WoW performance

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Mon Jan 17, 2005 10:44 pm

I have a Dell 2.6 ghz Penitum 4 with 512 megs of ram and a 128 meg 9800 ATI video card.

I have an iMac 1.8ghz 1.25 gigs of memory, 64meg Nvidia video card.

I ran WoW on my iMac first, performace was horrible. PC peformance was good, but not great. Both are default settings. I then discovered that iMacs are set as default for energy saving, so I adjust my iMac to full power.

Anyway I have been playing WoW on my PC for the last week and I have been happy with its performance. It lags, but no more than expected. tonight I decided to try it on my Mac again. There was no lag at all. Every key press was instant, there wasn't any delay in any movement. Sound was even more vibrant and I have a Klipsch 2.1 system on my PC and a cheaper JBL Creature II set up on my Mac. The Klipsch was 3x times the price.

Is my PC in serious need of a reformat or what? It is much more powerful in everything but memory. I would have thought video memory was more important though. I am kind of shocked.

Faldarian · Post by **Faldarian** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 12:37 am

I doubt this will help a lot, but video card doesn't seem to be a major factor in WoW performance as much as CPU speed/power and memory.

My work system has an Intel 915 integrated graphics adapter in it and runs WoW great (2.8ghz Dell PCI-E system with 1gb of RAM). My home system makes it look stupid for performance even in WoW, but I'd never complain about performance on it even though the Intel graphics adapter would run away screaming from most games.

It sounds like there could be some driver issues on your PC keeping it from running with comparable goodies turned on that the Mac is using. To suggest that the Mac runs any game faster is heresy

What kind of settings are you using in WoW on the PC in comparison to the Mac (or are they even comparable)?

docvego · Post by **docvego** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:58 am

I started running Wow with 512 Megs of RAM, I just upgraded to 1 Gig of Ram a few days ago and the Difference in Performance is dramatic. If you're hitting lots of Chop from Hard Drive loads when you're moving to new areas or trying to walk around in Capital Cities, you should seriously consider buying yourself a new 512 Meg Stick of Ram. It made a huge difference for me.

ChrisGwinn · Post by **ChrisGwinn** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 11:40 am

The mac will (most likely) have the pixel shader effects disabled by default in your video settings - I remember seeing some notes about that in the KB. The PC probably has them enabled. You might be seeing the choppiness because your video card is having problems running those shaders at the selected resolution/settings/whatever.

Basically, I'm suggesting that, although you may be running at default settings, the default settings might be different between the two machines.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 12:22 pm

P4 2.4ghz
1 gig pc2700 ram
GF4 ti4200

Let me say that before x-mas I had the same setup as above except I had only 512 megs ram. In big cities or flights the game was running at 1 frame per every 5 seconds. I had to keep my view distance to minimum and some other settings to medium. I got another 512 ram for X-mas and now I run all settings to max including AA and I never get any slow down at all anywhere. Its awsome and amazing what ram will do for you.

It reminded me of the old days when I spent $250 and went from 4 megs to 8 megs in my first pc.

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 12:00 am

I sat down and played with settings on both computers tonight. I think my PC needed a reboot the night I was playing around.

My iMac got about 10-25 fps with various settings turned on. The frame rate was giving me a headache, and with everything turned on it had some graphic problems.

My PC was getting 50-70 fps at 1600x1200 resolution and most graphic options on and turned up. The PC stutters a LOT more though, so I am guessing its as you guys said, that I need more memory.

I really like the widescreen of the Mac though.