Hi, I just got my first Mac after being a Windows user forever.
I was pretty shocked to see WoW using 7+GB of RAM constantly, with the native WoW app. Yikes. I have never seen RAM usage like that on Windows anything for WoW. My day-to-day usage is light and I’m currently not playing WoW a lot - it’s more after major content drops, so I settled for 8GB!
I recognise that the M1 chip is quite new and the native WoW app is also new and pretty much still developing. But is this normal on MacOS?
(I took screenshots but I can’t see anywhere to upload them here?)
You can upload images to imgur and post links here via the preformatted text option.
Is it total system RAM usage or WoW only? Do you have any addons installed, overlays and alike running?
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https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0Dh-AtFnWqIg5hYa04uR1mm6Q#Shared_Files
Thanks for your time.
I’ve shared an iCloud folder with the screenshots, hopefully it links ok!
You’ll see in the white pic, that WoW as a singular activity holds 7GB+ RAM. You might be able to figure out more looking at the rest of the details than I can see as a newbie to Mac.
Add-ons - I have no UI stuff. I’ve just a few; DBM, spell announcer, Skada, GTFO. I can try disable them to test, but having since browsed around this seems to be a common issue on Mac. Other threads guys talking about 40GB RAM and 20+GB used by WoW on Mac… 
Only specialized workstations have 40GB of RAM so your information doesn’t look correct, especially for M1. I didn’t saw on WoW forums people posting about RAM usage on M1 so I would say it’s one of the addons or something specific running on your laptop.
To be fair, I never said that the player who quoted 20GB of RAM on a 40GB machine was using an M1. He said he was using a Mac. That is, an Intel Mac.
Does anyone else using the universal/native WoW app on a Mac find excessive Ram usage?
I notice that the Battlenet launcher comes up as an Intel-written app, and each time it seems to be using nearly 1GB of RAM. Yikes that’s a lot! There’s still a lot of improvement to be done in the apps I think.
Not really.
And that 20GB on 40GB is also suspicious. Are you sure it’s not any addon or some total RAM usage?
Hmm, I have have experienced wow using about 8+GB of RAM in windows before actually(In Zuldazar). Not going to re-boot into windows right now to check if I still experience that.
These are my current results under macOS Big Sur after:
- After being AFK for a while in my garrison I had 3,75GB usage
- After walking around in the Venthyr Covenant to pick up dailies I had 4,1GB
- After flying from the covenant hall to Oribos and walking to the most populated area I got 4,5GB usage
However I see that I am using about 100% of my GDDR memory. Not sure if this is due to other applications or WoW.
Isn’t it so that the GPU uses the RAM for it’s GDDR? or am I mistaken here?
If so, then I don’t think 8GB usage is too bad to be honest.
If it is of relevance, my computer is running macOS Big Sur on a AMD Ryzen 9 3900x with a RX5600 XT GPU and 64GB RAM with a 2560x1080 monitor. I ran the game on max settings.
I also seem to be getting about the same results on my 2019 15" Macbook pro fully specced with wow running on max resolution and settings on max.
Games often allocate all of VRAM even if they don’t use it. Some better reporting software can show how much is actually used.
Integrated graphics do that.