Our good friends over at WoW Insider (disclaimer: I'm a lead over there) have unlocked one of the first secrets about 10.5.2 (which dropped today in Software Update): it'll make World of Warcraft play faster.After hearing that the patch made reader Jason's Mac play faster, WoW Insider's Adam Holisky saw his FPS jump from 30 to 50 on his first-gen Intel iMac (he also has 2gb of RAM, and installed the graphics update with 10.5.2). The picture on the upper right was a test under 10.5.1, and on the lower right was after the update.
Pretty slick. I'd imagine that this would probably affect most 3D games (although who knows how EA's games will work on the Mac at any given moment). The only note that might document this in the update itself is just a "general stability" fix for "third-party applications,' but if you see your 3D go faster after 10.5.2 let us know. Azeroth has never looked so good.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
2-11-2008 @ 9:14PM
Matt Moriarity said...
Is it possible this is a result of the Leopard Graphics Update? New graphics drivers would almost certainly improve FPS
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2-12-2008 @ 10:06AM
YoJIMbo said...
Supposedly, after talking with an Apple Cert Engineer, he said that this version (10.5.2) of the OpenGL drivers are now multi-threaded. This would explain why you get a huge jump in FPS at low-standard settings and then, the more you rely on the graphics card, the less improvement you see (ie anti aliasing turned to max, etc.).
2-11-2008 @ 9:24PM
Frere said...
Very very nice update indeed for wow players.
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2-11-2008 @ 9:25PM
delhokie said...
Window animations and other items which I'm assuming use core animation are now smoother- minimizing windows had a slightly jerky appearance since the Leopard upgrade (intel imac, 2gig ram). Now, much more smooth in all areas after installing the graphics update (10.5.2 by itself did not improve it).
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2-11-2008 @ 9:45PM
moo083 said...
Is that with or without the leopard graphics update?
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2-12-2008 @ 12:57AM
MoonMan said...
I think the part where he writes, "...and installed the graphics update with 10.5.2" might give us a clue to help answer your question.
2-11-2008 @ 9:49PM
Victor Agreda Jr said...
I wonder if the graphic enhancements include the volume overlay not choking every time I invoke. Remember how volume "just worked" back in Panther? It works like a charm on my G3, but my MBP gggets allll stuttterrerr-y when I try to adjust the volume.
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2-12-2008 @ 4:12AM
Martin said...
Volume adjustment works smoother indeed.
2-11-2008 @ 9:49PM
El Cartel said...
THis has nothing to do with this post. But after updating to 10.5.2 isync no longer opens up. Am i doing something wrong.
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2-11-2008 @ 10:16PM
Felix said...
isync works fine for me. Do you have any 3rd party apps installed?
2-11-2008 @ 10:21PM
El Cartel said...
nope everything else is working. I have 3rd party apps that work with two other applications. But everytime i click on isync the icon bounces in the dock and does not open anything up.
2-12-2008 @ 12:54AM
arthurq said...
my isync is broken too.
2-12-2008 @ 4:04AM
mentalsticks said...
I don't use iSync, but I have .mac syncing conflicts in address book and contacts that weren't there before, and I didn't change anything. They're weird errors, too.
2-12-2008 @ 8:36PM
tehdely said...
I have this problem, too. Only iSync is affected, and only if I launch it from the bundle using the Finder or the Dock.
I found that launching the binary (/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/MacOS/iSync) directly from Terminal.app works.
This is bizarre.
2-11-2008 @ 10:16PM
Aichon said...
I seem to recall Blizzard's Mac team making mention of waiting for some graphical fixes to come down the pipe from Apple. I'm wondering if this might be what they were waiting for.
Also, Mike, I was horribly confused one day last week when I looked at my RSS feeds and saw your name next to a TUAW entry (whose feed I only recently subscribed to) instead of a WoWInsider entry. Took me a few minutes to realize it wasn't some sort of a bug attributing the wrong author name to an article.
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2-11-2008 @ 10:25PM
Kevin said...
Well, 10.5.2 has done a number on my MB Pro 17". All I got after the restart was the welcome screen as if it was a new computer. If I go through the steps, it just finishes and goes back to the beginning of the process. Can anyone help?
Thanks...
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2-11-2008 @ 10:34PM
Ervin Lukacs said...
Same thing happened to me :)
Here you go:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306998
2-11-2008 @ 11:11PM
Kevin said...
Thank you, Ervin!
2-11-2008 @ 10:31PM
Jamus said...
I would be happy if it let the video card/cpu not work as hard and not produce as much heat! My MacBook Pro gets hot as Tanarsis in the summer...
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2-11-2008 @ 10:39PM
Trevin Ward said...
"(publish after 8:30pm please)"? What's the deal with that?
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