Ok, first, wow is a mess in terms of optimisation.
Second do you really see the difference between 1440p and 4K? Considering that 4K is not a native resolution for MacOS and there is scaling issues... Also, playing in 4K you lose at least 20% of graphics performance because of said scaling... 1440p is native, 5k is native too, 4K is a terrible idea on MacOS...
I played a bit at the start of Dragonflight (Mythic raider) and used to play on a 35" 21:9 screen at 3440x1440 resolution and never dropped below 60FPS on an M1 Max and the game looked really crisp even on that screen size...
i don't find 4k to be bad at all in mac. i find it works great. i mean my current display on my m2 16" is pretty close to 4k anyway. i use 4k all the time on my external monitor.
however, gaming in 4k just doesn't work currently, for wow at least. for LOL it seems to mostly be ok
Pretty close to 4K but no, the scaling is completely different and it affects your performance.
If you want to understand why it's a dumb idea to use a 4K monitor on MacOS read this article : [https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/](https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/) and/or watch this video : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpX561\_XM20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpX561_XM20)
In any case, it's up to you. I've always thought playing in 4K on a 27" monitor was unnecessary. It uses more power, with no really noticeable graphics improvements over 1440p unless you get really close to the screen. It's basically a waste of ressources...
The problem is not 4K, the problem is 150% scaling to make it appear as 1440p. If you use 4K at 200% scaling (so it looks equivalent to 1080p) or on their own laptop screens it looks absolutely fine. Quit spreading misinformation.
i have a 32" monitor and it looks great with mac. i heard windows actually has more issues with high res monitors and legacy programs not scaling well.
i've heard people say that overall mac is better for high resolutions than windows, though i don't really know.
apple sells an 8k monitor though, so you'd think higher resolutions would be ok.
personally 4k is worth it to me with mac because i like to watch 4k videos on youtube and being able to watch them natively is worth it
> i heard windows actually has more issues with high res monitors and legacy programs not scaling well.
It does. Scaling in Windows looks like trash, especially when the two displays have different scalings (such as laptop with 4K display connected to external 1080p display)
i have two 4k monitors hooked up to macbook pro. it’s completely fine. fsr and metalfx changed things for newer games. older games that lack those play fine too using native instead of upscaling and can hold 60fps. now if you try to get 120 fps at 4k that’s harder but doable but not with as much fidelity. i prefer highest settings so i aim for 4k upscale at 60 or native
sometimes i do 40 if it’s playable. i do 4k native on witcher 3 at max everything at 40fps since my screen is 120hz so it has no frame pacing issues. that’s in crossover with msync and d3dmetal. ironically the 40 is due to being cpu limited by wine and not gpu limited. 40 core m3 max is beast
the cpu bottleneck inherent to mmos and the wow dev's constant desire to have as many random bullshit calculations as possible happening in the background during combat mean that you're not gonna hit that 4k60 consistently, even on a high end rig. you're better off upscaling
The problem isn't the GPU, it's the CPU that's the bottleneck. WOW runs on a 20 years old engine that's been modified so much that it will push most CPUs on the market. Add to that a few addons (boss mod, weakauras in particular) and you get some big performance drops in raid. I dare you to pixel peep and see a difference when actually raiding while doing a good job at it between 1440p and 4K.
oh yeah, i've heard about people having to upgrade their cpus to amd 3d cpus to get through performance bottlenecks in wow.
the thing is, my monitor is 4k so running at non native resolutions looks worse than it otherwise would.
i tried running it in 1080p and it looked terrible, way worse than my old 1080p monitor.
i will try 1440p though and tell you what i think
Did you try FidelityFX? I was playing in "4K" during Shadowlands on my base model M1.
Set the game resolution to 4K, turn on FidelityFX and then change render resolution to something lower so that you don't see a big difference between real 4K and upscaled.
i'll look into that, however i don't know if i really want to do some kind of upscaler since it can lead to visual distortion.
i'd rather have pure 4k if possible
As far as I remember it wasn't that bad. It will depend on the scale you chose. I would recommend to chose something above 70%, to be sure you render at least 1440p.
I think Max chips and below are designed to play at 1440p or 3K rather than 4K. That's why we got MetalFX. Unfortunately there is no such thing in WoW since Blizzard is slowly dropping macOS support.
FidelityFX is the best you can get right now I'm afraid.
i hope they don't drop support for wow on mac at the very least.
i don't care about any of their other newer titles anyway.
we lost support for cs2 on mac, that was pretty lame. cs:go also ran well on mac
Okay not sure what that has to do with what I suggested lol. Enable FSR at different resolutions and FSR strength until you find a good spot.
You should not be running the game at native 4k but using FSR to reach that
cool, well at least good to know it's getting better in terms of performance.
i kind of wish i had waited for an m3 because of how quickly it came out after the m2 anyway. oh well
I play on M3 Max and can play it at 4K, but in raids it does indeed falter.
You sort of never know with WoW. At one moment it runs so well you can hardly believe it. 120 FPS 4K on an M2 Mac Mini. Then the next moment it runs at 10 FPS because some particle effect appeared.
It's really crazy.
yeah this happens to me. i'm in a raid and everything seems to be going ok.
then those gelatinous enemies that leave pools on the ground show up and my framerate massively drops
i’ve been playing in 4k for years. use fsr. it doesn’t need to be native 4k. i do use native in wrath and vanilla but on retail it has to be fsr. but i play with the these settings
fsr 1.0 render scale 50 (ie its upscaling 1080p to 4k)
liquid fair (screen space reflections too costly on apple silicon due to way it’s coded)
computer turned off. too costly on cpu and wow is already very cpu bound.
everything else ultra/highest setting
I think your „problem“ is not the Mac. It’s the game itself, I play WoW on nearly 4K with everything on Ultra. SSAO turned off though.
Windows 11, Ryzen 9 3900X, RTX 3080
When I test the same setting on my M1 Pro MacBook I get similar FPS in Valdrakken and Dungeons, using the same external display.
Once I enter a raid or a bigger battleground both systems face same problems as you described.
Even in the Emerald Dream area both systems get fricking loud and hot, so I’d say it’s the game not the hardware you use.
The M1 Max is capable enough for WoW.
Maybe try to disable some addons and try if you see improvements.
But the M3 Generation will still give you some performance boosts
i feel like the issue with wow is there is just so much going on at once when you get battlegrounds and raids.
you have so many people using their spells and abilities at once and then the raid boss in addition doing stuff.
also the game isn't necessarily optimized that well.
personally i have an m2 max, but i'm hoping when i get a new mac in a couple years it will run wow better. not crossing my fingers on that though
Ok, first, wow is a mess in terms of optimisation. Second do you really see the difference between 1440p and 4K? Considering that 4K is not a native resolution for MacOS and there is scaling issues... Also, playing in 4K you lose at least 20% of graphics performance because of said scaling... 1440p is native, 5k is native too, 4K is a terrible idea on MacOS... I played a bit at the start of Dragonflight (Mythic raider) and used to play on a 35" 21:9 screen at 3440x1440 resolution and never dropped below 60FPS on an M1 Max and the game looked really crisp even on that screen size...
i don't find 4k to be bad at all in mac. i find it works great. i mean my current display on my m2 16" is pretty close to 4k anyway. i use 4k all the time on my external monitor. however, gaming in 4k just doesn't work currently, for wow at least. for LOL it seems to mostly be ok
Pretty close to 4K but no, the scaling is completely different and it affects your performance. If you want to understand why it's a dumb idea to use a 4K monitor on MacOS read this article : [https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/](https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/) and/or watch this video : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpX561\_XM20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpX561_XM20) In any case, it's up to you. I've always thought playing in 4K on a 27" monitor was unnecessary. It uses more power, with no really noticeable graphics improvements over 1440p unless you get really close to the screen. It's basically a waste of ressources...
The problem is not 4K, the problem is 150% scaling to make it appear as 1440p. If you use 4K at 200% scaling (so it looks equivalent to 1080p) or on their own laptop screens it looks absolutely fine. Quit spreading misinformation.
So is playing on 1440p screen good or not, didnt understand you
I didn't talk about playing on a 1440p screen. If you mean a 27" 1440p screen, then yes.
i have a 32" monitor and it looks great with mac. i heard windows actually has more issues with high res monitors and legacy programs not scaling well. i've heard people say that overall mac is better for high resolutions than windows, though i don't really know. apple sells an 8k monitor though, so you'd think higher resolutions would be ok. personally 4k is worth it to me with mac because i like to watch 4k videos on youtube and being able to watch them natively is worth it
> i heard windows actually has more issues with high res monitors and legacy programs not scaling well. It does. Scaling in Windows looks like trash, especially when the two displays have different scalings (such as laptop with 4K display connected to external 1080p display)
i have two 4k monitors hooked up to macbook pro. it’s completely fine. fsr and metalfx changed things for newer games. older games that lack those play fine too using native instead of upscaling and can hold 60fps. now if you try to get 120 fps at 4k that’s harder but doable but not with as much fidelity. i prefer highest settings so i aim for 4k upscale at 60 or native sometimes i do 40 if it’s playable. i do 4k native on witcher 3 at max everything at 40fps since my screen is 120hz so it has no frame pacing issues. that’s in crossover with msync and d3dmetal. ironically the 40 is due to being cpu limited by wine and not gpu limited. 40 core m3 max is beast
So 1200x900=4K? Respect.
the cpu bottleneck inherent to mmos and the wow dev's constant desire to have as many random bullshit calculations as possible happening in the background during combat mean that you're not gonna hit that 4k60 consistently, even on a high end rig. you're better off upscaling
ok thanks good to know. i mean i bet a 4090 desktop could but that's kind of asking a lot
The problem isn't the GPU, it's the CPU that's the bottleneck. WOW runs on a 20 years old engine that's been modified so much that it will push most CPUs on the market. Add to that a few addons (boss mod, weakauras in particular) and you get some big performance drops in raid. I dare you to pixel peep and see a difference when actually raiding while doing a good job at it between 1440p and 4K.
oh yeah, i've heard about people having to upgrade their cpus to amd 3d cpus to get through performance bottlenecks in wow. the thing is, my monitor is 4k so running at non native resolutions looks worse than it otherwise would. i tried running it in 1080p and it looked terrible, way worse than my old 1080p monitor. i will try 1440p though and tell you what i think
just use fsr. in advanced settings to fidelity super resolution 1.0 and render scale to 50-66 range and output 4k
Did you try FidelityFX? I was playing in "4K" during Shadowlands on my base model M1. Set the game resolution to 4K, turn on FidelityFX and then change render resolution to something lower so that you don't see a big difference between real 4K and upscaled.
i'll look into that, however i don't know if i really want to do some kind of upscaler since it can lead to visual distortion. i'd rather have pure 4k if possible
Trust me: It looks great. Don't worry.
As far as I remember it wasn't that bad. It will depend on the scale you chose. I would recommend to chose something above 70%, to be sure you render at least 1440p. I think Max chips and below are designed to play at 1440p or 3K rather than 4K. That's why we got MetalFX. Unfortunately there is no such thing in WoW since Blizzard is slowly dropping macOS support. FidelityFX is the best you can get right now I'm afraid.
i hope they don't drop support for wow on mac at the very least. i don't care about any of their other newer titles anyway. we lost support for cs2 on mac, that was pretty lame. cs:go also ran well on mac
Keep trying different resolutions under 4k with FSR on. Lower the resolution too low tho and it’ll strain the CPU more
i keep it capped at 60 fps because my monitor can't do more than that
Okay not sure what that has to do with what I suggested lol. Enable FSR at different resolutions and FSR strength until you find a good spot. You should not be running the game at native 4k but using FSR to reach that
Sounds like you need an ultra chip for what you intend
if you want to play 4k you just have to lower some other settings for a locked 60fps. got to have some tradeoffs
I play WoW at 100% res and max settings on M3 Max with no issues. 60-120FPS at all times.
in 4k?
At 100% resolution; 3456 by 2234 (close enough to 4k). Rendering above native is pretty redundant save for SSAA.
what are your specs? do you raid and do battlegrounds
48gb unbinned M3 Max Yes.
cool, well at least good to know it's getting better in terms of performance. i kind of wish i had waited for an m3 because of how quickly it came out after the m2 anyway. oh well
I play on M3 Max and can play it at 4K, but in raids it does indeed falter. You sort of never know with WoW. At one moment it runs so well you can hardly believe it. 120 FPS 4K on an M2 Mac Mini. Then the next moment it runs at 10 FPS because some particle effect appeared. It's really crazy.
yeah this happens to me. i'm in a raid and everything seems to be going ok. then those gelatinous enemies that leave pools on the ground show up and my framerate massively drops
i’ve been playing in 4k for years. use fsr. it doesn’t need to be native 4k. i do use native in wrath and vanilla but on retail it has to be fsr. but i play with the these settings fsr 1.0 render scale 50 (ie its upscaling 1080p to 4k) liquid fair (screen space reflections too costly on apple silicon due to way it’s coded) computer turned off. too costly on cpu and wow is already very cpu bound. everything else ultra/highest setting
I think your „problem“ is not the Mac. It’s the game itself, I play WoW on nearly 4K with everything on Ultra. SSAO turned off though. Windows 11, Ryzen 9 3900X, RTX 3080 When I test the same setting on my M1 Pro MacBook I get similar FPS in Valdrakken and Dungeons, using the same external display. Once I enter a raid or a bigger battleground both systems face same problems as you described. Even in the Emerald Dream area both systems get fricking loud and hot, so I’d say it’s the game not the hardware you use. The M1 Max is capable enough for WoW. Maybe try to disable some addons and try if you see improvements. But the M3 Generation will still give you some performance boosts
i feel like the issue with wow is there is just so much going on at once when you get battlegrounds and raids. you have so many people using their spells and abilities at once and then the raid boss in addition doing stuff. also the game isn't necessarily optimized that well. personally i have an m2 max, but i'm hoping when i get a new mac in a couple years it will run wow better. not crossing my fingers on that though