StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty GPU & CPU Performance

I don't get how RTS games are fun, or even a game? You sit there
clicking minerals, gas, wait, build stuff, wait, get soldiers, wait, click units that
attack and then stop for no reason and you have to re-box them and click again.
Send all your soldiers to watch them attack the enemy, repeat. It is
more like a JOB of management, a chore, not a fun game. I have never
enjoyed an RTS, but am a big fan of FPS and even action type RPG's like
Gothic, Zelda. StarCraft is not Game of the Year, maybe battle simulator
of the year. Bring on Gears of War 3 and Rage, those are going to be
fun games. I played a friends Starcraft II for a while and other than the cutscenes,
it is the same 10 year old micro management chore, not a GAME. I suppose to
some people if you took a RPG game and got rid of the part that you actually have
fun with, like controlling your character and fighting the monsters, so that all the game
would have is the tedious part of picking armor, spells, weapons, assigning hit points, etc.
that would be FUN? I doubt it. Have fun guys in your click a million things, scroll around a map, click a million things, then watch a 10 yr old top down icons beat each other up. At least Diablo was FUN because you controlled one character, yourself and did not have to waste 99.99% of your game playing time issuing clicks and orders! I guess it takes a special kind of masochist who likes to do RTS, because you certainly don't play them for fun.

same here... got a Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz coupled with a 512MB 4870 and i get 40+ fps. something tells me it's not the processor itself but perhaps the motherboard it was used with. i've been running the game 1080p maxed (v-sync enabled) without a single hiccup and no video issues at all.

Yes but are you playing a 4v4 map with 4 humans and 4 AI?

I am just playing the campaign with Q9550 at 3.6ghz, mem 1066mhz, and GTX 285 at 1920x1080 with 4x antialias and pegged at 60 fps all the time (50-80) without vsync. Obviously my bus and memory are supplying a lot more bandwith than a normal socket 775 quad, but I get the same framerates on this game as well as Crysis and every other game vs an I5,7,9. I just don't see more than a 2 fps benefit of an I processor over mine, or even much of a difference of a gtx 460-480 over a gtx 285 on THIS game.

^

Well you don't see a diffrence in fps from a 5850 up to 480gtx in this game @ 2560x1600 b/c the game is still CPU limited for some reason.

It also only support 2x cores atm so the caches, clocks and inherent architecture of the cpus will have almost all effect on performance once you roll with a card equal or faster then a 5850 @ 280 dollars.


The most interesting point is how much of an effect does the quite large L2 cache on the intel Q9xxx series have on the performance.

Having people say they run the game maxed at 60 fps even if the review says other is really a no point since the circumstances are not the same.

I'm running this game on:
Q9450@3.8 ghz
4870x2 ( ai disabled 0x aa 0x af from CCC) - OCed to 800/1000 atm using 10.8 betas
950 mhz mem @ 4-4-4-12

1920x1200 @ dx9
Everything set to ultra

And I get like 30-55 fps mostly in the 45s during the campaign.

Not impressive at all if you ask me, I run World In Conflict maxed with 4x aa 16x af dx10 at 60 fps all the time and only dips down to low 50s during nukes.

Would be awesome if Steve could include the intel Q9xxx series in his cpu benchmark to see how much behind the i7s they are and if it would be worth an upgrade.

I am just playing the campaign with Q9550 at 3.6ghz, mem 1066mhz, and GTX 285 at 1920x1080 with 4x antialias and pegged at 60 fps all the time (50-80) without vsync. Obviously my bus and memory are supplying a lot more bandwith than a normal socket 775 quad, but I get the same framerates on this game as well as Crysis and every other game vs an I5,7,9. I just don't see more than a 2 fps benefit of an I processor over mine, or even much of a difference of a gtx 460-480 over a gtx 285 on THIS game.

UPDATE: I just played the gem mission where you defend till you die, with about 200 icons on the screen at once, and my might above machine did hit 18 FPS, still playable, but with a TON of units eventually the FPS does drop from the more constant 45-70 FPS, but very rarely.

Start playing with friends online in 3v3 and 4v4 matches and you will find out that it’s not very rare at all. We were not interested in campaign performance as this is not a very demanding aspect of the game and most will buy StarCraft II predominantly to play multiplayer online.

Basically everyone who has come into this thread claiming excellent performance using ultra settings on old hardware failed to read how we tested the game. If we wanted to show a GeForce 9600 GT doing well we would have tested a 1v1 match or the single player campaign. Unfortunately those results would have done the reader no good once they decide to really get into the game and play some fun 3v3 or 4v4 matches. Even 2v2 matches are considerably more demanding than what most of you guys are testing with.

16:10's the closest to the golden ratio.. Your 16:9 blows.

Although this is completely off topic and you have conducted yourself much as a 12 year old would, I think the first guest has a point. In my opinion 16:10 is much better for use as a computer screen, I much prefer it for viewing web sites, viewing e-mails and writing documents. However for watching Blu-ray movies 16:9 is arguably better and that is why I watch movies on a TV and use a computer screen for my computer.

Having said that I am aware many people prefer 16:10 for watching movies as the subtitles are placed in the black bar at the bottom and not over the picture. Really the black bars do not bother me as you are not missing out on any of the picture. Hell on my 1080p TV most movies still have the black lines anyway because they are shot in the 2.39:1 Cinema format.

On a more related topic if you play StarCraft II on a 16:9 screen you are missing out on some of the image and could be placed at a slight disadvantage to those using 16:10 screens.

Fair enough, but you could get A LOT more information on a 30 inch 2560 resolution or whatever. You would see a lot more of the map/units, but they would be tiny. On a 24 inch monitor it is tough to tell a marine from a ECV. Playing it on my 46" Samsung 1080p LCD HDTV is awesome, you can easily tell the difference of every icon. I think scrolling around the map is so annoying, it would be great if we had monitors with the resolution and size to show the whole map without scrolling, but that is a pipe dream, for now 1080p fits the gaming bill best.

Actually no that is incorrect. The field of view is exactly the same at all resolutions. If you play at 1680, 1920 or 2560 you will see exactly the same amount of terrain and units. Blizzard has done this to avoid giving people with more cash for larger resolution screens an advantage over poorer gamers

So the units will only become bigger on larger screens, the ability to see more does not come into it. That said I prefer to play on my Dell 30” opposed to my 50” Samsung as it looks much sharper and in all honesty is just easier to play.

The CPU benchmark doesnt mention anything about how many players or AI players there are.

Im sticking mainly to the singleplayer campaign (as I dont like RTS online play) but my Q6600 @ 2.4ghz and GTX 260 handles this game fine at 1920x1080 Ultra settings - a steady 50fps+

so painting a picture of a crippling 25fps isnt accurate.

Hey Steve, is there any chance of you giving this test ago on a E8400 massivly OCed vs stock and a Q9xxx 12mb cache one also massivly OCed vs stock? (Obviously OC both the dual and quad to same speeds so we can get a linear comparision where cache is the main diffrence, obviously the quads 2 'idle' cores will pick up the OS n whatnot but w/e :d )

Would be quite interesting to see how much the actual cache plays in here vs the I7s HT and other architectural diffrencies!

Would it be too much work x<?

Thanks it's very useful info about Starcraft.

Do you feel better now, did you have an abusive relationship with an RTS in the past. Take your useless trolling comments somewhere else...

Thanks Steve for the completely depressing dose of reality (i.e., abysmal fps on ultra settings due to CPU limitation). I just finished putting together a budget gaming system, kind of an oxymoron i know, for roughly $500 (Win 7 32-bit, 2gb ddr3 1333, GTX 460 768, AMD Athlon II X3 440 Rana 3.0GHz). I'm getting the card in today was previously playing on low settings with a HD 4250 IGP.

I probably will never play the single player campaign (never did on WC3 and i've been playing the game online for 7 yrs); I'm 100% online playing 3v3+ for the most part so I will likely run into similar CPU taxing scenarios. Was quite stoked by the middle of the article, especially when you said the GTX 460 was the perfect card for the game..and the CPU test (im not even on the list..sob)

This review would have been extremely helpful a few weeks ago considering i built my system specifically to play one game (this game). I'm sure others will find it very practical, given the same requirements (3v3+ on battlenet).

I have a question for you, understanding i've been out of gaming for a while, is there any chance in your opinion that this situation is going to improve any?

A side note i've read on other forums that taking off/lowering CPU dependent graphics features like "reflections" (even states in game that is CPU dependent) can make a notable difference on FPS. If someone could test this out quantitatively that would be great.

Great review/article Steve

I'm the same. Running Q8200 @2333mhz with a GeForce GT 240 on XP. Played on medium settings for about an hour then non-stop crashing... lowest settings on card and in game to no effect. Latest drivers, shutdown all background programs and still wouldn't stop.

Can't figure out if it's the combo of Q8200 and the GT240 not being enough or something else... can't figure it out...

Well problem solved. Recommended settings with Gt240 (all latest drivers) were medium but I had to try Low and all card options on minimum, as well as limited start-up only which still resulted in constant crashes. Installed an ATI 5850 GDDR5 1GB with 10.7 catalyst drivers last night and voila: all on recommended ultra settings and no crashing even with background programs running... all I wanted was to be able to play the game and now I can on Ultra settings... no doubt CPU performance will come into greater play with more complicated multi-player but right now i'm playing the sh%t out of the single player and no problems... I think you can perhaps get away with other minimum requirements but the video card still must be seen as the great impediment vis a vis crashing.

What kind of resolution are you running first ?