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Starcraft II Spec Question

H

heresiarh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hey guys, I just wanted to confirm if the following specs will run Starcraft II:

macbook pro 13 inch 2.23ghz core duo
9400m GPU
5GB ram
80gb free space

Thanks!
 
Did you mean 2.26 GHz?

I use that same setup with 8GB of RAM.

Just be warned that you can only really play on LOW. I haven't really played with the settings to know what it can really play at, but the default is LOW, and the game plays perfectly fine on that.

5GB should be perfectly fine to play. I first played with 2GB and that was not good at all! SC2 uses about 1.2-1.5 GB when I play.
 
Thanks for the responses. As long as I can play the game I'm fine. I don't care about hi settings. I'll eventually upgrade to 8gb.

One more question. Do you think running the game off an external hard drive will be a problem?
 
Last edited:
Sorry for being a pest. I'm in the process of upgrading my hard drive to WD 320GB 7200rpm. Hopefully that will improve the quality of game play. What do you guys think?
 
Improving the RAM and the HDD should improve the game.

However, the RAM would have more improvement since the game mostly loads itself into RAM (yesterday SC2 was using 1.45 after a while of playing).

A new HDD should improve up and the speed at which the game loads itself into RAM. I don't know how often SC2 accesses the HDD while playing, but if you are low on RAM, the new HDD should help while OS X pages stuff out of RAM to make room for SC2.

So long story short: the new HDD should help in booting up the game and loading things in to RAM. Once the game is in RAM, I don't think SC2 accesses the HDD that often, but when it does, a new HDD should improve the speed of doing this. The new HDD should also speed up the shuffling around of RAM (but I don't know by how much).

A new HDD from the stock one should bring about improvements across the entire OS X. I still have the stock HDD (waiting until next summer to get a SSD before Lion comes out), but upgrading to 8 GB of RAM has helped me sidestep the problem of constantly paging data out to the HDD which caused massive slowdowns for me (I had 2 GB).

You should be golden getting a new HDD. In a few months after using your MBP a lot, you might consider upgrading your RAM (just watch your activity monitor to see if your system is paging out a lot). SC2 can use quite a lot of RAM when it is able to!

edit: I forgot your question about the external. I don't really know much about this, but if data access is slow to the external, then you could experience some slowdowns at first until the game can load itself into RAM. But someone who knows more about hardware can step in and explain this. Upgrading your HDD is probably the best way to go instead of using an external to play off of.
 
Thank you. Your answer is really helpful. I have ordered another 4g ram along with the new hard drive. I'm really looking forward to playing SC2 and will report back once everything is set to go🙂

Branskins said:
Improving the RAM and the HDD should improve the game.

However, the RAM would have more improvement since the game mostly loads itself into RAM (yesterday SC2 was using 1.45 after a while of playing).

A new HDD should improve up and the speed at which the game loads itself into RAM. I don't know how often SC2 accesses the HDD while playing, but if you are low on RAM, the new HDD should help while OS X pages stuff out of RAM to make room for SC2.

So long story short: the new HDD should help in booting up the game and loading things in to RAM. Once the game is in RAM, I don't think SC2 accesses the HDD that often, but when it does, a new HDD should improve the speed of doing this. The new HDD should also speed up the shuffling around of RAM (but I don't know by how much).

A new HDD from the stock one should bring about improvements across the entire OS X. I still have the stock HDD (waiting until next summer to get a SSD before Lion comes out), but upgrading to 8 GB of RAM has helped me sidestep the problem of constantly paging data out to the HDD which caused massive slowdowns for me (I had 2 GB).

You should be golden getting a new HDD. In a few months after using your MBP a lot, you might consider upgrading your RAM (just watch your activity monitor to see if your system is paging out a lot). SC2 can use quite a lot of RAM when it is able to!

edit: I forgot your question about the external. I don't really know much about this, but if data access is slow to the external, then you could experience some slowdowns at first until the game can load itself into RAM. But someone who knows more about hardware can step in and explain this. Upgrading your HDD is probably the best way to go instead of using an external to play off of.
Click to expand...
 
I know we have different computers but I play SC2 on High/Some Ultra settings and it does just fine. The HDD wont be that beneficial to you, as others have said all the hdd does is load the game initially, then the ram does the rest.
 
I got the game today. I'm going to test it out with 5gb ram and the new 320gb 7200rpm ram. I'm still waiting for the other 4gb stick from crucial.

I'll see how it runs. Will definitely report back. Is everyone here enjoying the game?
 
heresiarh said:
I got the game today. I'm going to test it out with 5gb ram and the new 320gb 7200rpm ram. I'm still waiting for the other 4gb stick from crucial.

I'll see how it runs. Will definitely report back. Is everyone here enjoying the game?
Click to expand...

I got frustrated last night because of a game I lost (zerg is extremely annoying!), but it is really fun other than that! The custom games are really fun! Try Star Battle and BattleCraft!
 
I've been playing SCII for the past 4 hours on minimum settings. The game is running just fine without any noticeable lag. System resources seem to be stable as well. SCII is one heck of a game. Feels good to do some PC gaming again. Will report back again with more details on performance.

I think with 8GM ram the game is going to be perfect.
 
Thats more than enough ram when it comes to playing sc2 well as any other program unless your going to do some hardcore designing or virtual machine, etc..
Its mostly based on the GFX card which starcraft is hungry for.
I can only pull medium settings if I want decent FPS (at least 30fps) on my i7 330m (High Res, OSX) and it lags during 3v3-4v4 matches when theres alot of units.
And see if you can set your shader to medium if possible while everything else is on low, since low -> med is a HUGE difference.
 
I had a 2.66 c2d with 9600m video card. ran sc2 on medium-high no problem. the key thing is you have to set some physic stuff to low but texture stuff you can set to medium. resolution wise I am able to get the max it offers.
 
the only problem i had was with mission in utterance darkness where there were **** load of zerg units running at me and i have 200 food worth carriers. but other than that, everything (campaign, online 1v1, n v n, FFA) were good at medium setting with max resolution.

if a 9600 can run starcraft 2 at medium, the newer 330m should be able to run sc2 at medium/high.
 
I've been playing SCII for the past 4 days and so far I've had no issues what so ever. Although I'm running the game at absolute low because I don't really care about high end graphics. I just want to enjoy the gameplay. The game is FANTASTIC. I'm still waiting on my extra 4GB ram. At the moment playing with 5GB ram with nothing else running in the background.

I love how I can pick missions and go through briefings. The upgrade and research options are just great!!

PS. I haven't tried playing it online yet.
 
heresiarh said:
I've been playing SCII for the past 4 days and so far I've had no issues what so ever. Although I'm running the game at absolute low because I don't really care about high end graphics. I just want to enjoy the gameplay. The game is FANTASTIC. I'm still waiting on my extra 4GB ram. At the moment playing with 5GB ram with nothing else running in the background.

I love how I can pick missions and go through briefings. The upgrade and research options are just great!!

PS. I haven't tried playing it online yet.
Click to expand...

Better learn how to rush or defend against a rush before you even start. You will be put in 5 ranked matches against various skill level players, after the 5 matches it will then determine your skill level and should place you with others similar to your skill...but until then, good luck!
 
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