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WoW on iMac w/780M?

A

abluehaze

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 25, 2008
103
3
Considering ordering a iMac for a friend that plays a lot of WoW and would like to hear from someone that has one what kind of performance/fps they get with ultra settings and full resolution with the 780M under OSX.

Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
kaellar said:
OS X version runs obviously worse than Win version. AFAIK, under OS X he'll get around 50-70 fps, and 25m raid will be 30-40fps.
Click to expand...

It depends on your settings too, the biggest hit I noticed was the distance drawing, if I kept that at medium it was pretty much always a decent smooth framerate (above 30-40) even in OSX, obviously in windows it runs much better, but if your mate wants to go that route it's more than decent enough and will look good and play well.
 
abluehaze said:
Considering ordering a iMac for a friend that plays a lot of WoW and would like to hear from someone that has one what kind of performance/fps they get with ultra settings and full resolution with the 780M under OSX.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

40-50 FPS 25 LFR native, some lows in the 30s but never not playable and never stuttering - but I do disable timemachine while playing WOW now

I do run vsync and most video options to max (will verify what I tweaked most because I liked the look better when some options were lower).


FWIW, I have run five copies of WOW at once on this iMac (and even on previous). The main is all on, 1920x1200 with four slaves (all options off and sound off) at 800x600 without any issues whatsoever. All with just 8g memory as WOW takes hardly any ram

System is using the 512 SSD
 
I have a stock (the highest one) Late 2013 iMac 27 with 3.4Ghz i5 and GTX 775MX 2GB and WoW runs smoothly in Raids on native resolution.
The game is pretty old so no problems there.
I also played Assassin's Creed 2 and Deus Ex Human Revolution on the highest settings with no problems at all, no lag (Mac versions).
 
abluehaze said:
Considering ordering a iMac for a friend that plays a lot of WoW and would like to hear from someone that has one what kind of performance/fps they get with ultra settings and full resolution with the 780M under OSX.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

I play Wow in OSX on an my iMac with an i7, 780m, 16gb ram and flash storage on the latest version of Mavericks.

Ultra settings tend to bog the system down a bit (in my opinion), particularly in the Pandaria zones as they're so rich in detail.

I actually keep my settings pretty much middle of the road. I can post a screenshot of my settings when I get home. I have probably spent way too much time finely tuning Wow settings on every Mac I have ran it on for the past 5 years, but with that being said, I've gained a better understand of what works and what doesn't.

I find that the settings I use tend to be the secret sauce for me. I get 60fps *nearly* everywhere. I run it at native resolution with v-sync enabled as I cannot stand tearing when rotating the camera.

The reason I keep the settings somewhat lower is that I really prefer a very smooth FPS experience. From what I've read, OS X by design will either clamp FPS at 30 or 60 when v-sync is enabled. When it cannot achieve a solid 60 FPS, it'll drop right down to 30 FPS. I really dislike the "up" and "down" in frame rates so I dialed the settings down.

However, a few items get cranked (texture resolution for example) but the rest stay pretty much in the middle - some are turned off totally, like SSAO and sunshafts.

I haven't messed with running it in Bootcamp, but I am sure it would be able to run everything maxed and retain similar frame rates. Hopefully the "drive/graphics API" gap can be closed between OS X and Windows sometime in the near future.

Hope this helps.
 
Johnf1285 said:
OS X by design will either clamp FPS at 30 or 60 when v-sync is enabled. When it cannot achieve a solid 60 FPS, it'll drop right down to 30 FPS.
Click to expand...
That's how vsync works everywhere. It has nothing to do with some "OS X thing" to it.
 
kaellar said:
That's how vsync works everywhere. It has nothing to do with some "OS X thing" to it.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. I admit I do not know much in this area but was basing my post off of what I read from a blue post on the Battle.net forum:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6397850110#7

Perhaps I was reading between the lines a bit too much as I interpreted this as an OS X exclusive v-sync interpretation as opposed to some differences in functionality with DirectX and whatever goes on in Windows.
 
Johnf1285 said:
Perhaps I was reading between the lines a bit too much as I interpreted this as an OS X exclusive v-sync interpretation as opposed to some differences in functionality with DirectX and whatever goes on in Windows.
Click to expand...

Well, OS X and Windows really use vsync a bit differently in graphics pipeline, but it doesn't change the core principle of it. And that principle is about passing the number of frames through the videocard's frame buffer, that's identical to display's refresh rate. That's the way to ensure that display's buffer gets the whole frames with no tearing or stuttering. If the GPU can't produce 60+ fps (60Hz is the most common refresh rate nowadays), the frame buffer will pass the same frame twice which will result in steady 30fps. If the GPU can't produce 30-60fps, the frame buffer will pass the same frame three times and you'll get 20fps. And so on :)
 
kaellar said:
Well, OS X and Windows really use vsync a bit differently in graphics pipeline, but it doesn't change the core principle of it. And that principle is about passing the number of frames through the videocard's frame buffer, that's identical to display's refresh rate. That's the way to ensure that display's buffer gets the whole frames with no tearing or stuttering. If the GPU can't produce 60+ fps (60Hz is the most common refresh rate nowadays), the frame buffer will pass the same frame twice which will result in steady 30fps. If the GPU can't produce 30-60fps, the frame buffer will pass the same frame three times and you'll get 20fps. And so on :)
Click to expand...

Ahh I see. Thank you for the informative post! Always like to learn something new each day
 
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