Ok so here's the deal. Right now I have a laptop that has a AMD turion x2 64, 4 Gig DDR2, BUT it's running an ATI radeon X1200 128MB. I also have a desktop that has a core 2 duo 1.8Ghz, 512MB GeForce 6200, BUT 1Gig DDR. Which one would SC2 run better on, the lappy or the desktop?
Hum... many threads for the topic "minimum specs" today... what in fact is so hard to understand in "minimum requirement: Geforce 6600"? ;-) Both cards you names are waaaaaay too slow to run any recent game. Think about it, the Radeon X1000 series is 4 (four!) generations behind and the X1200 is something like the lowest model of that series. Geforce 4 is also 4 generations behind, with the 6200 GS also being one of the least powerful chips of their series... (4 GPU generations are currently - what? - 6 years or so?) I mean, you could test it on our laptop since it has a fairly decent processor and RAM, but the graphics board is THE limiting factor for games. SC2 was created with having low specs in mind, but some things are simply not possible. If you compare the raw processing capability of a Radeon X1200 and a Radeon HD 3870 (which is the card mentioned in the recommended specs, I think), this is 20 GFlop/s vs. 497 GFLop/s. Or said in other words, the (nowadays quite old!) Radeon 3870 is 25 times as powerful as the X1200.
Arrg I know I'm in quite a pickle here. I'd be fine if I had a better card in the lappy I'm pissed as hell it has such a crap card. I wish there was a "test" to see if your machine could run the game and if so on what settings.
Thanks for that! I raised my "virtual memory" from 3640 to 5947mb should I raise it more or is that ok? EDIT: I just ran the test and it says I have 1.8GB video RAM...weird.
Virtual memory is virtual memory. Even if you increase it, it's not gonna change your system specifications. The allocated memory for integrated video is dynamic and increases based on how much is needed. Of course, you need to have enough system memory since you'll essentially be sharing that.
Ok, well it said it was using 3648 or something like that and I bumped it up to 5947 so I'd guess it's allowing more memory for the card while taking some away from the RAM.
No, not really. Virtual memory is basically a file in your hard drive that contains data from running programs because they won't all fit in the RAM. Generally, you'd actually want to minimize the use of the swap file as the RAM is much, much, much faster than the HDD. There's really no need to allocate 2GB to the integrated graphics considering how underpowered it is. More video memory isn't really going to help its performance. Depending on how much RAM I have installed, I usually just allocate a static 256~512MB to the IGP in the BIOS.
I looked in the BIOS and saw nothing pertaining to the video memory..infact its the most basic BIOS I've ever seen unfortunately. First place I've checked. So do you think I should go back to the "let the system handle it" setting?
OK, one idea: You could try to grab a used graphics card on ebay. Since your desktop computer most likely has an AGP graphics slot, the best available AGP graphics card is the ATI Radeon HD 3850 AGP version. (Yes, there was actually an AGP version of this card, and it is by far the most powerful card that was ever build for that slot). I guess it should be possible to get such a card for about $50. If your mainboard does not have AGP but the more recent PCI-E interface, you could buy a Radeon HD 4850 for about $80 (retail price, surely somewhat chaper if bought used on ebay) and use this instead. However, you first would need to make sure if your power supply unit can handle such a card. (You need addtional power connectors e.g.) Using a Radeon HD 3850 on your Core2Duo shold be sufficient to play tha game in medium graphics mode.
