Just curious if anyone has any hands on experience with the new Air playing WoW and if so how did it do settings wise. I want the air for school so I know it is not for gaming but I would like to know how it did before I bought WOW to kill some time. Thanks for any replies.
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7)
Sure did... spent 30-35 minutes at an Apple Store this morning on the 13" MBA. Sorry, no feedback on the 11" model as the screen is unacceptable for WoW (my standards).
At Fair settings across the board I was looking at 24-44 FPS while doing Molten Front dailies. At Good settings across the board it held steady at 25-31 FPS while over in the Furnace (Molten Front dailies). I was unable to get a raid/5-man going so I jumped in on an AV. At Fair settings across the board, same (24-44), at Good, same (25-31).
Of note, when killing Galv (on Good) with all of the various spell/particle effects it dipped to 12-14 FPS. I back capped and played some D, so protecting the dwarf and the chaos there also had FPS dip into the low teens (10-14 FPS).
I suspect if you drop it down from Good (to Fair or Poor) you'd get the extra "oomph" to 25-40 FPS. Certainly not a machine that I'd want to be in a Top 15 progression guild using and trying to run FRAPS. But definitely playable and enjoyable for 99.9% of the WoW population like you and me.
Sure did... spent 30-35 minutes at an Apple Store this morning on the 13" MBA. Sorry, no feedback on the 11" model as the screen is unacceptable for WoW (my standards).
At Fair settings across the board I was looking at 24-44 FPS while doing Molten Front dailies. At Good settings across the board it held steady at 25-31 FPS while over in the Furnace (Molten Front dailies). I was unable to get a raid/5-man going so I jumped in on an AV. At Fair settings across the board, same (24-44), at Good, same (25-31).
Of note, when killing Galv (on Good) with all of the various spell/particle effects it dipped to 12-14 FPS. I back capped and played some D, so protecting the dwarf and the chaos there also had FPS dip into the low teens (10-14 FPS).
I suspect if you drop it down from Good (to Fair or Poor) you'd get the extra "oomph" to 25-40 FPS. Certainly not a machine that I'd want to be in a Top 15 progression guild using and trying to run FRAPS. But definitely playable and enjoyable for 99.9% of the WoW population like you and me.
Awesome, that was what I was wanting to know thanks. I had already to decided to get one but was just curious, and I am waiting for the Tennessee Tax Free Holiday Weekend in early August to get the fully loaded 11in model. I like playing WoW and would prefer to play it at high settings but I just don't have time to be a hard-core gamer (as much as I would like to be) to mind playing at lower settings. I won't have the chance to touch one till it gets here in the mail so what was your first Impression of the new airs?
Any other new 2011 Air WoW players out there?
Nuke
I have the Late 2010 MBA 11.6 Base model and it kills WoW. I had very similar results to Jason, however mine ran more consistently around 40FPS, with Good settings. I think this has to do with the NVIDIA graphics, but the trade off is an underpowered processor (in comparison to the iCore).
I'm playing WoW on the 13" MacBook Air with an external 23" monitor and it's running smooth, looking great and had no problem with it at all. Yes my macbook does get pretty hot at times but I dont think its anything to worry about. I have a mate with a MacBook Pro and he bought a cooling pad which apparently works pretty well too.
Playing WoW on the 2011 Macbook Air
