Starcraft II on M11x - General Discussion

i notice that the option menu in sc2 dont recognize my 335m graphic card...arghh help

 

I have the R2 i5 OC'ed @ 2.24. Running with textures sent on Ultra, and everything else on high except for physics which is set on low. Game averages about 20 FPS for the first 4 missions. Haven't noticed any lag whatsoever. Overall very happy with the performance.

I figure I'll have to turn down some settings later on in the game and for bigger online matches.

Oh I played a 2v2 game as well with a friend and it ran like a champ, even though we got are arses handed to us. LOL

 

It's fine, I get the same problem. But all that matters is that the game actually uses the 335m. That works for me properly on my R2 w/258.96 drivers. I've heard that people who have problems running the game on the 335m get success by updating drivers.

And Arklight - yes, normal for the installer to use Intel Graphics. You don't need nVidia 335m to show you a progress bar!

 

im running it great all on ultra settings using the updated driver

 

I could probably run the game on medium across the board, and have in the 20s for fps. But 30-60 fps is nice and smooth, and it still looks good to me.

 

Running pretty much everything on high & everything plays EXTREMELY smooth, even late game madness of battle cruisers, carriers, etc...

 

REALLY!? Good to hear!
I can't wait till I finish downloading my client!

 

prelimary test...

texture at high, most of other stuffs with mixture of ultra and high except for shadow in medium.

so far in single player campaigne running pretty smooth. have not experience slow down. i did not try to run fraps thou. wanted to make sure the system resource being fully allocated for the game so not very sure of the actual fps i am getting. but for sure i did not receive msg telling me i should lower my setting to prevent slowdown. yet to try skirmish and online yet. will test more later. things looking pretty great so far.

 

SC2 has a built in fps counter. Just hit ctrl + alt + F. I want to get the m11x and im hoping i get the performance i want (max or near max) on sc2 since that the only game I will really be playing.

 

That is an awesome tip. Thanks! +1 rep to you

 

btw you don't have to go to the store, you can just purchase a digital copy

unless you really want the stuff in the box

 

what nvidia driver are you using and did you overclock?

 

game booster causes my starcraft 2 to crash....

 

I'm smooth with everything on ULTRA!

257.96 drivers here.

 

What's your framerate .PoNeH?

 

Downloaded it lastnight & gonna play it tonight cant wait to check it out.

 

I am getting mixed results, I started getting near 30 fps with ultra but on high detail maps it drops to 12-15, gets too slow. I have lowered a lot of the settings to get around 20 fps but slighty disappointed. I am running the latest WHQL drivers from Dell and with non Oc'd i7 processor and 4GB RAM. Also the fan noise is a bit too loud during gameplay. Are the people saying they are some on Ultra settings smooth an most maps even with a lot going on?

 

did u overclock your r2?

 

How much faster is R2 in comparison to R1? This and Diablo 3 are the "it" games that I'll be playing for years.

 

Alienware M11x R2: A Legend Reborn - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

That should answer your questions.

 

I actually only wanted to know the difference between the two's performance on this game But thanks for the link though

 

Oh my bad. Doubt there's a whole ton of difference, but I'm guessing the R2 runs it a little better. That being said, it's hard enough finding out how SC2 runs on the M11x and at what settings.

 

Same here.

My settings are mostly high, and frame rates are good in the begining, and when the system heats up a bit after playing few maps, it starts to crawl.

My guess is it has something to do with turbo mode.

I Just play it on my M1730 now, so I can't be for sure.

 

Doesn't it also have something to do with the general overheating problem that blizzard has been talking about? Apparently graphics cards across the board have been overheating due to some problem, please check the following link:

Blizzard lists known StarCraft II issues, solutions

# Certain screens make your hardware work pretty hard

* Screens that are light on detail may make your system overheat if cooling is overall insufficient. This is because the game has nothing to do so it is primarily just working on drawing the screen very quickly. A temporary workaround is to go to your Documents\StarCraft II Beta\variables.txt file and add these lines:
o frameratecapglue=30
o frameratecap=60
* You may replace these numbers if you want to.

Hope this helps and HOPE THAT MY m11x IS BEING DELIVERED TODAY!!!

 

Playing with ettings on Ultra with good results, just passed a mission that had a lot of enemies on screen and it held up well. Time will tell though if it lasts. I'm using the 258.96 drivers.

 

go try on 3 human vs 3 AI in battlenet with ultra n high setting with all unit max out...see if that make it lags..

 

textures ultra. everything HIGH/physics. Low light/shadows. 50~ avg frames. once it gets near endgame. Id say around upper 20's. Very playable on an OC r1 perspective

 

so it isn't running good on the machine ?

 

it runs kind of slow during intense in-game movies, but runs fine when actually playing the game.

 

i keep getting random crash errors. I'm using 258.96. R2. anyone else having this problem?

 

I'm not having any crashes with the 257.30 driver

 

thanks i will check that out later after work

 

Any thoughts on playing this game (managing all the tiny units & text etc.) on the m11x's little screen?

 

How the hell do you manage to play an RTS game on a small screen?

 

lol yea its kinda hard... playing it... haha

 

It's fine on the 11.6" screen. I actually prefer it to my main rig (32" 1920x1080). Your Field of Vision doesn't change with resolution, so that you don't see more or less "stuff" as you change resolutions. All that changes is that the "stuff" you see gets drawn with more or less pixels.

Blizzard intentionally did this, to prevent giving people with a high-res screen an advantage in competitive gameplay.

 

I have no problem playing on a small screen at all. Like kent said, it doesn't matter whether you're on a 32'' or a 11'' screen, your vision stays the same.

Just a question though, the game suggest that I use 1280 x 720 instead of my native res. does this affect my fps?

 

Yeah, you'll get more fps if you play it at a lower resolution...
but you can still put it at the native one, but you'll loose some framerates.

 

Normally, lowering resolution is a great way to increase FPS. However, 1280x720 is so close to 1366x768, that you won't be able to notice any difference whatsoever. Better to keep your resolution at 1366x768, so that you get native pixel-for-pixel scaling on your screen.

 

The game doesnt offer me 1366 by 768 as an option. Only 1360x768. How are you guys playing at the native res?

 

The primary reason that native res is desirable is because it draws pixel-for-pixel onto your screen, so that you don't suffer any image quality drop through interpolation ("stretching" a lower-res image to fill the screen).

Playing at 1360x768 draws pixel-for-pixel on your LCD. So it is just as good as playing at native 1366x768, minus the loss of 3 pixels on each side.

 

Guys, SC2 players, you might want to read this.

StarCraft 2 Overheating Problem

 

When I enter into the menu my fans go nuts! I need to inform my friend, he left sc2 running and in the menu for the past 4 hours.

 

Oh boy...
I do hope blizzard releases a patch soon, cause a whole lot of people might just end up with fried with video cards cause of this. I mean, the ones who red that article will be safe, but not everyone will read that article.

 

Such a simple fix... yeah I would be surprised if it isn't patched ASAP.

 

Just a copy and paste on the txt file from the site. I had to dig in the blizzard forums and it was still from the beta.

 

What I don't get is how uncapped framerates can cause overheating.

I mean, aren't these cards DESIGNED to be able to run at max graphical power output? Aren't their fans designed to cool the card sufficiently? Don't the cards down-clock themselves if they overheat?

 

The overheating happens on blank screens when nothing is rendered, but the engine is still asking the GPU to pump as many frames as possible. This means the FPS jumps into the 400+ FPS range and it causes some serious heat. It shouldn't cause problems or fry MOST graphics cards, but it has the potential to kill cards. It is similar stress to some other graphics stress test programs that do relatively simple graphics at high FPS to test stability.

 

i play sc2 for like 3hrs and dont overheat, using a zalman nc2000

 

Hmm are you all testing your FPS or just estimating? Cause my i7 m11x is frequently in the 20s fps on 2v2. This is on the recommended settings which are medium to low in most cases. Also, in a big battle it can easily drop into the teens. So something is wrong... either the 50 fps on high settings is false, or my laptop is whack.

Props to whoever posted the ctrl + alt + f to showing your fps in game.