Mac? Need a little help here...

[Llianna]

I sorely lack understanding of any sort when it comes to a mac.

I managed, after a while of getting used to one mouse button, to bring up the system specs of a mac I recently got given from a friend, but have little clue as to wether they are "good" specs.

I've no idea if they mean the same as what they would in windows or whatever, so don't laugh at me too much 

I would like for someone whom knows their way around a mac to give their opinion as to wether these are good enough specs for WoW. 


Memory: 1024MB
Processors: Dual 500MHz Power PC G4

Machine Speed: 500MHz
Bus Speed: 100MHz
Number of Processors: 2
L2 Cache size: 1MB (times 2)
Machine Model: Power Mac G4 (version=2.9)

It was formerly used for graphical design or something, but couldnt figure out how to check the graphics card...

[Noadonis]

What's a 'Mac'? 

Noa

[Natanya]

Thank goodness you have me around then isn't it?

While I'm sure you can manage to get the game to "run" I'm not so sure it will run at more than a couple of FPS. Mostly because of it's processor(s) which as far as i am aware are not able to run in dual-mode with WoW because they're not Intel processors. As far as the graphics card goes Apple has always used built-in ones for most of their consumer level machines. In other words don't expect more from it than you would an Intel-onboard card they throw in school computers. No shaders but plenty power to run at least wow

PS: Also you will have to install at least Panther (10.3) to get WoW to install properly. If you have Tiger (10.4 - Apple's XP) you might be able to get the machine to run abit faster.

Hope it helps

EDIT: Upon checking my own Mac it seems the minimum requirements is around 1Ghz for the processor. Ill ask about on the local Mac forums to clarify if half of that will make it run

[Acka]

From what I know (I work with macs from time to time) 500mhz is still 500mhz on mac same as on PC

And G4 is quite an old model to be honest

[Natanya]

As true as that may be Acka the Apple operating systems are alot more efficient so the game can run with lower specs. I played Natanya from 1-45 on my old G4 999mhz Macbook Pro, only issue was that having 4-12fps in an instance battle as a healer was somewhat tough ^^

[Acka]

I would bet WoW is playable under windows xp with 1000mhz processor too, with 4-12fps

[Totemanix]

Nah, I get 4-12fps on my 1700mhz pc (a bit better if I crank the graphics down a ways) 

[Natanya]

I didn't say it couldn't. Im just saying that OSX gets more out of the system resources than a standard XP installation does.

[Llianna]

thought it was pretty old

Well, that answers my question  


*saves up for a better mac*

Oh, and how the heck do you manage with one mouse button? 

*enjoys the luxury of three buttons*

[Rowain]

The performance bottleneck is usually not the processor but the video card. If it were the CPU and WoW ran at 4-12 fps @ 1000 MHz then even at 3000 MHz processor could not run faster than 12-36 which is clearly not the case.
One other problem can be the lack of RAM which would make the program to HDD swap alot, but 1Gb is fine with XP.

Another all too frequent generalisation is that CPU frequency = CPU speed. There can be huge differences in that, just compare the perfomance of a P4 Celeron to a new revision of AMD64 or Intel Core 2 at the same clock speeds. AFAIK IBM processors are usually faster than its frequency would indicate but I might be wrong here. While Lli's Mac has two processors I think WoW is old enough for not being optimised to run faster on multiple processors.

As for XP requiring more system resources I'm not sure. It may need more memory, but when you have 1Gb+ the extra 20-30 Mb does not really matter. I'm almost sure that it does not require more CPU resources.
Sure, if the system is ridden with all kind of little gadgets, spyware, malware, anti-virus and so on it may slow down the whole system. But that does not have anything to do with XP. But the "if anything is wrong with the system, blame Windows" mentality is all too common I guess

[Natanya]

*nods in agreement*

Actually WoW IS optimized for dual core processors (Check the patchnotes, i dare you ^^). However i was in doubt that the Mac version specifically would support anything other than the Core 2's that all their new machines use (Mostly because this is the first I've ever heard of a dual cored Mac so far back)

20-30mb? What kind of barebone version of XP are you running on Row? Every single computer i use has atleast 100mb of 'trash' services, unused applications and so forth, until i turn off half of Windows that is.

On a different note, Tote (and anyone else really) if you want a small boost to your game FPS then kill off explorer.exe (The windows UI) and load your games through the Task Manager. I usually get 2-3fps more on average

[Rowain]

20-30 Mb being the difference between Mac OS and Win XP memory usage. I assume even the Mac OS needs some memory. I might be underestimating the Mac programmers' godly tricks
A "virgin" XP needs about 50 Mb memory. Do not let sum memory allocation confuse you, XP uses a flexible memory cache of read HDD contents (right now it is 150 Mb on my 1Gb machine with only IE running). As the memory requirements grow, it downsizes it.