starcrat 2 hardware requirements

Hi, I'm looking to buy a new laptop and have many questions! If you've played sc2 with me, you'll know about my awful lag...

In general, I'm just looking to buy the cheapest laptop meeting requirements to play starcraft 2 without lag. Preferably with 1080p.

1) What's the min. graphics card required to play on High settings (not Ultra) for 1080p? Raedon 5650 I assume would work, yes? What about Raedon 5470/3650/4570?

2) What's the min. processor model (in terms of Intel Core ix xxxM) needed to play 8 player games? (I heard RTS like sc2 is CPU intensive - correct me if I'm wrong)

Thanks!

 

How many frames per second are you aiming for? 1080p is a very high res and usually requires high end cards. Something along the HD5800 series, or nVidia GTX 260m/285m/360m/460m/480m.

As for CPU, any Core i5/6/7 with dual core 2.4ghz and up will be more than enough I think.

 

Anything around 25-40 fps is fine. I definitely don't need something like 60fps. Compared to the 1fps I get some times right now, it'd be a huge upgrade

Is the difference of graphic card requirement that different between 900p vs 1080p?

 

5650 would work just fine but you'll probably want to lower it down to medium if you're playing in a game with more than 4 players on 1080p o_o Any mid-range cards will do really but low end ones... Maybe not :/

CPU wise, any dual cores with over 2.4GHz as ryzeki mentioned above will do. Sure it's CPU intensive but it's not really CPU that will bottleneck you but rather GPU first.

And yes, there's a slight difference if you're playing on lower resolutions

 

I have an Asus N73JN: i5 450M (2.40GHz), 4GB RAM, Nvidia GT 335M, 1600x900.

The game suggests that I play on Medium, but I have played single player and 2v2 on Ultra with absolutely no problems. To allow for some more headroom, I generally play on High.

Played a long 2v2 game last night, and in the last few big battles when everyone was at the unit cap, the frame rate did get a bit choppy, though as far as I know, the game didn't pause for lag (I would know if I lagged, wouldn't I? )

I expect that on 4v4, it would make sense for me to go down to Medium.

Anyway, like the title says, this is just a point of reference for you.

 

IMO, the graphics difference from very high and ultra is not exactly noticable. The performance difference is though. I'd say stick to very high tops and not bother with Ultra.

Oh, and 5470/4570/3650 are quite similar in performance but are way weaker than 5650. You'd probably be playing on low-med if you get any of those.

 

Hm, so I guess it's more GPU intensive than I thought.

As for CPU, would an Intel Core i3 330M be more more than enough for any types of sc2 game then?

 

i3 330M would probably barely make it but I still do recommend a dual core above 2.4GHz since that's the recommended specs provided by Blizzard. It shouldn't really be that hard looking for a budget laptop with that

 

My 5830 strains a fair bit on mostly high settings at 1080p. When it's overclocked. If you're looking for 1080p and high, you pretty much have to do a Radeon 5850 or above (GeForce 460 or faster I'd think on the Nvidia side). You might consider something like the MSI GX640 or GT660 if you want something relatively inexpensive with high performance and still decent usage otherwise as a laptop and not a ginormous gaming DTR.

 

are you only buying a laptop to play this game? and are you going to be using your laptop elsewhere other than your desk?

if you're considering using your laptop 90%+ of the time at your desk, just build a desktop. i just built my friend a desktop for $377 and some change, and it runs SC2 very well on med / high. it'll save you a buncha money if this is all you're planning on doing with it.

 

I definitely want a laptop and not a desktop. Reasons are many, such as not having a monitor, hatred for wires/cables, etc.

Blech, I didn't think the GPU req. would be so high for sc2, considering my crappy laptop does okay on low

I'd like to spend less than $1000. Both of those MSI are a tad expensive... I might just have to settle either for 900p or not playing on high graphic settings.

The two cheapest/decent that I've found so far are:

$850 Studio XPS 16 with 15.6" 1920x1080, Intel Core 2 Duo T6600, 5GB RAM, 1GB ATI Radeon HD 565v

$900 HP Pavilion dv7t with 17.3" 1600x900, Intel Core i5 450M, 8GB RAM, 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5650

 

I think you'll do fine, as long as you don't try to go 1080p. It has to do with the bus width. 5650 is 128-bit while the more expensive 5850 is 256-bit, making it an ideal performer even at 1080p.

Personally, between your choices, I'd get the HP. You can play most games at native resolution.

 

No, not bus width. Memory bandwidth . It takes both width and type/speed, and both are important.

My HD5870 is 128bit, and it has over twice the memory bandwidth thanks to GDDR5 at high speeds.

 

the card is also very capable, making the 128 bit argument very nil. my 5770 is 128 bit and GDDR5 and it does mostly all games on max at 1920 x 1200.

the GPU requirements for SC2 are actually very low - i believe they require at least a 6600 series Nvidia card, and a single core 2.4 ghz processor.

my M11x plays the game very well on med/low settings (i tend to keep it lower so large battles don't slow down my computer), but the resolution is also much lower.

what i would suggest is if you can configure the HP, scale back on the RAM unless you're a video / audio / image editor doing professional work - you don't need 8GB of memory to run video games while multitasking. save the money and spend it elsewhere.

don't worry so much about a notebook with ultra high resolution and then mediocre hardware because you're not going to run most games at native resolution on decent settings, so scaling will look bad unless you do non full screen scaling. i'd go for the HP, however, i would opt to find a 16:10 notebook if i could because i hate 16:9 aspect ratio.

 

SC2 is highly scalable. It can run on nearly nothing, but it can eat up pretty much anything you throw at it. Anything with a 1GB 5650 should be able to run it fine at medium and some high settings with the high-res textures, possibly at high res. I'd push you to get the XPS. 17" is freakin' HUGE to carry around, and the 15" has a better resolution.

That said, the GX640 is only $200 more than the Pavilion, and it will eat both of those machines for breakfast in gaming.

 

Not sure about the others, but it runs smoothly on my DV7 at low-to-medium settings at 1280x720 with textures set to ultra.

 

Thanks everyone for advices and letting me know how your system runs SC2. One of these days (the more I lose) I'll make up my mind as to what to get...

 

Mine can do Ultra at at least 30fps or so, but I leave everything on Low or Medium settings to keep my framerates up and temps down. Eyecandy is nice, but ultimately does nothing to make you play better.

 

My 1645 in sig runs it at 1600 x 900 Ultra settings, Shadows Medium, Reflections off and i have my framerate capped at 30fps and it never drops. Runs beautifully

 

Nvidia GeForce GT 330M vs. ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650

Which is better for starcraft 2 specifically? Or rather, how much better is the 5650?

I have the choice between the two... 5650 is 30$ cheaper, but the damn laptop has the ctrl and fn key switched around!!! (Just the chasis and GPU are different)

 

The 5650 is faster than the 330, about the speed of a 350.

Also, to answer your previous question, there is a big difference between 900p and 1080p, as 1080p has 44% more pixels to drive. It makes a performance difference, especially if you have less than 1GB of VRAM.