cgdoc519
Christian Gamers Alliance Staff Manager
This thread on the Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum offers good information on how to optimise WoW both through tweaking options and upgrading graphics cards. Furthermore, Accelerate Your Mac has a page dedicated to user reports on WoW performance on individual Macs.
General Tips
The more RAM you have, the better; 1.5 to 2 GB is a good baseline. Note that buying RAM from Apple is notoriously expensive, 3rd party sellers have been known to sell at 1/10th Apple's price.
The Fullscreen Glow effect (in WoW's Video Options) has a much greater impact on performance under Mac OS X than on Windows. Turn it off if your framerate is too low. The Anisotropic Filtering and Multisampling settings can also also drastically lower framerate.
PowerPC-only Tips
A recent thread with posts by Blizzard employee Tigerclaw on the Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum has important things to say about WoW on PowerPC Macs running Tiger or earlier OSes - specifically, that performance will always be limited by the exclusion of certain OpenGL features that are available on Tiger on the Intel-based Macs. Until the release of Leopard (available October 26th, 2007) or OS X 10.4.11 (either of which may or may not include these OpenGL features for the PowerPC), or in lieu of upgrading to an Intel-based Mac, PowerPC users may wish to try the following tweak:
PowerPC OpenGL tweak
G4 users should specifically note the information provided by post 47 on this thread, which highlights that G4 Macs have an insoluble bottleneck limiting graphics card performance.
Intel-only Tips
Multithreaded OpenGL is enabled by default, increasing performance on dual-core (or multi-CPU) Intel Macs. An experimental version of this technology can be enabled by typing /console GLFaster 2 in-game — it's even faster but can sometimes lead to noticeable mouse/UI lag. (Type /console GLFaster 1 to return to the normal setting, or /console GLFaster 0 to turn it off entirely.)
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Additionally I have installed the following application for the MAC os which has also helped alot.
Fan Control 1.2
Fan Control... Do you think your MacBook or MacBook Pro is running too hot? Then give Fan Control a try. Some MacBooks (Pro) are just to hot for daylong use. Fan Control adjusts the minimum fan speed depending on the current CPU temperature. For safety, it leaves the original automatic fan speed control intact.
This program allows you to set profiles for different fan speeds. For instance I made a gaming profile. When I run wow I set the application to gaming and my fan RPM goes from 2k to 6k. Yes it is a little more fan noise, but your computer stays much cooler. I have noticed an oncrease in performance since using this application.
General Tips
The more RAM you have, the better; 1.5 to 2 GB is a good baseline. Note that buying RAM from Apple is notoriously expensive, 3rd party sellers have been known to sell at 1/10th Apple's price.
The Fullscreen Glow effect (in WoW's Video Options) has a much greater impact on performance under Mac OS X than on Windows. Turn it off if your framerate is too low. The Anisotropic Filtering and Multisampling settings can also also drastically lower framerate.
PowerPC-only Tips
A recent thread with posts by Blizzard employee Tigerclaw on the Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum has important things to say about WoW on PowerPC Macs running Tiger or earlier OSes - specifically, that performance will always be limited by the exclusion of certain OpenGL features that are available on Tiger on the Intel-based Macs. Until the release of Leopard (available October 26th, 2007) or OS X 10.4.11 (either of which may or may not include these OpenGL features for the PowerPC), or in lieu of upgrading to an Intel-based Mac, PowerPC users may wish to try the following tweak:
PowerPC OpenGL tweak
G4 users should specifically note the information provided by post 47 on this thread, which highlights that G4 Macs have an insoluble bottleneck limiting graphics card performance.
Intel-only Tips
Multithreaded OpenGL is enabled by default, increasing performance on dual-core (or multi-CPU) Intel Macs. An experimental version of this technology can be enabled by typing /console GLFaster 2 in-game — it's even faster but can sometimes lead to noticeable mouse/UI lag. (Type /console GLFaster 1 to return to the normal setting, or /console GLFaster 0 to turn it off entirely.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additionally I have installed the following application for the MAC os which has also helped alot.
Fan Control 1.2
Fan Control... Do you think your MacBook or MacBook Pro is running too hot? Then give Fan Control a try. Some MacBooks (Pro) are just to hot for daylong use. Fan Control adjusts the minimum fan speed depending on the current CPU temperature. For safety, it leaves the original automatic fan speed control intact.
This program allows you to set profiles for different fan speeds. For instance I made a gaming profile. When I run wow I set the application to gaming and my fan RPM goes from 2k to 6k. Yes it is a little more fan noise, but your computer stays much cooler. I have noticed an oncrease in performance since using this application.