If you are running into a graphics or sound issue with WoW 2.2.0, here are some basic things you should do as part of your posting, to minimize confusion and excess round-trips with the people manning the forum.

a) Tell us what kind of machine you have and how you have it configured.
bad form: "it's a mac g5"
good form: "it's a Dual G5 2.3GHz, OS X 10.4.10, 2GB RAM, ATI video card"

b) Tell us if you are using anything other than the stock audio hardware. For example, USB speakers, or FireWire audio interfaces. If you are having an audio problem with 2.2.0, also look around for an SESound.log file which may include key information for us - it is kept in the Logs folder.

c) Write your own thread, don't pile onto someone else's thread unless you are very sure that you are seeing the same bug.

d) when in doubt, email us with screenshots or other descriptions of the problem, and please include a system profile saved in XML format using the "System Profiler" utility on your system.

-> wowmacteam123@blizzard.com

Building on Tigerclaw's post above, it would be most helpful to everyone involved to follow these steps when reporting problems with World of Warcraft on a Mac.

1. Click on Go then Utilities and open System Profiler.

2. Copy the information from the following sections:
Hardware (remove the Serial Number line)
Graphics/Displays
Software (remove the Computer Name and User Name lines)

3. Paste the above text along with a description of your issue to your post/thread.

4. If you are getting error messages, copy/paste one as well. Error logs can be found in ~/Library/Logs and/or in /World of Warcraft/Errors

This will provide us with the best possible information to us so we can better assist everyone. Thanks!

If you wish to report a bug, please post on our Bug Report Forum at - (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=10023). Be sure to read the header information and include the appropriate keyword(s) in your subject line so that it is formatted correctly.

Example Subject Line: Mac-Quest-VanCleef Quest Starter Bug

This will make it a lot easier for us to review the bug reports posted. Thank you in advance for your help.

AMD now has website info on their X1900 upgrade card for PCI-e G5 Macs (the dual core 970MP processor models).

http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonx1900/RadeonX1900G5/index.html

It may be possible to order the G5 compatible 7800 board from Apple as a service part; make sure they include the G5 specific aux power jumper if you go that route.. I would be leery of trying to get a reflashed PC-PCIe card going on the Quad G5, but that may be possible to do also.

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Q u o t e:
I have a dual 2.5 PMac G5 with 2.5 GB of RAM, the 9600 XT card & 2 ViewsSonic LCD screens (1600x1200). I can't run in full-screen mode because some of my other software refuses to play nice and use just the 2nd screen. Other than that, I have almost all the graphics options on low and I'm still getting rates as low as 2.8 fps in MC/BWL/AQ40. Will the X800 significantly improve performance, or should I wait for the X850 or something else?

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Be wary of trying to optimize the wrong thing. What mods are you running, and have you tried playing with some or all of them turned off ?

The 2.0.1 patch is in beta test on the PTR as you noted. Roughly speaking we would like to get that out to users in December, but there is not a hard date selected yet.

It will offer support for multi-threaded OpenGL which is new, as well as a more optimized 3D model format which conserves RAM and may also run faster in some situations.

Assuming you don't max out the most costly GPU settings (MSAA, aniso, trilinear, full screen glow) we're confident you will notice a nice improvement with the 2.0.1 patch.

The bummer about the single CPU 1.8 is that it won't be able to leverage multi-threaded GL if&when that becomes available in OS X for PowerPC.

That said, we have some tweaks coming up in the Dec and Jan patches that may bring up FPS a bit even on single proc G4 and G5 systems.

I would hold off on that until we know more about what benefits might accrue to PPC systems in Leopard.

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Q u o t e:
Heres a puzzler for ya.


My system now:

Powermac G4 400 with a Processor upgrade to 1.25
ATI 9800 pro with 128 megs
RAM: 1.75 gigs

If I set up this system:

Powermac Dual G4 1.25
ATI 9600 Pro with 256 megs
RAM: 2 gigs

Would I see a big increase in framerates?

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probably not.

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Q u o t e:
I got my Mac before starting to play WoW - so I still have my OEM card - the one you described as being the laughing stock of cards... (GeForce FX 5200). I have been reading through the posts several times and I confess, I'm a bit confused.

You describe the cards thusly:
Radeon X800 GT: "Currently the fastest retail ATI card available"
GeForce 6800 Ultra: "Fastest NVIDIA card available"
X800 & 6800 Ultra: "roughly equivalent in Mac gaming benchmarks"
Radeon X850 XT: "Current the fastest ATI card available"
GeForce 7800 GT: "The 7800 is the fastest consumer-based video card for the Macs"
Radeon X1900 GT: "More powerful than the GeForce 7800"

Then Tigerclaw posts that a poster should hold off on deciding between the 7800 and X1900 until Leopard comes out.

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I can clarify what I meant a bit, please note the comment was with respect to PowerPC dual-G5 systems only. It's our hope that multi-threaded GL support will appear in OS X 10.5 for PowerPC, but whether that will happen is not yet known to us or publicly available information. If it does become available I believe it will be no trouble to support it in WoW.

If iMT-GL does become available for PPC, I expect WoW to be able to extract more performance out of older dual processor systems, and not necessarily require a GPU upgrade to raise FPS. More to the point, in the current single-threaded GL world on 10.4/PowerPC, GPU upgrades may not deliver the benefit one might expect, because the game tends to be CPU-limited and not GPU-limited on that config.

What you might find with a 7800 to X1900 upgrade on a G5 machine is that you can play higher resolutions and turn up more graphical features without getting higher or lower frame rates, but if you are hunting tor a boost in FPS, it's possible that a GPU change won't get it done.

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Q u o t e:
I got my Mac before starting to play WoW - so I still have my OEM card - the one you described as being the laughing stock of cards... (GeForce FX 5200). I have been reading through the posts several times and I confess, I'm a bit confused.

You describe the cards thusly:
Radeon X800 GT: "Currently the fastest retail ATI card available"
GeForce 6800 Ultra: "Fastest NVIDIA card available"
X800 & 6800 Ultra: "roughly equivalent in Mac gaming benchmarks"
Radeon X850 XT: "Current the fastest ATI card available"
GeForce 7800 GT: "The 7800 is the fastest consumer-based video card for the Macs"
Radeon X1900 GT: "More powerful than the GeForce 7800"

Then Tigerclaw posts that a poster should hold off on deciding between the 7800 and X1900 until Leopard comes out.

I'm so lost.....

If I am upgrading from GeForce "Laughing Stock" FX 5200 on a Dual G5 2GHz w/ 4 GB RAM, I am assuming I should ideally be looking at the GeForce 7800 GT or the Radeon X1900 GT. Is that correct? Is one better than the other if you are coming from the 5200 (the poster mentioned already had the 7800 and was asking if he should upgrade from there to the X1900)?

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I have one of those dual 2GHz G5's, they are AGP 8X based. The Apple 7800 card is PCIe based and won't go in that machine. I think you can get an ATI-branded X800 or X850 card for the AGP-slotted G5's, and those would be a noticeable improvement over the fx5200. Another option that can go in the AGP G5 might be the Apple/NV 6800Ultra board, or 6800GT.

I don't have any experience or info about using PC-space cards on the Mac; some have said it can be done, but do your homework.

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Q u o t e:
I have seen a few G4 posts here, so I'll tag onto this thread while support is formulating an answer ;)
Rather than spend $900+ on a 'new' PC system -- just to play WOW -- I'd rather put some cash into my Mac.

Machine Name: Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics)
Machine Model: PowerMac3,1
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.9)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 400 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 1 GB

OS 10.4.8

I've looked at x1 and x2 processor upgrades to 1.4GHz .. 2.0GHz
and the ATI radeon 9800 128 Mac edition (the only card that will fit into my rig, right?)

Will any of this make WOW playable on my machine?
Where will the bottlenecks be with this configuration?

Thanks!

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I really do not think you will be satisfied with the speed or stability of the resulting system. We have had a lot of problems with stability on older machines that have been upgraded on both the CPU and GPU sides, my guess is that the older PSU's are not up to the task.

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Q u o t e:
I am reading these posts and im totally lost. I am somewhat new to macs only been using them for about 2 years now. My G4 powerbook has a very crappy frame rate averaging 10 FPS in 40 man raids, but my new 24" iMac seems to be amazing. I guess my question is; how reliable is the wow FPS tool (ctrl r)?

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It's quite accurate.

Let's revisit the topic of frame rates on PowerPC systems, after Leopard ships.

I expect some improvement in v2.3.0, and we also hope to see some improvement using Leopard on that type of hardware.

I don't believe the 6200 is a card that is supported by MacOS X. The OS has drivers for 5200fx and 7300/Quadro, but since no Mac has shipped with 6200-class graphics, there's no driver for it.

Good bug reports include hardware information.

In cases where there is a deficiency in Leopard, we can then work to reproduce the error here and file bugs with Apple as needed.

Can't do it without specs.

Ezob,

Please see this thread for more information:
LEOPARD: PowerPC systems with NV graphics

It's quite possible this issue is affecting GeForce 4 cards in addition to the cards listed in the link above.

Leopard will help a bit on a dual G4, however there is a graphic corruption bug on NV graphics for systems using AGP slots such as that G4. Once that bug gets resolved (see sticky on it) I'd recommend that as an upgrade prior to doing a GPU upgrade. Or put another way, putting in a faster GPU card may not help all that much under Tiger on G4. Leopard will use both processors better.

Steadfast,

A video card will not cause problems with downloading data. However, that video card is not supported for World of Warcraft or Burning Crusade:
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21085&searchQuery=video%20card&pageNumber=1

The CPU speed also is below system requirements. This can cause the game to run quite slow. Here are the minimum requirements:
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21054&searchQuery=minimum%20requirements&pageNumber=1

I definitely suggest upgrading the video card if you can. You might be able to upgrade the CPU as well, but that has been known to cause system issues in the past.

Shame to have two processors in that machine and only be using one of them for graphics - Leopard fixes that.

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Q u o t e:


Why is that, if you don't mind me asking?

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The WoW engine needs to access memory to draw each chunk of terrain, and the amount of memory accessed goes up as the square of the view distance. Intel Macs have lower-latency memory controllers, bigger caches, and features like automatic prefetch that most PowerPC Macs do not have. There are also some OpenGL features which until 10.5.x were Intel only and that also impacted terrain rendering a bit particularly when spinning the camera (PPC gets some improvement in that area under 10.5.x).

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Q u o t e:
O.K. I have tried and tried and downloaded as much updates as I can and was unsure about my card so please tell me if this is my problem:
Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2400
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 128 MB

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You didn't say in this post what class of problem you are trying to solve. Looking at your other posts it looked like you were running into the "movie recording not enabled on ATI 2x00 chipsets under OS X 10.4.x" issue.

If that is the problem you are posting about, do this in game (type it into chat)

/console set MovieRecordingForceEnable "1"

then quit and re-launch.

If there is some other issue you are asking about, be more specific.

You didn't state the settings in use (try defaults) or the location being tested.

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Q u o t e:
Hello, and thank you for having such a great forum. My problem is my frame rates, especially in the outlands. I am currently running a G5 Dual 2 GHZ PowerPC G5 machine with 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM and a recently upgraded ATI Mac Edition 9800 pro, with 256 MB Vram. According to all the stuff I read on this forum, this card was predicted to handle World of Warcraft without problems. What setting should I be using, as my frame rates, are barely above my MacBook pro, and Barely playable in battlegrounds or intense warfare. I am sorry if this topic has been discussed prior, but I have been searching here and XLRyourmac.com for help.

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Which OS are you running ?