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Update: 19/09/2010
I downloaded a program called CPUID CPU-Z to check out my core clock speed after reading some stuff on other forums. My clock speed was showing 800 MHz, which I thought was strange because i thought it was supposed to be 2800 MHz. So I went into my BIOS to play with some settings, my guess is Cool n' Quiet was throttling my cpus down to 800 MHz and when I was playing SC2 it wouldnt trigger back up to the necessary 2800 MHz.
I disabled the Cool n' Quiet and voila, it is now running extremely smooth on High and Ultra. Since SC2 utilizes only 2 CPUs, I was basicly running a dual core at 800MHz instead of a dualcore (really a quadcore) at 2.8GHz. I want to thank everyone for the time they put into their responses. I hope this will help others that have or will experience the same problem.
I will add more text to this post so that google searches will bring people here.
-SC2 StarCraft 2 Lagging with new computer AMD
-Cool n' Quiet disable to fix CPU StarCraft 2 SC2 Lag AMD
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Good evening fellow TLers,
I just bought a new computer, and it lags in SC2. I'm confused because with the specs it should be destroying it (meaning not lagging at all).
I am not running any programs in the background. No torrents or iTunes or anything of the sort. I have 30Mb/s internet speed, which is considered very high for where I live (I pay extra to get this speed, I know, Europe gets 100MB/s at lower rates, I know)
Specs:
ASUS M4A87TD Motherboard (AMD3)
AMD Phenom II X4 925 Processor (Quadcore@2.80 GHz))
Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 Video Card
4Gb of Kingston 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM
1 TB Western Digital Green Caviar Hard Drive
Running Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (x86)
All drivers are up to date.
Running SC2 on 1920x1080 resolution, all settings on medium or high, no settings on Ultra.
SC2 Lags with this computer when battles have around 40-50 supplies and more. Here is a picture of the Win7 Index rating. Shouldn't this computer be destroying SC2? Its not like I'm trying to play Crysis2 on max resolution and settings:
![[image loading]](http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/5120/rating.png)
So my question is, what am I doing wrong. The only thing I know I have to change is going from Win7 32-bit(x86) to Win7 64-bit(x64). How much of a performance increase should I see from going to 64bit? Is it like double? I know Win7 running on 32bit is only able to use 3Gb of ram. I have 4Gb in my system, so I would theoretically be getting an extra Gig, but I don't see that being the difference between lag and no lag.
Furthermore, it almost seems my previous computer was doing better. And it was 5 years old.
Specs of old computer than ran SC2 better with same settings:
ASUS P5B-VM DO Micro ATX Motherboard (Intel)
Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 Video Card
Intel Core2duo E6300 Processor (Dualcore@1.86GHz)
3GB of Corsair 800MHz DDR RAM
1 TB Western Digital Green Caviar Hard Drive
Running Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (x86)
I've heard rumours that SC2 only utilizes a maximum of 2 CPUs and doesn't take advantage of quad cores. However, even if that was true, 2 CPUs@2.8GHz (out of the 4 from the Phenom X4) should be better than 2CPUs@1.86GHz (from the Intel E6300).
I'm at a loss gentlemen, can anyone give me any suggestions?
edit: typos
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You will not see any difference, unless your windows install is currently damaged by some stroke of bad luck, and any reinstall would have fixed the problem.
The only real performance consideration applicable here is how much ram can be addressed by your operating system. 32 bit should allow you to address just short of 4gb of ram, which is what you have. However the small amount of additional ram you can access on your current set up is almost certainly not going to have any impact on the performance problems you are reporting.
Good luck!
EDIT: If you haven't checked to see if you have the most current GPU drivers you should certainly do that, your system specs as you assumed are well in excess of what you need to run SC2 at max everything.
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EDIT: If you haven't checked to see if you have the most current GPU drivers you should certainly do that.
Thank you for your kind reply. Unfortunately, I got the most recent GPU drivers when I built the new computer. Lag is present even with the new drivers. =(
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I doubt it's the RAM, mine runs absolutely fine on 2 GB and all my specs are considerably worse than yours, and I'm on 32 bit as well (XP).
Btw, you can get more than 3 GB of RAM with 32 bit, it's just under 4 GB I believe (it'll use part of that fourth GB but not fully... I think?). I'm not too tech savy so I won't go beyond that.
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-SC2 uses all 4 cores on my i7 PC.
-64 bit OS can use more RAM and will be a bit more efficient at copying large files, otherwise you won't notice any difference.
-Your video card is likely the bottleneck on your SC2 performance, that being said, your computer should run SC2 just fine. Perhaps its some kind of bug/issue with certain things that SC2 needs to render.
Sometimes SC2 would stutter for me when I was running my CPU at 2.8GHz, but with it OC'd to 4GHz its 50-60fps smooth as butter. If you turn down the creep detail/effects a bit (search the thread on variables.txt file) it can make a huge difference in FPS.
How bad is the lag? (how low does your fps drop).
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Btw, you can get more than 3 GB of RAM with 32 bit, it's just under 4 GB I believe (it'll use part of that fourth GB but not fully... I think?). I'm not too tech savy so I won't go beyond that.
![[image loading]](http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/648/rating2.png)
Well, its not just under 4Gb. More like just above 3Gb.
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Faulty PSU? Maybe you just aren't getting enough power.
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Would it even run if power was the issue? Or at least run well enough to get decent test scores?
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On September 15 2010 09:40 Melancholia wrote:
Would it even run if power was the issue? Or at least run well enough to get decent test scores?
Yeah, it would run, but it would probably have a shitfit and black/white screen when the power usage goes above what it can supply. Your power usage can easily double going from idle/firefix/itunes to huge SC2 battle. It is a possibility. How big is the PSU in your new system?
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How big is the PSU in your new system?
750 Watts.
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On September 15 2010 09:45 deViation- wrote:750 Watts.
K well its not that.
-Try an older driver that is known to run SC2 well.
-Maybe make sure your CPU and video card aren't power saving while playing SC2? Get something like coreTemp/CPU-Z or whatever nvidia cards have that shows your CPU/GPU frequency & usage.
-I know this sounds really silly, but is your video card in the PCI-e x16 slot (closest to CPU)?
I'm honestly running out of ideas, Meik (below) has a good point. Though a GTX260 should be plenty for SC2.
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have you put the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard?
and yes your system should run pretty smooth with those specs. also try running the game on a lower resolution and see if it still stutters. If it doesn't stutter on lower resolutions its usually the video card or the drivers you are using for it.
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I would also check CoreTemp to ensure your CPU isn't throttling down due to high temperatures. I personally use CPU Frequenz as a standalone to monitor my CPU's frequency. It is very possible, even likely, that if you recently assembled your computer the heatsink wasn't affixed properly to the CPU and is causing excess (read > 70 C) heat.
CPU frequenz is found here: http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=microsoft/cpufrequenz
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The Asus PC Probe II software that came with the motherboard shows the current settings:
Vcore: 1.02 V
+3.3V: 3.23V
+5V: 5.02V
+12V: 11.85 V
CPU: 36°C (im in an SC2 match right now)
MB: 31°C
CPU: 1917 RPM
Maybe Nividia GPUs run better with Intel based chipsets and dislikes AMD? Typically AMD go great with ATI (for crossfire) and Intel goes with Nvidia (for SLI). But since I only have 1 video card, I am not doing crossfire or SLI, so the graphics card should run great...
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I recently upgraded my gpu from ATI 4670 to 5670 and then from Vista 32bit to Windows 7 64bit because I was getting some lag. There seemed to be a slight performance increase in both although I believe something was messed up with Vista 32 because it took literally minutes to alt tab sometimes and running a program in the background had a huge impact on performance. Your computer is really good much better than mine so I doubt you should have lag on medium settings, you certainly should not see the "your system is slowing down the game" messages in custom games more than other players.
750 is enough for the PSU and your core temp is nice and low. I'd say the easiest solution is to just turn down your settings to low like I have or medium they still look nice. If you really want to mess with it and it's ez for you, upgrade your OS to 64bit but you should not get a significant performance increase unless there was some problem with your OS/card/game that gets fixed from your upgrade. Since you are having lag issues with such a nice system that might be the case.
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That's no solution though, there's clearly something wrong. Just caving now won't help him sort out whatever the issue is, surely we can figure it out now somehow.
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Also, you should get a GHz reading while running SC2, I had a problem that seems similar that turned out to be because my CPU was being throttled.
On a side note, if hertz are cycles per second and RPM is rotations per minute, shouldn't a 2.8 GHz processor have 168000000 RPM? I know my interpretation must be wrong, but this seems to run against what makes sense intuitively.
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On September 15 2010 10:38 Melancholia wrote:
Also, you should get a GHz reading while running SC2, I had a problem that seems similar that turned out to be because my CPU was being throttled.
On a side note, if hertz are cycles per second and RPM is rotations per minute, shouldn't a 2.8 GHz processor have 168000000 RPM? I know my interpretation must be wrong, but this seems to run against what makes sense intuitively.
Your dimensional analysis is wrong. Cycle / seconds * 60 seconds / minute = 60 cycles / minute. Which leaves you with cycles per minute. A rotation is not the equivalent of a cycle, so you cannot just interchange the word cycle for rotation in this instance. Cycle in this sense is short for an instruction cycle.
Assigning a value of rpms to a processor is meaningless, as nothing is being rotated in a processor since there are no moving parts, and measuring your processor in minutes is ridiculous.
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I figured that a full rotation would be the only reasonable equivalent of a cycle. The math is right if a rotation is taken to be a cycle. But yeah, you're right, we need a Hz measurement regardless of my math shenanigans.
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EPT
