Blizzard knows about the Video Card Overheating issue

[mjllonir]

The installer allows multiple copies of the game to be installed

Unlike previous Blizzard installers, this one will always let you install another copy of the game. It does not check for previous installations so be careful of how many folders you end up making.

Compatibility Modes will not work properly

Attempting to run StarCraft 2 on a compatibility mode (Windows XP SP3 from Windows 7, for example) will make it crash. Please run the game normally.

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:

frameratecapglue=30
frameratecap=60

You may replace these numbers if you want to.

User report – Security program flagging the beta downloader as a trojan

We had some reports where a security program might flag the beta downloader as a trojan. It is a false positive.

Black Screens

There have been multiple reports of black screen issues being related to the use of a Quick Cam webcam. In some cases exiting out of the software has resolved the issue but others have reported a need to uninstall the software for the camera in order to resolve the problem. There are also reports where some security programs like Comodo firewall can cause the game to start and stay on a black screen.

Source: http://kokugamer.com/2010/07/29/blizzard-confirms-starcraft-ii-overheating-bug/

I know that lately I have been having issues with my video card as well. It's a Nvidia Gefore 9800 GT, it shouldn't have any problems.

It also mentions that you should get rid of the dust in the compter box so the fans can work properly and so your system can run a little more smoothly.

 

[tagg1080]

The mouse curser issue with ATI drivers is also in Star2, tis annoying.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Overheating issue especially affects owners of 8800 GT cards. My brother has one that the game says should run high fine but it can physically only run medium due to overheating at high. Yes I did apply Vsync, even more restrictive frame caps and clean the heat sync.

 

[fancy]

Man wtf?
My Geforce 8500 GT has absolutely no problems running this...No overheating, no nothing, just some slowdown on some high light parts like that laser for the artifact mission.

 

[Dr Super Good]

And? My 275 GTX runs the game on ultra with no fixes and never overheats, even if I up resolution to 1080p for a TV and get an average of 60 FPS or more.

Your 8500 GT is as simlar to my brothers 8800 GT as my 275 GTX is. Basically not at all next to using some geforce 8 series ideas (GPU design) and being around the same age.

The 8500 GT is nowhere near as powerful as a 8800 GT so does not produce as much heat for a start and also its cooling would be different which is the main problem with the 8800 GT.

The 8800 GT stock cooling is not enough to allow the card to reach maximum load for elongated periods. Modern cards have a lot better stock coolers.

The 8800 GT has 1 fan and a small heatsync on it. My 275 GTX has 2 fans, a long heatsync and the fans suck in air from the back of the computer (unlike the 8800GT which uses air from inside the computer to cool. Yes my card has double the processing power compared to the 8800 GT but considering each opperation it does uses less energy it means the cooling for mine is more than ample while the 8800 GT is majorly lacking.

 

[JimBob]

Overheating issue especially affects owners of 8800 GT cards. My brother has one that the game says should run high fine but it can physically only run medium due to overheating at high. Yes I did apply Vsync, even more restrictive frame caps and clean the heat sy

Sometimes that means that the other parts of the computer must be upgraded as well. Motherboard, processor, memory, hard-drive.... It sounds like your not getting the full results of that video card perhaps because of what I said above. The Video card might just be too good for the rest of the computer.

 

[Bu113t]

I had a gt 9600 which tended to get a bit hot while I played Sc2.
But then I swapped it with a ATI Radeon HD 5770 and I don't got that problem.
Although now while I play, my cpu temperature is always at 70degrees (celcius),
and if I try to watch a youtube or something while I'm playing it goes to 80 and my comp shuts down.
Intel Core 2 duo @ 2,93GHz if your wondering.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Sometimes that means that the other parts of the computer must be upgraded as well. Motherboard, processor, memory, hard-drive.... It sounds like your not getting the full results of that video card perhaps because of what I said above. The Video card might just be too good for the rest of the computer.

You my dear sir can not read....
His computer can run the game on ultra even playably.... for 4 seconds...
His graphic card then overheats causing a serious system crash.

High is no problem for it, again at 60 FPS highly playable but still it overheats in 5-10 minutes of playing.

Only on medium can it play reliably. Once again it can handle ultra even at playable levels but will only run for 4 seconds before a total system crash due to the graphic card overheating.

The card suffers from heat runaway. Basically if it exceeds 70 degrees it will run straight up to fatal levels at an ever increasing rate. It is entirly due to the crappy cooling on it being unable to keep the card cool and cleaning the dust off it drastically boosted stability (can run medium stabilly unlike before where even low overheated).

His 4 GB of RAM, intel quad core at 2.4 GHz and 2 TBs of HDD space have nothing to do with the crash.

 

[brayden430]

My 8600gt never seemed to have problem its overclocked as far as its possible usually will hit 70c running furmark for hours in the summer with ambient temp at 81 indoors

insufficient cooling is the problem in any game that stresses a gpu it will over heat. Make sure you have case fans below it bringing in cool air for it not reusing warmer case vents and don't stuff your computer into a small desk slot will make overheating much much much worse

 

[Dr Super Good]

My 8600gt never seemed to have problem its overclocked as far as its possible usually will hit 70c running furmark for hours in the summer with ambient temp at 81 indoors

What godly cooling mechanisim are you using for this? I never heard of a graphic card running cooler than the ambient (outside of liquid nitrogen cooling for records) as that makes no sense energy wise (creating such a heat gradient is impratical). Furthermore I am concerend about your house, 81 degrees is extreemly hot even for a tropical desert and stuff could easilly catch fire if you are not careful. My final question is how are you able to live inside a house that is 81 degrees when your body can not exceed 40 degrees without dieing? I understand sweating does cool you down but I do not think it would help much with a 44 degree gradient... Its like you are living on venus or an oven...

A 8600GT is nowhere near a 8800GT. For a comparision I am using default specs.
A 8800GT performs 4-5 times as many calculations per second as a 8600 GT.
A 8800GT uses 2.5 times as much power compared with a 8600GT.

If you were using my brothers 8800GT cooling on a 8600GT you could easilly overclock and still be cool with an 8600GT because it is like comparing an oven to a furnace.

insufficient cooling is the problem in any game that stresses a gpu it will over heat.

Incorrect...
Only poorly designed or highly compact hardware components suffer overheating problems when mximumly loaded. As a matter of principle because cooling is never in optimum conditions you have to build with great excesses inorder to garuntee reliable function cause the same cooling working in alaska (cold) must work in california (hot). Furthermore cooling potential can drop over time as dust could interfear with airflow and so to prevent a user from having to clean his computer every few days they need a tollerence. Furthermore people would not be buying performance hardware (8800 GT is performance unlike the 8600 GT) if they were not going to load it heavilly thus the engineers have to design for prelonged maximum load aswell.

Also keep in mind it is average maximum load as different instructions and opperations generate different ammounts of heat. I believe this is the problem with SC2, as it probably uses a very difficult to perform opperation more than to be expected per second. End result is higher power consumption and so more heat generated, so much so that cards with minimilistic cooling solutions would overheat.

An example of performance reliable hardware is my 275 GTX in my computer. It runs SC2 with no overheating problems at all, infact after playing 8 hours straight with no overheating fixes it still had not crashed the game once and still was playing ultra at 60 fps. I could also idle in menues where framerate must have exceeded hundreds (due to no cap) for hours without any problem at all.

The 8800 GT looked like a bargine, it was cheep and powerful and atleast we now know why it was cheep... They cut corners with cooling thus its got the power of a performance card yet cooling simlar to budget cards.

 

[brayden430]

Sorry i should have made my temperatures more clear out of habit i typed my house temp in Ferignhight and not in Celsius sorry for the cunfusion

What im saying its if a computer has bad cooling its going to over heat when taxed to the max. While cheaper graphics cards with cheap heat sinks are a issue.

i dont have the cooling of a 8800gt while it isent the same as a 8800gt bad cooled gpu is poorly cooled apply a poorly cooled gpu is going to over heat. not really blizzards fault people cant keep computer cooled when they buy high end components that produce a lot of eat and then put them in a badly cooled case.

From what i understand is that during 2d people dident cap there Frames per second and they reach rediculas amounts of frames overheating the gpu. thats what i heard

 

[Dr Super Good]

If you did have the cooling of a 8800 GT you would be perfectly fine cause your card uses 1/2.5th of the power.

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

My 8600gt never seemed to have problem its overclocked as far as its possible usually will hit 70c running furmark for hours in the summer with ambient temp at 81 indoors

insufficient cooling is the problem in any game that stresses a gpu it will over heat. Make sure you have case fans below it bringing in cool air for it not reusing warmer case vents and don't stuff your computer into a small desk slot will make overheating much much much worse

Rofl
And Rofl Dr SG, you made my night, both.

 

[brayden430]

If you did have the cooling of a 8800 GT you would be perfectly fine cause your card uses 1/2.5th of the power.

i don't see how that makes a difference from my statement most of the Dead GPU's are because of poor cooling weather on user end of manufactures end but Blizzard shouldn't be blamed for it.

a 8800gt heat sink is designed to keep up with its thermal demands
a 8600gt heat sink is for its thermal demands my point is
8800 is a high end card when it was made and it produces lots of heat.

Any gpu without the proper cooling is going to heat when put at 100% load so this shouldn't be new and in no way does it apply to starcraft

Graphics cards create heat when taxed like ANY computer component

 

[Dr Super Good]

I do not know why you are even mentioning this stuff. It is pretty apparent I am fully aware of the reasons why computer components produce heat.

Fact is that the 8800 GT consumes more power than the 8600 GT by 2.5 times. Fact is that the power consumed by a component almost completly is turned into heat (some will be shipped between components or stored temporarly in impendience or capacitence). It is not hard to keep something like a 8600 GT cool so why did you bother mentioning the fact you do not suffer from this overheating problem when it mostly affects laptop and performance card owners.

Infact very low end graphic cards and solutions nowdays do not need any active cooling at all. The DS and 3DS for example use graphic processors which do not need any energy put into them to cool them.

How is this possible? Well its all down to thermodynamics and how quickly energy dissipates from one point to another. The higher the temperature difference the faster it will disipate (put something 1000 degrees next to something 0 degrees and the surfaces will change at hundreds of degrees a second). The more heat generated, the faster the dissipation rate must be to keep the temperature constant.

Logically this can be contered by letting the temperatures rise until an equilibrium is met (the difference is big enough, the temeprature will stop increasing) but in the case of electronics that usually is not a viable option as that equilibrium would be far past the withstandable temperatures.

Air is the most common heat accepter due to how easilly available it is. The problem however is air is not very dense so can not accept a lot of heat energy per volume when compared to substances like water. As such the air will heat up to nearly the same temperature as the radiator (the heat sync) after absorbing only a little energy (at which point it acts as an insulator slowing heatloss which is bad). To get around that fans are used to exchange air so a constant stream of low temperature air displaces the heated up air away. Relying on the natural exchangeing of heat also will not work in all cases as even the heat conductivity of copper will not be able to transport heat energy away fast enough (future gen processors made with 20 nm or smaller precission may run into this) and so sometimes an active heatpump is used to cool the processor down while heating the copper heatsync (or water, where this is most commonly used due to the area for heat transfer) up. This will logically improve the efficency of removing the heat as more energy is accepted per volume of heat accepter that passes through the system due to the higher temperature difference.

You then run into problems where the system smothers itself with its own waste heat if air is not properly being exchanged (if the air is comming in at 60 degrees, it can not cool the heatsync below 60 degrees). This will reduce cooling efficency. Likewise with air cooling if there is dust blocking the air flow, less air will pass through so there will be less heat taken away. Dust might also act as an insulator reducing the efficency of heat transfer in air cooling. If the thermal paste is not applied correctly between heatsync and processor you can also lose transfer efficency.

What people often forget is that most of the energy used in processors is to switch transistor states. As such reducing clockrate will reduce the number of switches per second and so reduce the energy consumed. As this energy consumed is truned mostly to heat, it will reduce the heat production. Thus with correctly set drivers you could create a fail safe for a graphic card whereby if it is starting to overheat it will automatically underclock the processor to allow it to cool off before the temperature risks hardware damage or system instability. A lot of laptops do this with both CPU and GPU to prevent damage due to inaduquit cooling. Logically this will affect performance in a negative way as the hardware can do less instructions per second which is not desirable but it is better than damage or crashes.