StarCraft II beta tested, easy on PC hardware

[Julio Franco]

It's hard to overstate how popular StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty already is among PC gamers, with keys to enter the closed beta that launched last week already fetching a price on eBay.

Blizzard had disclosed fairly relaxed minimum hardware requirements for the game's beta, but as you should know these hardly dictate what you are truly going to need to enjoy the game, let alone run it on all its visual glory. With most high profile PC games released in the last year or so remaining more hardware friendly than usual -- let's call it the Crysis effect -- we had no reason to believe Blizzard would choose a different route for StarCraft II considering its massive appeal. But even then the preliminary results look strikingly positive for the PC crowd on a budget. Our friends at Legion Hardware took the beta code for a spin and tested a wide range of GPU configurations to see how older and newer generation graphics boards performed in this upcoming RTS sequel.

At a less than modest 1920x1200 resolution with all graphics settings maxed out (no AA/AF in the beta) they found most current generation cards performing up to the task. In fact, pick any of the GPUs we featured in our recent tech tip where we listed the best budget to mid-range graphics cards currently available and you will see that a balanced card like the ATI Radeon HD 5750 achieved a noteworthy 59fps average at this resolution, while the sub-$100 GeForce GT 240 scored a very decent 44fps. Faster cards blazed through the tests, at 2560x1600 for example, a Radeon HD 5770 seems to be sufficient to draw the necessary frames per second for a smooth gameplay experience.

Another test that looks at CPU scaling shows that performance on StarCraft II does rely more heavily on the processor than your average gaming title. You can check the complete 1920x1200 GPU results after the jump, or read the complete article at LH.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/37969-starcraft-ii-beta-tested-easy-on-pc-hardware.html

 

[Mycologist]

Hmm, looks like I may not be needing to stump up the wonga for a new HD5800 series. If it runs at 50fps average on a HD4850, that's pretty good; considering how seriously tasty the new graphics look.

 

[spydercanopus]

Is being picked for betas like winning the lottery? I sign up for tons of them, but never get a response... ;(

 

[thebluemeaner]

It appears the game is more cpu dependant, you need at least a dual core for this.

 

[LGraves]

Blizzard beta seem impossible to get in on! I used to play Startcraft 1 on the worst system ever and it ran pretty smoothly. I can't wait to see SC2 on my new monitor.

 

[Viandroto]

I was kind of upset to not see I didn't get into the first wave of beta testing... And now I didn't get into the FFXIV beta testing... It seems I'm stuck playing WCIII a little while longer.

I suppose that's alright, because it looks like I'm gonna need to get a job and upgrade my system as my graphics card is a Radeon HD3870... My CPU is a dual-core 2.80GHz AMD Athlon... So I might still be good with that, yeah?

 

[Guest]

Any Dual Core beyond 2Ghz should do the trick.. and any good/decent G-card will run it at about 30-50 fps.. just be sure to have fast ram eg: 800mhz or better FSB and a card beyond a Go 6600 or a radeon 9800 pro.. ok?