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WoW on base 21.5" 2011 iMac

R

remery

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 8, 2011
4
0
Sorry if this topic has already been covered, but I just ordered the new 2011 iMac. I'm just getting the base 21.5" so the one with the i5 2400s 2.5ghz cpu.

My question is has anyone done any testing on fps on this model in world of warcraft and seen how it runs in osx at high end settings?

Thanks for any results.
 
Look here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1149742/

The link is for a base 27" 2560x1440 iMac playing WoW on High in OS X which gets ~30 FPS. The graphics card (6750M) in your iMac is a little bit worse than the 6770M in the 27" but the resolution of the 27" is 2560x1440 so you should get more performance than it at 1920x1080.

Check this link out for FPS w/ the 6750M in MacBook Pro's: http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6750M.43958.0.html

Hover your mouse over a setting (i.e "Ultra") to see the setting details, you can also click the FPS numbers with a highlighted background to see more details about the machine. These games are all under Windows, I believe.
 
I have the mid2010 high end 21,5". WoW runs smooth on "good" settings. In "high" settings i have some breaks.
 
Thanks, I wasn't really sure how the 27" benchmarks would scale to the 21.5" because of the different resolution.

I also saw that notebookcheck thing earlier, but had all but dismissed it for wow because it showed much newer/higher requirement games playing at higher fps at 1920x1280 resolution while it showed wow running at 35 fps at a 1280x1024 spec. Also it sayed with most tested laptops it wasn't even playable.

In my experience and from what I have seen from others the fps on wow is effected more by cpu bottlenecking instead of the gpu, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

I'm practically dying from excitement/impatience right now for my new mac to arrive.
 
remery said:
Thanks, I wasn't really sure how the 27" benchmarks would scale to the 21.5" because of the different resolution.
Click to expand...
If you got the base iMac, it'll be a bit better.
I also saw that notebookcheck thing earlier, but had all but dismissed it for wow because it showed much newer/higher requirement games playing at higher fps at 1920x1280 resolution while it showed wow running at 35 fps at a 1280x1024 spec. Also it sayed with most tested laptops it wasn't even playable.
Click to expand...
I'd just ignore that one. It seems strange. That link I posted to is a user getting 30+ FPS on high settings in OS X, at 2560x1440. Those results in notebookcheck are most definitely "off". But, the users should be fine.
In my experience and from what I have seen from others the fps on wow is effected more by cpu bottlenecking instead of the gpu, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the CPU in the MacBook Pro's shouldn't be a bottleneck though. Maybe it's because they're using WoW from 5 years ago? That can't be good lol :p
I'm practically dying from excitement/impatience right now for my new mac to arrive.
Click to expand...
Haha, I can't wait until I can buy mine :p
 
I'm upgrading from my old/really really bad laptop that I've suffered with for the past 4 years.

My old laptop was a Dell Inspiron 1521 so:
AMD sempron 3600+ 2.0ghz cpu +
2gb DDR2 ram +
ATI RADEON Xpress1270 128MB gfx card =
A sigh of relief now that it will be gone

:)
 
Yea that was another thing the graphics on wow hadn't really been drastically changed/improved until this last year so I couldn't see them being that bad as to only be 36fps.

But its good to hear that it should run about the same smoothness as that video except obviously with the reduced resolution associated with the 21.5"
 
remery said:
Yea that was another thing the graphics on wow hadn't really been drastically changed/improved until this last year so I couldn't see them being that bad as to only be 36fps.

But its good to hear that it should run about the same smoothness as that video except obviously with the reduced resolution associated with the 21.5"
Click to expand...
Yeah, you should get a significant performance increase. 2560x1440 is 3.7 million pixels whilst 1920x1080 is only 2.1 million. The 27" model is running a slightly faster GPU, but I think it isn't unreasonable to guess at least a 40% increase over the 27" model. But, you'll know soon enough.

Enjoy your machine :D
 
Hello,

What is the result for World of Warcraft with this iMac?

Do you play at high settings in native resolution?
How many fps do you get?
Do you use boot camp?

Thanks
 
kenpachy said:
Hello,

What is the result for World of Warcraft with this iMac?

Do you play at high settings in native resolution?
How many fps do you get?
Do you use boot camp?

Thanks
Click to expand...
I can tell you that the only way you'll play anywhere near high settings, or even medium settings, with a reasonable frame rate, is when booting into Windows natively. (Using Boot Camp, so to speak.)

Running it in a virtual machine (VM) will result in very poor performance.
 
Running an i7 3.4GHz with 12GB RAM and 2GB 6970M and I can run with vSync on in raids i.e. 60fps in Mac OSX.
This is at 2550x1440 with most video settings at med/high except sunshafts which are disabled.
With vSync turned off the fps varies from 40-130 in Ogrimmar depending on where you are, i.e. outside the AH.

I did try wow on Win7 using bootcamp and undoubtedly it did look better using DirectX but I got hacked the day after I installed it so I gave that a miss and went back to native OSX.
 
MythicFrost said:
I can tell you that the only way you'll play anywhere near high settings, or even medium settings, with a reasonable frame rate, is when booting into Windows natively. (Using Boot Camp, so to speak.)

Running it in a virtual machine (VM) will result in very poor performance.
Click to expand...

How did running VM even come up? WOW is native for mac. Unless you have a radeon card to take advantage of Direct X, the gains are not huge.

On top of that WOW is cpu intensive not gpu.

Should be fine running at med/high w/ acceptable frame rates.
 
robotrootbeer said:
How did running VM even come up? WOW is native for mac. Unless you have a radeon card to take advantage of Direct X, the gains are not huge.
Click to expand...

There are no gains to be had via Direct X, if you're running it in OS X. DirectX is an Microsoft framework. Both AMD/ATI and nVidia cards (and Intel cards) can use it, as it's vendor agnostic.

On top of that WOW is cpu intensive not gpu.
Click to expand...

If you want to run it at medium/high, it's GPU intensive. You'll barely notice a difference switching between (say) an i3 2300 and an i7 2600, but you will notice a big difference switching between a 6750M and a 6970M.
 
Games like WoW and Second Life are bandwidth intensive. It makes a big difference if you have a good internet plan.
 
I just bought a base 21.5" and im running WOW on ultra. Getting 60ish fps in stormwind atm. Also having no problems with recording vids at the same time. (on osx client ofc)
 
Last edited:
sudosu said:
I just bought a base 21.5" and im running WOW on ultra. Getting 60ish fps in stormwind atm. Also having no problems with recording vids at the same time. (on osx client ofc)
Click to expand...

Great, could you post a vid on YouTube please if you are in opengl mode?
Do you play under osx (opengl) or do you use boot camp (directx)?

Thanks
 
And what about Mac osx Lion, is it better or slower with this major update?

@remery : you sould have received your iMac sinds May. Are you happy with it? Wow run as smooth as you would like?

Have a nice day
 
Consider me baffled - my weiner base model 2009 13" MBP with a flippin' Geforce 9400m runs WOW at about 30 fps on medium-high settings in OSX with only slowdowns in cities and big battles - on a wireless network.

I find it hard to believe that the top or bottom 2011 iMac can't shatter that, regardless of the resolution.

That said, the Mac guide on the WOW forums says the 2010 top iMac should run WOW on mostly high settings with 60 fps. I'd check out the thread just to get an idea of what to expect, even if it's not up completely uo to date: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/969747052
 
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