if you want to figure out if your computer can run SC2, please read. now, the most common problem for almost everyone is the video card. Generally speaking, computers you buy off the shelf of Best Buy or whatever are not made for gaming- they're trying to sell you PS3's and Wiis for that. even the higher-end ones have more powerful processors and more RAM to justify the price, but often the GPU will be very lacking. Choosing a GPU can also be kinda confusing, because AMD and nVidia both have their own numbering schemes, and sometimes they don't even follow their own rules. it gets confusing. i'm going to try to list the best GPUs for the price bracket. performance is based on this review, concentrating more on the minimum FPS. Prices will be roughly based on a general newegg.com search and looking at the median or low price. underlined is my personal recommendation for that price bracket if cards perform similarly. remember prices are subject to change, technology generally gets cheaper over time, etc. etc. i may update this post if there are any major price drops or new cards in the next few months, and if i can find a more accurate review after the game is released. LOW BUDGET (<$100) nVidia: GT 240 ($85-95) ATI: HD 4850 ($90-100) I wouldn't recommend a resoultion higher than 1680x1050 if you want to run the game on Ultra. This is a common resolution for 20-23" widescreen monitors. both of these cards are last-gen's technology, so they won't support DirectX 11. not a problem for SC2, but maybe for other games you play. LOW-MEDIUM BUDGET (~$100ish) nVidia: GTS 250 ($110-125) ATI: none i'd recommend spending this much for 1680x1050 resolutions. this should give you consistently good framerates (60fps and up) throughout the game. you could also try 1920x1200 at this price range MEDIUM BUDGET (~$150ish) nVidia: none ATI: HD 5770 ($135-155) This is the price range where you can step up to about 1920x1200. This is the resolution for most 24" monitors, as well as HDTVs (1920x1080) if you want to game in your living room. MEDIUM HIGH BUDGET (~$200ish) nVidia: GTX 460 1GB ($200-220) ATI: HD 5830 ($200-230) You can run at 2560x1600 on Ultra with this. if SC2 is the only game you're expecting to play on your PC, there's really no reason at all to spend more than this. unless you're nuts. HIGH BUDGET (money is no object) nVidia: GTX 470 ($340-360), GTX 480 (~$460-480) ATI: HD 5870 ($390-400), 5970 ($700) or SLI/CF of the above. really, no reason to spend that much. 5870 is recommended and it's powerful enough to play most other games out there maxed out. you can probably crank up the AA/AF if SC2 supports it (or force it in the drivers) and still run smoothly. Or if you want to go multi-monitor (not sure if SC2 supports that, either).
Thanks! This should be stickied. Here's another benchmark worth looking at: Tom's Hardware - StarCraft II Beta: Game Performance Analyzed Notice, their results are noticeably lower than Legion Hardware. That's because the CPU used in their review was a Core i7-920 @ 3.06 GHz while Legion Hardware used a Core i7-965 EE @ 3.70 GHz. At 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 Ultra, GTX 260 and higher cards are clearly bottlenecked by the 3 GHz i7 CPU. Looks like for Starcraft, you're better off investing on CPU rather than a top of the line GPU.
it could also be the type of game that you're playing. most FPS and action games don't actually have that many calculations going on, with only a few moving objects within the game. RTS games do stress the CPU more, and bigger, 8-player games or UMS maps that have tons of units will actually stress the CPU a lot more. i haven't really seen a good CPU comparison for SC2 yet, though. in fact, it might even need a good custom map for that (say, one that just spawns units endlessly and makes them run around each other and attack) to really figure out how hard SC2 can be on CPUs.
Hmm, haven't really gamed on the PC for a while. I'm currently dabbling with PCSX2 (PS2 emulator) and for that, 60FPS is a requirement for smooth gameplay. It's really CPU heavy and there are several games where a stock i7 still doesn't cut it. I'm also replaying StarCraft but that one plays just fine even on the Atom nettop we use in the living room. I read this article earlier. Not the best, but at least they posted the video of the replay they benchmarked. Turbo Boost is disabled on the Lynnfields. It would be interesting to see how much of a difference it makes if it's enabled. From memory, you get an additional 533MHz in dual-core mode via Turbo. Useful if someone doesn't want to overclock.
great information here thanks, its always very confusing tryign to determine what card to get because some are in the same price range and the numbers are decieving, what is the main thing to look at in the specs for a video card, i currently have looked mainly at the memory amount 1gb etc and the core clock, but sometimes they call it something else I think?
core clock doesn't mean anything unless they're the identical architecture. memory also doesn't mean very much in terms of overall performance. 95% of the power is determined by the processing power of the GPU itself. yeah, it's pretty confusing to compare them unless you keep up regularly with reviews and comparison tests.
