Hey guys!
So I’m a returning wow player I played last summer at my friend’s place. I was gonna play on his old computer but that broke down. So we played with my MacBook. We got a nice full hd screen and I noticed that my game ran a LOT better on that compared to how it ran on my MacBook. After googling and thinking about it, I’m pretty sure this has to do with the resolution. Because the MacBook has such a high resolution, that ofc requires more power.
Now, I want a nee screen. 27” for both working (corona times, always home) and gaming (much too small to really enjoy the new areas). So, I’m wondering: what to get? If I got a 1440p screen, this would mean that my performance would still kinda suck. And this leads to the other question in the header: is changing the in game resolution to, say, about full HD the same (performance wise, but also looks wise) as having a full hd monitor with highest resolution settings? Cause that’s what I did at my friend’s place.
Buying a full HD screen would ofc make this a lot easier and cheaper. But I’m also used to my beautiful retina screen, so I’m wondering if I could just get a QHD screen and then turn down the resolution to full hd to achieve the same thing.
Also, on my MacBook I won’t be able to run it, even at full hd, over (or at) 60fps lol. So I’d always get a 60 or 75hz screen.
The specs aren’t that bad for an Intel system. 1080p mode 2-3-4 should work quite fine on macOS. Using a Haswell potato-spec I managed to get N’zoth to even be playable at ~30 FPS
For non-gaming sure, and even for WoW you may be able to use it too depending on situation (or other game like say Hearthstone). For productivity and WoW pretty views also ultrawide displays are an option
Right, ok. And this might be a stupid question but will 1080p settings look the same on a full HD screen as on a better screen? I was actually surprised in the summer by how nice the game looked on the big screen, even tho that was “only” full HD, but I don’t think I had my rendering lowered back then as the main resolution was just capped at 1080 naturally
Right, so that’s assuming I leave the window size high and just change the scale, right? What if I do the opposite, turn down the resolution but leave the scale at 100%? Will there be a difference between the screens then? And how’s that for performance? I read in another post that this is even better for FPS
There can be some differences in scaler performance but visually it should be pretty much exactly the same thing. You can compare performance and pick what you like best.
Ok, well, thank you so much already! I really appreciate your help. Right now I’m thinking price, mainly. If I’ll play around 1080 anyway, be it with scaling or not, I could save a lot of money by just getting a full HD screen instead. Even though it ofc won’t be as nice as my retina screen for normal usage then but oh well. Thanks again for all your insight!
1080p starts around 95 EUR, while 1440p or 1080p ultrawide at around 150EUR. You can also check ebay deals on used displays - if they are in really good condition from good seller it could be a nice option.
Also check reviews as some cheaper IPS displays can have some drawbacks (and avoid TN panels)
DX12 is the equivalent. The main difference may be the OS scheduler allowing game tasks to scale better across cores or to give more core time to game main thread and move other processes to cores where only some load is present.
All those low power and older Intels have relatively same weak iGPU but if performance differs between low and high power CPU but macOS can run better on the low power ones then the cause is likely related to the CPU and not GPU. Even on Windows WoW uses other cores for draw calls but still has main process running on one core that handles “game state” that becomes the bottleneck if you have multiple actors and multiple actions. If the OS scheduler can optimize this then the game would perform noticeably better.
probably, I haven’t really kept up with that as I play on PC again. But I went from a PC to a entry-level Mac mini for a couple of months during legion and it wasn’t as much of a downgrade as I thought while my PC was way more powerful than the Mac.
I have a sort of Mac-specific follow-up question on this. I read in various forums that, because of the way scaling works on Mac, 1440p monitors at 27" aren’t optimal. How’s your experience with that? And also, does ultra wide (so ultra wide QHD) change anything about that? I really struggle with this decision. If this is right, then a 4K 27" would be the best bet for Mac but then I’d definitely require a eGPU - something I also consider currently. Ultimately, I’d love to get a 4k/1440p screen and an eGPU to run wow at higher specs/higher FPS. Which leads me to another question: with my specs and a decent ePGU (for instance the one sold by apple with Radeon Pro 580), could I run wow at 4K or 1440p with more than 60fps (and would it thus be worth it to get a screen that has, say, 75HZ or even 120?)
Sorry that’s a lot of questions haha but there’s so many factors to consider here, I have no idea what to do :o
Not sure why it wouldn’t be optimal. There is pixel density to consider, people may want super dense displays for same “retina” effect as on the macbook, but for gaming that isn’t really needed.
Ultrawide have a much bigger diagonal for same height of the display. I have LG 34UC88 3440x1440 which is 32" display while not being that big.
This isn’t really a 1440p/4K GPU. For WoW and a good CPU at 1440p/1440p ultrawide it could work around 60 FPS in new/demanding zones… but you would be best picking something from RDNA2 range. And M1 macs don’t support eGPU (not sure which one you have).
I don’t have the M1, I have the 2018 MBP with 2,3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5. I heard about the M1 not doing eGPU and I also watched a video where, for video games, an older MacBook with eGPU outperformed the M1 for gaming due to the higher graphics. So I considered getting an eGPU. But ok, I guess then with my CPU 1440p at more than 60fps won’t be possible. OK, good to know! I checked the RNA2 range, that’s definitely too expensive for me. I’m looking into used eGPUs and found some apple ones for around 450€ which is definitely the maximum I would like to spend (since I’d also be spending at least 250€ on a display then)… Thanks for all your insight! I appreciate it a lot <3
I played last summer at my friend’s place. I was gonna play on his old computer but that broke down. So we played with my MacBook. We got a nice full hd screen and I noticed that my game ran a LOT better on that compared to how it ran on my MacBook. After googling and thinking about it, I’m pretty sure this has to do with the resolution. Because the MacBook has such a high resolution, that ofc requires more power.
