Need upgrade for SC2

BigGreg85

Gawd
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Jun 19, 2003
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I just recently purchased Star Craft 2, and I attempted to play it with an 8600gt I bought a couple years ago, and it was a less than pleasurable experience. My other components are an older CPU as well a Core 2 Duo E6600 and 4GB of memory, should be sufficient. So I thought about upgrading my video card...I have been out of the loop on video cards for quite sometime.


What would you recommend? I would like to try and keep it under $200 if at all possible.
 
The 6850 should be released shortly for around $179, you'll want to take a look into that when it releases. What sort of PSU do you have?
 
If you need to play the game right now and don't want to wait for ati's new stuff (and associated price drops on nvidia hardware) then a GTX460 would be your best bet in the nvidia camp, try and find a cheap 1gb 460, but a 768GB card should be okay and cheaper.
 
Ok great, how is that going to compare to the NVIDIA cards?

My PSU...

ENERMAX Liberty ELT500AWT 500W ATX12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
 
a 5770 if you can find it at a lower pricepoint than the 768mb gtx 460. Or wait a week for amd to release 6850. SC2 runs great on my elderly 8800gt, no reason to go near 200$ if you can do much cheaper
 
What resolution are you playing in? The 460 may be overkill if its anything less then 1920x1080
 
Right now my screen is 19" W at 1680x1050...I am also thinking of upgrading to a larger 23" screen with at least 1920x1080
 
Right now my screen is 19" W at 1680x1050...I am also thinking of upgrading to a larger 23" screen with at least 1920x1080
1680x1050 on a 19 inch? I have never seen that res on anything below 20 inch and most 19 inch screens are 1440x900. what is the exact model of that monitor??
 
Since you're planning on upgrading to a 23 inch later. A GTX 460 1GB is a good choice. BUT you really should wait just 4 more days when the 6000 series releases. You might get a more powerful 6000 series card for less OR the GTX 460 could see a price cut in response.
 
great thanks guy, I appreciate the heads up on the 6000 series release. It definitely makes sense to hold off a few days!
 
look for those 460 for about 150 after rebates
great cards
or wait for paper launch 6000 ati and hard launch in dec
with same performance as 5000
 
or wait for paper launch 6000 ati and hard launch in dec
with same performance as 5000

Quoting to show how people love talking out of their asses. The 6870 and 6850 are hard launching next Friday.
Best recommendation is to wait 'til then. Then check price/performance within your price range since the new products will undoubtedly have an effect in the pricing of everything that's currently out in the market.
 
i have a similar pc with a 4870 and an overclocked e5200 you might see more gains with a faster cpu than a faster gpu. Although im not real sure just how fast an 8600gt is
 
Indeed, SC2 is known to tax the CPU (being a strategy game and all) more than the GPU (who are more taxed by the FPS genre)

If SC2 is the only game you want, then I'd suggest going for something less than a GTX460 1gb and spend the spare cash on a CPU upgrade.
 
Indeed, SC2 is known to tax the CPU (being a strategy game and all) more than the GPU (who are more taxed by the FPS genre)

If SC2 is the only game you want, then I'd suggest going for something less than a GTX460 1gb and spend the spare cash on a CPU upgrade.

wtf? absolutely not. The game is very GPU-bound at max settings, even at 1680x1050 (hence why the GPUs notoriously run so hot and fans ramp up so high), and when applying override AA from the control panel (which is very expensive performance-wise) it is even more so.
 
Isn't SCII getting a patch that adds in-game AA support as well?? Once that kicks in he's not going to want less than a 460, especially if he gets a new monitor.
 
wtf? absolutely not. The game is very GPU-bound at max settings, even at 1680x1050 (hence why the GPUs notoriously run so hot and fans ramp up so high), and when applying override AA from the control panel (which is very expensive performance-wise) it is even more so.

I'm not saying that you can run SC2 with a 2mb vga graphics card from the Pentium 1 era. I'm saying that the CPU can bottleneck SC2 a lot faster than it would an FPS game.

Another thread on this:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036281319
 
I agree. Whether playing on 260gtx or 480gtx - unless you really torture the game with Tomshardware-style benchmarking-maps or play 45minute Nexus Wars games for insanely big armies, you are going to be limited by cpu and ram before gpu.
A 460gtx would be great for your machine - in perspective though, if you are in the mindset of "just" upgrading your machine to run SC2 and plan on selling it in the future, and buying a brand new pc to replace it - I dont see why you shouldn't just settle for a 130$ 5770 or cheaper 260gtx.

Whatever card you buy, you should oveclock you cpu to 3.0 or 3.2 ghz, if you havent already. C2D and the stock cooler can achieve this easily in most cases, and you will need to for SC2 and for less bottlenecking of the new gfx. Also, SC2 only uses 2 cores, so I dont see any reason to "upgrade" to a used older quad cpu
 
Just for a perspective. I have a [email protected] (stock cooler, default vcore) and 5770. I run the game at 1920x1080 with a mix of Ultra/High. It runs fine all ultra, but I dropped some settings to high for improved load times (can't really notice the changes in actual play). I lowered them from ultra initially due to speed issues when trying to do the 4vs1 AI challenges (the scenario in which I beat those causing the slowdowns would not occur in a any actual game), but in actual play never noticed a quality difference so kept it there for better load times.

In terms of AA, I don't see it making a big improvement in the actual game play. The in close game engine cut scenes have very jagged edges though. But in terms of the actual rts game play component, I don't think you'd care about AA or not.
 
AA is weird in this game , during cut scenes and on some objects its as if it doesn't work at all. In game while playing it seems to work on a majority of things but not everything. I just decided to leave it off since it isn't fully utilized.
 
SC2 needs a good CPU and a good GPU. The good thing is that you don't have to upgrade both at the same time. ATM you can upgrade the GPU first (HD6000) and then next year, upgrade to sandybridge.
 
Anything above gtx260 will do.
Im running athlon II x4 635 with gtx260
1920x1080 ultra setting with no slow down 4v4
 
SC2 does depend on CPU a lot. More than a lot of other games out there. You should over clock your CPU. Its weird that people say they can hit ultra settings with old and somewhat slow CPUs. My experience and benchmarks show otherwise.


Lots of people say they can run on Ultra settings, but this game demands a lot more in some battles. I'm surprised how many people claim their computer can max out SC2.


Its really tough to get decent advice when people claim to run on Ultra settings when computers better than theirs have been proven to fail at this task.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...CPU-benchmarks-x-Core-i5/i7-leading/Practice/

The video they show isn't even close to a 'bad scenario' as far as stress goes. A few carriers in 30 food worth of zerglings?
 
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SC2 does depend on CPU a lot. More than a lot of other games out there. You should over clock your CPU. Its weird that people say they can hit ultra settings with old and somewhat slow CPUs. My experience and benchmarks show otherwise.


Lots of people say they can run on Ultra settings, but this game demands a lot more in some battles. I'm surprised how many people claim their computer can max out SC2.


Its really tough to get decent advice when people claim to run on Ultra settings when computers better than theirs have been proven to fail at this task.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...CPU-benchmarks-x-Core-i5/i7-leading/Practice/

The video they show isn't even close to a 'bad scenario' as far as stress goes. A few carriers in 30 food worth of zerglings?

Yea even on the best systems certain parts of the game will destroy your PC. I think in terms of general performance most do ok but saying you can run the entire single player game without any slow down on ultra settings at 1920x1200 is far fetched.
 
I'm not saying that you can run SC2 with a 2mb vga graphics card from the Pentium 1 era. I'm saying that the CPU can bottleneck SC2 a lot faster than it would an FPS game.

Another thread on this:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036281319

He has a point. Benchmarks show the difference between a $350 video card and a $150 videocard being ~5fps. But using the same video card an i5-750 leads the highest scoring AMD X4 chip by over 15fps.
 
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