RagingSamster
2[H]4U
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Deal breaker for me ( I know I need to get a life) I'm looking to get a home theatre PC and the Mac mini is small , quiet and sips power - but will it play World of Warcraft acceptably?
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Current Mac Mini - quiet, but can it WoW
- Thread starter RagingSamster
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UnknownSouljer
[H]F Junkie
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What is acceptable?
What resolution do you want to game at? What settings do you want to be turned on? What frame rate drops are acceptable during a 25 man raid?
What resolution do you want to game at? What settings do you want to be turned on? What frame rate drops are acceptable during a 25 man raid?
without knowing what resolution you play at we can't help. But you can watch some youtube vids of people playing wow on it and decide for yourself.
For me, I want to run at native rez with all settings maxed and never notice a stutter. The 2011 imac in my sig can do it well at 2560x1440. My gaming PC in my sig can also do it well at 1920x1200. The mini would choke at that resolution.
It may or may not work well for a HTPC depending on what your needs are. It won't work for me as I want 7.1 as well as DTS-MA HD/TrueHD and the mini can't do that. So I have a HTPC I built. Well two actually.
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Centauri
2[H]4U
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WoW? Isn't that game like... 8 years old? Pretty sure any current computer can play it.
Andross182
Gawd
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- Sep 20, 2005
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Youd be suprised....its extremely cpu intensive plus with the latest xpac they did beef up the water effects and spell detail....some boss fights can be a slide show to lower end gpus
Bomo
Gawd
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They bump up the engine and graphics detail with each expansion. Things like textures, particle effects, water detail and draw distance are just a few of the things that have had major overhauls since its release in 2004. With each new bump, the labels in the settings menu get equally changed. What was High back in 2005 is definitely no longer high/max settings now.
While you may have been able to run WoW on high with a Dell 9300 (1.6 Pentium M, 6800 Ultra Go and 1GB of Ram) back in early 2005, you would be really taxing it to try and run anything above low settings on that hardware now and expect decent frame rates in anything but solo play. This has to do with the fact that Low/Mid Settings are essentially what the high settings were way back when. Things like max draw distance doubled between BC and WotLK, so it's not always guaranteed that it will play great on old/low end hardware.
Further, when I played WoW it took about a 10-20% hit just being run on a Mac (similar hardware compared). A current Mac Mini running a 320M is about on par with the 2008 MBP I had (2.2Ghz C2D, 8600M GT, 2GB of ram), and it handled WotLK at about low to mid, with the biggest factor being draw distance and texture detail.
Since the 320M is about on par with th 8600M GT (or at least, that's what I remember reading, correct me if I'm wrong), I'd expect to run WoW at medium settings with a current mac mini and a resolution of around 720p, if you want it to run smoothly in all aspects (solo grinding, 5-man, raids and BG's). If you don't raid and dont' mind the occasional stutter, you could probably bump up the resolution or the detail.
That said, WoW is meant to reach as wide of an audience as possible. With the right tuning, it could probably be run on hardware that was outdated in 2005. Since the current Mini is much more capable than that kind of hardware, it should be able to run it (it just may not be the prettiest you've seen WoW).
I lol'd
"They bump up the engine and graphics detail with each expansion. Things like textures, particle effects, water detail and draw distance are just a few of the things that have had major overhauls since its release in 2004. With each new bump, the labels in the settings menu get equally changed. What was High back in 2005 is definitely no longer high/max settings now."
What Bomo said ^
Also, depends on how many guys are on the screen too. You could go from 60FPS in one non-popular area, to 30FPS in a major city.