Starcraft II FPS

[whooleo]

Would Starcraft 2 be more CPU limited or GPU limited on my rig with full settings? And what FPS do you guys get in starcraft 2 (post your rig too).

EDIT: By full settings I mean all settings on ultra/highest at 1080p. Right now i get max 70 fps, 40-50 avg, and min 20's.

 

[Chainzsaw]

I would say both. But more so GPU for you than CPU. Starcraft 2 is quite a CPU and GPU hog, especially in larger games with lots of units.

Also what do you mean by full settings and at what resolution? I highly doubt you could run SC2 on "ULTRA" which is the highest texture setting as well as a few others.

I have a core i7m 1.6Ghz 8GB ram SSD and a radeon 5870m 1GB. It runs SC2 at about 50-60FPS on medium quality at 1920x1080P (most everything set to medium). It's a laptop btw.

Once tons of units are on screen sometimes i get as low as 10FPS or even lower.

Also SC2 use's quite a bit of ram as well, i've seen RAM usage go above 2GB for SC2, possibly even more. You may want to upgrade your RAM.

But your main weak link is your Graphics card. Not so much your CPU since you have a high clock rate, but your CPU is a tad on the weak side as well.

 

[simon12]

I never paid any attention to my frame rates but read this http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/starcraft-ii-radeon-geforce,2728.html from it I think what you are getting is about right and also I think if you upgraded the CPU or GPU the other would hold it back. I think you should wait to upgrade your whole PC (CPU, GPU, Board and RAM anyway) at once.

 

[samuelspark]

With Q6600 Quad, at 2.5 ghz and gt240, I get around 20-30 fps at everything maxed. At full HD.

 

[calinkula]

An E8200 @ 3.6, 4GB RAM and GTX 460 1GB @ 826 core running a 2048 x1152 res(oddball samsung lcd) with everything maxed will pull 100+ at start of a game, avg 70-40 (depends on number of units) and go down to 10 or so if 8 players in a 4v4 with 200 food armies collide.

A fast quad would stabilize my frames more, but it runs really good for the most part. Usually never negatively effects a match.

 

[Herr_Koos]

Would Starcraft 2 be more CPU limited or GPU limited on my rig with full settings? And what FPS do you guys get in starcraft 2 (post your rig too).

EDIT: By full settings I mean all settings on ultra/highest at 1080p. Right now i get max 70 fps, 40-50 avg, and min 20's.

I play at 1680x1050 with everything turned on, except that I manually tweak the physics and shadows down a bit to save the CPU. I also cap the fps at 30 which makes the overall experience a little smoother for me. Having a quad-core CPU does help a bit, and going from 2GB to 4GB RAM made a huge difference.

I recommend you turn AA off if you haven't done so, it really helped my frame rates and doesn't make much of a visual difference imho.

 

[jjb8675309]

personally Id say more CPU limited, the game seems to be a CPU hog and also a ram hog, Ive actually once seen the memory utilization go over 3.0GB and Ive never seen that in any other game I own so I definitely think upgrading from 2 to 4 gigs (like already said) will benefit you, and I agree with Herr_Koos in turning the AA off, it does kill performance on lower/mid systems.

But honestly (when considering that game only), If you were to upgrade... the first thing would probably be the Ram, CPU, and then GPU in that order... having the Quad should at least bring your minimums up a good bit and moreover it will make your system overall a bit snappier.

I also run SC2 on my rig in my sig below and I actually installed the game on my SSD so loading and the overall experience of the game is excellent, so maybe drop in a 955, give it an oc and see if at that point you need more of a graphics subsystem...

 

[jjb8675309]

I play at 1680x1050 with everything turned on, except that I manually tweak the physics and shadows down a bit to save the CPU. I also cap the fps at 30 which makes the overall experience a little smoother for me. Having a quad-core CPU does help a bit, and going from 2GB to 4GB RAM made a huge difference.

I recommend you turn AA off if you haven't done so, it really helped my frame rates and doesn't make much of a visual difference imho.

BTW, You have a nice semi-older rig in your sig! You are likely getting some good mileage from some of the older hardware, which is smart... these are all great suggestions as well. It also goes to show that you do not need a monster gpu to run the game at higher than satisfactory settings for most people

My question is can I play SC2 on my Dell D630 on Ultra low settings with an intel GMA X3100 and a t7500, ...........I doubt it but Im still curious to try since I need a game to play when I'm bored at work :lol:

 

[Herr_Koos]

BTW, You have a nice semi-older rig in your sig! You are likely getting some good mileage from some of the older hardware, which is smart... these are all great suggestions as well. It also goes to show that you do not need a monster gpu to run the game at higher than satisfactory settings for most people

My question is can I play SC2 on my Dell D630 on Ultra low settings with an intel GMA X3100 and a t7500, ...........I doubt it but Im still curious to try since I need a game to play when I'm bored at work :lol:

Jip, it's still soldiering on faithfully after 4+ years. Since I built it I've added RAM and swapped out GPU and CPU, and so far I'm very happy with the result.

By the way, I very much doubt SC2 will be playable on the older Intel IGP's.

 

[whooleo]

Why didn't blizzard take advantage of quad core CPUs? Their engines never seem to be that efficient.

 

[Herr_Koos]

Why didn't blizzard take advantage of quad core CPUs? Their engines never seem to be that efficient.

The last time they released a new game before SC2, there barely were any quad-core CPU's...

Having played the game and kept an eye on my CPU graphs, I tend to think that additional cores do help, even though the game doesn't scale upwards in fps as you go beyond two cores. The main benefit is that having the extra cores takes care of all your Windows background tasks, and thus they don't impact the game's performance.