Hey guys, got a question. So i have a new unibody 17" i7 and I've been playing SC2 lately, and recently, it has begun to get very poor FPS. I have the i7, 8GB ram, 7200rpm drive and the 512 vid card. The game is the only thing running, its on 10.6.5. It's plugged into the wall. I have all settings on low, and resolution on the (1600x1080) i believe. Something like that. Basically ill be playing, and it doesn't matter whether there is nothing on the screen, or 100 units fighting. It seems to be random and it will play perfect for 10 seconds or so, then just freeze for like half a second, play for 10 seconds and it freezes again for half a second. Restarting the Comp tends to help temporarily but it always comes back. Also, the hotter the comp is tends to make it freeze more often too. I have fiber optic internet at my house with 25mbps, so we can rule out the internet. Also, I have a Apple Time Capsule, newest one running a wireless N network. I believe I included everything. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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17" MBP i7 laggin in Starcraft 2. On low settings.
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It sounds like there a few things that can be causing this, but first address the heat, because it can cause a system to lock up.
By default, Apple leaves the fan(s) rpm too low, and this causes their consumer system to run WAY too hot. My Unibody 17" was idling at a a ridiculously high temp of 60c -- and this was in an air condition room. My i7 920 PC clocked at 4.1 GHz gets about that hot under full load.
If your MBPro is idling in the sixties, under load it could be reaching temps that can damage your CPU and cause other problems. Heat kills components.
Download and Install "Fan Control" and set its Base Speed RPM to about 2500 rpm. The fan won't be that much louder and it will greatly help will the reliability and longevity of your portable.
Keep the Lower threshold at 40c and the upper at the default of 80c.
Also invest in a notebook cooler to set under your MBPro when gaming. They do make a difference.
And lastly, I noticed a direct correlation to how hot my MacBook Pro got and how hot the AC adapter was getting and by cooling the external power adapter, it made a difference with my portable's heat.
If the heat is truly under control and you're still having problems, check your memory.
If there's a bad region that's only being addressed, it can cause your system to lockup -- but generally bad memory will crash a Mac completely. Run an extensive memory test on your system using Apple's hardware tester -- sorry, I forget its name.
Anyways, jus to reiterate, heat bad and Apple's comps never adequately cool themselves by default.
By default, Apple leaves the fan(s) rpm too low, and this causes their consumer system to run WAY too hot. My Unibody 17" was idling at a a ridiculously high temp of 60c -- and this was in an air condition room. My i7 920 PC clocked at 4.1 GHz gets about that hot under full load.
If your MBPro is idling in the sixties, under load it could be reaching temps that can damage your CPU and cause other problems. Heat kills components.
Download and Install "Fan Control" and set its Base Speed RPM to about 2500 rpm. The fan won't be that much louder and it will greatly help will the reliability and longevity of your portable.
Keep the Lower threshold at 40c and the upper at the default of 80c.
Also invest in a notebook cooler to set under your MBPro when gaming. They do make a difference.
And lastly, I noticed a direct correlation to how hot my MacBook Pro got and how hot the AC adapter was getting and by cooling the external power adapter, it made a difference with my portable's heat.
If the heat is truly under control and you're still having problems, check your memory.
If there's a bad region that's only being addressed, it can cause your system to lockup -- but generally bad memory will crash a Mac completely. Run an extensive memory test on your system using Apple's hardware tester -- sorry, I forget its name.
Anyways, jus to reiterate, heat bad and Apple's comps never adequately cool themselves by default.
Awesome. I greatly appreciate your help. I have a friend who works at Apple and is a "Genius" so I'm going to bring it in to him and have him run all the diagnostics he can. Also, Im going to try and reinstall the game on a new user to attempt to eliminate any issues with software. I have already done a Erase and install though so I do not know how much good this will do. Lastly, I do agree with what your saying about heat, however my problem is that Apple's absolute top pro level portable computer, should be able to run SC2 on low settings. Especially when people all over the web are saying they can run it on a 13" MBP on low/medium settings. I'm going to get all the diagnostics run on tuesday so I'll make sure to repost what the results are from the diagnostics. O, and I just talked to him and he said he's going to run a very extensive hardware test, as well as disk warrior on the drive. We shall see what happens. Again, thanks for the response.