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I'm a new Starcraft 2 player, and I've been attempting to play the game on decently awful laptop.
AMD Turion II Ultra Dual-Core Mobile M600
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200
4GB Ram
...so it's nice and bad. I've turned all graphics down to low, and made some modifications to my variables.txt file to allow for even lower graphics. 1v1 matches are fine, but during large matches, like 2v2, my graphics card is overheating, which is causes my frame rate to drop to about 4 fps (which is unplayable.)
In an attempt to fix this, I've been looking around for a generally excepted "Ultra Low Graphics" variables.txt formula, without success. If anyone had access to this sort of file, that would be super helpful to me 
Also I've been reading around, and apparently the graphics card overheating problem has recently been an issue for some people. If there are any solutions to this that don't involve the variables.txt file, that would be great as well.
Thanks in advance.
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variables.txt cannot be edited anymore after the recent 1.5.1 patch. I would recommend buying a cooling pad for your laptop.
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I'm not sure about other settings but I can get my own frame rate cap right now Maybe somebody else can shed light on this.
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Well i agree with the laptop cooler idea. I actually built my own and it works great. The targus cooler that you can buy from BB or Walmart drops it like 10 degreees or so. Mine has 4 Heat sinks that i wired to one usb cable and it dropped my temp close to 20. Since then i have had little problems except that i go black screen...(maybe you do too?) I have radeon 4250 and 8gb ram and 2.1 ghz processor....ik TERRIBLE lol
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On October 08 2012 09:44 stormchaser wrote:
variables.txt cannot be edited anymore after the recent 1.5.1 patch. I would recommend buying a cooling pad for your laptop.
Good suggestion on the cooling pad.
Actually I believe it still can be edited - if you make Variables.txt read-only, or if you edit the Variables.txt file in your account folder. Someone let me know if I'm wrong, that would be a shame 
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I'm not great with computers, but I can still modify my variables.txt file. What might be confusing some people is that if you modify any settings after modifying the variables.txt file, the changes revert. I use it to remove shadows and use "old" Low graphics settings.
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On October 08 2012 09:56 ImANinjaBich wrote:
Well i agree with the laptop cooler idea. I actually built my own and it works great. The targus cooler that you can buy from BB or Walmart drops it like 10 degreees or so. Mine has 4 Heat sinks that i wired to one usb cable and it dropped my temp close to 20. Since then i have had little problems except that i go black screen...(maybe you do too?) I have radeon 4250 and 8gb ram and 2.1 ghz processor....ik TERRIBLE lol
Nope no black screen. Woah made your own cooler? That sounds awesome.
On October 08 2012 10:05 -_- wrote:
I'm not great with computers, but I can still modify my variables.txt file. What might be confusing some people is that if you modify any settings after modifying the variables.txt file, the changes revert. I use it to remove shadows and use "old" Low graphics settings.
This might be what I'm looking for. Any chance you could share how you got the 'old' low settings?
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On October 08 2012 09:50 invisible.terran wrote:I'm not sure about other settings but I can get my own frame rate cap right now Maybe somebody else can shed light on this.
How do you do that? ...
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You can still modify variables.txt in the my documents folder for a framerate cap.
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I suggest u to change some shadow stuff to 0 because that's what i did.
Also, try playing as full screen with low resolution. That helped me out a lot.
Now I can play with terrain=medium with 100 frames.
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On October 08 2012 09:44 stormchaser wrote:
variables.txt cannot be edited anymore after the recent 1.5.1 patch. I would recommend buying a cooling pad for your laptop.
Read the latest patch notes. AlternateLowTextures was added to the list of things you can modify in variables.txt. (So that people who wanted the old, higher FPS textures could keep them; since it would be retarded to force everyone to play in lower FPS settings than they want.)
If you did a search, you can find everything you can change to maximize FPS. Someone wrote an article for that. Some things might stick, some might not.
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try this. change the resolution to yours tho. let me know what u get
AlertFadeSound=0.898374
alphadepthWrite=0
alternateLowTextures=1
aolight=0
bakeTerrainLighting=1
buildgridhint=1
camerasmartpan=1
controlgroupmode=2
creepnormalmap=0
creepQuality=0
creepreflection=0
creepselfshadow=0
creeptrans=0
deff=0
deffspec=0
depthDisp=0
displaymode=2
displayunitstatus=Selected
dof=0
dragscrollinverted=1
dragscrollspeed=30
fog=0
fogvolume=0
foliagedensity=0.000000
foliagequality=0
gamehdr8bit=1
glossmaps=0
GraphicsOptionEffectsDetail=0
GraphicsOptionLightingQuality=0
GraphicsOptionModelQuality=0
GraphicsOptionMovies=0
GraphicsOptionOverallQualityVer7[6]=0
GraphicsOptionOverallQualityVer7[8]=5
GraphicsOptionPhysicsQuality=0
GraphicsOptionPortraits=1
GraphicsOptionPostProcessing=0
GraphicsOptionReflections=0
GraphicsOptionShaderDetail=0
GraphicsOptionShadowQuality=0
GraphicsOptionSSAO=0
GraphicsOptionTerrainQuality=0
GraphicsOptionTextureQuality[2]=0
halo=0
hdr=0
hdr8bit=1
height=900
highqualityhaloblur=0
hotkeyprofile=alan
keyboardscrollspeed=40
LastChallengeId=ProtossPsionics
lastDeviceId=38422
lightingLevel=1
lightingregionmapterrain=0
lightmap=1
lightmapcastshadows=0
localao=0
localeidassets=enUS
localeiddata=enUS
localight=0
localShadows=0
lowqualitymodels=1
lowQualityMovies=1
mouseoverridesensitivityenabled=1
mousescrollspeed=100
mousesensitivity=1.000000
MoviesSeen=1
music=1
MusicHeard=1
musicvolume=1.000000
normalmap=0
observerunitcolorstyle=0
parallax=0
parallaxshadow=0
particlelod=0
particleobjects=0.000000
particleterrain=0.000000
physicsdensity=0
pixellight=0
portraits3d=0
preBlendedCreep=1
reducemouselagenabled=1
refreshrate=0
reverb=0
ribbonlod=0
sampleFOW=0
shadowmapsize=1
shadows=0
showmissiontime=1
simplifiedCloaking=1
simplifiedShaders=1
soft=0
softshadows=0
softshadowTaps=1
sound=1
soundambiencevolume=0.503731
SoundAutoDetectCPUCoreCount=2
soundchannels=16
soundeffectsvolume=0.496269
soundglobal=1
soundoutput=Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
SoundQuality=0
SoundResampler=LINEAR
SoundSampleRate=44100
sounduivolume=0.500000
speakermode=Stereo
spec=0
splatlod=0
ssao=0
ssparticles=0
targettexeldensity=0.150000
teamcoloredlifestatus=0
TerrainTextureHiResCacheSize=40
TerrainTextureLowResCacheSize=40
TerrainTextureSize=6
texQualityLevel=0
texSpace[2]=256
textureBasedFOW=0
transparentshadows=0
treadlod=0
unitcolorstyle=2
useLowqualitymodels=1
voicechatsoftwaremute=1
vsync=0
watercaustics=0
waterflipbook=1
waterreflection=0
waterrendertargetformat=0
waterrendertargetsize=2
watershadow=0
width=1600
windowheight=900
windowstate=3
windowx=244
windowy=3
winkeydisabled=0
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On October 08 2012 11:48 boomudead1 wrote:
try this. change the resolution to yours tho. let me know what u get
That did help. It's still not stutter-free, but it's better than what it was. Much appreciated.
EDIT: If you want more specifics, the terrain texture is super low-res, which is fine. Other than that, the game appears like it would on low settings. The stutter was slightly less than usual, but still present. The mouse sensitivity went up... but I believe that I can fix that by taking out a few lines in the Variables file.
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This would really help me out too.
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i removed fog and shadows and shaders. u might have trouble with cloaked units. but u can see burrowed roaches/ infestor moving easier. yeah. u can even make terrain texture lower. but u wont b able to see creep. i kept it at 6 cuz i can still see creep. always have a backup detection since its a lil tough to spot cloaked.
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Buy a cooling pad, and if its an old laptop that you've used for a long time, make sure you had it cleaned out and reapplied thermal paste to it -> If you dig out a laptop you'll see that the CPU+Vid card is together and connected a pipe thingy which leads to the heatsink->fan. The area of connection has a layer of thermal paste on it, allowing for easier heat transfer. Usually after about a year that paste starts to wear out if you game as much as I do, and requires reappliance.
Btw download HWMonitor
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EPT
