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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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1. Install latest Nvidia drivers
2. Check temperatures of your hardware (GPU) under load
3. Your voltages are fine. 12V is getting a bit low, but that shouldn't the problem here.
4. Give SC2 a higher priority in task manager.
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What about your hard drive? The Caviar Greens have a decent buffer 32MB but it only runs at 5200RPM. I bet that's your problem. Try upgrading to a faster 7200RPM drive and you should see improvements. Even though you have a lot of RAM, I'm guessing your system is still running a pagefile so that means it is accessing your HD a lot during your games as well.
Just a guess here since the rest of your components are beastly 
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Hard drive has nothing to do with frame rates
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If you have a network card available try disabling the onboard one.
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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.
Afaik, the rpm number the ASUS probe displays is for the CPU fan.
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With that kind of a system, why would you not opt for a 64-bit OS?
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On September 15 2010 16:23 Chaosquo wrote:
Afaik, the rpm number the ASUS probe displays is for the CPU fan.
Ah. Well, we don't need that.
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Before wasting your time with anything else, try to OC your processor.
I remember seeing some benchmarks of different processors / video cards running SC2, and in this case i would say the bottleneck is your processor. In fact I am pretty sure of it.
2.8 is good for 1680x1200 and such, but for 1900x it is a bit at the limit of what is necessary to run the game smoothly on high. The video card is fine, just overclock your processor to 3.5ish and you should see a clear difference.
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On September 15 2010 17:51 Draken wrote:
Before wasting your time with anything else, try to OC your processor.
I remember seeing some benchmarks of different processors / video cards running SC2, and in this case i would say the bottleneck is your processor. In fact I am pretty sure of it.
2.8 is good for 1680x1200 and such, but for 1900x it is a bit at the limit of what is necessary to run the game smoothly on high. The video card is fine, just overclock your processor to 3.5ish and you should see a clear difference.
Starcraft 2 sees little benefit in frame rate beyond 2 cores. His processor is a quad core.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/08/18/how-many-cpu-cores-does-starcraft-2-use/2
Besides, the engine for Starcraft 2 only uses the CPU for physics. The rest is the GPU. Overclocking, while an option, is not the likely solution. The only circumstance I'd be inclined to agree that overclocking is the solution is if Starcraft 2 only has affinity with 2 cores, which I haven't read anywhere yet.
Research into overclocking shows the opposite is true, and you gain very little benefit in terms of FPS.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/08/18/how-many-cpu-cores-does-starcraft-2-use/3
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Don't think in terms of benefits, but in term of limitation.
Yes SC2 don't take advantage of multicore beyond 2, you will get more performance from a dual 3.4 than a quad 2.8, and this is exactly why OCing efficient (when the processor is the bottleneck), because ultimately all that matters is the speed and not the number of processors. The solution is to OC to a higher speed.
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For the record, you are using dual channel ram, on a 32bit Operating system that only supports 3.25 GB of ram. So for one, one of your sticks of ram isnt being used, and two, the second stick in that set is working single channel. This may be causing severe conflicts with ram timing and probably is the reason you are having such trouble. I would recommend clocking down the ram (800Mhz) if you are going to continue using 32bit OS with 4gb of ram or just upgrade to 64bit. I personally had no troubles running 4gb on 32bit OS after clocking my 800Mhz OCZ gold down a notch, but that could have just been instability with 800Mhz ram and my motherboard.
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What FPS are you getting? i believe ctrl-alt-f shows your FPS in starcraft2, also try disabling some settings that can cause severe performance issues for some setups like VSYNC. Make sure you are not confusing computer problems with network problems> freeze followed by speedup = network problem.
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You have the same specs like mine, only the CPU is different(i5-750). SC2 is CPU intensive and only uses 2 cores.
Try Overclocking your CPU to 3.4 and it should make a difference. Should run on Ultra without low FPS.
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It still may be PSU problems. PSU problems can be funky. You may also have some small scale electrostatic damage.
Easy question...you plugged your GPU's auxillary power in right?
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I have a similar build to your PC (I've got the 955BE instead of the 925) and I'm running w7x32 and am not experiencing any problems with this OS. However, I originally had an Nvidia card in my build and it just didn't jive with the AMD. So, I returned that card and installed an ATI and now it runs like a champ (knock on wood).
Also, I was having issues with my RAM and I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic and it failed. I would run it just in case and make sure that your memory is fine.
These are just 2 problems I had that may be helpful to you b/c they sound somewhat similar to the issues you are having. Good luck!
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I'm starting to wonder if it's the AMD processor. My brother has the same issue with his pc, get huge dips in fps during large engagements even on low setting (same issue whether on low or ultra settings), yet my laptop with an intel processor (inferior in every way to his comp build) is able to play steadily even in max supply 4v4 games. From what I'm seeing, the only common denominator is that it's an AMD processor. I also have a desktop which uses a GTX 260, same as his, but mine still works very well.
I did recently go from 4gb to 8gb, where oddly the only improvement I see was in the campaign premission screens on the hyperion. So odd how SC2 works.
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This is weird. Your PC can easily crushed SC2 in High if not all Ultra. If you just bought it, why didnt you go for a GTX460.
I just build a new PC as well( 4 days ago) similar spec as yours only with a Phenom II X4 965 and a GTX 460 and I'm play above 60fps all the time at Ultra setting.
What I suggest now is: Format the hard disk, install a fresh version of Win7 (32 or 64 doesnt matter).
Install all the lastest driver for your hardware
Then If it still lag, you may want to borrow your friend's graphic card and try it on your system.
I cant think of any problems beside unstable graphic card and software problem( that's why your need a format).
Its not the process for sure. Blizzard is famous of making beautiful game with least demanding hardware and the Phenom II is a powerful CPU.
Edit: My specs in case you need a reference.
Same MB as you ASUS 870TD....
Phenom II X4 965
Asus GTX 460 1GB
1TB Western Digital 6GB/s Sata 3 (forget the exact name so I put some info of my HD on)
4GB RAM DDR3
Win 7 Ultimate 64bit
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I wish people wouldn't rely on only one tech site to base their conclusions on. Bit-tech has good intentions, but like the other sites (guru3d, legionHW, HWCanucks, Techspot, PCGameHW, Anandtech) - they all use different settings for their benchmarks. You _must_ judge each benchmark differently and appropriately when you are drawing conclusions from their results.
They use 1v7 AI with "several dozen units". They article also calls their settings "Very High" when they should have gone into more detail if the settings were Ultra or High, shaders, shadows, etc. Again Bit-tech, much like Guru3D, is not very transparent about their settings. Also they do not mention creep highways, motherships, water maps, air units (shadows), or anything else that would put their benchmark in context.
The few sites that did do CPU overclocking (LegionHW, PCGameHW, and especially Techspot) - all show very good gains for CPU overclocking. The other thing to note is that Bit-Tech is doing 2-core vs. 4-core on Gulf-town chip. If they wanted relevant, real-world results they should have compared either Clarkdales or Wolfdales, which are the best dual-core chips on the market. If they had tested with either of those, their conclusions at least would have had some merit - but since they "synthesized" a 2-core (out of a true 6-core Gulftown), then really their benchmark is not really meaningful.
They are other more suspect lines in that article like this:
We used an Intel Core i7-980X to maximise the core count available, but we disabled Hyper-threading and power saving states. A Hyper-threading core is not a 'real' core, it's just a piece of software trickery that opens up 'what's left' of the available CPU pipeline so could easily have created inconsistencies in our tests. We ran the game entirely run from the hard disk - no slower optical media was involved.
Why in the world are they bringing up optical media? I'm mean wow, how far as bit-tech fallen?
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could be the cool 'n quiet messing up.
Do amd cpus still need the dual core fix shit installed?
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On September 16 2010 00:08 Providence wrote:
I'm starting to wonder if it's the AMD processor. My brother has the same issue with his pc, get huge dips in fps during large engagements even on low setting (same issue whether on low or ultra settings), yet my laptop with an intel processor (inferior in every way to his comp build) is able to play steadily even in max supply 4v4 games. From what I'm seeing, the only common denominator is that it's an AMD processor. I also have a desktop which uses a GTX 260, same as his, but mine still works very well.
I did recently go from 4gb to 8gb, where oddly the only improvement I see was in the campaign premission screens on the hyperion. So odd how SC2 works.
I run an AMD Phenom II x4. No problems here.
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On September 15 2010 12:42 FragKrag wrote:
Hard drive has nothing to do with frame rates
It can, but I'll agree that in this case, it does not.
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Dude, please read my post man.
My friend has the same exact problem. The SAME exact problem. And we fixed it. for some weird ass reason if you're using a 32-bit OS, the CPU will not run properly. I do not understand why, I am not a computer guru, yet out of luck of the draw we fixed it. Just upgrade to Windows 7 64-bit and it will run perfectly fine.
My friend was using XP 32bit, with an even better processor than yours, a similiar video card in terms of performance, yet he had horrible lag even in games like WoW.
I can practically guarantee you that if you upgrade to 64 bit, your problem will be solved. Seeing how no one else but you and my friend have this problem, I'm really excited I that I can help you because I'm not a crazy techy guy hehe.
EDIT: Btw, my computer guru friend who fixed the problem said something about it having to do with a 32-bit OS not allowing an AMD quadcore use all 4 cores, instead only 2, so a 64-Bit OS fixes that. I don't think he even understood why it didn't allow the quadcore to run properly, but we've tested it and it was indeed the problem with the OS.
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Try setting power options at high performance.
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Dude, there is nothing wrong.
Stop listening to all these bad advice because this I know from experience:
GTX260 is your bottleneck. Wouldn't matter even if you pair up a i7-980X with your GPU, those framerates are what you'll get. Simple as that. CPU, PSU, RAM, HDD, etc. all have nothing to do with your problem.
Want better framerates at 1920x1080 on med-high? Get a better GPU.
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On September 16 2010 03:53 Snuggles wrote:
Dude, please read my post man.
My friend has the same exact problem. The SAME exact problem. And we fixed it. for some weird ass reason if you're using a 32-bit OS, the CPU will not run properly. I do not understand why, I am not a computer guru, yet out of luck of the draw we fixed it. Just upgrade to Windows 7 64-bit and it will run perfectly fine.
My friend was using XP 32bit, with an even better processor than yours, a similiar video card in terms of performance, yet he had horrible lag even in games like WoW.
I can practically guarantee you that if you upgrade to 64 bit, your problem will be solved. Seeing how no one else but you and my friend have this problem, I'm really excited I that I can help you because I'm not a crazy techy guy hehe.
EDIT: Btw, my computer guru friend who fixed the problem said something about it having to do with a 32-bit OS not allowing an AMD quadcore use all 4 cores, instead only 2, so a 64-Bit OS fixes that. I don't think he even understood why it didn't allow the quadcore to run properly, but we've tested it and it was indeed the problem with the OS.
Dude it seems like this guy may have your answer. Side note for those of you who don't know, 32 bit editions can also only utilize about ~3.7-3.9 gigs of RAM(the remainder if you have 4 is hidden by either BIOS or Windows allocating it somewhere).
You need 64bit for fully utilizing multiple cores, 4+ gigs of RAM, etc.
Other fun fact...most major software is not yet programmed to utilize the other 32bits in the bus(32+32=64, or, 64 bit bus. Twice as much room for the processor to chat with the other hardware) So while SC2, Windows, and some choice software is programmed to take advantage of the 64 bit bus and the extra cores, most stuff(Firefox, for example) does not actually use the extra resources available, and in some cases, will run worse on it.
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Dude.
...
DUDE.
...
DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!
That really stops looking like a word when you see it too much.
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God, so much misinformation in this thread from "friends" and what not.
Fact: StarCraft II will not run any "better" on 64 bit hardware. 64 bit Windows runs 32 bit applications (such as StarCraft II) in an emulation layer called Wow (Windows on Windows). There is very little performance hit from this, but definitely no benefit. Unless a program is specifically built as a 64 bit binary (99% of the programs you use, including all your games, are 32 bit), it will neither use 64 processor instructions nor be able to use more than 2 GB of RAM.
Fact: Windows will only use up to 4GB of RAM on a 32 bit system, minus reserved memory ranges. Upgrading to 64 bit will allow Windows access to the full amount of your RAM, however, individual programs are limited to addressing 2GB at most unless they are 64 bit programs. Thus, 64 bit Windows lets you run more programs at once if your programs use a lot of memory. On that note however, due to the word size, 64 bit programs will consume slightly more memory than their 32 bit counterparts.
Fact: Anything newer than Windows ME is able to use multiple cores just perfectly, including Windows 2000, Windows XP, etc. 32 bit or 64 bit has no influence on this at all.
Fact: 64 bit is not "faster" than 32 bit. It just provides a larger address size for 64 bit programs to be able to access more address space (memory). With hand optimization, some algorithms will perform faster on 64 bit hardware due to extra registers, but the difference is negligible for most programs.
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fuckkk i expanded on everything r1ch said but lost it 
Anyways R1CH is right is the theme.
64bit games are a few in numbers like Crysis, and usually it requires you to look up where to download the 64bit version of it. The Larger memory allocation is a benefit to things like a 2+SLI/Crossfire set up but usually the benefit is nullified by not as many optimizations as the original version of the game.
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I am about to upgrade from Windows XP to W7, and what you are saying is that i should get the 32bit version?
Is there any drawbacks to getting the 64 version?
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On September 16 2010 05:10 R1CH wrote:
God, so much misinformation in this thread from "friends" and what not.
Fact: StarCraft II will not run any "better" on 64 bit hardware. 64 bit Windows runs 32 bit applications (such as StarCraft II) in an emulation layer called Wow (Windows on Windows). There is very little performance hit from this, but definitely no benefit. Unless a program is specifically built as a 64 bit binary (99% of the programs you use, including all your games, are 32 bit), it will neither use 64 processor instructions nor be able to use more than 2 GB of RAM.
Fact: Windows will only use up to 4GB of RAM on a 32 bit system, minus reserved memory ranges. Upgrading to 64 bit will allow Windows access to the full amount of your RAM, however, individual programs are limited to addressing 2GB at most unless they are 64 bit programs. Thus, 64 bit Windows lets you run more programs at once if your programs use a lot of memory. On that note however, due to the word size, 64 bit programs will consume slightly more memory than their 32 bit counterparts.
Fact: Anything newer than Windows ME is able to use multiple cores just perfectly, including Windows 2000, Windows XP, etc. 32 bit or 64 bit has no influence on this at all.
Fact: 64 bit is not "faster" than 32 bit. It just provides a larger address size for 64 bit programs to be able to access more address space (memory). With hand optimization, some algorithms will perform faster on 64 bit hardware due to extra registers, but the difference is negligible for most programs.
Duuuuu- j/k lol
Wait so having the wrong kind of OS isn't the problem? Or maybe its not the real problem? I'm practically computer illiterate when it comes to CPU and whatnot, so please forgive me =(.
Although we have fixed our friends computer, (went from 15 frames on low to like 100+ on ultra), it'd be nice to figure out what the hell was wrong with the thing. I mean we literally ran out of ideas, and decided to randomly upgrade the OS from XP 32bit to Windows 7 64bit. Even now me and my buddy are scratching our heads as to what was wrong. But from reading the OP it definitely sounded like we have the same exact problem.
If I'm reading what R1CH said right, than basically whatever OS you have greater than ME 32bit or 64 bit will not have any effect on the game application, and there should be no problems with having the CPU being utilized to its fullest extent. While me and my friend were trying to fix his computer we had this graph-like program to keep track of fan speed, CPU usage, etc. At first we tested things out using World of Warcraft. Going in between 2 cities in WoW, Dalaran and Stormwind City we found that in Dalaran, a city with a lot of CPU intensive things going on, only 20-30% of the CPU was being used up resulting in a ton of lag, in Stormwind City, a city with a lot less things going on, the normal 50 - 60% CPU usage was being used up. Going onto Starcraft, the game would lag horribly (even on low settings) as more and more units flooded the map, however, only 20-30% of the CPU would be used. Normally for a computer to be bottlenecked by its CPU, the CPU should be running at 100% all the time trying to desperately keep up right?
When we switched to Windows 7 it was at its normal 50 - 60%, and ran smoothly all sorts of different graphics settings because we had a good graphics card all along the ride.
So even if it is a fact that the OS and whether or not 64 bit and 32 bit doesn't have anything to do with it... changing the OS did fix the lag issues... somehow.
Hopefully we can pinpoint the cause, because I don't think many people are aware of this problem (google searched the crap out of this problem already). If the OP changes his OS and solves his problem in that way, then we'll know for sure. If it doesn't fix it, then jeez what could it be.
I know that I'm not a very good reliable source of information seeing how I'm not a computer guru of any sort, but all that testing we did is legitimate. After all we did spend 3 weeks of our spare time trying to fix his computer so he could go raiding in WoW and do 3v3's on SC2 =_=
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@ Draken
Well, if your computer doesn't support 64 bit architecture it won't work at all. For the most part 32 bit and 64 bit will run just the same, if you have less than 4GBs of RAM there's not much reason to care as far as I know.
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On September 16 2010 06:06 Snuggles wrote:
Wait so having the wrong kind of OS isn't the problem? Or maybe its not the real problem? I'm practically computer illiterate when it comes to CPU and whatnot, so please forgive me =(.
Although we have fixed our friends computer, (went from 15 frames on low to like 100+ on ultra), it'd be nice to figure out what the hell was wrong with the thing. I mean we literally ran out of ideas, and decided to randomly upgrade the OS from XP 32bit to Windows 7 64bit. Even now me and my buddy are scratching our heads as to what was wrong. But from reading the OP it definitely sounded like we have the same exact problem.
I imagine this is much more the result of going from a multiple year old XP install loaded down with background crap, old drivers, leftover programs, etc to a completely clean Windows 7 install with the latest drivers for everything than having anything to do with the OS itself. Sure, Windows 7 has some newer technologies and kernel improvements that make it slightly faster, but you won't see huge drastic changes such as 15fps to 100fps just from an OS change. Most likely you had some messed up drivers on the XP install.
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it's oldschool, but try driver sweeper to clean all your drivers, and get an absolutely fresh install of drivers. usually this affects people swapping from ATI to Nvidia, but eh who knows.
EDIT: clean all video* drivers.
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I'd like to thank everyone trying to help me solve my problem.
Comment that might help you guys in pinpointing the problem: When I installed my new Motherboard, CPU and RAM, I simply transfered my hard drive from my old computer to my new and connected them using the SATA cables. They worked immediately with the first boot (although a bunch of updates via Win7 installed themselves, like USB drivers, etc) Could this be a problem? Or should it not matter?
Alot of you asked questions, here are the answers:
Give SC2 a higher priority in task manager. Cool idea, will try that.
What about your hard drive? The Caviar Greens have a decent buffer 32MB but it only runs at 5200RPM. I bet that's your problem. Try upgrading to a faster 7200RPM drive and you should see improvements. I was using the same hard drive on my previous computer and I was not having the same problems. I highly doubt its the hard drive, unless AMD motherboards act differently with hard drives vs Intel motherboards.
With that kind of a system, why would you not opt for a 64-bit OS? My version of Win7 is semi-legit. I got the 32-bit version because my previous system was not able to run on 64-bit. Upon upgrading my motherboard, RAM and CPU, I didn't bother to change from 32bit to 64bit.
Before wasting your time with anything else, try to OC your processor. I will try this option if nothing else works, but my dualcore@1.86GHz didn't have any problems, so I fail to see why my quadcore@2.8Ghz would be a bottleneck.
For the record, you are using dual channel ram, on a 32bit Operating system that only supports 3.25 GB of ram. Thanks, but I was already aware of this, as shows my second post on page 1 of this thread.
What FPS are you getting? i believe ctrl-alt-f shows your FPS in starcraft2, also try disabling some settings that can cause severe performance issues for some setups like VSYNC. FPS shows a max of 20, which drops down to 15 and sometimes lower during battles. I get 20 FPS at the start too, while looking at my 6 SCVs when its not graphically intense at all.
Easy question...you plugged your GPU's auxillary power in right? Yes, I plugged in 2 6-pin PCI-e power connectors directly into the video card.
I originally had an Nvidia card in my build and it just didn't jive with the AMD. So, I returned that card and installed an ATI and now it runs like a champ (knock on wood). Has anyone else experienced problems with Nivia and AMD combinations?
Do amd cpus still need the dual core fix shit installed? I have no idea what this dual core fix shit is, if it was required I didn't install it.
Try setting power options at high performance. Will try this.
GTX260 is your bottleneck. Wouldn't matter even if you pair up a i7-980X with your GPU, those framerates are what you'll get. In my previous system I had the same video card, and I was getting better framerates than currently. Although I will take your comment as a possible cause.
If you just bought it, why didnt you go for a GTX460 I bought the video card around 4 months ago before the GTX460's price was reduced.
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I will try this option if nothing else works, but my dualcore@1.86GHz didn't have any problems, so I fail to see why my quadcore@2.8Ghz would be a bottleneck.
Correct me if i am wrong, but you are using higher resolution and settings than your previous setup thus you can't really compare the two. (I am actually very surprised you can run SC2 smoothly on a 1.8 in the first place.)
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Arg, check your CPU clock speeds! We still have no idea whether they are being throttled or not!
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On September 16 2010 08:25 deViation- wrote:
I'd like to thank everyone trying to help me solve my problem.
Comment that might help you guys in pinpointing the problem: When I installed my new Motherboard, CPU and RAM, I simply transfered my hard drive from my old computer to my new and connected them using the SATA cables. They worked immediately with the first boot (although a bunch of updates via Win7 installed themselves, like USB drivers, etc) Could this be a problem? Or should it not matter?
This must be it. You brought the hard disk from the old system to your new system so there is a very good chance that you got some serious driver conflict and as Rich said many left over from previous program.
Really, do a clean install of Win7 and see what happen.
For the record, GTX260 is a powerful card, no way it is your bottleneck. Even if it is, it wouldn't be this serious. You can at least run SC2 on High smoothly!
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Might be something to consider, just might (i'm not saying it is)
you can check your ping speed with pingtest.net
I was having horrible lag, and when i got a VPN to get out of my Uni's connection limitations, lag disappeared. because other than that, your computer seems fine.
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Whenever you move to major new hardware (new motherboard) you should completely uninstall all old drivers before shutting down or do a fresh install on the new hardware. As Caphe says, this is almost guaranteed to be a driver problem such as the wrong ATA controller driver, no CPU driver or bad graphics driver.
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On September 16 2010 07:04 R1CH wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2010 06:06 Snuggles wrote:
Wait so having the wrong kind of OS isn't the problem? Or maybe its not the real problem? I'm practically computer illiterate when it comes to CPU and whatnot, so please forgive me =(.
Although we have fixed our friends computer, (went from 15 frames on low to like 100+ on ultra), it'd be nice to figure out what the hell was wrong with the thing. I mean we literally ran out of ideas, and decided to randomly upgrade the OS from XP 32bit to Windows 7 64bit. Even now me and my buddy are scratching our heads as to what was wrong. But from reading the OP it definitely sounded like we have the same exact problem. I imagine this is much more the result of going from a multiple year old XP install loaded down with background crap, old drivers, leftover programs, etc to a completely clean Windows 7 install with the latest drivers for everything than having anything to do with the OS itself. Sure, Windows 7 has some newer technologies and kernel improvements that make it slightly faster, but you won't see huge drastic changes such as 15fps to 100fps just from an OS change. Most likely you had some messed up drivers on the XP install.
I can't stress enough how absolutely massive the performance gain can be with a fresh windows install. If you go from a 5-10 year old XP install to a fresh XP install, it can be like getting a whole new computer.
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Updated OP with information on how I solved the problem.
The problem was Cool n' Quiet feature of the CPU was throttling the CPU Core speed down to a lower value. Upon entering StarCraft, the speed is supposed to bump up to full capacity, but it wasn't doing so as intended. The solution was to go into the BIOS and disable Cool n' Quiet to get the full speed of the CPU while playing SC2.
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On September 19 2010 12:21 deViation- wrote:
Updated OP with information on how I solved the problem.
The problem was Cool n' Quiet feature of the CPU was throttling the CPU Core speed down to a lower value. Upon entering StarCraft, the speed is supposed to bump up to full capacity, but it wasn't doing so as intended. The solution was to go into the BIOS and disable Cool n' Quiet to get the full speed of the CPU while playing SC2.
lol, that's pretty funny so your processor was running at like 800 mhz and everyone's guesses were all wrong. I've seen laptops do that but never heard of it being broken. As a couple people already said it is a horrible idea to run your OS off a harddrive that had windows installed in another computer OS aren't robust enough to be used like plug n play devices. The problem with cool n quiet could be because of that.
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On September 19 2010 13:39 KillerPenguin wrote:
lol, that's pretty funny so your processor was running at like 800 mhz and everyone's guesses were all wrong. I've seen laptops do that but never heard of it being broken. As a couple people already said it is a horrible idea to run your OS off a harddrive that had windows installed in another computer OS aren't robust enough to be used like plug n play devices. The problem with cool n quiet could be because of that.
Yeah, I didn't realize that I could run in compatibility issues doing that. To me, the CPU and Motherboard was something completely independent from the Hard Drive, so a Win7 32bit that was installed on another machine wouldn't need to be changed (or so i thought) if you only upgraded those components. Wouldn't it be better if anyone could take any hard drive on any computer and install it on another computer without any issues? Like if I could take my hard drive out right now, fly to any of you guys' houses and install it in your computer, shouldn't it work? The answer I guess is probably, but not very well (if we have same OS etc., obviously I can't just plug and play my hard drive onto a Mac (or can I?)).
In my case, it works, the problem was related to the Throttling more than anything else.
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On September 19 2010 13:39 KillerPenguin wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2010 12:21 deViation- wrote:
Updated OP with information on how I solved the problem.
The problem was Cool n' Quiet feature of the CPU was throttling the CPU Core speed down to a lower value. Upon entering StarCraft, the speed is supposed to bump up to full capacity, but it wasn't doing so as intended. The solution was to go into the BIOS and disable Cool n' Quiet to get the full speed of the CPU while playing SC2. lol, that's pretty funny so your processor was running at like 800 mhz and everyone's guesses were all wrong. I've seen laptops do that but never heard of it being broken. As a couple people already said it is a horrible idea to run your OS off a harddrive that had windows installed in another computer OS aren't robust enough to be used like plug n play devices. The problem with cool n quiet could be because of that.
What are you talking about? It was mentioned at least twice on the first page to check if CnQ was causing problems, and several more times after that. Nathan, Doko, and Melancholia all brought it up.
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The gentleman with the advice about 32bit not seeing full 4gb and messing with your dual channel is completely correct. I just never thought of it!
I had major stuttering on initial SC2 startup, lag entering matches, my first match would be TERRIBLY laggy in the beginning, and I would have terrible lag during large (2v2, 150+ food armies) engagements, and during replays at 8x I would not be able to abear it because it would skip jump and stutter, among other things.This is even with some setting dropped to low and medium.
I just upgraded to 64bit and IT IS AMAZING! 4v4 at max armies get smashed with absolutely no stuttering on all Ultra and I finish 8x replays considerably faster than anyone else I have tested with. It's rediculous how much better the performance has been. And everyone who jumps and says the GPU is the problem is just guessing at what maybe they have experienced.
My Specs:
E8500 @ 3.16ghz
GTX 560ti
4GB RAM (now running amazingly better due to proper dual channel)
680i mobo
7200rpm SATA2 HDD
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EPT
