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Starcraft 2 Pentium 4 successful player out there ?

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Hi there,

I am not a regular gamers but since Starcraft 2 is something I have been hoping to play, I would like to know has anyone out there has able to play with a lower spec PC and if yes what is the maximum setup of the Video setting you are putting ?

I'm asking this because if somebody can play with a lower spec of PC and upgraded video card, then I will proceed to buy the new graphic card this weekend. My PC spec is:



Pentium 4 Hyper Threading 3.4GHz 2MB L2 Cache
1 GB DDR2 RAM


I know that this spec is below the recommended spec in theory but I wish to know in real life anybody out there with a similar spec can run SC2 with a 1GB DDR2 128bit PCIe graphic card ? And if you do what is the spec you put ? Low/Medium/High/Ultra ?

If someone with a P4 can play by just upgrading to 1GB DDR2 128bit PCIe card, then I will proceed to buy it :)  I'm looking a Nvidia card with the budget less than USD 100. I prefer Nvidia because I have another boot with linux to run, since Nvidia support in linux is better.

So my questions will be:
i) P4,1GB RAM, 1GB DDR2 128bit PCIe graphic card can play SC2 ?
ii) if yes, what spec maximum you can run ?
iii) what nvidia 1GB DDR2 128bit PCIe could be recommended with less than $100 ?

Thanks to all the successful running SC2 friends out there :) 

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Here are the specs straight from Blizzards website:
Quote:
PC Requirements
PC Minimum System Requirements*:

Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 (Updated with the latest Service Packs) with DirectX® 9.0c
2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD Athlon® processor
128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better
12 GB available HD space
1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users)
DVD-ROM drive
Broadband Internet connection
1024X720 minimum display resolution
PC Recommended Specifications:

Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
2 GB RAM
512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
*Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.


According to the minimum, it would run, but I would imagine on a super low resolution and a mediocre framerate. As far as a nice card under 100$ goes I found this nVidia GT 240 here 74.99$ (49.99$ after rebate) -- Anyhow, here is a video of what Starcraft 2 should look like with the specs you have currently http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tWI42LoRFE
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Something you should be aware of
Quote:
'Anyone else have StarCraft II try to melt their hardware? Blizzard admits that it's a known issue and has a fix for you.

Apparently, the game's menu screens aren't framerate-limited. This means that when there's nothing else going on, your graphics hardware renders the bejeezus out of those screens, causing nasty overheating problems. The fix is easy, requiring players to add the following lines to your "Documents\StarCraft II Beta\variables.txt" "Documents\StarCraft II\variables.txt" file (nice catch, commenter LegolElf):

frameratecapglue=30
frameratecap=60

Good to know. Personally I would have appreciated a heads-up before my video card fried, but maybe this can save someone else from the hassle I've been dealing with since yesterday afternoon.




http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/07/28/blizz...

Helltech said:
YOu can run it, here is a graphics card for you...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

With the rebate thats a pretty good deal.

If you could spring for this...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

It would be heavily bottlenecked by your CPU though.



hi there,

Thanks for the kind reply :)  I'm looking at that card as well, GT240, and I'm comparing it with 9800 GT. This is the cards I'm considering:

gigabyte 9800GT 512MB 256bit DDR3
gigabyte GT240 512MB 128bit DDR5
gigabyte GT240 1GB 128bit DDR5

I heard from another thread having people saying that a 1GB card is only good for a big monitor and doesn't give much difference in case of the graphic performance on a decent 19" monitor (that is what I'm using), is that true ?

So if comparing a 256bit DDR3 card like 9800GT and a 128bit DDR5 card like GT240, which one will bring a good result ?

Here is what I got from gigabyte site:

GT240
Core Clock 550 MHz
Shader Clock 1340 MHz
Memory Clock 3400 MHz
Memory Type GDDR5

9800GT
Core Clock 550 MHz
Shader Clock 1375 MHz
Memory Clock 1800 MHz
Memory Type GDDR3
Graphics card Master

It doesn't make as much difference with a small monitor, no, but there is a slight difference.

The 9800GT 1GB is better then the 9800GT 512MB which is better then GT 240 1GB which is better then the GT 240 512MB.

Helltech said:
It doesn't make as much difference with a small monitor, no, but there is a slight difference.

The 9800GT 1GB is better then the 9800GT 512MB which is better then GT 240 1GB which is better then the GT 240 512MB.


Hi,

Thanks a lot for the prompt reply.

I notice a lot of people mentioning here that 9800GT is a very good card, even the new GT240 can't beat them. I think from the chart comparing result from many site no doubt it is. But if we read from their spec, why is a 9800GT GDDR3 Memory Clock with 1800MHz will out perform a GT240 GDDR5 Memory Clock with 3400MHz, providing their Core Clock and Shader Clock is almost the same ? I'm quite interested to know this but I have dig into this forum but can't find any explanation on this, so would be glad if any graphic card master can shed me some light, very appreciated !!
Graphics card Master

sylye said:
Hi,

Thanks a lot for the prompt reply.

I notice a lot of people mentioning here that 9800GT is a very good card, even the new GT240 can't beat them. I think from the chart comparing result from many site no doubt it is. But if we read from their spec, why is a 9800GT GDDR3 Memory Clock with 1800MHz will out perform a GT240 GDDR5 Memory Clock with 3400MHz, providing their Core Clock and Shader Clock is almost the same ? I'm quite interested to know this but I have dig into this forum but can't find any explanation on this, so would be glad if any graphic card master can shed me some light, very appreciated !!

Now go and look up "Shader Processor" or "CUDA Core" and then look at how many each of those cards have and you might begin to understand what makes one Nvidia card faster than another despite having slower clock speeds.

Mousemonkey said:
Now go and look up "Shader Processor" or "CUDA Core" and then look at how many each of those cards have and you might begin to understand what makes one Nvidia card faster than another despite having slower clock speeds.


Hi there,

Thanks for the input :) 

I have checked the wikipedia and found out something interesting and not sure that is what you're asking me to search for, so just elaborate a bit what I found:

Features A = Unified Shaders (Vertex shader / Geometry shader / Pixel shader) : Texture mapping unit : Render Output unit
Features B = GFLOPs

Model========Features A =========Features B
9800 GT =======112:56:16======== 504
9600GT========64:32:16======== 312
GT240 ======== 96:32:8 ======== 385.9
GT220 ======== 48:16:8 ======== 192
HD4670 ======== 320:32:8========480

So, is it the Unified Shader reading and GFLOPs that makes 9800GT a relatively better card than GT240,GT220 ? And is it why ATI HD4670 is a card worth more than GT240 and GT220 ?

Reference nvidia:
Reference ATI:

Best solution

Graphics card Master

sylye said:
So, is it the Unified Shader reading and GFLOPs that makes 9800GT a relatively better card than GT240,GT220 ?

Yes.
sylye said:
And is it why ATI HD4670 is a card worth more than GT240 and GT220 ?

Again, yes. But you also have to remember that ATi's shader cores and Nvidias shader cores go about achieving the same thing but each company has a different approach and as such you cannot just compare the core counts of a pair of cards, one from each company, to get any kind of meaningful performance comparison between those two cards.

Thanks mousemonkey, that really helps a lot. And I have now purchased a Gigabyte 9800GT 512 MB DDR3 256bit (rev 2.1) and I able to run the Starcraft2 well with a Pentium 4 Hyper Threading 3.4GHz 2MB L2 Cache, and i upgrade the RAM to 2GB. I also upgrade the power supply to Cooler Master 500W that come with the 6pin connector to generate more power to my card. There is no big interruption to the game experience and i can set the graphic setting to all 'Ultra'. I'm a happy man now :) 

Hello, I am happy to help you.

You have a very similar system it looks now to my friend I built a pc for last night out of spare parts.

We built: Pentium D 950 3.4ghz 4mb cache, 2gb DDR2 @ 667, 9800GT 512MB

We ran starcraft 2 on medium with absolutely NO lag,
and ultra/high with no problems or slow downs untill big battles.

The difference is your system is P4 with only 2mb cache... a Pentium D is 2 pentium 4's put together but is not twice as good, it is an inneficient dual core to todays standards.

I think the holdback here is the processor, and the RAM..

I have the same graphics card in my 3.0ghz core 2 4gb DDR2 @800mhz and I run ultra no problems or slowdowns at all.

I hope I helped, it looks like you got everything good I really enjoy tricking out old systems with cheap parts. Its alot cheaper and you can keep up with modern computing with a 5 year old system upgraded to the fullest with what used to be top-dollar stuff rather than a new system with sub-par cheap parts :) 

I would like to hear, sylye.. what settings are you running the game at? and also, what mhz is your ram ??

Good luck and happy gaming
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