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Starcraft 2 - Will it run? megathread

Specs are in sig.

Settings are native res at 1680x1050
Everything is on High or as high as it can get like post processing being in medium.

3D Portraits and movies on High.

45ish on multiplayer 1v1. I'm getting horrible fps on campaign though. Anyone know why? It's much much lower on campaign than multiplayer.
 
Mac Model: Late 2006 MacBook
Operating System: OS X 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.0 Ghz
RAM: 3GB DDR2
Video card: GMA 950 64MB Shared Memory
Screen resolution: 1280x800

Will not run at all under Mac OS X 10.6.4. The audio will play for the introduction video but the screen just blinks with graphical distortions of the desktop. When I press "ESC" to skip to the main screen, the .app quits and returns to the desktop as if nothing played at all. Currently downloading Trial version for PC to test in BootCamp with Windows XP. I'll update after I test it out. Any ideas on how to get the .app to run in Mac mode, even on minimum specs? I can't Option up a settings screen when I load the .app.
 
Whaleyland said:
Mac Model: Late 2006 MacBook
Operating System: OS X 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.0 Ghz
RAM: 3GB DDR2
Video card: GMA 950 64MB Shared Memory
Screen resolution: 1280x800

Will not run at all under Mac OS X 10.6.4. The audio will play for the introduction video but the screen just blinks with graphical distortions of the desktop. When I press "ESC" to skip to the main screen, the .app quits and returns to the desktop as if nothing played at all. Currently downloading Trial version for PC to test in BootCamp with Windows XP. I'll update after I test it out. Any ideas on how to get the .app to run in Mac mode, even on minimum specs? I can't Option up a settings screen when I load the .app.
Click to expand...

That graphics card is garbage. Your going to need at least 128mb on board to run the game
 
Mac Model: MacBookPro 5,5
Operating System: Mac OS 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.26GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1067Mhz
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256MB
Screen resolution: 1280 x 800
Default settings: Low
Modifications to default settings: none

Playability: With these settings it works great.
You can adjust the texture detail to Medium (because the GPU has 256MB RAM) but when there are a lot of enemies on screen, there's a lot of lag/slowdown.

This game crashed 5 times today and after I restarted my computer in safe mode (holding shift while booting) and then restarting again in "normal" mode, the game hasn't crashed on me yet... I read somewhere on the internet that Mac users on 10.6.4 with nVidia need to do that...
 
Mac Model: iMac 20" mid-2008
Operating System: Mac OS 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.66GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1067Mhz
Video card: ati radeon HD2600
Screen resolution: 1280 x 800
Default settings: Low
Modifications to default settings: none

Playability: excellent
Yes it's on low, but smooth as silk and zero crashes so far. Gotta be an nvidea thing...
 
Mac Model: Mini 2010 Base
Operating System: Mac OS 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.4GHz
RAM: 2GB DDR3 1067Mhz
Video card: 320M
Screen resolution: 1280 x 800
Default settings: Low (can't really remember. It's the default)
Modifications to default settings: none

Playability: Playable but have some long load time. Thinking about upgrading the ram to 4 or 8 gb. Will that help much? The average framerate is around 20-30.
 
Mac Model: MacBookPro 5,1
Operating System: Mac OS 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.93GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1067Mhz
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512MB
Screen resolution: 1920x1200
Default settings: Medium
Modifications to default settings: none

Usually ~20-30fps on missions. Ship-board, usually ~25fps.

Tried it in Boot Camp 2 and graphics performance is much better better (45fps ship-board) but I have massive I/O issues, related to installing on an external FW drive among other things, so it's easier for me to just play in OS X.

Playable but not optimal.
 
thetorque said:
Mac Model: Mini 2010 Base
Operating System: Mac OS 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.4GHz
RAM: 2GB DDR3 1067Mhz
Video card: 320M
Screen resolution: 1280 x 800
Default settings: Low (can't really remember. It's the default)
Modifications to default settings: none

Playability: Playable but have some long load time. Thinking about upgrading the ram to 4 or 8 gb. Will that help much? The average framerate is around 20-30.
Click to expand...

following up on this. I set the texture to low (it was medium before) and portrait to 2D. It's much smoother now. I can up the resolution one notch. 1440x900 I guess.
 
Mac Model: Mid 09 MBP
Operating System: 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.66
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1067Mhz
Video card: 9600gt 256mb
Screen resolution: 1280 x 800
Default settings: Med, however a few items are set to low.
Modifications to default settings: None

I wouldn't say its unplayable, but I will say It makes me not want to play it. Panning around the map is very laggy, I have a 160GB Intel SSD and the maps load in seconds however performance is not great at all. I'm going to uninstall it and just play on my gaming rig. :( Very disappointed.
 
this is a silly question guys, consider me a newbie to SC2.

Could I play SC2 directly on Macos? without bootcamp? I prefer to suffer the crappy fps than install windows on my mbp.

Thanks
 
Ninjasrule said:
this is a silly question guys, consider me a newbie to SC2.

Could I play SC2 directly on Macos? without bootcamp? I prefer to suffer the crappy fps than install windows on my mbp.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes you can, as long as you meet minimum requirements. If you checked any of the pages in this thread you can see a lot of people are posting results using Mac OS X..
 
MacBook 2,1 (the original BlackBook)

Mac Model: Macbook 2,1 (black, purchased after 11/2006 C2D refresh)
Operating System: 10.5.8 (SC2 played in Windows XP Home 32-bit)
Processor Speed: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 @ 2.0GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR2 @667MHz
HDD: 200GB Hitachi 7,200RPM
Video card: Intel GMA 950 w/ 64MB memory in OSX and 224MB memory in Windows XP
Screen resolution: 1280x800 / 1280x720 in SC2 (defaulted to this)
Default settings:1280x720, Low settings, 2D portraits
Modifications to default settings: None (as of yet)
Playability: Extremely playable (in XP), I was amazingly surprised. It will install and run in OSX however the screen will remain blank as Blizzard has not released a compatible video driver for the game to run on the Intel GMA 950, if there is anybody in the community that writes drivers this game is playable on this system and video card at about 24FPS and 14-18FPS in combats, I'm sure there are still a lot of these systems out there. I would recommend upgrading to 4GB of RAM and a 7,200RPM HDD if you haven't already. I'm not sure how well this game would run on less than 3GB of RAM and a 5,400RPM drive.

Since we're talking about older hardware - It does default to high+ on my vista machine running 2.4GHz Athlon x2 (939 chipset), 2GB DDR400, 7,200RPM HDD, 9800GT running at 1400x900 resolution (default 19' Widescreen resolution). So if you're running something similar you should have no problems. It defaults to ultra+ on my XP-64bit machine running C2D 2.66Ghz, 4GB DDR2 800MHz, 10,000RPM HDD, dual Radeon 4850's.

Hope this helps.
 
Mpalmieri1203 said:
That graphics card is garbage. Your going to need at least 128mb on board to run the game
Click to expand...

It runs in Windows under bootcamp for this system (Macbook 2,1), so long as you have at least 3GB of RAM, Windows will share more base memory up to 224MB to use with the GMA950 on this system. As with most Blizzard games this game is more CPU intensive and relies less on GPU for general playability and more so for textures and making things look prettier, but the T7200 is still an amazing CPU.
 
Whaleyland said:
Mac Model: Late 2006 MacBook
Operating System: OS X 10.6.4
Processor Speed: 2.0 Ghz
RAM: 3GB DDR2
Video card: GMA 950 64MB Shared Memory
Screen resolution: 1280x800

Will not run at all under Mac OS X 10.6.4. The audio will play for the introduction video but the screen just blinks with graphical distortions of the desktop. When I press "ESC" to skip to the main screen, the .app quits and returns to the desktop as if nothing played at all. Currently downloading Trial version for PC to test in BootCamp with Windows XP. I'll update after I test it out. Any ideas on how to get the .app to run in Mac mode, even on minimum specs? I can't Option up a settings screen when I load the .app.
Click to expand...

There is no GMA950 Mac driver for this game yet released by Blizzard. You CAN play it on Windows via Boot Camp (I would suggest XP). You have at least 3GB of RAM so it shouldn't be a problem, Windows will share more base memory up to 224MB to use with the GMA950 on this system (so long as you have at least 2GB). As with most Blizzard games this game is more CPU intensive and relies less on GPU for general playability and more so for textures and making things look prettier, but the T7200 is still an amazing CPU.
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Ninjasrule said:
this is a silly question guys, consider me a newbie to SC2.

Could I play SC2 directly on Macos? without bootcamp? I prefer to suffer the crappy fps than install windows on my mbp.

Thanks
Click to expand...

It will run on your system in OSX, I'm not sure how playable it will be as Blizzard has to still tweak the OSX drivers. See if nVidia has any direct driver upgrades, I'm sure you will have to get them from Apple Update, but would be good to check it out nonetheless. I would still suggest running this in Boot Camp, as it will be a more enjoyable experience, skin Windows with OSX, lol.
 
I just bought one of the new iMacs (specs are in my sig.), I will post how well the game plays when I receive the machine. Yeah, I bought the computer just for the game, and also college, mostly for SC 2 though.
 
Soooo....

I'm a special kind of stupid. I never even bothered to check out the system requirements. Oops. Turns out, it doesn't. To add insult to injury, I had purchased it with the intention of playing SCII on it, back when it was first in development (where does the time go?).

So, long story short:
Model: Low end 24" 2007 iMac
OS: 10.6.3
Processor: 2.4 GHz
RAM: 1 GB
Video: ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro
Resolution: 1920 x1200

But here's the thing: It runs (obviously, all settings are at their lowest). Without too much lagging. I'm not gonna even bother trying to do multiplayer (not my thing anyway). Loading screens take a couple minutes, and the mission on Monlyth was lagging to start, but seemed to catch up with itself after not too much time.

Long story short: Despite being *well* under the minimum requirements, I can play the game. Barely. Although, any advice on how to improve things would, of course, be appreciated. PS, is anyone noticing much improvement playing it through bootcamp (and would I need to reinstall, or could I just run the same copy through Win7)?
 
runs so-so on my macbook pro 2010, get about 20-35FPS on average with mostly low and a few medium settings. it's definitely a driver issue because I can run the game on high/ultra on a weaker and older PC laptop in windows... ugh

hurry up and release a patch blizzard/apple, I do NOT want to install windows on my mac just so I can game at the level my hardware is capable of.

edit: check frame rate in game with Option-Control-F you can compare yourself with different OS frame rates since the key combo works the same on a mac/windows, brings up a little counter like at http://osxdaily.com/2010/07/28/show-starcraft-2-fps/

ahhh i am just really frustrated that the mac version runs bad on better hardware. looks like all nvidia hardware is effected?
 
aznguyen316 said:
Yes you can, as long as you meet minimum requirements. If you checked any of the pages in this thread you can see a lot of people are posting results using Mac OS X..
Click to expand...


Far too many people. I'm surprised that people who are serious enough about gaming to get this on launch aren't gaming under Boot Camp. Shocked, in fact, I would have thought the majority of responses would fall under 7x64. I'm not a SC fan, but I have had a lot of fun with the 320m and 4GB ram hooked up to my HDTV through my Mini Server's HDMI port.
Do yourself a favor if you're at all into gaming on your mac and install Windows, it's that simple.
 
DominusNovus said:
Soooo....

Long story short: Despite being *well* under the minimum requirements, I can play the game. Barely. Although, any advice on how to improve things would, of course, be appreciated. PS, is anyone noticing much improvement playing it through bootcamp (and would I need to reinstall, or could I just run the same copy through Win7)?
Click to expand...

You should see a big improvent if you upgrade to 4 GB of ram. In windows you should get a 15% speed boost on top of that. Your graphics card isn't the greatest, but it isn't terrible. It just can't handle the game properly at your native resolution, so you could try to bring that down. I have a 2.66 ghz iMac with that graphics card and 4 GB of Ram, and I get about 35-40 FPS in windows on medium, at 1600x1050 res.
 
My settings...

Model Name: MacBook Pro 13"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics card.

What kind of results can I expect with this system? Is it worth even getting the game from a performance perspective?


Thanks, best wishes.
 
Bat9th said:
What kind of results can I expect with this system? Is it worth even getting the game from a performance perspective?


Thanks, best wishes.
Click to expand...

Once Apple fixes the broken nVidia drivers, you should have no trouble playing on medium.
 
Bat9th said:
Has there been word of them fixing them? Could I run it well on bootcamp? Or same problem?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Well, 10.6.5 has yet to be seeded to developers, so it might be a while. But 10.6.4 screwed up the drivers so much that Apple might release a separate patch earlier.

In bootcamp, you will have no issues. It will also be faster even after Apple fixes their drivers.
 
Cougarcat said:
Well, 10.6.5 has yet to be seeded to developers, so it might be a while. But 10.6.4 screwed up the drivers so much that Apple might release a separate patch earlier.

In bootcamp, you will have no issues. It will also be faster even after Apple fixes their drivers.
Click to expand...

Sounds good thanks. My system runs pretty hot when running games or bootcamp by itself. Any reason to worry combining the two?

Thanks
 
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