Starcraft II on 7970M on Ultra Setting

Hey guys,

Starcraft II is one the primary games I play. I am planning to get a Sager NP9150 with a 7970M GPU. Based on the 7970M's benchmarks, it really should not have any issues running the game on ultra graphics. At the same time, I know that the 7970M has driver issues.

Notebookchecker says the game can run at 65 FPS, but also places a yellow box around it. This means the following.
Uncertain – This graphics card experienced unexpected performance issues during testing for this game. A slower card may be able to achieve better and more consistent frame rates than this particular GPU running the same benchmark scene.

StarCraft 2 - NotebookCheck.net Tech

Based on the Catalyst 13.1 / 13.2, can anyone comment on this? Any other feedback is also welcome.

Thanks,
Josh

 

Notebookcheck is completely useless for this game. In fact, most benchmarking sites are not reliable with this game because the fps varies a lot with the army composition, map, how many units etc.

you can read about my fps experience.
Starcraft 2 will be not bottlenecked by the 7970m, I have a 680m and it is way more than enough.
However, it is extremely CPU hungry, you need to make sure you have a good CPU to play this game at ultra.

I got a 3840qm and playing at Ultra. My graphics card is 680m in case you are wondering.

my fps can go from 150 at start.
40 to 60 depending on race and map, in mid game (generally, creep will lower fps by around 10)
drip to mid 20 to mid 30 in the late game maxed situation . (no experience with broodlord infestors style yet, I suspect it will fall to 20)

I had a blog at teamliquid with screen shots of a late game PvP heart of the swarm Skytoss battle:
Just ordered a Laptop
Pretty solid impressive FPS considering I had quite a few carriers.

Even a desktop oc'd 2500k at 4.4Ghz cannot keep a stable 30fps in PvZ end game deathball situation, according to a post on teamliquid.
(can't find the exact thread but this one should do: Starcraft 2 CPU for >60fps/low details/400 food?)

Laptop user is not likely to have a solid end game FPS until at least 2 to 3 years later imo, so just be happy for whatever good mobile CPU you can get.

That being said, mid 20 fps is pretty smooth and enough to do some micro actually, the fps tends to raise again pretty fast

But if it is campaign you are wondering about, it will be more than fine.

 

Ive got a 3630qm and a 675mx, and I play on ultra (I use vsync so i get a steady 60fps, although with vsync off itll shoot into triple digits) so based on Power specs alone, any ivy bridge quad core + 7970m should be enough.

However, the 7970m does have issues with its switchable graphics system (enduro) that may or may not be affecting your gameplay.

 

Yeah... I was wondering how Enduro affects Starcraft. I haven't heard too many complaints about it with that game. A few people mentioned under utilization of the GPU but it still delivers high frames per second.

 

I remember having issues with Starcraft 2 on my 7970m. However, I swapped for a 680m because I was sick of the driver issues and I had a little extra cash at the time. I don't know if the newer driver versions have fixed this issue, but at not time was the game unplayable with the 7970m.