Game DameWoW on my PC is dead. Long live WoW on the Mac!
I solemnly promise unto you, dear Reader, that this will be the last post I make about my WoW graphics problem. I know you all are probably very tired of hearing about it, but I wanted to give the story an ending so we can all get closure and move on from the trauma.
Last night I opened the PC, blew out out all the dust and cleaned everything that looked like it could withstand a Swiffering. I booted it up with the case open and ran some heat tests. With no programs running, the card registered 50 degrees Celsius.
With WoW running in windowed mode (so I could see the heat test), it went up to 60 degrees, with 61 being the max I witnessed while fighting with a lot of mobs on the screen. Although my computer did not lock up, it still offered streaky and patterned graphics problems. See the screenshot here:
Thus, I have officially given up trying to run WoW on the Dell. Perhaps after the next “real” patch (like 2.4 or even WotLK), I’ll try to run it again, just in case Blizzard decides to own up and fix it.
In the meantime, I will be playing WoW on the Mac. The truth is, it’s actually a much better playing experience. The Mac has a Hi-Def screen which just blows my mind. (Did you know that the Naga actually have FACES??) It’s also a 19″ widescreen format which gives me a wider view of the playing field. The only downsides are (1) the hard drive is pretty loud when the graphics engine is under load, and (2) I’m using the Mac keyboard instead of my spiffy gaming keyboard. I will probably switch the keyboard soon, though.
Filed under: Shaman Blog | Tagged: graphics, graphics problem, video cards, world of warcraft, wow
Well now you know never to buy a Dell again, RIGHT?! =)
My son has been having the same issues (that’s how we found your site).
By any chance are you running IE7? We started WoW this morning with a cooled computer and everything was fine until he opened up IE7.
I’ve been in sporadic touch with WoW tech support and am going to suggest this to them.
I’m also going to see if I can roll back to IE6 and see if the problem goes away.
You can see his screenshots and problems he has been having here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4311051195&sid=1
Good luck!!!
Lisa
@Lisa: I will send this to you in email also… No, I do not run IE7, I only use Firefox. I saw your son’s screenshots. He’s got the same kind of streaks I’m seeing, but the image is also quite degraded, which I don’t get. (Like, more holes in the Undead than they really were intended to have.) I don’t lose pixels or parts of the image. Rather, I get additional images or patterned anomalies. Not sure whether that matters overall, but just wanted to point it out. Do you have your browser running in the background? Or do you think the mere fact of having IE7 on your machine is causing the issue?
[...] WoW on my PC is dead. Long live WoW on the Mac! [...]
Hum I’ve decided to buy a mac, however a friend of mine has some graphical issues on the latest version of MacBook, so I researched it everyone told me to ask blizzard, so I did however they told me to look on the technical support ? and as expected they don’t answer, does anyone have a solution for me ?
-Thanks