World of Warcraft

[darko_]

I was playing world of warcraft the other day as usual but I notice that the game is always lagging up.
I checked my Frame Rate and it turns out its running at around 10. a second.
Does anyone have any tips or anything that I can do to get the frame rate higher?
My comp is a Imac G5
GeForce FX 5200 3d card
512 DDR SDRAM.
Is there any new drivers to download for my 3d card or something?
Thanks for the hlp in Advance ;)

[Damrod]

Hm, you could get more RAM.

You could also turn down details in one way or another to gain some frames.

All I could think of, as I do not really play WoW

[darko_]

Ummmm, It might be the ram but the details are turned down low and its still low frame rates.
Could it be the actual monitor or something?

[darko_]

I was told to get some new drivers for the GeForce FX 5200 graphics card.
I have no idea where to get it soo I looked in google and I couldnt find any lol.
If anyone knows please tell me thanks

[Mystic Gohan]

I run WoW on my laptop in my sig

1.67 GHz 2 gig ram radeon 9700 128 meg card and it is still kinda choppy in some areas...

[Damrod]

I was told to get some new drivers for the GeForce FX 5200 graphics card.
I have no idea where to get it soo I looked in google and I couldnt find any lol.
If anyone knows please tell me thanks

Unlike ATI, nVidia does not provide a single driver download for their cards. ATI proivides seperate driver downloads from time to time, but you get the newest nVidia drivers only with the OS X updates. Means: If you have the latest version of OS X installed, you have the latest drivers for your card. If not, not.

[darko_]

:'(
Then I dont know how to get my frame rate up. I mean I have easily enough a good computer to run WoW.

[kainjow]

Make sure your ping isn't high... that might be causing it (although I doubt it).. open Terminal and type "ping google.com" and if it's over 100ms then it's bad...

[darko_]

lol my latency is like 500 or so.
But my older bro with a PC playing exactly the same time his frame rate is 40 .
Then mines like under ten, and even my friend who plays WoW on the same kinda comp a G5 plays it with a 40 frame rate.

[kainjow]

lol yea that's the problem definitely... it'll be slower on your Mac then your PC most likely... hehe :)

[darko_]

Well, it was running faster at one point in time.
How do I put a certain program such as WoW to a high priority such as
I want more ram to be put into WoW then into storing it and not using it.
My teacher in IT was saying that I would have to fix it up for it would work better like that.
I need some help if anyone who knows what their talking about can help I would apreciatte it so much.
Thanks alot in advance.

[Damrod]

Under OS X, unlike OS 9, you can not tell the system how much RAM it should keep for a specific application. OS X organizes the RAM much more dynamic than OS 9 did, so basically every application should get the best possible share of both CPU time and RAM.

If you want the maximum amount of CPU share and RAM for WoW, make sure you run no other applications while playing. Basically WoW can eat up RAM and CPU time like a maniac, until nothing is left for the takin' ;)

[darko_]

OK thanks but there has to be a reson come down to it since im running my comp at above recommeded and required for the ggame to run and its soooo annoying.
I dont know whats going on with it :'(

[Damrod]

Well, regarding specs provided by Blizzard, your just on specs with your 512 MB RAM:

Mac® System OS X 10.3.5 OS:

* 933 MHz or higher G4 or G5 processor
* 512 MB RAM or higher; DDR RAM recommended
* ATI or NVIDIA video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more
* 5 GB or more of available hard drive space
* MacOS X 10.3.5 or newer
* 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection

[darko_]

lol it says in my booklet of the game that the recomended was 512 and the min was 256

[darko_]

Also I just got my screen replaced in my Imac G5 would they have damaged something that would do this?
I have turned all the video settings and such down and the FPS (frame Rate Per-Second) has gone up 10-20.
When I first logged it was up to 30 and went down straight away loike 2 secs after logging. It also still goes uner 5 FPS when im near other people.
I rang up my Apple store near me and they said they can check it out so I am gonna see if I can watch them test it all.
If I can see whats going on I can give them a better understanding of whats going on since they dont know much. It is rather weird since I am runnning the recommended specs for WoW.
I will try reinstalling the game again but, I hope its something that I can get fixed soon since this is rather annoying.
I appreciate everyone who helped me, thanks.
But if there are anyone who know what I could do I would appreciate it.

[Viro]

What screen resolution are you running at? 1024x768? 800x600?

[darko_]

1024x768 in the game.

[Damrod]

Try going 800x600

I'm sure you will get quite some frames out of the other resolution

[Viro]

Go for 800x600. The nVidia fx5200 is a very bad graphics chip, and I highly doubt that it is capable of running WoW at 1024x768.

[ritz_uk]

Righto,

You need to set Spotlight not to index the WoW folder. You frame rate should double. I'm amazed no one has told you this already - Spotlight is a killer when running games.

Cheers!

Steve.

I tried to email you, but it's set to disabled or something!

[darko_]

Righto,

You need to set Spotlight not to index the WoW folder. You frame rate should double. I'm amazed no one has told you this already - Spotlight is a killer when running games.

Cheers!

Steve.

I tried to email you, but it's set to disabled or something!

lol thanks but how do I do that?

[Damrod]

System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy -> Click on 'Plus' button -> search WoW folder and select it -> Done! :)

[darko_]

lol I cant see it in my System preference!!

[Damrod]

Do you have 10.4 anyways? Or do you not have administrative rights on your computer?

If so, ask someone who has to do it

EDIT: I attatched 4 pics below, showing the steps for the exclusion with Spotlight (as example I chose my Doom GL folder), in case you did not understand it right away. If you lack the Spotlight Icon shown in my Prefs below, you do not have 10.4 installed, which would mean you do not have to worry about it in the first place :)

[tamma]

I also Play wow and i play it on three different macs and i always get the same frame rate as you 10FPS... it never varies or drops.... I just thought that was how the program was written..... i know my friends who play wow on a PC see me play and they can't tell it is 10 FPS.. so i just pay it no mind and go out and kill some horde and mobs... oh and grind and grind and grind.....

[ritz_uk]

Yeah... dude - you can tell if it's 10 fps. I think something is wrong man. For a start, if you're hitting 10 fps, you can't raid, or pvp, or do battlegrounds.

Try removing it from spotlight indexing.

[maz94protege]

Wondering the same thing, i got the 1.42ghz mini with 512, am i goin to be able to run it smoothly? or should i invest in the extra 512 ram....well thats a good investment anyways.

Anyone else play WoW on their mini's?

[a2daj]

1 GB of RAM in a Mac Mini makes a huge difference for WoW. It really likes 1 GB. 1.5 GB is the sweet spot though.

[ritz_uk]

I have a mac mini 1.25 with 512 of ram, and it runs WoW ok soloing, but you can't raid, and big cities are difficult.

In 800 x 600, FPS are around 25 outside with everything turned off. It usually varies massively though, dropping down to around 10 most of the time.

So, i'm trying to say 25 fps isn't solid, more of a lucky spike!

Edit: I'm upgrading to a G5 iMac soon, and I'm going to stick 1gig ram stick in there, bringing it up to 1.5. If I wasn't, I would consider buying a gig of ram for the mac mini, but I can't see it making much difference.

[ritz_uk]

Damrod, 1982 represent!

[a2daj]

Edit: I'm upgrading to a G5 iMac soon, and I'm going to stick 1gig ram stick in there, bringing it up to 1.5. If I wasn't, I would consider buying a gig of ram for the mac mini, but I can't see it making much difference.

As I said already, going from 512 MB to 1 GB makes a huge difference for WoW. With 512 MB, virtual memory swapping will occur almost constantly. With 1 GB, it's significantly reduced since more game data can be kept in the physical RAM rather than being swapped out to virtual memory on the HD. I know a number of people that have made the Mac mini 512MB -> 1GB memory leap and they all say it makes a huge difference.

[darko_]

lol I need the new os x =\

[mw84]

Try having a read through this before you start spending money, people are getting low frame rates on 2gb ram, apparently.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/games/mac_wow_performance.html

[maz94protege]

Ok so ill be needing to upgrade the ram to 1gb

wheres the sweet spot for ram online? I havent opened this mini up which stick does it take? how many pin is it?

[Lt Major Burns]

www.crucial.com/uk

not the absolute cheapest, but it's the best ram in the world, and the website tells you exactly what ram you need for your particualr machine.