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World of Warcraft Performance on top spec 21.5" (2011)

H

hi99s

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 9, 2011
5
0
OK, I realise there are a few "How will WoW run on my iMac?" posts but bear with me. Many of those posts go off on tangets such as Mac vs PC, OpenGL vs DirectX and don't actually give any definitive answers.

I'm expecting my iMac today (21.5", 4GB RAM, i7 and SSD) and have also had the misfortune of recently getting back into WoW.

What sort of performance should I expect with the 6770m on High to Ultra settings at native resolution?

How long can I play until the fan starts going nuts?

I bought the iMac at a bit of a whim and now I've sort of realised I'll mainly only game with the machine and am thinking if I'm not going to get good performance it may bt worth returning it and opting for a cheaper gaming PC, but I'd rather not since I love the look and feel of everything Mac.

Thanks
 
I guess you'll run about 190 fps in a city and ca. 90 world :D
Especially with a SSD your experience will be great.
 
You'll be totally fine with most things on high, with some things turned down (water, shadows, and sunshafts are the biggest fps killers).

Start with Sunshafts off, and set water to high, and shadows to medium. If you're still not happy with the frame rate, then tweak them.

It really depends on how much eye candy you want to have. If you tweak, you'll get great performance.
 
If you are use the imac mainly for gaming, I'd suggest you return it and buy a desktop Windows PC instead. Here are mine reasons.

The 6770m graphic card is around half the performance of 6970m on the high end 27 inch imac, which itself is a slower version of mid-range desktop GPU.

If you want to play more graphically demanding games available now or soon to be released, there is no way the 6770m can produce smooth gameplay (40+ fps) on 1080P under maximum settings.

Also you can't use the 2011 imac as display for a gaming PC as it can only accept video input from another Thunderbolt machine.

You could spend the money on a Windows machine with $300 to $400 graphic card, connect it to a good quality 1080P monitor and you will able to play most games under high settings for the next couple of years.

If you still missing OSX, you can buy a mac mini and connect it to the monitor.
 
This question, WOW performance on the 21.5 iMac, has been asked a lot of times. But apart from the usual "go buy a pc", by people that are horrified at the idea that someone would game on an iMac, I have not seen anywhere the only thing that would be useful: fps numbers. I think it would run fine on good settings (skeptical about ultra settings), but since you have already purchased the thing, it would be nice if you could share some objective data on this.
 
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88 King said:
If you are use the imac mainly for gaming, I'd suggest you return it and buy a desktop Windows PC instead.
Click to expand...

Nowhere in his post did he say 'mainly for gaming'. He asked about WoW, and only WoW.

The iMac will be just fine for that game. I have a 27 with the 6970m, and I can run the game at 60fps (with vsync) with most eye candy on playing at native resolution.

If he doesn't mind turning some of the effects down a bit, it will run just fine.
 
hi99s said:
...and have also had the misfortune of recently getting back into WoW.
Thanks
Click to expand...

I can totally relate with you on that comment! I had to quit cold turkey and delete all my characters a while back, too addicting.:D
 
hi99s said:
I bought the iMac at a bit of a whim and now I've sort of realised I'll mainly only game with the machine
Click to expand...

JordanNZ said:
Nowhere in his post did he say 'mainly for gaming'. He asked about WoW, and only WoW.
.
Click to expand...

It's difficult to imaging someone only play one game on a machine brought mainly for gaming. Just because OP can run WoW under normal settings, which he doesn't want to, the 6770m is not a graphic card designed for gaming in high setting and 1080P.

Beside, you have a completely different graphic card and screen resolution, so your fps number don't really help OP.
 
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in Windows you'll be able to run it on Ultra with Water down to good an shadows down to good. I used to do that on a similar card. You should be able to get 40+ apart from in really busy zones.
 
88 King said:
It's difficult to imaging someone only play one game on a machine brought mainly for gaming. Just because OP can run WoW under normal settings, which he doesn't want to, the 6770m is not a graphic card designed for gaming in high setting and 1080P.

Beside, you have a completely different graphic card and screen resolution, so your fps number don't really help OP.
Click to expand...

If he's playing anything more demanding than WoW.. Absolutely.
But if that's all he's looking at, there is no reason not to use it.
 
I play on my 2011 MacBook Pro with the 320m dedicated card and it runs great! Most of my settings are on medium because I would rather have high FPS than great detail but it still looks fine. In crowded cities I drop to around ~20-30 if Im near a lot of people. Keep in mind your card is significantly better.
 
Evil game. I almost lost everything to that game. Had 3 lvl 60s in full tier 6 back in the bc expansion raiding 4 times a times week and playing all day. Glad I stopped playing that

But anyways. You will get great performance don't worry about that
 
I play on my 2011 MacBook Pro with 6750M and it runs beautifully at 1920x1080 (external monitor) at the "High" Preset. Sunshafts and water are both at their default "High". The 6770M is just a higher clocked 6750M. It should run just fine at the 21.5" iMac native resolution of 1920x1080 at "High". Make sure you turn vsync off as it kills the framerate (in Mac OS X, at least).
 
Dude,

"Mainly for gaming" immediately rules out an AIO like the iMac. It may be WoW today but at some point you'll break away to another game. Some months from now, and certainly a year or so from now, you'll love the luxury of swapping to a more powerful video card or maybe dropping a 2nd one in there to keep up with the latest games. You can't do that on an iMac.

Once again.... nobody who states "mainly for gaming" should buy an iMac unless they have specific titles in mind and are happy with any compromises like lowering details, etc. If you are a gamer who wants a gaming machine for today and the foreseeable future, get that IMac back to the store.
 
Psilocybin said:
Evil game. I almost lost everything to that game. Had 3 lvl 60s in full tier 6 back in the bc expansion raiding 4 times a times week and playing all day. Glad I stopped playing that
Click to expand...

You mean lvl 70? :p

I'm the same story as you, although replace three with two. Fun, yet ultimately wasteful, times.
 
You will get pretty good performance under the Mac OS though I would use something a fan control utility as the machine will get hot playing WoW for extended periods and the default fan settings don't seem to kick in until you can feel the heat radiating through the screen. :D

If you only have the default 4GB RAM it's worth adding some more as it will smooth out your system especially if you want to have mail/firefox/iTunes and ventrillo running with WoW.

If you have a copy of Win7 kicking around it's worth partitioning, installing bootcamp and playing using DirectX as it's quite a performance & eye candy boost.
Obviously this then opens up using the Mac for other PC games, though bear in mind that you won't be able to crank up the latest games to max. with that graphics card.
 
Hi. I just bought the mid-range 2011 iMac 21". Yours is slightly better than mine. I play with all settings on High/Ultra. I range about 30 fps in cities (the lowest it ever goes) and 60 fps in raids, rated bg's, dungeons, etc.

You could go full ultra and laugh in my humble opinion. The only thing I have 'fair' is ground clutter...for obvious raiding reasons.
 
Ah to hell with it. RMA'ing this one and am very, very tempted with the top spec 27"

Education discount (uni staff) makes the price reasonably ... reasonable.
 
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