Ask WoW Insider: How's WoW performance on a Mac?
by Barb Dybwad 
Mar 30th 2007 at 2:45PM
Today's Ask WoW Insider brings us a corollary question to our WoW performance on Vista inquiry from a couple of months ago; Rotmeyer writes: I play Wow on a PC, and am looking towards a new computer purchase. One thing that influences my purchase is how well WoW will run on my new computer. I'm leaning towards a Mac, but how well does WoW run on a Mac? What's the minimum Mac requirements for smooth framerate and gameplay? Could I play WoW on a Mac Mini? Thanks.Without getting derailed into Yet Another Platform War, can anyone give Rotmeyer some advice or share your experiences running the WoW client on a Mac? Be as specific about the model and specs of your machine(s) as possible.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
mike Feb 24th 2009 2:42AM
I have a iMac 24', and it does horrible. I run with 4g of ram and setting turned 3/4 the way down. I got wicked polygons in Dalaran, and my FPS is horrible most of the time unless i play late at night. I would recommend a PC if wow is all your going to be doing with it. Once you go with a iMac 24' you done. I upgraded my ram and my card is a Nvidia 7600gt. I also am getting all the problems while at 1600x900 or whatever it is. I say if you can, build a PC with some upgraded hardware, and spend the rest on a Video card.
jon Mar 17th 2009 3:07PM
well, i have a desktop dell for gaming and a macbook (white)
they both have 1gb ram
(dell) 210gb hardrive
(macbook) 111 gb hardrive
my mac has much less lag.
though only 13 inch screen
i have the video options on 3/4
and the dell has to b 1/4 or else too much lagg.
i would say the mac runs it better than a pc.
Mike Jun 2nd 2009 3:26PM
I know this is an old article but it was a top hit when I searched for "wow mac performance" in google, so I will leave this comment because I think it will be useful.
I have a 17" MacBook Pro w/ NVidia GeForce 9600. I also have boot camp installed and run Windows 7 RC on the same machine. With the exact same quality settings and resolution on the exact same hardware, WoW runs better in windows. It's quite noticeable. It feels more responsive and the frame rates are much higher. I don't have absolute numbers but the difference is large enough that it's unnecessary. However, with that said, it runs much better relative to its Windows counterpart than some other games I've played which use a compatibility library for the mac (transgaming's cider, for example).
If I'm going to be playing WoW for a while, say to raid or do battlegrounds, I will boot into Windows. Otherwise I do keep it installed in Mac OS for when I'm doing idle things like browsing the AH or chatting to corp mates in which case I run it in windowed mode with reduced details.
sabino_rui Jun 8th 2009 11:02AM
hi ppl can you tel me if wow going to run rly good on this?
http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html
im going to get the 24 inches but just the scren
demonfart Jan 14th 2010 4:07PM
WoW runs schmoove as buttah on my Mac Pro with max settings. My machine specs:
09 Mac Pro octo-core 2.26ghz
16GB RAM
OCZ Vertex SSD (for my OS install)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 w/1024MB memory
Dual Dell S2409W LCD monitors
Snow Leopard (10.6.2)
Granted this is about a $6000 workstation, but it's not meant to be playing games so I was pleased with it's performance.
veggiedude Mar 12th 2010 7:42AM
I tried running the PC wow version on my iMacs bootcamp partition. I was hoping for a dramatic improvement, because I thought I heard it was optimised for Windows game savvy coding. Well, I didn't see any difference, not even the framerate seemed to be better - so I switched back to my Mac. If indeed there is better performance in Windows, it isn't noticeable, and therefore not worth the bother if you already have a Mac. The new Macs have much better video cards, so they will easily handle WoW. My iMac is 3 years old and when I am in Delaran, it can be laggy at certain times of the day (when lots of players are in there).
Sëmël Mar 23rd 2010 5:48AM
I see a lot of flaws in this debate, mostly people saying that they can barely notice an improvement from mac to windows. Unless you don't actually know enough about your computer to build one yourself or customize it you shouldn't comment here.
First of all the reason why mac lags has nothing todo with the OS, but the UI. All that shiny costs you a lot of ram and your graphic card's performance. To those who boot-camped W7, log on and put your theme (unless already on) to windows 7 aero. Play wow a little and notice the small lag. Now switch to classic. (Only noticeable on 2gb - 4gb ram) The mac has a beautiful UI but its heavily animated and with .mp3's being able to load via desktop it packs a punch against your gaming habits.
And unless you can code OS there really isn't any improvements you can do, neither are there any tools as there are for windows to overclock.
However if you buy a mac and bootcamp windows 7 on it, (and ofc your specs are 8gb ram and 3.02ghz processor) you will have your dream laptop. I was against mac for as long as i can remember but when i bought my Macbook Pro (late 09 edition) i never regretted it. Because of the Unibody made out of aluminum metal no matter how hard you push it it will remain cool enough to not damage the graphic card. So far i have only had one bluescreen but that was my own fault pressing the graphic card too much on my overclocking.
So, to all mac gamers: Bootcamp W7. Use mac for Logic Studio Pro 9 & iTunes homestudio. ;)
Hope this helped! :) Sëmël out.
Doogledude123 Aug 23rd 2010 2:08PM
Hey. I don't want to deal with wow running on a Mac so I'm just gunna buy a MacBook pro and the build a pc with windows 7.
antonyspiterix May 6th 2011 7:55AM
heyy can you tell me if WoW works on a macbook pro?xx
bphelpsen Dec 12th 2011 3:59PM
Just an update since this is very old, and things have greatly changed.
I've wrote up a blog post about gaming on macs currently as of posting this, you can check it out here:
http://benphelps.me/?p=24
Sonic Mar 30th 2007 3:04PM
I am currently playing on a Intel Mac, the Macbook Pro. Runs smoothly with all the pretty features and 3/4 terrain distance. The G5 (PowerPC) iMac with the same stats as my Macbook has a lot of the video features turned down to run smoothly.
A Mac Mini will never run WoW smoothly since it does not have a dedicated video card.
GoldFISH_no641 Mar 30th 2007 2:54PM
I have run the game on both PC and Mac. My mac was a G5 Powermac with 2GB of ram and a decent AGP card. Granted the PC version runs a little better, but I've heard some great things about how it runs on Intel Mac's, specifically the 24" iMac with the upgraded video card. Having a nice wide screen is sexy also
Claymore Mar 30th 2007 2:56PM
I have a:
Macbook Pro core duo - 1.83
1gig memory.
In general WoW runs flawlessly. (the bright screen if fantastic).
I do on occasion lockup but you will notice in patch notes that Blizzard continually updates Mac support. Also the locking up is rare enough not to be bothersome.
PLEASE NOTE... it does make the Macbook Pro run HOT... so don't have it on your lap. :)
Jaded Mar 30th 2007 3:04PM
Well ... the Mac Mini doesn't have a video card so you can run the game, but that's about it. You pretty much have to have all of the settings turned down. The same goes for Macbooks (no videocard). They can run the game just fine, but they don't do it especially well.
Macbook Pros (the silver ones) DO have videocards, and generally run the game very well, especially if you load them up on RAM. The mid- to high-end iMacs run the game pretty darn well also.
Of course all of these new macs can also run Windows and if you play in Windows you'll probably get a 10-15% higher FPS rate (although this difference goes down with each patch as the mac version gets closer to the PC version).
Dave Snider Mar 30th 2007 3:19PM
Any modern Mac will run WoW just as good as on a PC. I currently play WoW off my powermac pro laptop and can turn on all effects on my 1900x1200 cinema display.
You won't be able to run with everything full blown on a mac mini, but it plays well enough, I'd recommend you have at least a gig of RAM though.
The great part is that all the mods that work for WoW on the PC, work just as well on the mac. I'm running trinity bars, titan, metamap, tiny tips and a whole bunch more without any problems.
There is virtually no difference playing WoW on a Mac. I have a very nice PC gaming rig and I tend to still play WoW on my powermac pro because it's portable and I can get my WoW fix on the move if need be.
neonpenguin Mar 30th 2007 3:47PM
I play on a mac mini that I've put 1gb of ram into.
I don't have the super high level of detail turned up on the game graphics, but it is still a very solid experience. I've had laggy issues on the major fights where most pc's get pushed to their limits (suppresion room in bwl as an example.)I would expect
any new mac should run it just fine for most needs.
(I have also used a powerbook with no problems for wow.)
Tim Mar 30th 2007 3:07PM
WoW will run on a Mac Mini, but the integrated graphics will limit you a bit, and won't be the overall best. The iMacs are much better. i have a G5 17" iMac and it runs it very good. i would imagine that the faster chips and better graphics in the newer iMacs make it even better. as always, the more RAM the better.
Varus Mar 30th 2007 3:04PM
I play WoW on my Macbook (not the Pro) which might be relevant to your as it has the same graphics chip as the mini (and since that chip uses shared memory, it's good to have a lot of RAM - I have 1Gb).
Running natively on Mac, I get fairly low framerates, even with things turned down to minimum (usually between 10-20fps, depending a bit where you are).
Then I installed XP through Bootcamp and when I play WoW on XP (same settings), my framerates are around 40-50fps, which is ok.
If you're investing to a new Mac, go for the Macbook Pro in that case - the Mini and the normal Macbook will run the game, but don't really pack the punch to make is gorgeous.
Hope this helps
Scott Mar 30th 2007 3:07PM
Mac: Hi...I'm a Mac.
PC: And I'm a PC.
Mac: I can play WoW.
PC: But not as well as I do....punk.
Chirs Mar 30th 2007 3:09PM
I use a two year old 20" iMac G5 (w/ 128 MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra video card ) as my main machine and occassionally a 15" Mac Book Pro (w/ ATI Mobility Radeon X1600) . Both run WoW beautifully. The Mini however has on much weaker video and that is the limiting factor. The cheapest iMac has better video than my 20" iMac and should work very well.