I think I've got a build set up in my head, just need to get the cashflow to support it before the game launches and I should be all set.

I was thinking about going with

Intel i5-750 Lynnfield Quad core
ASUS 1156 P55 mobo
G.Skill Ripjaws ram, somewhere between 4 and 8gb
new 1.5TB HDD
700w PSU
and maybe a 4890? The video card is the only thing I'm really up in the air about, I know the 5xxx series is nice, but there are definitely going to be some nicer DX11 cards out when DX11 actually matters (not like I'll be playing anything other than SC2 anyways lol) so I was thinking of sticking to a really high performance 4xxx series or maybe even an Nvidia? Not really sure where to go on there if anyone has any opinions on what to do for this it'd be much appreciated :D

FragKrag

United States11539 Posts

May 26 2010 04:36 GMT

#983

HD 4890 is a very solid choice if you do not plan on going for DX11 games, but it may be hard to find some in stock because they are not produced anymore

!

You may also want to keep in mind that many of the 1.5TB HDDs on the market at the moment are 5400RPM with high access times, and thus are not suitable for use as boot drives

The 4890 will not require a 700W PSU either. A solid 600W will be perfectly fine.

hydroxx

United States46 Posts

May 26 2010 04:39 GMT

#984

Well I'd rather have the 700w so eventually when DX11 games do start rolling out in the masses, I can just upgrade the card and probably snag an i7 since they'll be cheaper by then, and be all set for those games.

And I have a 7200rpm 250GB HDD to use as a boot drive :D

I was thinking about SSD drives as well, but at the moment I don't see them as really worth it, next year they'll have 500GB drives for the same price as the 100GBs now so I might as well wait

Any thoughts on the RAM? Is 8gb a bit of overkill? Or you think it'll really be useful?

semantics

10040 Posts

May 26 2010 04:45 GMT

#985

On a single card you never really need more then 600w unless you plan on ocing your ram, cpu and gpu to the brink.

4890 is only good if you can find it cheap like a GTX 275 they are EOL thus usually are costly becuase they aren't sold anymore.

5770 works fine on ultra sub 1920x1080 it works fine on mostly ultra at 1920x1080, 5850 works on ultra/extreme at 1920x1080 I'm using 16 by 9 becuase that the game native res pretty much.

4gigs is plenty. SC2 is a 32bit game it cannot use more then 3.2 gigs of ram, and it's programed not to use on avg 1.5gigs in most cases something like that although with the memory leaks etc it doesn't always work out to be like that.

8gigs of ram is only necessary for like 64bit vHD ideo editing, render farms, HD photo editing etc along those lines.

hydroxx

United States46 Posts

May 26 2010 04:49 GMT

#986

Well I'll probably go with 4GB then, and like I said I'd like to have the 700w so I don't have to replace that as well when I upgrade to a nice DX11 card when those start rolling out in the masses.

And I plan on playing at 1920x1200, that's my monitors native res and playing on anything else looks blurry and off.

The 4890 is 200 bucks on newegg and tigerdirect atm, should I be going for something else like an Nvidia card possibly? I want to get the most performance for the least amount of money basically. I'd like to be able to run the game with everything on max settings with a solid framerate though.

FragKrag

United States11539 Posts

May 26 2010 04:53 GMT

#987

On May 26 2010 13:45 semantics wrote:
4890 is only good if you can find it cheap like a GTX 275 they are EOL thus usually are costly becuase they aren't sold anymore.

Newegg currently has one for $190, and one for $200. Not bad at all imo

4GB of RAM is more than enough.

I doubt you'll find a GTX 275 under $250 because of the artificial shortage. Another card you may want to consider is the HD 5830. While it isn't as powerful as the 4890 at times, it does support DX11 and it runs very very cool. If there is one around $210, I would probably go for it.

hydroxx

United States46 Posts

May 26 2010 04:59 GMT

#988

But when DX11 really starts pumping out some nice games, I feel like the 5830 is going to be lacking, that's why I was thinking of going with the 4890 for now, and then upgrading to a nicer DX11 card once they start making some more or the prices on the 5970 drop or something.

If you think it'd be smarter to go with the 5830 I may have to go with that then, we'll have to see what happens in the video card world before launch.

Thanks for the help though gents it's much appreciated.

FragKrag

United States11539 Posts

May 26 2010 05:01 GMT

#989

Yeah, that is a bit of a concern. With a 1920x1200 display you are really going to end up needing more power ;_;

TadH

Canada1846 Posts

May 26 2010 05:05 GMT

#990

Here are my Specs

I'm running in full screen windowed mode 1600x900 I believe

Graphics are set to custom, everything is on ultra/high

intel quad core i5 3.2 ghz processor
8GB DDR3 Ram
1TB HD
nVidia GTX 260

Sound slike a pretty sweet rig right? Well it is, cept' I only get about 50~60 FPS

If I lower the settings to medium, it does not change, even if I lower the resolution the FPS stays the same.

Was wondering if any of you have any ideas on how to improve upon this?

(I am using the sc2 beta drivers from nVidia)

Thanks~

hydroxx

United States46 Posts

May 26 2010 05:16 GMT

#991

On May 26 2010 14:01 FragKrag wrote:
Yeah, that is a bit of a concern. With a 1920x1200 display you are really going to end up needing more power ;_;

Does 1920x1200 really take that much more power than 1920x1080?

And if I'm planning on getting a nicer card when DX11 games are actually coming out in the masses and the cards are getting cheaper, do you think it'd be better to get the 4970 now? I mean I want to run SC2 flawlessly at 1920x1200, and if the 4970 can do that I'll probably just end up getting that and going for a major upgrade when the time comes.

FragKrag

United States11539 Posts

May 26 2010 05:21 GMT

#992

nah, it's just that 1920x1200 takes a lot of power in general :p

I think the HD 4890 should be able to handle it at Ultra.

TadH: It sounds like you have an FPS cap somewhere? Because I don't really see any bottlenecks on your system. Did you by chance do that framerate force earlier on?

PineappleSage

Canada109 Posts

May 26 2010 05:26 GMT

#993

intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU t5300 @ 1.73GHz 1.73GHz
ram: 2.5 GB
32-bit Operating system

FallenWraith

United States26 Posts

May 26 2010 06:12 GMT

#994

1920x1080 res
Ulta settings get me 50 fps in game
I never play here due to there is too much information to parse

CPU: Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 2.94GHz
GPU: 2x GeForce 9600 GT
Ram: 4 GB

DemiSe

883 Posts

May 26 2010 23:16 GMT

#995

On May 26 2010 14:05 TadH wrote:
Here are my Specs

I'm running in full screen windowed mode 1600x900 I believe

Graphics are set to custom, everything is on ultra/high

intel quad core i5 3.2 ghz processor
8GB DDR3 Ram
1TB HD
nVidia GTX 260

Sound slike a pretty sweet rig right? Well it is, cept' I only get about 50~60 FPS

If I lower the settings to medium, it does not change, even if I lower the resolution the FPS stays the same.

Was wondering if any of you have any ideas on how to improve upon this?

(I am using the sc2 beta drivers from nVidia)

Thanks~

I have the exact problem. I'm running everything on ultra and have almost the same setup as you. I get around 60fps, and when I lower the quality the fps stay the same, it seems like I have a cap of 60fps and can't go higher. I think I should get a lot more than 60 fps, or maybe not a lot, but definitely higher than 60 fps.
Although I havn't really looked for the "problem", if anyone has suggestions / ideas to fix this, I'd appreciate if you posted / pm

hydroxx

United States46 Posts

May 26 2010 23:54 GMT

#996

I'm not positive but if you go to My Documents/StarcraftII you should see a file called Variables.txt, open that and put in frameratecap= and after the equals put 100 or 150 or whatever you want, this should allow the game to go above 60 fps, also I'm pretty sure you'll have to have Vsync off if you're using an LCD monitor as the refresh rate is usually 59 or 60, which will lock the FPS in game to 59 or 60 with Vysnc on. Let me know if that works :D