StarCraft II Revisited: How Much Gaming PC Do You Need?

[matthewmododoc]

"However, StarCraft II is not a twitch game like a first-person shooter, where success depends on precise, split-second aiming."

-wrong

 

[kikireeki]

This review left so much to be desired.
Why there was no Phenom II x6 in CPU benchmark?
Why there was no 5770?
Why there was no decent cards from previous generation?

And what is the deal with ATI and AA? they should have overcome this problem long time ago, but obviously they haven't!

 

[joellim]

want to see benchmark of this on the still popular e8400@4.0+ Ghz. or the still popular q9550@3.8ghz.

currently running E8500@4.4ghz, no lag with 4870X2@19x12

 

[zilnicra]

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]*Looks at 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo and Radeon 4670**Cries*[/citation]

/jeleous
looks at Fx-55 @3.0ghz and 7900gt and cries

 

[dalta centauri]

[citation][nom]scrumworks[/nom]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 Fermi.[/citation]
fix'd
Anyways, I agree with L0tus, the newest driver 10.9 has given me more issues than 10.8
Of course I can go back to 10.8 or .6, but I wish they just released more stable drivers instead of a monthly one that doesn't work any better than the previous without having to wait for the small fix's.

 

[gxpbecker]

Game is running at full settings with 2x if i remember correctly with one or two of the options on Hign instead of Ultra. Plays great like this on this bit older...ish system
this is 1680X1050 though
Phenom x4 940 OC 3.2gig
4gigs DDR2 800
4770 Saphire OC
Dual Raptors Raid 0

^^, though i have been tempted to upgrade the ole card to a 460 1gig

 

[hixbot]

runs fine on P4 2.8ghz with ATI 3850 AGP, 3gb ddr 266.

 

[C00lIT]

It's an exagerated worst case senario benchmark that you will never see in regular ranked games.

Even "Epic Battles" do not compare to some of the custom maps.

In ranked games, a Dual Core Athlon 3800 will do a great job with something like a geforce 8500GT

Hell I played 4v4's on a turion laptop with 8200 graphics and it ran... not that well I admit but still quite playable on low...

In conclusion, ranked games require a half decent dual core with 8500GT and up... Custom games such as Evolves that have unlimited mad units that go kill each other will require that I7 or Fast Phenom CPU.

 

[cknobman]

LOL @ Blizzard coming out with a AAA title and it dosnt even properly support multithreading (more than 2 threads)?

Tisk Tisk Blizzard you can do better than this!!!!!! Quad cores have been around for 4+ years now so you had plenty of time to get the code optimized for more than 2 threads.

 

[avatar_raq]

A very enjoyable article. Few points:
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!

 

[avatar_raq]

Sorry for double posting.
@Don Woligroski:
Can we get your benchmark map? I have the game and I like to bench my hardware.

 

[dark_lord69]

I played through the game on high settings @ 1080 X 1920. Since the actual graphical differences between High and Ultra are slight I didn't mind 1 notch lower for better frame rates (although I never tried the Ultra setting).

FYI, my system
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black @ 3.6GHz
Sapphire HD 4870
37" LCD HDTV used as a monitor @ 1080p

This system made the game an awesome experience and there is so much more I can do within the game. My only hope is that it will be good enough to run Diablo III by the time that game finally comes out.

 

[enzo matrix]

It's nice to see someone finally include good information as to how they actually tested the game.

 

[rwmunchkin12788]

@avatar_raq

Points 2 and 3 are irrefutable. For point number 1, I think that if you want to play SC2 completely smoothly at high settings, those reccomendations can be stated with great certainty.

I was actually really surprised upon reading this article that the lower graphics cards fall off pretty quickly on ultra settings, and just how strong the CPU bottleneck is.

I'm wondering though, I've heard a few places that SC2 had some issues with framerates going out of control and overheating some GPU's. I believe this issue has been fixed, but it may be why we're not seeing any average framerates over ~60.

 

[coldmast]

Thanks GigaByte for providing the parts for this article

 

[hixbot]

I'm not sure why I was voted down. I do play this game on my Pentium 4 2.8ghz with 3gb ddr 266 ram, and a HD3850 AGP.
Minimum requirements are just a P4 2.6ghz with a 9800pro.

I'm stating a fact, not an opinion.

 

[coleipoo]

I don't get why this game is so tough on components, it's not even that pretty.

 

[dalta centauri]

I don't get why this game is so tough on components, it's not even that pretty.

For me, Ultra is not any prettier than High, and even medium looks decent enough to play and enjoy.
Did you think Metro 2033 was pretty? I didn't, but it sure is demanding on the higher settings.

 

[donovands]

i5-750 @ 3.7 Ghz, 2x 5770 1GBs are running all on Ultra fine.

Laptop with P8700, GTX 260M runs smoothly up to High settings, anything higher starts to skip.

 

[mresseguie]

Thank you, Tom's, for this review. I'm curious now how much improvement may be had by running double graphics cards. Too bad that option wasn't included.

 

[ovenbuster]

Would it be possible to get a copy of the custom map so people at home can run the benchmark on their own setups?

 

[coldmast]

Great CPU stress test, definitely shows off what kind of power is required to show-off 4-way AI. I would like to see how the top of the line i7 980 (6 core w/ HT) stacks up, maybe the 1090T as well to see if the two extra cores help it at all.

 

[awaken688]

[citation][nom]coldmast[/nom]Great CPU stress test, definitely shows off what kind of power is required to show-off 4-way AI. I would like to see how the top of the line i7 980 (6 core w/ HT) stacks up, maybe the 1090T as well to see if the two extra cores help it at all.[/citation]

The 2 extra cores aren't going to make much of a difference at all. If going from 3 to 4 made very little difference, going from 4-6 is not going to solve it.

 

[Morgan3rd]

I'm on a 4850 and a 2.2 Allendale core 2 duo (the one with half the cache). And I can run the game fairly smoothly(1080p) with most settings on high and some medium. The only thing that slows it down are crazy custom games (income wars, etc)

 

[oxxfatelostxxo]

This doesnt really make much sense to me... i have to be missing something, My computer using a core 2 duo at 3.5, and a old 8800 ultra, runs this game at 1900x1200, at ultra, and i dont like ever dip below 50fps.

I dont see how i outperform a gtx 470.