OpenGL components missing from Intel 10.4.7 delta upgrade

I didn't even know about this until I happened to be browsing the Mac tech support forums on the Blizzard World of Warcraft site the day after Mac OS X 10.4.7 came out. Apparently, if you own a Intel Mac (I own a MacBook Pro) and do a typical Software Update from 10.4.6 to 10.4.7 some improved OpenGL components will be missing. The delta upgrade is approximate 133 MB and everything else seems to work fine otherwise. Blizzard (and Apple) recommends that Intel Mac users download the combo 10.4.7 upgrade from Apple's site and install that (for 10.4.6 users and those who did a delta upgrade to 10.4.7). How big of a deal is this? Blizzard mentioned in its forums that it has been tuning performance for Macs and was making some OpenGL enhancements in conjunction with Apple. To verify that these upgrades are working and that you have the latest OpenGL components, run World of Warcraft in Windowed mode and open your Console.log. You should see some strange entries which relate to graphics similar to this:


CGxVboBroker5 activated for GL_ARRAY_BUFFER_ARB, size 2097152 for buffer slot
0, hints = 0x03

CGxVboBroker5 activated for GL_ARRAY_BUFFER_ARB, size 2097152 for buffer slot
1, hints = 0x03

…and if those do not show then you may have to download the 10.4.7 combo upgrade. I can tell you that these new OpenGL improvements bring astounding performance. I can run WOW at 1680×1050, 2x 24-bit multisampling, full screen glow, terrain distance maxed, 50% anisotrophic filtering, trilinear filtering on, and practically every other setting maxed. Best of all, I get about 30 fps all the while, even on raid runs in Zul'Gurub! Of course, it doesn't hurt that this MacBook Pro has a 256 MB ATI Mobility X1600 onboard.


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