference is shocking, the image quality is shockingly worse on 2011 MB as well. Just look at the texture filtering on the grass, and the stone ground between the two. It looks like the aniso filtering has been turned off on Intel. The grass in particular looks so bad and blurry. Are you sure you didn't use some worse settings on 2011 model (which would be rather sad, of course, given the massive framerate difference)

 

[Oppressed]

Not only the framerate difference is shocking, the image quality is shockingly worse on 2011 MB as well. Just look at the texture filtering on the grass, and the stone ground between the two. It looks like the aniso filtering has been turned off on Intel. The grass in particular looks so bad and blurry. Are you sure you didn't use some worse settings on 2011 model (which would be rather sad, of course, given the massive framerate difference)

The settings were exactly the same as seen below:

2011: http://imageshack.us/f/819/wowscrnshot072311071612.jpg/

2010: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/200/wowscrnshot072311071838.jpg/

While looking at those images take a look around at the textures like the wall to the left and the fountain in the background.

Also about the preference panel. That is a small known issue, but its the only way to turn off HT in OSX. I'll try to do some research as to how to fix it.

 

[SteveSparks]

These look the same to me. Maybe som one can edit them together with a side by side comparison and point out the issues.

The settings were exactly the same as seen below:

2011: http://imageshack.us/f/819/wowscrnshot072311071612.jpg/

2010: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/200/wowscrnshot072311071838.jpg/

While looking at those images take a look around at the textures like the wall to the left and the fountain in the background.

Also about the preference panel. That is a small known issue, but its the only way to turn off HT in OSX. I'll try to do some research as to how to fix it.

 

[DavidC1]

I'm not sure where you got that WoW runs on 3 threads, but based on the chart below anything above 2 cores is almost completely pointless.

Image

My post meant it isn't exactly a sound advice to say turning off is better before testing it. No one said it hurt anything.

http://jscache.blogspot.com/2011/02/multi-core-cpu-architecture-and-wow-lag.html

Updated for 4.0:
They changed wow in 3.1 to run on more processor threads. Originally it was running on 2 main threads with several smaller threads handling simpler tasks. As of 3.1 there are now 3 main threads, and many more smaller threads.

2 main threads + many smaller threads still means more than 2, but I guess the original source I got it from didn't know the details. Now on version 3.1, you'll get 3 threads at the least.

Also remember the 980X has Hyperthreading enabled, so 1, 2 cores doesn't mean 1, 2 threads, but rather double.

 

[Marconelly]

These look the same to me. Maybe som one can edit them together with a side by side comparison and point out the issues.

Open these two so that they are full size, each on it's own tab in the browser and switch between the tabs. There's significant difference in texture filtering quality on the grass and the rocks on the ground. The further away from the camera textures go, the bigger the difference is. It's almost like Intel drivers have anisotropic filtering forced to disabled, to try and keep up the performance, and the performance is still worse.

2011 MBA: http://imageshack.us/f/143/wowscrnshot072311002408.jpg/

2010 MBA: http://imageshack.us/f/683/wowscrnshot072311002505.jpg/

 

[Flagg]

Started a Worgen today and played through level 10 on the comparatively intensive starting scenes for that race. Had the details set to fair and all other stuff set to low and noticed a little bit of lag, but nothing too unreasonable. Except for the massive battle where you fire those cannons at the hundreds of wargen, frame rates never dropped below 30 and usually stayed between 45-60. During the massive Wargen battle they hit about 15-30 lol.

As I said before, this thing has a very hard time with shadows and liquid. It also has a hard time with areas containing lots of background (even with Low clicked) and masses of PC's in the same screen. Hearing that it is doing okay with other games makes me wonder whether all of this is more software issues dealing with the HD3000 rather than the HD3000 being inherently poor at running this game.

At any rate, it's certainly not good, but good enough. If I decide to continue playing, I should have an iMac long before I'm leveled high enough to raid. I've debated trading down to a maxed 13" 2010 though.

 

[jgunn]

Interesting, I upgraded my 1.8 2010 13 inch to lion today and I'm getting another 10 FPS in WOW. definitely noticeable so I upped the graphic settings to high, all except shadows.

Looks great!