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Low FPS with high - ultra shaders setting

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If the shaders are on low and everything else is on ultra, I have very good FPS. If I turn the shaders setting to medium, the FPS is good but the water turns pink, I don't know why. If the shader settings are on high or ultra, the frames drop very much. I have 2 GTX580 graphic cards, my processor is i7 3,07 ghz. I think that these specs are enough to have shaders on high - ultra. What could be causing this problem?
 

Dr Super Good

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Try disabling SLI, some games do not support it very well. Your graphic card is more than ample to run SC2 on ultra as I run it on ultra with a slower I7 model and an older and slower 275GTX.

I assume your drivers are up to date as that is the first thing people do when they encounter any graphic problems. If not you should definatly upgrade them as new optimizations are added for games like StarCraft II with every new revision.
 
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Disabling SLI fixed it, I can't select Extreme anymore but that doesn't matter. There's almost no difference. Weird, I can select Extreme in the editor, but not in-game, confusing, lol.
 

Dr Super Good

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It is not working as well as it could be. You are not able to play at extreme which I think even I can with a single 275 GT and you are not using 50% of your GPU so performance could be 30-40% better if the SLI worked properly.

There is no need to watch in black and white just because "it works" when your set supports colour. You have serious hardware in your computer and it is a major waste if it is not being used. Turning SLI off is a temporary solution, a long term solution should allow you to play at extreme with SLI on and high frame rate.
 
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I have 50 - 60 FPS. What difference is there really between Ultra and Extreme?

SC2 is the only game where my frames drop on high settings.
 
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I have 50 - 60 FPS. What difference is there really between Ultra and Extreme?

SC2 is the only game where my frames drop on high settings.

Extreme adds some kind of high-quality occlusion or something, you can see it by just changing between Ultra and Extreme and looking at settings. Personally I don't see any difference between these modes, not in quality nor in performance.

Agree, SC2 performance is just terrible. I manage to play on "almost Ultra" settings, with only lightning, special effects and anti-aliasing set to minimum, but it's a bit laggy, and the picture is not breathtaking at all. I don't get it: I could play Deus Ex HR on the highest settings (even tweaked some in NVidia panel to make it look even better), performance was excellent! But SC2, while looking MUCH worse than that Deus Ex, is laggy.
 

Dr Super Good

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Agree, SC2 performance is just terrible. I manage to play on "almost Ultra" settings, with only lightning, special effects and anti-aliasing set to minimum, but it's a bit laggy, and the picture is not breathtaking at all. I don't get it: I could play Deus Ex HR on the highest settings (even tweaked some in NVidia panel to make it look even better), performance was excellent! But SC2, while looking MUCH worse than that Deus Ex, is laggy.
Your CPU is bottlenecking the game. RTS games push your CPU a lot and most of the frame dropping is caused as a result of the CPU being over schedualed.

You cannot compare Deus Ex ( a FPS or TPS) to an RTS game as the number of agents it needs to support at a time is much lower. You do not have 300 agents brawling at a time in Deus Ex do you?
 
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Your CPU is bottlenecking the game. RTS games push your CPU a lot and most of the frame dropping is caused as a result of the CPU being over schedualed.

You cannot compare Deus Ex ( a FPS or TPS) to an RTS game as the number of agents it needs to support at a time is much lower. You do not have 300 agents brawling at a time in Deus Ex do you?

I am aware that the game is relying heavily on CPU performance. However my laptop has one of the top Core i7 processors. Not a single strategy I played before (even such enormous game as Supreme Ruler: Cold War) was laggy with any settings.
And also performance of SC2 in my case doesn't really depend on the number of units in the map, size of the map, etc. It's 18-22 FPS constantly. 8 players play just as well as 2 players.
I would think that it's just me who messed something up in NVidia settings, in SC2 settings, maybe catched some virus or something. But I keep reading the same complains from other people on different systems and settings. So there's definitely some kind of problem.

Networking though works just excellent in SC2. I haven't had a single disconnect, delay (ping) is next to nothing, in contrast to WC3 where my ping sometimes was as big as 150-200 ms.
 

Dr Super Good

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However my laptop has one of the top Core i7 processors.
I am not entirly sure about that. They often run at lower clock rates due to heat problems.

And also performance of SC2 in my case doesn't really depend on the number of units in the map, size of the map, etc. It's 18-22 FPS constantly. 8 players play just as well as 2 players.
Fill rate bottleneck? Perhapse memory bandwidth and quantity? Especially since you are using a laptop you likely have a rather poor graphic card compared to the similar named desktop versions (which usually are 4-8 times the physical size).
 
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I am not entirly sure about that. They often run at lower clock rates due to heat problems.
Well, mine has 2.4 GHz which is not bad at all. Of course I could overclock it, but, since all other games (including strategies) work fine, I don't want to. And, anyway, say, 3 GHz compared to 2.4 GHz shouldn't make that much difference.

Fill rate bottleneck? Perhapse memory bandwidth and quantity? Especially since you are using a laptop you likely have a rather poor graphic card compared to the similar named desktop versions (which usually are 4-8 times the physical size).
Memory is 8 Gb and pretty fast. Graphic card is NVidia GTX 560M which is close to desktop NVidia 550 - anyway, as I said, graphics settings do not change performance significantly in my case.

Of course, laptop is laptop. My complaint was that the game runs pretty slow while not having that much impressive graphics. Really, visual difference between WC3 and SC2 is not dramatic, and processors should perform pretty equally in these 2 games since in WC3 on some maps they're to work with many thousands of units on the map and they do it well.
 
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I almost jelly you guys, you argue about Ultra and Extreme when all I want is High settings without lag, where things start to not matter if High or Ultra/Extreme. Because it is High where water is reflective and realistic and you can see the light lighting any bodies around. Medium feels... can't enjoy the gaming experience as much as High where banelings splash and you can see zerglings burning (oh yeah I had to go Low Models because I get lag if many banelings die and that hurts in ladder)

Well glad you solved your prob
 

Dr Super Good

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visual difference between WC3 and SC2 is not dramatic
You are joking right?

since in WC3 on some maps they're to work with many thousands of units on the map and they do it well.
StarCraft II uses more resources per unit. This should be obvious by how you can move 400 zerglings at once while in WarCraft III the same army will move like a joke (single stream of units).
 
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You are joking right?

Not at all. The REAL difference is, say, between KOTOR and Mass Effect. Yeah, I agree, there are amazing special effects in SC2, great textures and such, but, visually, I like WC3 even better. It is pretty much like the difference between Star Wars Episode 4 and Episode 1: yeah, special effects, modern cameras and so on, but Episode 4 looked way more realistic.
Actually, what I just noticed, trying to get an optimal performance in SC2, is I actually more like it on all settings set to lowest than that on highest! I guess incredible textures and such are just not suited for RTS games. RPG and FPS - yes, but RTS - it is somehow weird. Maybe it is just me, an old-school gamer who still loves sometimes to nostalgically play Warcraft 2 or Age of Empires 1...

StarCraft II uses more resources per unit. This should be obvious by how you can move 400 zerglings at once while in WarCraft III the same army will move like a joke (single stream of units).
OK, take the most possibly horrible experience (excluding some special custom maps): 4v4, everyone has 200/200 and all of these are zerlings. OK, 1600 zerglings and, say, even 3200 buildings (absolutely impossible, but suppose so). Total of about 5000 units, including neutral creeps, minerals and so on.
Now, this number (5000 units) was common 10 years ago in WC3 in such maps as, say, Line Tower Wars. There was some lag, true, but it was 10 years ago, when computers were a joke as compared to current ones. These 5000 units also moved simultaneously, could change behaviour every second (depending on a particular maze, on block and so on). What is the need to use more resources per unit if in WC3 everything worked just fine? As a half/programmer I can definitely tell you that to make 400 zerglings governed at once is very easy and not resource demanding. Actually, you can do it in WC3 right now: create a map and make 400 grunts moving together with one you govern. It is ridiculously easy.

I can guess why so much processor time is used now. Because of all these special effects, mineral sparks, difficult creep-evolving patterns and so on. Well, time moves forward and these effects should be added. But why aren't we given an option to turn them off? I absolutely don't care about some mineral sparks that get annoying the minute you see them, if it makes the game absolutely unplayable on really strong computers.
 

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but Episode 4 looked way more realistic.
As much as I loved the old starwars, you must be kidding... The fact all the computers look like museume pieces for a start and how robots are not used for combat extensivly while in 30 years time here in reality there might be fully automated armies.

I guess incredible textures and such are just not suited for RTS games. RPG and FPS - yes, but RTS - it is somehow weird.
Texture quality has no impact on performance if your graphic card has enough GPU memory. It takes the card the same time to render a 32*32 texture (like from N64 games) as it does a 2048*2048 texture. It will however drasticly slow performance if your card does run out of memory as then it has to thrash the PCI-E bus. As all gamming cards have atleast 1 GB now (usually towards 3 for searious pieces) this is no problem in SC2 and you can set ultra textures without a single frame drop in all circumstances. Even a 8800 GT which burns out if it runs SC2 on ultra is capable of ultra textures without any heat problems as long as other things are set to low.

These 5000 units also moved simultaneously
Do not try to "bull shit" me. I know exactly how WarCraft III moves units and it is physically not possible to move 5000 units together with collision. Tower defenses got away with 400 per player by cheating and removing all collision to optimize mini-move performance. In WarCraft III if 2 units collide they cancel any existing mini-move order and the unit is stationary until the mini-move generator task (run every frame for every player) reaches that unit again.

As a half/programmer I can definitely tell you that to make 400 zerglings governed at once is very easy and not resource demanding.
I agree, it is the collision that is. You could get the same effect in WC3 by getting 100 air units to stack up (attacking a target) and then ordering them to stop. The air units pushed each other appart which would often drop frame rate drasticly when it occured. Unlike WarCraft III where that mechanic was only used for air units when stationary, StarCraft II uses it for all units all the time allowing you to make big units like a "megalisk" push away small units which is not possible in WC3.

Yes in StarCraft II you can make a massive unit physically push through armies. In WarCraft III the unit would lose any current mini-move as soon as it touched another unit meaning that inefficient triggers would be required to achieve the same or similar effects.

That said, StarCraft II can easilly support thousands of stationary units without any performance problems at all, it is entirly the push collision physics that are so demanding with the movement system.

Actually, you can do it in WC3 right now: create a map and make 400 grunts moving together with one you govern.
And watch how they form a chain accross the map. Only if collision is disabled will they move vaguely well. Complex terrain will also degrade their movement performance as mini-moves will be shorter.

I can guess why so much processor time is used now. Because of all these special effects, mineral sparks, difficult creep-evolving patterns and so on. Well, time moves forward and these effects should be added. But why aren't we given an option to turn them off? I absolutely don't care about some mineral sparks that get annoying the minute you see them, if it makes the game absolutely unplayable on really strong computers.
They are probably less demanding than the billboards in WarCraft III as they use Direct3D 10. In worst case the sparks will be as demanding as any particle WarCraft III used.
 
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As much as I loved the old starwars, you must be kidding... The fact all the computers look like museume pieces for a start and how robots are not used for combat extensivly while in 30 years time here in reality there might be fully automated armies.

Well, this is subjective. But let me give another example. Take cartoons. I definitely loved Tom and Jerry series when I was a kid, and I somehow love it still. But, looking at modern cartoons, such as Captain Nemo or Ice Age... I really don't like this new graphics at all. It's kind of lost its charm.
Now, I don't say I don't like SC2 graphics. It's just not much better than in WC3, in my opinion, and it absolutely shouldn't be so sluggish on high-end computers. If you read battle.net forums, you will find some topics where people with absolutely top desktops (like 8 cores processor, NVidia 690 in SLI mode and so on) can't play normally on 'ultra' settings. It's just ridiculous.

Texture quality has no impact on performance if your graphic card has enough GPU memory. It takes the card the same time to render a 32*32 texture (like from N64 games) as it does a 2048*2048 texture. It will however drasticly slow performance if your card does run out of memory as then it has to thrash the PCI-E bus. As all gamming cards have atleast 1 GB now (usually towards 3 for searious pieces) this is no problem in SC2 and you can set ultra textures without a single frame drop in all circumstances. Even a 8800 GT which burns out if it runs SC2 on ultra is capable of ultra textures without any heat problems as long as other things are set to low.
In theory that all sounds great. But now my card has 1.5 GB of memory and it was enough even for Battlefield 3 to run on absolutely highest settings with some tweaking for TXAA and 3D Vision! (Just to mention, 3D mode decreases FPS to about 1/3 and increases textures by about 100%) There is no good explanation on Earth why some RTS game with far from top graphics has these issues.

Do not try to "bull shit" me. I know exactly how WarCraft III moves units and it is physically not possible to move 5000 units together with collision. Tower defenses got away with 400 per player by cheating and removing all collision to optimize mini-move performance. In WarCraft III if 2 units collide they cancel any existing mini-move order and the unit is stationary until the mini-move generator task (run every frame for every player) reaches that unit again.
Why not? You just add a single trigger which checks every 0.01 seconds for every unit if it's stuck, and then, if it is, move units around it on the direction off the unit. In REALLY big unit packs (200-300 units) this simple scheme will not work properly, but then in actual Starcraft 2 code you can just check it not 0.01 seconds, but 0.001 seconds or even more frequently. Even if there are 5000 units on the map, this simple check will cost almost 0% of processor performance.
There might be some really deep things they did to units, agree, but it absolutely shouldn't have THAT huge impact on performance.

I agree, it is the collision that is. You could get the same effect in WC3 by getting 100 air units to stack up (attacking a target) and then ordering them to stop. The air units pushed each other appart which would often drop frame rate drasticly when it occured. Unlike WarCraft III where that mechanic was only used for air units when stationary, StarCraft II uses it for all units all the time allowing you to make big units like a "megalisk" push away small units which is not possible in WC3.
Well, you have a point here. But if this is the main reason of framerate drop, then it just shouldn't have been implemented, at least exactly as it was done. Anyway, the game is heavy on processors even on small 1v1 maps at the very beginning, where the only units able to collide are 6 workers. It doesn't explain poor performance in these situations.

P.S. As I clearly can see, you are much more familiar with games mechanics, so I may be completely wrong in something important and I admit it in advance. I just cannot find any reason to a simple question: why do you have to implement any features which would render the game unplayable on some really good computers? For example, Crysis (which I personally don't like at all, but still) on average settings would run just fine even on some low-end laptops, and that is one of the most resource-demanding games of its time. But Starcraft 2 proves to be unplayable on really good configurations with ANY settings, because you can do little if processor eats so much resources even on the lowest settings.
 

Dr Super Good

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If you read battle.net forums, you will find some topics where people with absolutely top desktops (like 8 cores processor, NVidia 690 in SLI mode and so on) can't play normally on 'ultra' settings. It's just ridiculous.
This is because they are running in SLI mode. Some graphic pipelines scale near linearly with SLI while others will actually perform worse. In most cases turning off SLI will give them near flawless performance. Additionally the use of graphic HUDs like steam will also greatly degrade performance.

I am prety sure if I had their hardware SC2 would run flawlessly. If not then it is a hardware driver bug which will be resolved soon (if not already).

There is no good explanation on Earth why some RTS game with far from top graphics has these issues.
It is nothing to do with the textures or video memory, some other part of the graphic card is bottlenecking the performance. This could be anything from heat (if the card overheats it starts to reduce clock rate inorder to prevent damage) to poor drivers (very common with AMD cards).

Why not? You just add a single trigger which checks every 0.01 seconds for every unit if it's stuck, and then, if it is, move units around it on the direction off the unit. In REALLY big unit packs (200-300 units) this simple scheme will not work properly, but then in actual Starcraft 2 code you can just check it not 0.01 seconds, but 0.001 seconds or even more frequently. Even if there are 5000 units on the map, this simple check will cost almost 0% of processor performance.
In WarCraft III JASS executes extreemly slowly. All referenced names (like native calls) go through a hash lookup process multiple times each time they are referenced. Moving 100 objects 100 times a second in WC3 starts to push modern processors (remember WC3 is only single threaded). If they start to push other units that is even more load as group searches are not the quickest to perform. By the time 200-300 units are doing this then WarCraft III will be unplayable, maybe not if they stand alone but definatly when clustered together.

StarCraft II is made better than WarCraft III. Unlike WarCraft III which gave you timers with meaningless precission such as 0.001 seconds, StarCraft II gives you timers linked to every game frame. A game frame is the actual update period of the game, physical frames you see are interpolated from game frames (so units appear to be in constant motion and not teleporting). Both WarCraft III and StarCraft II used the game frame approach but WarCraft III JASS engine masked it with meaningless precission.

this simple check will cost almost 0% of processor performance.
The way you mentioned it will cost a ton of processor time. Triggers do not compile to native machine code and even StarCraft II Galaxy virtual machine, although much faster than WarCraft III JASS, still is not as fast as machine code.

The only time performance with movement becomes an issue is when you move huge armies together. The performance impack comes from StarCraft II managing crowd collision while moving where as WarCraft III just stopped all movement on collisions.

This can be most noticed by how crowds in StarCraft II will start to compact in size if pushed through bottle neck terrain while keeping as a grouo. In WarCraft III the unit group movement would break down entirly and you would get units going as a stream. Eventually a traffic jam could even form in WarCraft III where continious movement is not possible and the distances between units is smaller than the mini-movement lengther resulting in even slower movement.

Well, you have a point here. But if this is the main reason of framerate drop, then it just shouldn't have been implemented, at least exactly as it was done. Anyway, the game is heavy on processors even on small 1v1 maps at the very beginning, where the only units able to collide are 6 workers. It doesn't explain poor performance in these situations.
There is no poor performance in these situations. If there is then something is not right with your computer hardware (which should not be the case for gamming cards from Nvidia and performance processors from Intel). I have constant 60 FPS on ultra in such situations with only the odd frame drop when content is first loaded (not noticable). I am using a first generation I7 processor and a Nvidia 275 GTX, both prety dated by comparison to newer equivelents.

why do you have to implement any features which would render the game unplayable on some really good computers?
I think the computers are acting not as good as they should be. Also remember that StarCraft II is only dual threaded so will perform the same weather it is given 2 dedicated processors or more. Having a 6 or 8 core machine will not make you play StarCraft II any better than a Tri core machine with same core design. Infact StarCraft II might even perform the same with just 2 processors as it cannot even load 2 to 100% due to synchronization required.

Crysis (which I personally don't like at all, but still) on average settings would run just fine even on some low-end laptops, and that is one of the most resource-demanding games of its time.
The game has a totally different set of requirements from a RTS game and so will perform differently.

But Starcraft 2 proves to be unplayable on really good configurations with ANY settings, because you can do little if processor eats so much resources even on the lowest settings.
It is not that processor demanding. It only uses 2 main threads and even then both will never load cores to 100%. If the CPU is bottlenecking then you should consider upgrading to a quad core with atleast 2.7 GHz (what I use).

Remember to enable vertical synchronization and cap frame rate at your display frame rate. This will prevent the game from wasting resources (specificly CPU on frames you never see).
 
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I am prety sure if I had their hardware SC2 would run flawlessly.

I was sure too. In fact, I have a very huge experience in playing high-demanding games on poor computers, I even played KOTOR on Pentium 2, 16 Mb NVidia GeForce 1, 64 Mb RAM, 1Gb hard drive - and it ran fine, of course, on lowest settings. Living in a poor country (now not so poor, but still) gives an advantage of learning how to utilize your resources with a maximum efficiency. And, I should say, Starcraft 2 is the only 2 game I can't run well on lowest settings even on high-end laptop, let alone those students' netbooks. No tweaking helps me if I play SC2 4v4 match and army sizes come close to 100/200 for every player. This is just ridiculous.

This could be anything from heat (if the card overheats it starts to reduce clock rate inorder to prevent damage) to poor drivers (very common with AMD cards).

Again, in my case it is neither. GPU-Z shows that video card (NVidia GTX 560M) is utilized on 100% even if I play SC2 on lowest settings in 1024x768. I don't get how it can be so. I could blame it on something in my Windows or settings, but the fact that NOT A SINGLE other game has such things shows that Blizzard really messed up with SC2 optimization.

In WarCraft III JASS executes extreemly slowly...

I won't argue on that part since I'm not competent enough. But there is a simple comparison. Take Legion TD map in WC3 and it's SC2 clone Squadron TD. Similar unit numbers, similar map size, so on. In WC3 the map won't lag at all, no matter how many units were sent. In SC2 on lowest settings on high-end computers game lags since the first second and becomes pretty much unplayable after 20 ingame minutes. So what's the point of all these optimizations if, as a result, game performes much worse?

If there is then something is not right with your computer hardware (which should not be the case for gamming cards from Nvidia and performance processors from Intel). I have constant 60 FPS on ultra in such situations with only the odd frame drop when content is first loaded

I have been in gaming since 1992, I believe, and I learned well that you should always take NVidia and Intel, not ATI/AMD. I have Intel Core i7 processor (I believe, 2.4 GHz) and Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M card (1.5 GB). With this setup I can only dream of playing Ultra, I can't even play Medium, and Lowest still lags sometimes. However I've read many topics with people complaining, and they have very different setups. I guess you were just lucky that your processor + video card combination proved to suite SC2 well.
Maybe there is no problem with graphics or processor performance in SC2. It just may be something wrong with optimization for certain hardware. But does it really matter? I can't imagine how bad should optimization be if the game runs far from perfect with the graphics and physics set to look like in games of early 2000s on any modern computer at all.

Infact StarCraft II might even perform the same with just 2 processors as it cannot even load 2 to 100% due to synchronization required.

Yes, looks like this is the case. At least it is so, according to Task Manager.

The game has a totally different set of requirements from a RTS game and so will perform differently.

Not in graphical part. Graphics can be any in any game, so graphics in SC2 could as well be more complex than in Crysis.

If the CPU is bottlenecking then you should consider upgrading to a quad core with atleast 2.7 GHz
Funny thing is that in my case actually processor time is mostly wasted (about 15% or so go to SC2, and that is by the end of a game, and at start it's 10%), but GPU is bottlenecking. But it is the same GPU I used to play on highest settings in many different games, all went well, maybe, except for Dragon Age II (but there Bioware admits that optimization in DA2 is just terrible). So how comes I can't play SC2 without lag on lowest settings??? I'm totally confused...
 

Dr Super Good

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Again, in my case it is neither. GPU-Z shows that video card (NVidia GTX 560M) is utilized on 100% even if I play SC2 on lowest settings in 1024x768. I don't get how it can be so.
You did turn on vertical syncrhonization and limit the frame rate right? Otherwise it will constantly render frames as fast as possible using the GPU near 100%.

A 560M is not as strong as you may wish. M series are usually 1/16 to 1/8 as powerful as the desktop equivelents.

but the fact that NOT A SINGLE other game has such things shows that Blizzard really messed up with SC2 optimization.
I am sure if you went to play some old game from 2000 without turning on vertical synchronization it will also load your GPU to near 100%. Also be aware that laptops will lower the clock rate when running from battery for extended life.

In SC2 on lowest settings on high-end computers game lags since the first second and becomes pretty much unplayable after 20 ingame minutes. So what's the point of all these optimizations if, as a result, game performes much worse?
Unless the map is badly made it should not lag at all on a top end computer. Either the map maker has no idea of optimization (one of those thread spamming guys) or the system is not top end.

I guess you were just lucky that your processor + video card combination proved to suite SC2 well.
No it is just my video card is a desktop card which is probably 4 to 8 times stronger than yours. My processor is also 2.7 GHz so slightly faster as well. There is a reason gammers do not recommend using a laptop to game.

Not in graphical part. Graphics can be any in any game, so graphics in SC2 could as well be more complex than in Crysis.
The type of graphics being performed is totally different.

So how comes I can't play SC2 without lag on lowest settings??? I'm totally confused...
Probably your M card is the reason. Are you using the lattest video drivers?

The most common Desktop complaint with SC2 is that the graphics are too simple. Most people get a CPU bottleneck long before their GPU is near maximum load.
 
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You did turn on vertical syncrhonization and limit the frame rate right? Otherwise it will constantly render frames as fast as possible using the GPU near 100%.

Sure, I tried to switch these settings. Nothing changes. Temperature of video card is normal, GPU is 100% and framerate is low.

A 560M is not as strong as you may wish. M series are usually 1/16 to 1/8 as powerful as the desktop equivelents.

About exactly 560 I read that it is about half of a desktop one. Anyway, the Notebookcheck site promised about bottom line as high as 40 FPS on ultra for 560M, based on their tests.

I am sure if you went to play some old game from 2000 without turning on vertical synchronization it will also load your GPU to near 100%.

Actually, not necessary. Many old games have a discrete rendering system, meaning the game itself draws image with some frequency, say, 30 FPS, regardless of VS.

Also be aware that laptops will lower the clock rate when running from battery for extended life.

Gaming from battery is surely a bad idea. I did not even try it.

Unless the map is badly made it should not lag at all on a top end computer. Either the map maker has no idea of optimization (one of those thread spamming guys) or the system is not top end.

Yes, but on other maps performance has pretty much similar pattern.

No it is just my video card is a desktop card which is probably 4 to 8 times stronger than yours. My processor is also 2.7 GHz so slightly faster as well. There is a reason gammers do not recommend using a laptop to game.
Even so, that doesn't explain how I am able to play almost all modern games on highest possible settings with stable >60 FPS and not able to play SC2 on lowest possible with stable >20 FPS.

The type of graphics being performed is totally different.

Yes, but, generally, it depends on the game design, not on either it is RTS or something else. So, I guess, if the game which looks worse than some other game performs worse too, there is definitely something wrong with optimization.

Probably your M card is the reason. Are you using the lattest video drivers?

Yes, the very latest. I tried to roll back to previous versions but it didn't help. Again, ALL other games perform just incredibly well. Say, I didn't even expect Battlefield 3 to keep >40 FPS all the way with settings maxed out and 3D Vision turned on, but it did it. I wasn't able to play Dragon Age II on maxed out settings since it uses DirectX 11 intensively and my card, I suppose, is just too weak for it. But then, after turning off DirectX 11 in the game (there is an option to play on DirectX 9 instead), it run as well as any other game.

The most common Desktop complaint with SC2 is that the graphics are too simple. Most people get a CPU bottleneck long before their GPU is near maximum load.

Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Graphics doesn't look any innovative, certainly not one of the best graphics games. Yet many people on forums reported not to be able to play it well even on lowest settings, while having really good computers. I even saw a post from some guy who overclocked desktop Core i5 to 4.5 GhZ (!) and played with 2 GeForce 590 cards in SLI mode, and he still couldn't play well on anything above Medium settings. Some say that their CPU bottlenecks it, others (like me) say the same with regards to video card.
 

Dr Super Good

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Actually, not necessary. Many old games have a discrete rendering system, meaning the game itself draws image with some frequency, say, 30 FPS, regardless of VS.
Which is why I said some. I do agree with what you said as many games ran on independant game FPS that was clock synchronized.

and played with 2 GeForce 590 cards in SLI mode
SLI is well known to cause performance problems. Games need to be specially designed or driver patched to support SLI on a card per card baisis. Such people will get higher performance turning SLI off for StarCraft II than with it on due to this. The reason is not all shader pipe-lines scale very well with SLI. Sometimes the drivers produce control instructions in such a way that it thrashes the SLI bridge between the cards resulting in a bottleneck. Crossfire (AMD's equivelent) is also prone to the same problems. SLI only really peaks in efficiency when it comes to 3D or multiple displays as each display or interlaced image comes from a dedicated GPU obtaining maximum parallelisim without any inter-card communication next to frame buffers (so it appears on the right output).

Try asking on the Nvidia support forums. I suspect this is a problem with their card or drivers more than Blizzard. I am running an old 275 GTX and have little problems with StarCraft II. My brother uses a 460 GTX (I think) which also has no problem with StarCraft II on ultra. A 8800 GT also could run StarCraft II on ultra with playable performance for a few seconds before it overheated (lol) and that card is prety old now (2007?).
 
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Try asking on the Nvidia support forums. I suspect this is a problem with their card or drivers more than Blizzard. I am running an old 275 GTX and have little problems with StarCraft II. My brother uses a 460 GTX (I think) which also has no problem with StarCraft II on ultra. A 8800 GT also could run StarCraft II on ultra with playable performance for a few seconds before it overheated (lol) and that card is prety old now (2007?).

I am pretty much sure that NVidia knows of this issue since so many people posted it in different forums, including NVidia's one. But, since all other games run well on my configuration and only Starcraft 2 has problems, I would definitely blame Blizzard on this. Also this problem became very common after 1.5 SC2 patch, before that few people had such problems. In the end, I remember playing SC2 2 years ago on my old laptop with integrated (!) Intel video card and framerate on lowest settings was pretty much the same as I have now, with only NVidia video card on board.
 
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Since you know so much DSG, can you tell me how should I customize my laptop to play almost as if High Settings. I want to play with the water reflection and light emission that starts from High and up. I also want to use High model quality, I had to set my Model Quality to Low because I may lose bnet games if banelings or too many zerg splash or die - HUGE LAG exactly to not control my units then too late - gg loss - the problem was fixed when I lowered to Low quality but, I so wanna use normal death animation. I use 512 MB ATI HD 3870, you know who I am.
 
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I'm happy to say that I finally fixed my issue and get a great Starcraft 2 performance (over 40 FPS constantly on Extreme, more than I had before on lowest settings).

I have just performed a clean installation of Windows 7, without any additional Toshiba applications, without any pirated software (ashamed to admit it, but I had some before) and so on. Starcraft 2 was redownloaded and reinstalled too. I don't know about other games (I deleted them all during disk formatting), but Starcraft 2 performance definitely changed from "unplayable even on lowest" to "decent performance on Extreme".

However I got used to lowest settings so badly that I cannot play on different settings now... I play on lowest with only textures being ultra and get over 100 FPS even during 4v4 matches. Hooray!
 

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Since you know so much DSG, can you tell me how should I customize my laptop to play almost as if High Settings.
Sorry I am not the right person to ask about laptops. I mostly know desktop hardware.

I play on lowest with only textures being ultra and get over 100 FPS even during 4v4 matches.
Told you so! Anyway glad you finally get to experience the StarCraft II that you should. Maybe use Ultra for custom maps, pros use low for melee anyway to avoid the frame drops. Extreeme is not advisable for a laptop as it turns on a demanding shader opperation, ultra should perform about 10%-20% better.
 
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Told you so! Anyway glad you finally get to experience the StarCraft II that you should. Maybe use Ultra for custom maps, pros use low for melee anyway to avoid the frame drops. Extreeme is not advisable for a laptop as it turns on a demanding shader opperation, ultra should perform about 10%-20% better.

Thank you.
Unfortunately, some custom maps (such as Squadron TD or Desert Strike 1338) on Ultra (and even on high) are very slow. Anyway, I am somehow used to old-school graphic and all this beauty simply takes my mind away from an actual gameplay. I feel great that with 100s of units on the screen I don't notice any performance drop, it gives that feeling that I had in WC3 that I have a full control over my gameplay.
 
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Maybe use Ultra for custom maps, pros use low for melee anyway to avoid the frame drops.

Changing the settings every time is annoying. When I play my own missions I also prefer going to High so that I can see the water reflection, shaders and lights. And in Melee - back to Medium and Models: Low. But you are right pros do go to low as they do not care how fancy something looks.

Unlike them however, I would love to play on High models and quality if not the mass baneling or zerg units death.

Besides, I am not sure if pros go Low settings but maybe they still keep the Models: High. (for me there is no reason to go Low, in HotS which so far runs fine on Medium I may have to because the full game I am sure will take more video memory. In SC2 WoL Beta I could play High Settings and High Models without a lag even when zerg units die, in WoL retail I had to go back to Medium and Low Models.

Maybe in HotS retail I will have to either stay Medium or it will want me to go lower. The thing is when you have Models set to Low, there shouldn't be issue with texture and grahpics and it may remain Medium settings).

But seeing the death animation is helpful even for melee because you can see that units actually died, which ones and how many. Just disappearing with splash as I see them now... I cannot follow that well how many died at a time.
 
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Changing the settings every time is annoying. When I play my own missions I also prefer going to High so that I can see the water reflection, shaders and lights. And in Melee - back to Medium and Models: Low. But you are right pros do go to low as they do not care how fancy something looks.

Unlike them however, I would love to play on High models and quality if not the mass baneling or zerg units death.

Besides, I am not sure if pros go Low settings but maybe they still keep the Models: High. (for me there is no reason to go Low, in HotS which so far runs fine on Medium I may have to because the full game I am sure will take more video memory. In SC2 WoL Beta I could play High Settings and High Models without a lag even when zerg units die, in WoL retail I had to go back to Medium and Low Models.

Maybe in HotS retail I will have to either stay Medium or it will want me to go lower. The thing is when you have Models set to Low, there shouldn't be issue with texture and grahpics and it may remain Medium settings).

But seeing the death animation is helpful even for melee because you can see that units actually died, which ones and how many. Just disappearing with splash as I see them now... I cannot follow that well how many died at a time.

For me, beautiful graphics is really beautiful only, maybe, first hour I play a game, then I get used to it and stop paying my attention to it, focusing only on gameplay.

For example, recently I decided to play some Dune2, the best game of my childhood. If I'm right, resolution there is 320x200, sound is a bit better than standart 90-s PC speaker (that 'beep'), and, of course, first minutes it looked and sounded just terrible. But then I got used to it and thought only about how to crush computer opponent.

If my computer could provide 100+ FPS constantly in SC2 on Ultra, I would probably play on it. But I don't think my enjoyment of this game would rise due to it.

Yesterday I played Day9 Monobattles map and by the end had over 140 marines in one control group. And it felt so great just to watch this whole army moving and shooting at Zerg buildings without a slightest lag!
 
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^ Ah come on Westwood studios has some of the best sounds of old games! It's a crime to play them with PC Speaker.. Westwood have also made it for some of the best games for me - Lands of Lore, Legend of Kyrandia & HoF, Dune 2.
 
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Westwood Studios have made some of the best music of the time of the old games. Not listening to them and their speech, using PC speaker instead is a crime! Dune 2, Legend of Kyrandia & Hof, Lands of Lore are from my most favorite old games.
 
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Westwood Studios have made some of the best music of the time of the old games. Not listening to them and their speech, using PC speaker instead is a crime! Dune 2, Legend of Kyrandia & Hof, Lands of Lore are from my most favorite old games.

My personal favourite is Dune 2000 music (very similar to Dune2's, but of better quality).
 
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Dune II had awesome action music, I've used it even in war3. I like lots of it more than Dune 2000. Just needed to set music to Sound Blaster Pro.
 
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