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Starcraft 2 - Will it run? megathread

Ok! So a friend of a friend has Starcraft 2 for $40, and I think I will pick it up.

What I need to know, has anyone tried it on a similar machine to mine:

Mac Model: Macbook Pro 2007 17" Intel Core 2 Duo

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6.4

Processor Speed: 2.4ghz

RAM: 4gb

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256mb

Screen resolution: 1920 x 1200

So any experience?
 
Mac Model: 13" MBP (Late 2009)

Operating System: OS X 10.6.4

Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

RAM: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

Screen resolution: 1200 x 800

FPS
Gameplay: 20
Gameplay Cinematics: 5
All Other Cinematics: 40

Default settings: Low

Modifications to default settings: Low to Medium

Playability: Although I am only in the beginning parts of the campaign, the game seems to run fine with default settings. The only thing that sucks is that I have to play the game with these crappy settings.
 
aidanpendragon said:
Appreciate if someone with a new-model Mac Mini could throw stats up...I've been thinking about one as my new machine since hearing that integrated graphics now actually can run some games, but SC would kind of be a prerequisite. Thanks.
Click to expand...



just loaded it on my mid 2010 mini, standard config. with the default settings (attached screen shot), it ran campaign levels OK, not perfect but OK. Most of the lag was in the cinematics oddly enough. i am going to tweak down a few settings tomorrow and see if it runs better
 

Attachments

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pdpfilms said:
Ditto. It's like paying $60 for a really really nice bottle of wine made out of titanium with no cork.

Or a high-powered drill that only runs at 1rpm.

Or a super rare book full of secrets with all the pages glued together.
Click to expand...

Hahah, perfect descriptionts.
 
The performance delta between OS X and Windows 7 is large. Larger than it is for TF2. Blizzard has said they've a bit of optimization left to do, and there's the chance that 10.6.4's regressions are affecting it as well. But Windows 7 pushing 80% more frames is a heckuva difference.

Hardware
  • Mid-2010 Mac Mini (MacMini4,1)
  • Intel Core2 Duo, 2.66GHz ("Penryn" P8800, 3MB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB)
  • 8GB PC3-8500 DDR3 Memory
  • 500GB Seagate Momentus XT, 7200rpm, 32MB cache, 4GB SLC NAND
  • nVidia GeForce 320M, 256MB VRAM (shared memory)

Settings (Default)
  • Display Mode: Fullscreen
  • Resolution: 1280x800
  • Texture Quality: Medium
  • Graphics Quality: Medium
  • Shaders: Medium
  • Lighting: Low
  • Shadows: Medium
  • Terrain: Medium
  • Reflections: Off
  • Effects: Medium
  • Post Processing: Medium
  • Physics: Low
  • Models: High
  • Unit Portraits: 3D
  • Movies: Low

OS X 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard)
  • Cutscenes: 30-35 fps
  • "Liberation Day" Mission: 15-20 fps

Windows 7 Ultimate, x64 (Boot Camp)
  • Cutscenes: 55-70 fps
  • "Liberation Day" Mission: 30-35 fps

Disappointing and not at the same time. The plus is a Mac Mini, MacBook, or 13" MacBook Pro can play a new game at playable framerates at medium settings. The downer of course is you have to constantly switch into Windows to get said framerates.

To put this in perspective, here are the 3DMark06 scores of some Macs, and some desktop GPUs for comparison...

  • MacBook Pro 15" Core2 Duo, ATi Mobile Radeon X1600 - 1800
  • Mid-2010 Mac Mini, nVidia GeForce 320M - 4420
  • MacBook Pro 15" Core i5, nVidia GeForce 330M GT - 6080
  • iMac 21.5" Core2 Duo, ATi Mobile Radeon 4670 - 6840
  • iMac 27" Core i5, ATi Mobile Radeon 4850 - 9950
  • Core2 Duo 2.66GHz & GeForce 8800GT 512M - 12,700 (desktop I built in late 2007)
  • iMac 27" Core i7, ATi Mobile Radeon 5750 - 14000 (estimate)
  • Core i5 & ATi Radeon 5850 - 22180 (desktop that could be built for < $1000)

Keep in mind, DirectX 7 or DirectX 8 is when Microsoft had gotten crazy serious about optimizing Windows for games. Removing as many hoops as possible for applications to jump through to maximize performance. That was nearly a decade ago. Plus video card manufacturers optimize much more for Windows than OS X since the difference in how large those markets are is huge. Plus games developers know DirectX much better than OpenGL, as DirectX has been what's in favor - by and large - for about 7 years now.

The reality is for the performance gap to shrink to more around... 15-20%... that's going to take a few years for Apple, GPU manufacturers and developers to make that happen.
 
MikieMcBikie said:
just loaded it on my mid 2010 mini, standard config. with the default settings (attached screen shot), it ran campaign levels OK, not perfect but OK. Most of the lag was in the cinematics oddly enough. i am going to tweak down a few settings tomorrow and see if it runs better
Click to expand...

If you're running with the stock 2GB of memory, upgrade. The video memory is shared, so that leaves OS X with only 1.75GB at best. The cinematic models have a much higher polygon count in their models, and there's a lot of textures. If you're paging to disk, performance will suffer GREATLY.

With 8GB of memory I'm finding that the framerate of the cinematics are easily twice that of the actual game. Heck, in Windows 7 parts of the Liberation Day cutscenes (the ones before and after the mission) were often sitting at 80fps for some parts, and occasional sitting at 110fps.
 
mrfoof82 said:
If you're running with the stock 2GB of memory, upgrade. The video memory is shared, so that leaves OS X with only 1.75GB at best. The cinematic models have a much higher polygon count in their models, and there's a lot of textures. If you're paging to disk, performance will suffer GREATLY.

With 8GB of memory I'm finding that the framerate of the cinematics are easily twice that of the actual game. Heck, in Windows 7 parts of the Liberation Day cutscenes (the ones before and after the mission) were often sitting at 80fps for some parts, and occasional sitting at 110fps.
Click to expand...


I know where the lag is coming from, was giving someone a rough idea of how a stock mini runs the game. I just found it odd that the cinematics ignored my settings and played full detail. it's all good ;)
 
Apple & Blizzard need to get their **** together on this issue. In this day & age with the components Apple is using & the bragging they do about their machines there is no excuse for the fps performance being more than HALF that of a comparable Windows machine. Furthermore Blizzard took over five years to produce this game and never want to release a game until they get it right. Well how about you get it right then.

Don't tell me they didn't test this out & see the problem. Perhaps it was optimized for Leopard or Tiger? Be good to hear some reviews from Mac users on older operating systems.
 
MowingDevil said:
Apple & Blizzard need to get their **** together on this issue. In this day & age with the components Apple is using & the bragging they do about their machines there is no excuse for the fps performance being more than HALF that of a comparable Windows machine. Furthermore Blizzard took over five years to produce this game and never want to release a game until they get it right. Well how about you get it right then.

Don't tell me they didn't test this out & see the problem. Perhaps it was optimized for Leopard or Tiger? Be good to hear some reviews from Mac users on older operating systems.
Click to expand...

There are many things to blame for OSX's poor gaming performance, I wouldn't call out Blizzard as they are one of the top Mac game client producers and you aren't going to find much better.

In between OSX not being developed for gaming, lack or incomplete implementation of the latest versions of OpenGL, and lack of high quality OpenGL graphic programmers in the industry, it's going to take a while before gaming on OSX is going to match that of Windows.
 
hurriance said:
There are many things to blame for OSX's poor gaming performance, I wouldn't call out Blizzard as they are one of the top Mac game client producers and you aren't going to find much better.

In between OSX not being developed for gaming, lack or incomplete implementation of the latest versions of OpenGL, and lack of high quality OpenGL graphic programmers in the industry, it's going to take a while before gaming on OSX is going to match that of Windows.
Click to expand...

Agreed. But it should, one day, right? :(
 
Mac Model: Hackintosh

Operating System: 10.6.4

Processor Speed: 2.83 GHz

RAM: 6 GB DDR3

Video card: HD 4890 (1 GB)

Screen resolution: 1680x1050

Default settings: High

Modifications to default settings: Ultra

Playability: 45-60 FPS
 
mrfoof82 said:
The performance delta between OS X and Windows 7 is large. Larger than it is for TF2. Blizzard has said they've a bit of optimization left to do, and there's the chance that 10.6.4's regressions are affecting it as well. But Windows 7 pushing 80% more frames is a heckuva difference.

Hardware
  • Mid-2010 Mac Mini (MacMini4,1)
  • Intel Core2 Duo, 2.66GHz ("Penryn" P8800, 3MB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB)
  • 8GB PC3-8500 DDR3 Memory
  • 500GB Seagate Momentus XT, 7200rpm, 32MB cache, 4GB SLC NAND
  • nVidia GeForce 320M, 256MB VRAM (shared memory)

Settings (Default)
  • Display Mode: Fullscreen
  • Resolution: 1280x800
  • Texture Quality: Medium
  • Graphics Quality: Medium
  • Shaders: Medium
  • Lighting: Low
  • Shadows: Medium
  • Terrain: Medium
  • Reflections: Off
  • Effects: Medium
  • Post Processing: Medium
  • Physics: Low
  • Models: High
  • Unit Portraits: 3D
  • Movies: Low

OS X 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard)
  • Cutscenes: 30-35 fps
  • "Liberation Day" Mission: 15-20 fps

Windows 7 Ultimate, x64 (Boot Camp)
  • Cutscenes: 55-70 fps
  • "Liberation Day" Mission: 30-35 fps

Disappointing and not at the same time. The plus is a Mac Mini, MacBook, or 13" MacBook Pro can play a new game at playable framerates at medium settings. The downer of course is you have to constantly switch into Windows to get said framerates.

To put this in perspective, here are the 3DMark06 scores of some Macs, and some desktop GPUs for comparison...

  • MacBook Pro 15" Core2 Duo, ATi Mobile Radeon X1600 - 1800
  • Mid-2010 Mac Mini, nVidia GeForce 320M - 4420
  • MacBook Pro 15" Core i5, nVidia GeForce 330M GT - 6080
  • iMac 21.5" Core2 Duo, ATi Mobile Radeon 4670 - 6840
  • iMac 27" Core i5, ATi Mobile Radeon 4850 - 9950
  • Core2 Duo 2.66GHz & GeForce 8800GT 512M - 12,700 (desktop I built in late 2007)
  • iMac 27" Core i7, ATi Mobile Radeon 5750 - 14000 (estimate)
  • Core i5 & ATi Radeon 5850 - 22180 (desktop that could be built for < $1000)

Keep in mind, DirectX 7 or DirectX 8 is when Microsoft had gotten crazy serious about optimizing Windows for games. Removing as many hoops as possible for applications to jump through to maximize performance. That was nearly a decade ago. Plus video card manufacturers optimize much more for Windows than OS X since the difference in how large those markets are is huge. Plus games developers know DirectX much better than OpenGL, as DirectX has been what's in favor - by and large - for about 7 years now.

The reality is for the performance gap to shrink to more around... 15-20%... that's going to take a few years for Apple, GPU manufacturers and developers to make that happen.
Click to expand...

Fantastic post! Thanks for doing all this!!!!
 
hurriance said:
There are many things to blame for OSX's poor gaming performance, I wouldn't call out Blizzard as they are one of the top Mac game client producers and you aren't going to find much better.

In between OSX not being developed for gaming, lack or incomplete implementation of the latest versions of OpenGL, and lack of high quality OpenGL graphic programmers in the industry, it's going to take a while before gaming on OSX is going to match that of Windows.
Click to expand...

Well someone's gotta be to blame for this. I'm well aware of Blizzard's support for the Mac, they've been there since WarCraft ONE wayyy back in the day. The thing is, I've bought lots of their games (Warcraft I, II, III, Diablo I, II, Starcraft I, II) and this is the first time this has been an issue in my experiences. In fact, I used to have computers that were way behind the times and these games always worked fine at least when running campaigns.

Something isn't right here or else they've decided to push the system requirement boundaries farther than in the past. But that doesn't seem to be the issue here as most people having graphics issues have Macs that exceed or meet the Sys Req. Perhaps I wasn't totally fair and part of this blame should fall at NVIDIA's feet as well.

Perhaps its time for Apple to abandon OpenGL and move to Direct.
 
Did everyone pay attention to what the Texture Quality option tooltip says? It says

For Ultra: 1 GB (gfx RAM)
For High: 512 MB
For Medium: 256 MB
For Low: 128 MB

I really noticed this on my Hackint0sh and Macbook Pro that this has a big impact on the GFX of the game and speed!
 
Mac Model: 2010 White Apple Macbook

Operating System:Mac OS X 10.6.4

Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz

RAM: 2GB

Video card:NVidia GeForce 320M

Screen resolution: not sure

Default settings: Medium almost everything.. one or two things on low

Modifications to default settings: NONE

Playability:Just kept it at default settings, no lag playing online or campaign. Enjoy everyone
 
Xavier said:
Ok! So a friend of a friend has Starcraft 2 for $40, and I think I will pick it up.

What I need to know, has anyone tried it on a similar machine to mine:

Mac Model: Macbook Pro 2007 17" Intel Core 2 Duo

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6.4

Processor Speed: 2.4ghz

RAM: 4gb

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256mb

Screen resolution: 1920 x 1200

So any experience?
Click to expand...

I have roughly the same specs, but on a 15". It has run well at 1280x720(?) though. Mostly medium settings, some low. Will probably try 1440x900 when I get home tonight.

But that is in BootCamp.
 
Diddiyo said:
i'm really considering buying the new $1499 imac, but only if i would be able to play sc2 with a steady fps rate on decent settings...
Click to expand...

Based on its 3DMark06 score, I'd expect ~40-45fps at the default settings, though not much of an FPS hit by jumping to 1440x900 or 1680x1050. Shader effects will have a much more dramatic effect. More around 80-85fps under Windows 7, which means you can probably run 1680x1050 with high detail.


MowingDevil said:
Perhaps its time for Apple to abandon OpenGL and move to DirectX.
Click to expand...
What incentive does Microsoft have to allow Apple to port DirectX to OS X -- Assuming that's even feasible, considering DirectX is going to need to emulate some parts of the Win32 subsystem. They wouldn't make a dime by completely opening the DirectX spec so other operating systems could implement it. They'd lose money by having to support such an endeavor.

OpenGL performance is fine. It's fine under Windows for sure. OS X and drivers need better optimizations, so the onus is on Apple, nVidia and ATi at this point.
 
I have scoured forums looking for someone with my Macbook Pro model. Curious on opinions if I can run SC2:

2.2 ghz processor core duo, 4 gb ram, video card is what worries me - geforce 8600m gt with 128 mb vram.

Technically, I meet the minimums, except the broadband connection, which is stupid.
 
mrfoof82 said:
OpenGL performance is fine. It's fine under Windows for sure. OS X and drivers need better optimizations, so the onus is on Apple, nVidia and ATi at this point.
Click to expand...

OpenGL performance is great, if not on some occasions better. But OS X hasn't even bothered to use the latest version of OpenGL nor optimize the OS for gaming use, which is why performance is mediocre at best. I wouldn't hold my breath for a gaming Mac anytime soon, as it's not a market Apple has great interest in (it's basically just a side project and a marketing feature at this point).
 
Systems currently being tested, will update shortly with both OS X and Windows 7 results.


Mac Model: Mac Pro 4,1
Processor Speed: 2.93GHz Quad
RAM: 6GB DDR3 1066
Video card: ATi 4870 (512MB)
Screen resolution: 1920x1200
Operating System: 10.6.4
Default settings: High (Reflections Off, Post Processing Medium, Portraits 3D). 40-60fps
Modifications to default settings: Physics Ultra, Reflections On. 35-45fps
Playability: Smooth as butter
Operating System: Windows 7, 64bit
Default settings:
Modifications to default settings:
Playability:

Mac Model: Mac Pro 3,1
Processor Speed: 2.8GHz Octo
RAM: 4GB DDR2 1600
Video card: ATi 2600XT (256MB)
Screen resolution: 1920x1080
Operating System: 10.6.4
Default settings:
Modifications to default settings:
Playability:
Operating System: Windows 7, 64bit
Default settings:
Modifications to default settings:
Playability:
 
huge difference between windows and osx

Mac Model: 15" Macbook Pro 2.4 Ghz

Operating System: 10.6.4 (newest) and Windows XP Pro (32 bit)

Processor Speed: 2.5 Ghz

RAM:4GB

Video card: 330M 256mb

Screen resolution: 1440 x 900

Default settings: medium

Modifications to default settings: none

Playability: Huge difference between Windows and OSX. Have installed on both operating systems. Windows gets about 40-50 FPS and OSX gets about 20-25 with identical settings.

Question: Is it worth it to me to invest in Windows 7 ultimate? I don't really need better FPS but would Windows 7 Ult allow me to increase video settings while maintaining FPS?
 
Mac Model: Mac Pro 3,1

Operating System: 10.6.3

Processor Speed: 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon

RAM: 4

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT - 512mb VRAM

Screen resolution: default 1920 x 1080

Default settings: high

Modifications to default settings: Lowered AA,shadows

Playability: Well, at the default 'high' settings there are noticeable slowdowns and a lot of jerkyness, especially when there's a lot happening on-screen. I wouldn't call it unplayable at these settings, but it's not smooth. Lowering the AA and shadows did help with this, I didn't really want to drop the res down as it started to look a little blurry.
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