So I plan to play SC2 on an old, low-end laptop: 1.83ghz Intel Core 2 3.0 RAM Geforce 8400M GS Obviously, I'm shooting for all low specs. However, what I don't understand is all the buzz of not being able to play on low settings on a similiar rig. When scaled down to low, SC2 looks like a slight step above WC3. What makes SC2 low settings so taxing? They certainly don't look all that taxing(low settings) from what I've seen on youtube, etc. To test my laptop, I downloaded Supreme Commander 2 (only because it was an RTS that came out this year) and I seem to run that fine with some settings on medium and/or high. Even with lots of units on screen doing their thing. Now, I don't know if this means anything about the price of tea in China when it comes to running SC2. If it doesn't run, I'll just wait on it. I just don't see why I couldn't run it at a decent rate on low settings. Also, "Can you run it?" says I pass the minium sys req. but it also says my 8400M GS is a 1.5 GB card so I don't trust it. Thanks in advance.
Meh, I've been able to run it on lesser hardware (Atom 330/ION). Unless you're really picky about buttery smooth performance, that laptop should handle it just fine on low.
My framerates are all over the place. With all settings on low, it stays above 10FPS minimum. It's not silky smooth, but quite playable. Of course, I'm severely bottlenecked by the CPU. Haven't actually tried MP yet but from accounts here, it seems to be more taxing than SP. Aside from low graphics settings, using a lower resolution also helps. Dropping down from 1920x1080 to 1280x720 makes a big difference. That said, it seems like the ION graphics is better than what you have, albeit your CPU is considerably faster than mine. How that translates to framerates, I have absolutely no idea.
Yeah, that 8400m gs isn't the greatest, but it has held up nicely. I've seen some vids on youtube boasting that SC2 is playable, with decent fps, on an 8400m gs. So I'm crossing my fingers my laptop can run it at a passable level. I mean it looks slightly better then WC3 on low so I don't know why it wouldn't. Thanks for the info though, I haven't been into computers since the GeForce 3 days. Now, there are a thousand different cards out there. So what do think? Is this laptop passable with the low graphics card?
