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DELLsFan

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 6, 2009
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How does the new M1 MacMini perform for gamers? Can it run World of Warcraft without pain?
 
Can it run World of Warcraft without pain?
Yes. WoW doesn't require a high-end GPU.

I run it on 2560x1080 and the system settings on "10", with the target frame rate setting off. It gets about 35-45fps average in Shadowlands, and 60fps in older areas.

Here is a screenshot of the settings with FPS in the red circle:

Screen Shot 2021-04-29 at 12.17.07 AM.png

If you care less about eye candy and must have 60fps, you can easily get that by turning down some of the settings.

I personally am fine with 30fps+ on WoW.
 
That is astounding... as someone who ran WoW for years on a 2017 MBP with an RX 850 eGPU.... I couldn't get that if I tried.

I retired from WoW last year but... as someone with an M1 MBP... the call to return is strong.
 
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as someone who ran WoW for years on a 2017 MBP with an RX 850 eGPU.... I couldn't get that if I tried.
I guess it just depends on the Mac and the fact that it was a laptop.

My Late 2012 iMac with the 2GB 680MX GPU still performs well when playing WoW.

I have been playing WoW since 2007, playing non-stop for year. Finally took a break in 2016, missing Legion. I came back in 2019, catching up on Legion stuff, and the performance was great.

I took another break not quite finishing up the Legion stuff a few months after coming back. I came back for WoW Classic, and earlier this year started playing Retail again, finishing up almost all of the content and achievements for Legion.

While in the Legion area, I had my Late 2012 iMac's WoW system settings on 10, and got similar frame rates that I get with the M1 in Shadowlands. Although, the Late 2012 iMac would dip below 30 often, still very playable frame rate.

I had to turn the system settings down when doing Shadowlands content on the iMac. Still pretty good though. As long as I stay around 30FPS, I am happy.
 
I guess it just depends on the Mac and the fact that it was a laptop.

My Late 2012 iMac with the 2GB 680MX GPU still performs well when playing WoW.

I have been playing WoW since 2007, playing non-stop for year. Finally took a break in 2016, missing Legion. I came back in 2019, catching up on Legion stuff, and the performance was great.

I took another break not quite finishing up the Legion stuff a few months after coming back. I came back for WoW Classic, and earlier this year started playing Retail again, finishing up almost all of the content and achievements for Legion.

While in the Legion area, I had my Late 2012 iMac's WoW system settings on 10, and got similar frame rates that I get with the M1 in Shadowlands. Although, the Late 2012 iMac would dip below 30 often, still very playable frame rate.

I had to turn the system settings down when doing Shadowlands content on the iMac. Still pretty good though. As long as I stay around 30FPS, I am happy.
Hah, I started at the end of BC. :) Which, if I remember was very close or in 2007. I semi-retired during Pandaria, and came back last year for half a year. WoW classic - I made the mistake of choosing a populated server (having lines of 20-30 people for each quest) even months after release.

I did WoW on a 2015 MBA to external 1080p monitor for years :).

Played a horde belf hpally the entire time. Last year I decided I try out the alliance and paid for a faction change. Wow, alliance cities have a lot more effort put into them and wow... a lot more kids play alliance. lol.
 
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I’ve been looking at the M1 Mac Mini to replace my 2018 MBP. I currently play on an older i5 PC with a GTX1070 gpu connected to a 4k monitor. I think the settings are around 5,which looks plenty good enough (I don’t do high end raiding or anything like that) so if the M1 can play at lower resolution at similar settings, I may be in luck, and may be able to ditch the PC (literally all I use it for is playing WoW).

My main problem though is that I tried running it at 1920x1080 on the 4k monitor, and the thing I really noticed was the quality of the text in the names above players’ and NPC’s heads, which looked really bad even at quite close distances. Not entirely unexpected, but if there’s a way to make them look sharper again, I’ll be in business, and may have another look at the M1 Mini…
 
I’ve been looking at the M1 Mac Mini to replace my 2018 MBP. I currently play on an older i5 PC with a GTX1070 gpu connected to a 4k monitor. I think the settings are around 5,which looks plenty good enough (I don’t do high end raiding or anything like that) so if the M1 can play at lower resolution at similar settings, I may be in luck, and may be able to ditch the PC (literally all I use it for is playing WoW).

My main problem though is that I tried running it at 1920x1080 on the 4k monitor, and the thing I really noticed was the quality of the text in the names above players’ and NPC’s heads, which looked really bad even at quite close distances. Not entirely unexpected, but if there’s a way to make them look sharper again, I’ll be in business, and may have another look at the M1 Mini…
Yep, I had to run my 4k monitor on my 2017 MBP with an eGPU at 1080p and the text was fuzzy even with the DPI correction slide (I forget the name of it) in the settings in WoW. It wasn't great. I ran on medium settings in order to maintain FPS in raid and cities - which dropped to 30-40 even with an RX 580 (egpu).
 
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I’ll have another look at the settings…
I tried an RX 5700 xt in my eGPU with my 2017 MBP 13' and I got like 50FPS while the card was screaming at 100% fans. So I gave up on that pretty quick. I just ran the RX 580 on medium/low and still didn't have great playback.

Starcraft II runs amazing on my M1 MBP 13' (almost 4k) - smoother and almost as good as my eGPU RX 580 (1080p) - which is amazing.

So tempted to sign up for WoW again (retired last year) just to see what it's like but I'm getting too old and work has me working almost all day. <cough>. Getting old sucks.
 
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Thanks very much for the feedback. It seems the WOW gamer experience is satisfactory with a modest display but some issues with higher end 4k displays.
 
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