Starcraft 2 Graphics Card information released

I wouldn't worry about Blizzard. They've never neglected a large portion of their consumer base, in this case the lower end performance users.

 

The 8600M GT outclasses any of the FX cards by at least a factor of 2 and more likely by an order of magnitude. Furthermore, I very much doubt a 9800 card can come anywhere close to the 8600M GT -- some of the numbers may look similar on paper, but the latter card is several generations newer and it shows.

But you're completely missing the key point here (which has been pointed out quite a few times): we are talking about Blizzard. Blizzard doesn't do games you need a powerful GPU to enjoy: they never have and they really don't need to start with this one. Sure, one may not be able to use the snazziest effects without a GT200 or R700 card, but the game will still look and play fine with something quite old and/or slow.

 

the 8600m gt is at least 4 times stronger than the ati 9800.

 

As someone else posted, http://www.starcraft2.com/faq.xml

As stated there, the game can run under DirectX 10, and may have exclusive effects only to DX10 users.

I really find it annoying when someone like yourself finds one hardly mispelled word, and bloats it to something that is irrelevant to the subject. Does it make you feel good about yourself that you corrected one word that anyone reading could immediately understand?

Again, you all are a bit off, I think some of you understand it, but many of you don't understand. I don't know how it can be any simpler than this.

The game will run GREAT on old hardware, your integrated cards will run the game smoothly, but the graphics will look minimal. The game's highest settings are reserved for high end cards. Thier aim is to make the game accessable to everyone, while also giving people who do have ultra high end gaming PC's something to push thier system. This game IS NOT like a console port, they are making settings intended exclusively for cards such as the GTX280, HD 4870 etc.. and higher.

One more thing, Crysis does run on all sorts of hardware, old and new. Also quite well. You just need to run it at the settings that your hardware can handle.

 

I can't wait to see some of the DX10 sexiness.

 

I'm more concerned with the gameplay and how balanced it will be. I still find SC1 graphics pretty good and I played through WC3+TFT at like 800x600 all low settings and it wasn't bad at all.

 

Well, I'm not trying to say graphics are all there is to it. I'm a competitive gamer and balance/pace is my top priority. Just having that with amazing graphics is all you can really ask for.

 

Correct, but only under PS3 (Pixel Shader 3... Not playstation 3). This is why I stated that the 8600M GT will probably just barely meet the recommended requirements.

Plus, running the game under PS3 will be faster than PS2, which I explained in a few posts back (has to do with not having to shuffle data from vertex to pixel shaders in PS3, as compared to PS2).

If you look at Pixel Shader 2 specific benchies for 9800 and 8600M GT (take the game FEAR, for example, it uses PS2), you'd find that performance are similar (depending on the version of 9800, it can have more bus plus can be clocked higher because it's a desktop part).

On the other hand, the lack of over all power in the 8400M GS probably won't make up for the performance difference even though it does support PS3 while the 9800/5xxxFX series only support PS2.

My aplogies, I wasn't having the best of days. Excuse my language, I will watch what I say--err, type--from now on . No hard feelings, right?

Actually, if you look at how certain DX10 games are made, they can be made to run under DX9 with some "hacks" (Halo 2 comes to mind, and then there's the Alky project [now abandoned] which was to port DX10 to XP; it was more like an extension of DX9 really), which seems to suggest that, at least in parts, DX10 is BW compatible.

But in general, you are correct. DX9 games run under different API's and DX10 simply forward the calls.
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As for you guys all banking on "Blizzard" delivering... Well, good luck, because you guys seem to forget something:
Deferred rendering is a hungry hungry hippo. Even if we're talking about "Blizzard", there's only so much magic they can cast per game. For starters, it requires a complicated dual buffer setup (with render to textures for depth, normal, albedo, and final. Then they have to be attached to the various bitplanes and offscreen buffers--no, I actually know this stuff, I'm not just copying and pasting crap I don't understand from the PDF. In fact, you won't even find any of this in the PDF) that NONE of their previous games even come close to in terms of complexity and computational cost! Second, like I mentioned before, translucency and shadows are going to be extremely expensive (Shadows, I'm sure you can turn off), plus you also have to look at how the forward renderer is integrated--Regarding this, I already posted my 2 cents worth of analysis in a prior post.

The bottom line is, the whole thing doesn't look pretty nor efficient. It even explicitely state in the PDF that SC2's engine was made to cater to the artists and easy shader extensions... And if you know anything about game art pipeline, it's that it's ALWAYS taxing on the engine (if you let the artist do what they want )! If you cater to the artists, then you're going to get ready to accept some pretty exotic models.

I have faith in Blizzard, like much of you, but I also know a thing or two about how graphic engine work. And a good guesstimate is that IGP's (Intel IGP's, branded IGP's from ATi or nVidia might have enough shader power and raw power to pull it off) won't be running this game well, if at all.

You guys can hope and pray and whatever all you want... But at the end of the day, if your 8600M GT or 8400M GS can't run this game at 1280 x 800 with all the sparkle... Well, I'm just going to sit back and state "I told ya so. *Shrugs*".

P.S.: The 8400M GS running this game at 640x480 was a joke (from my previous post).

 

Dude don't you have a 8600m GT as well...

 

Depends on what you mean by all the sparkle. I have a 8600m gt and cant hope to run crysis with all the sparkle. And so i realize the limitations to having a mid ranged card. I'll be happy if i can run starcraft @ 1280x800 with qualities that look close to what they are in blizzard's demo videos.

People should also realize this, a 8600m gt can pretty much run red alert 3 near max settings, how much more demand will sc2 be anyways?

 

Blizzard doesn't focus on crysis like graphics and requirements. Remember this is still an RTS and it's still blizzard, and yes they may say they are relying more on GPU then the normal RTS but it will still be a CPU intensive game. Either way blizzard is not the kind of company that makes some uber game that so many people are waiting for and they slap a mid level dedicated card as the min requirement. But hey good luck with that theory.