StarCraft 2: C2D and 9600M GT vs Core i5 and 330M

[Yixian]

Hey peeps, so SC2 is obviously awesome and I'm considering upgrading to a new MBP if it will gie me much better performance in game.

I'm on a 2.16Ghz C2D with a 9600M GT 256mb at the moment, in game (bootcamping into XP SP3 and overcloking) I am getting I would guess about 25-30fps on a cominbation of high and medium settings, mostly high. I tlooks good but it's not quite as snappy as would be ideal for an RTS and I would really like to get some settings to ultra as the difference between high and ultra looks vast even though high looks pretty sweet anyway.

So will the entry Core i5 MBP with a 330M, overclocking on Windows 7 offer that much of an improvement in performance over my current set up? Or is it not really worth it?

 

[1finite]

Hey peeps, so SC2 is obviously awesome and I'm considering upgrading to a new MBP if it will gie me much better performance in game.

I'm on a 2.16Ghz C2D with a 9600M GT 256mb at the moment, in game (bootcamping into XP SP3 and overcloking) I am getting I would guess about 25-30fps on a cominbation of high and medium settings, mostly high. I tlooks good but it's not quite as snappy as would be ideal for an RTS and I would really like to get some settings to ultra as the difference between high and ultra looks vast even though high looks pretty sweet anyway.

So will the entry Core i5 MBP with a 330M, overclocking on Windows 7 offer that much of an improvement in performance over my current set up? Or is it not really worth it?

Probably will be a pretty good performance increase

 

[Yixian]

Does the 330M overclock well? The 9600M GT is a fairly good overclocker I'd say, so I'm probably punching above my weight as it is.

 

[mikeo007]

From what I've read, those 330m / core i combos got hot rather quickly. So whatever overclocking you do, you'll want to keep a close eye on temperatures. Personally I don't find any macbook to be very good for gaming at med-high detail levels at a decent resolution. You want around 60 fps for the best experience, and that's not likely achievable with a 330m (or most laptop GPUs for that matter).

 

[Yixian]

From what I've read, those 330m / core i combos got hot rather quickly. So whatever overclocking you do, you'll want to keep a close eye on temperatures. Personally I don't find any macbook to be very good for gaming at med-high detail levels at a decent resolution. You want around 60 fps for the best experience, and that's not likely achievable with a 330m (or most laptop GPUs for that matter).

For most games fair enough, but for StarCraft 2?? It's no Crysis.

 

[CorporateFelon]

For most games fair enough, but for StarCraft 2?? It's no Crysis.

http://gameinformer.com/b/news/arch...rd-confirms-starcraft-ii-overheating-bug.aspx

Anyone else have StarCraft II try to melt their hardware? Blizzard admits that it's a known issue and has a fix for you.

Apparently, the game's menu screens aren't framerate-limited. This means that when there's nothing else going on, your graphics hardware renders the bejeezus out of those screens, causing nasty overheating problems. The fix is easy, requiring players to add the following lines to your "Documents\StarCraft II\variables.txt" file (nice catch, commenter LegolElf):

frameratecapglue=30
frameratecap=60

Good to know. Personally I would have appreciated a heads-up before my video card fried, but maybe this can save someone else from the hassle I've been dealing with since yesterday afternoon.

On a related note, Blizzard explains StarCraft II's system requirements in detail here. If you're curious, you'll get a much better answer there than you would from me directly. So stop asking and read the official post already!

 

[Yixian]

Is that bug supposed to be affecting everyone? I am overclocking the living shize out of my 9600M and it's not getting any hotter than usual.

That said, setting a framerate cap is always a good idea anyway, let's say you're down in the 20s fps a lot of the time, setting the framerate cap to about 40 makes things a LOT smoother for me in most games.

Will try it with SC2 in a few mins.


By the way, will being on a 64bit copy of Win7 have any performance benefits over 32bit XP?

 

[Eddyisgreat]

By the way, will being on a 64bit copy of Win7 have any performance benefits over 32bit XP?

Well Blizz recommends Windows 7, guess there are some optimizations that could be had.

But I don't think they'd be able to test *every* configuration during beta so once they figure out what's going on they'll probably release a good patch.

I mean it's not like they won't have time. They'll probably wait 10 years for Starcraft III

 

[Yixian]

Does Windows 7 generally perform a little bit worse than XP fps wise, like Vista did? Or has that all caught up now? Even surpassing XP at all?

 

[DesmoPilot]

Does Windows 7 generally perform a little bit worse than XP fps wise, like Vista did? Or has that all caught up now? Even surpassing XP at all?

With Win 7, there is no reason to run XP anymore.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I always liked Windows XP just because I felt it was leaner than Windows Vista/7

but Windows 7 has some enhancements display drivers and have a later version of DirectX available

so if you have a choice, as said above, there's really no reason to run XP.

 

[Yixian]

I always liked Windows XP just because I felt it was leaner than Windows Vista/7

but Windows 7 has some enhancements display drivers and have a later version of DirectX available

so if you have a choice, as said above, there's really no reason to run XP.

Agreed, XP just felt like a bare bones operating system in many ways. To be honest I'm not convinced Microsoft can do anything other than a) a bare bones OS or b) a confused over-bloated mess of an OS, but I'll take your advice and go with Windows 7.