Ok. I know there's been a bit of speculation on how well World of Warcraft might run on a MacBook, seeing as it has no dedicated GPU.

Well, from the past couple of hours that I've been playing it on my MacBook, I think it runs quite well. Mind you, I don't have any high level characters to try out the really big instances, but for those instances up to about level 50, the game play is just as smooth on my MacBook than it is on my iMac G5 (though, admittedly, I'm running all settings on low on my MacBook).

The only thing that really bugged me was the change in screen size ... from a 20" iMac to a 13" MacBook!

My MacBook is a 2ghz, with 2gb RAM. I did play WoW prior to installing the additional RAM on the MacBook, and the performance was jerky. The extra RAM seems to have made the difference.

This is just my humble and somewhat limited experience. I don't know anything about measuring frame rates and the like, so can't comment there ... apart from the fact that the play was not jerky at all.

Still enjoyable on my MacBook! And still very, very happy with my new-found purchase

Any specific questions, let me know.

EDIT: my biggest question atm is how to clean off the finger smudges off the glossy screen! :lol:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mwot @ Jun 8 2006, 12:50 AM) [snapback]181101[/snapback]</div>Get a one of those micro-fibre cloths that come with most glasses (the ones you wear over your eyes).

Having done a few tests with WoW on my powerbook, I found that the game can easily swallow over 400Mb of physical Ram. I expect that the in-game location, party size or number of people on screen, and any mods you use have an effect on this as well.

Press Ctrl-R to see your framerate in WoW, btw.

Were you playing it in OS X or win XP?

OS X. Don't have XP installed - no reason to.

Will see what FPSs I get in the areas I'm playing in and report back - thanks Squozen.

Gmask - I'll login and try at a more peak period on the weekend. Admittedly, there are not half as many ppl playing at nights during the week in Aus as what there would be during the day on the weekend. All I can say is that there was a noticeable difference walking around in the major cities when I had just the stock 512MB RAM compared to the 2GB RAM I now have - the former was slightly choppy and the latter no less smooth than what I get on my iMac G5.

EDIT: I should also mention that I don't use any mods for the game.

Thanks for the info mwot. Has WOW been released as an OS X intel native yet or does it run still under Rosetta? Either way the performance is better than my 1.5 PB.

Cheers.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mwot @ Jun 8 2006, 09:50 AM) [snapback]181235[/snapback]</div>

I believe 1.10 or 1.9 patch made it all universal... I think

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mwot @ Jun 8 2006, 09:50 AM) [snapback]181235[/snapback]</div>Ya should be using mods! Do you the world of good they do. If you want help or advice with them, I (or several others around here) can help.

Ahem. Anyhow, my tests centered around Ironforge during a peak time, but I checked again while I was typing my earlier response, and just outside Stormwind I was still peaking at 400mb ram. I noticed a significant reduction in pausing and loading when I took the p'book from 512 to 1.5Gb of ram, as you'd expect.

I'm looking to go from my 1.6Ghz G4 powerbook to the intel 20inch iMac - I'm still trying to gauge whether or not there will be much improvement in performance (anyone have any ideas?). Regardless, increasing the ram from the stock 512 makes a very noticable improvement to WoW.

Ahh, that's good to hear Gmask1.

I also just read this on the official WOW mac forums from one of the mods, so WOW on the macbook should get even better soon.

WoW has a bit of a tough time on Intel graphics, but we expect this to improve after a round of future display driver updates.

More concretely, we see higher FPS in XP than in OSX on that class of GPU, so we know the hardware is capable of more than the current OSX drivers achieve. It's something Apple is actively working on.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gmask1 @ Jun 8 2006, 10:07 AM) [snapback]181242[/snapback]</div>

I'd say it should be a huge improvement.

As a reference I'm running WOW on a AMD Sempron 2800 (1.6ghz) with 1gb ram & 6600 GT 128mb graphics card, driving a dell 20" widescreen. It beats the pants off my PB in everything from sitting in IF to 40 man MC runs.

Considering the iMac beats my PC in every aspect, it should be great. Of course I'll leave it you lucky 20" iMac owners to verrify this one.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gmask1 @ Jun 8 2006, 10:14 AM) [snapback]181244[/snapback]</div>

its intiriguing... as i saw a friend of mine play WoW on a powerbook g4 1ghz, and it ran so fluidly, no slowdown whatsoever...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gmask1 @ Jun 8 2006, 10:07 AM) [snapback]181242[/snapback]</div>Yes, I remember sitting through an update a few weeks ago that included a universal patch, so it will run natively in OS X on an intel Mac and not under Rosetta.

WoW is definitely a universal binary, Blizzard has always been really good at supporting us mac folk.

Kudos to Blizzard.

I have to say i was concerned about Apple's shift to the Intel GMA chip, but it turns out that if you through a tonne of ram into it, it runs fine.

Still, bit of a mungrel that in order to play WoW, you have to pay for the game, the $20 a month subscription, then $790 for Apple installed RAM (less if third party, lets say about $370 for third party). Personally, i wouldn't pay all that money just to play WoW