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    W520 and Starcraft 2

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by huberth, Jun 25, 2011.

  1. huberth

    huberth Notebook Deity

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    I am not a gamer, but I was curious, so I downloaded the Starcraft 2 free demo.

    It started out with 100 fps and then went up to 150 fps in single player mode.

    I changed the graphics setting to Ultra and the fps went down to 76 fps.

    Can this be an accurate score? I used an 1920X1200 external display.

    This review (W520 - i7-2820 - 8GB PC3 10300 - Platter HDD)
    http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-ThinkPad-W520-Notebook.53220.0.html
    only got 37 fps in "Ultra" mode.

    Can memory size & speed make that much difference? Does the SSD play a role?

    Or is the Starcraft 2 demo version reporting the fps incorrectly?
     
    huberth, Jun 25, 2011
    #1
  2. lead_org

    lead_org Purveyor of Truth

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    the platter hdd may play a role, i don't think the game would use that much ram, so having 8 gigs or 16 gigs shouldn't be that much of a difference.
     
    lead_org, Jun 25, 2011
    #2
  3. Colonel O'Neill

    Colonel O'Neill Notebook Deity

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    Um. 76FPS sounds wrong. Even the 485M hits 56.5.

    Granted, SC2's FPS varies significantly based on the amount of units on screen.

    Games tend to preload as much information that they need into RAM to prevent hitting the drive.
     
    Colonel O'Neill, Jun 25, 2011
    #3
  4. bogatyr

    bogatyr Notebook Evangelist

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    The more units on screen, the lower the FPS. Their test might have done something different than what you did while playing.
     
    bogatyr, Jun 25, 2011
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  5. Thors.Hammer

    Thors.Hammer Notebook Enthusiast

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    Is the W520 BIOS set to discrete only?
     
    Thors.Hammer, Jun 25, 2011
    #5
  6. huberth

    huberth Notebook Deity

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    No, it is in optimus

    Yeah - I hardly played. I don't even know how to play the game yet

    I just moved the scenery around a bit. Perhaps you have to really get into it to get the true fps.

    Perhaps the 1600 Mhz Kingston HyperX RAM?
     
    huberth, Jun 25, 2011
    #6
  7. MidnightSun

    MidnightSun Emodicon

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    That will make very little difference, especially as the GPU bottleneck becomes more apparent at higher resolutions. RTS games like SC2 depend largely on the amount of activity going on--how many units, structures, etc, so it's quite possible to see a huge FPS fluctuation between an essentially empty map and a large 8-player FFA match.
     
    MidnightSun, Jun 26, 2011
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  8. huberth

    huberth Notebook Deity

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    Yeah. That makes sense!

    I looked up RTS (Real-time strategy), but what is FFA? Future Farmers of America? :)
     
    huberth, Jun 26, 2011
    #8
  9. kirayamato26

    kirayamato26 Notebook Deity

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    FFA is free for all, where each player is for his or herself. I find that I get much higher frames in the demo than the actual game, which is weird.
     
    kirayamato26, Jun 26, 2011
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  10. Mech0z

    Mech0z Notebook Evangelist

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    Ultra is quite demanding, but if you play multiplayer you should play in low quality anyway :) much easier to see the units then. SC2 is very Cpu demanding when there is a lot of units on the map (Also outside your screens sight)
     
    Mech0z, Jun 26, 2011
    #10