You might be thinking "Oh, no! Not another one!" but no, this isn't one of those. I'd like to think my hardware's fairly decent enough (i7-860 + GTS 250 512MB to be upgraded to GTX 460 1GB) that I don't need to ask this question. However, I do have a bunch of crappy hardware at my disposal and I thought it would be helpful to would-be purchasers of SC2 to get actual feedback from someone who's tried to play the game on less than ideal specifications. So far, I've only played Mission 1 Liberation Day from the single player campaign. If anyone can provide some fairly taxing replays, please share them and I'll be glad to test. Mission 1 Liberation Day Intel Atom 330 + NVIDIA ION Display: 1360x768 Fullscreen Texture: Medium Shaders: Medium Lighting: Low Shadows: Medium Terrain: Medium Reflections: Off Effects: Medium Post Processing: Medium Physics: Low Model: High Unit Portrait: 2D Movies: Low FPS (during gameplay): 12~18 FPS Intel Core i3-530 + Intel HD Display: 1920x1080 Fullscreen Texture: Low Shaders: Low Lighting: Low Shadows: Low Terrain: Low Reflections: Off Effects: Low Post Processing: Low Physics: Off Model: Low Unit Portrait: 2D Movies: Low FPS (during gameplay): 20+ FPS (this I might have to update, I wasn't really keeping track of the FPS counter, I think framerates might actually be closer to 30 than 20) The above builds are both HTPC's, hence, the resolution used for testing is based on the native resolution of the HDTV they're connected to. The integrated GPU on the i3-530 couldn't handle medium at 1920x1080 (I never expected it to) but I think it should be able to handle it if the resolution was lowered to 1360x768. Of course, this was a very simple/easy mission. I expect it'll be a vastly different story when you've got Zerglings and whatnot rushing at you from all sides. Other thoughts: The game is surprisingly playable as long as the minimum framerate is kept above 10 FPS. Not silky smooth, but playable. Drop below that though and it becomes unbearable. Playing with everything on low is an eyesore. I don't really notice much of a difference going from medium to ultra but going from low to medium is a huge leap in visual quality. Of course, beggars can't be choosers. I reckon a lot of people with laptops or really old desktops would be happy SC2 runs at all. Got some more set-ups so I'll be updating this thread when I find the time to test.
