When Gigabyte suggested that we review the performance of StarCraft II on an all-Gigabyte graphics card lineup, we were delighted. We wanted an excuse to revisit the game, even though we had performed a thorough performance analysis of the StarCraft II beta a few months ago.
While the game engine hasn’t changed much between our beta review and the final release, we weren’t especially satisfied with the benchmarking method we were forced to use at the time. This is because the only consistent way to benchmark the beta was by playing back a saved game. This involved watching a movie of game play that had previously occurred. While this test did stress the graphics engine, it wasn’t ideal for measuring real-world performance. In an actual game play scenario, the system is forced to calculate variables in real-time. Playing back a saved game with a predetermined outcome doesn't generate the exact same processing load.

The release of the full title allows us to create a more realistic simulation. The bundled StarCraft II Map Editor gives us the ability to build a map pre-populated with multiple simultaneous battles involving all three StarCraft races at the same time. Now that the computer has to perform all of the necessary AI calculations, instead of simply playing back a movie with a predetermined outcome, we have the opportunity to perform a worst-case scenario stress test of the game’s ability to push PC hardware to its limit.
In addition, AMD released the Catalyst 10.7 beta driver that supports anti-aliasing in StarCraft II, so we can see how Radeon and GeForce cards compare with this graphical enhancement enabled. Of course, between then and now, AMD made its Catalyst 10.8 package available as well, wrapping in the improvements introduced in the hotfix driver.
With all of these considerations in mind, it's a good time to revisit StarCraft II, post-release. Let’s start by looking at the hardware we're using to benchmark this game.
- Our Second Round With StarCraft II
- Test Hardware: Graphics Cards And Platform
- Test Methodology
- Test System And Settings
- Benchmarks Results: Medium Quality
- Benchmarks Results: Ultra Quality
- Benchmarks Results: Ultra Quality, 4x AA
- Benchmark Results: CPU Performance
- Conclusion: StarCraft II Can Put Your PC To The Test
1. While the benchmark the author kindly put a lot of effort to make is nice, I believe it's much worse than the worst case scenario for most ppl, most people play online against human opponents or play against the AI in the single player campaign or to get some training before diving into multiplayer. IMHO it should have tuned down a little or the GPU/CPU recommendation should be stated with less certainty. Readers should put that well in mind.
2. ATI released CCC10.9 after the article was written and it is said to improve the performance while AA is on, but I really have to test this to confirm. If anyone tested the new driver please share the results!
3. For those whiners about not including their hardware in the piece: STOP! It is near impossible to include all the hardware out there, besides I always noticed that Don is somehow limited on the hardware side, so he only used what cards Gigabyte offered, and that was clearly stated in the article. As for the CPUs he did a comparison of 1, 2, 3 and 4 phenom 2 cores, so this should give you a good idea how the game scales with CPU cores and it is obviously not threaded well enough to make use of Phenom II x6 6 cores.
Feel free to thumb me down!
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I wish the i5 750 was included as a comparison.
Hence why I regret my ATI purchase.
It's good hardware but the constant driver issues & benchmarks such as these make you think twice.
Still relevant!
Of course this is just personal exp.
Some games will run better with nv, and some better with ati.. Don't really care as long as I can play it smoothly. And usually 1-5 fps don't determine that.
Yep it worked flawlessly on my 5770 1GB + Athlon II X3 435...
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What driver issues you are talking about? I had none. If you don't care about power consumption, temps and noise then perhaps you should consider Germi.