Guild Wars 2

Most of the time, I can only play on 1680×1050 with low-medium settings with a FPS of 18-25. But then, there are times in which I can play on 2880×1800 with all high settings and can have FPS from 20-30. I would love to be able to play at high resolutions with high settings all the time, but unfortunately those times are more rare than common. Any ideas as to why this is? I understand that the Mac client is a Cider wrap and that could be the reason, but I haven’t heard anything definitive yet. Any help would be much appreciated!

Did you recognize the framerate in areas populated by many players, i.e. Lions Arch, is significantly lower than the framerate in areas where you are alone, i.e. your personal story instances?
I’m on a Mid-2012 MBA with an Intel HD4000 and moving around in Lions Arch is a slideshow on lowest settings while other things work almost fine.

Playing the game at 2880×1800 resolution at max quality settings is very demanding, even from a high-end Computer (which a MacBook Pro isn’t). That’s not even a problem of the Cider port, you just don’t have the hardware for it.

Magoo, it typically hasn’t been area specific. I’ve been able to see great results in all areas, or lower results in all areas, which is why I’m confused.

Naqaj, I do have the hardware for it, as I have been able to run smoothly at 2880×1800 more than once, again which is why I don’t know what the issue is.

I have also considered maybe the internet connection is the reason, but I have had differing FPS even on the same internet connection, which is strong.

Haha, sorry you really don’t have the hardware for it xD.
The system is already hogging resources from your graphics card to be able to push out at such a high native resolution, adding trying to play a game inside a cider wrapper just isn’t going to get you anywhere when the game itself is so GPU and CPU intensive.

Mac’s are not gaming machines, so sure you have a decent amount of RAM and your graphics card and processor are absolutely wonderful for running things like Final Cut Pro and Photoshop – but gaming, not so much.

Consider that your machine has relatively similar specs to a regular Macbook Pro, but with a much higher resolution – your performance is going to be worse than anyone with a 15" MBP, but thats the price you pay for a more portable machine.

18-25 FPS is relatively standard for GW2 on a mac. With all of the settings on High thats what I get, with settings on medium I get around 25-35, if I turn everything down to low (except with Sampling on Native) then it’s around 60FPS.

Dapper, your internet connection is of no relevance to your framerate, you can safely rule that one out.
And to clarify, this is not an issue about Mac vs. PC, it’s about trying to run a game at a very high resolution with laptop hardware that doesn’t have enough power to do so. That’s true for any laptop, not just MacBooks. The thing with GW2 is, not even even with high-end desktop hardware could you get a stable 60fps at that resolution with high settings.
Yes, you can sometimes get a stable framerate. When you’re standing still, not moving the camera a lot, and don’t have much else going on around you. That’s not the situation you want to benchmark against.

If a stable, high framerate is important to you, your best option is to run the game at a lower resolution via bootcamped Windows.

You are probably having the same problem I was having in Diablo. You need to do a SMC reset: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

That fixed my problem and now I get consistent frame rates.

So just for you, I ran Guild Wars 2 on my Macbook Pro 15" Retina at max settings (Literally everything set on the highest setting at native 2880 × 1800 resolution) on both OSX Mountain Lion and on Windows 7 using boot camp.

The results:
OSX Mountain Lion
FPS: 2-7 (Tested in Lion’s Arch next to the Armor Smith)
FPS (using auto detect): 20-24

Windows 7
FPS: 10-14 (Tested in the exact location. Literally logged out and back in after the first test.)
FPS (using auto detect): 19-25 (tested near the mystic forge with playing jumping all around me because my guildies are a bunch of nuts)

So all and all, the winner hands down is Windows! Yes everyone has made great points about hardware. What people are missing is that nvidia updates drivers on the PC side on a very regular basis increasing performance and decreasing power consumption where as Apple, they hardly update anything ever (speaking hardware.)

Also, the Mac Guildwars launcher is still in Beta and doesn’t have all the kinks worked out yet. Graphics and FPS can only go up.

On a final note, the auto detect on the Windows side also gives you higher quality for those 19-25 FPS so the game looks much better while playing. With using the auto detect setting from the mac test, you get MUCH higher FPS at the loss of quality.

Either way, make sure you set your Macbook Pro on a table while playing because you’ll cook your nuts off.

Here are my specs:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Apple%26%23174%3B+-+MacBook%26%23174%3B+Pro+with+Retina+Display+-+15.4%22+Display+-+8GB+Memory+-+512GB+Flash+Storage/5430532.p?id=1218646127071&skuId=5430532

Dark,

I just bought a macbook pro (the modle right below yours, you have 512 SSD i have 256 SSD) and a few things I have noticed from when I played on a Windows laptop.

The Apple laptops will NOT play this game the same as a Windows machine, thats just fact right now. You get more hardware for your buck on a Windows machine. For the price of these Retinas you can get a MSI or Sager laptop with a 4 gig Nvidia GTX 680M GPU, 16 gig ram, on and on and on. Those machines will play this at Ultra settings with no issues.

These just do not have the hardware to run it like that. I knew this going in, but I wanted to get away from Windows PC’s.

Im sure the game will run better on Window…….even on a Mac. If you need that extra preformance, load it on Windows.

My experience playing on Mac Beta:

So far I see no difference. I was playing on a 1.5 year old Alienware with a ATI 5870M 1 gig GPU, i7 Q720, 4 gig memory. This apple runs the game MUCH smoother and more stable then my older one (using macbeta). The graphics settings can be set higher on the Mac then my Alienware. My Mac I run it on Medium on most, my PC was all Low.

One note, your Macbook is getting hot because your likely running it with a 60 FPS cap or higher. I set mine to 30 FPS cap and it does not get very hot.

I do play WvWvW and notice a slight drop in WvW but its still playable.

Mcabook Pro> Alienware 1.5 years old

I have found out that doing an SMC reset will often greatly boost your FPS. The other day I was playing WvWvW for the first time in awhile on all max settings, including native resolution, and I was ranging in FPS from 10 to 25 while in a large fight. Not very ideal but it looked so great I actually played for awhile at that. On all max settings, besides reflections and shadows, and with a lower resolution I generally get around 40-50 FPS, except in LA, which can be worse than WvWvW for some reason.

Here you can find out about doing an SMC reset: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display
2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GH
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM