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Hi guys, my problem is that I get 2-5 FPS in bigger battles, and when a lots of stuff is going on, usually when there are a lots of units on the map. I have everything on the lowest settings.
I have an Acer Aspire 5536G laptop, with the following config:
OS: win7 32bit
CPU: Mobile AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL65 (dual core, 64bit)
RAM: 3GB DDR2
Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 512 MB (this has shared memory with the ram actually, so its memory can get up to like 1712 MB or so. Can this be the problem? I might not have enough RAM in the computer)
So this is not a gaming laptop by any means, and not an expensive one either, but I ran quite a few games on it, without any problem (DIRT 2, Oblivion, HoN, Dragon Age:Origins, etc.). Also according to the minimum req of SC2, I should be able to run this game smoothly on the lowest settings. (Or maybe not, I'm not an expert, thatswhy I'm asking here)
Does anyone have an idea what can be the problem? I don't want to run this game on Ultra settings or something like that, but at least I'd like to be able not to lose huge battles by simply not being able to move my units, or micro them at all. I also have the latest ATI drivers, but they didnt do anything. Pretty much the only thing I can change is buying 1 or 2 GBs of RAM, if there is a need to improve something, but I'm not sure if it would fix it. Will I ever be able to play this game smoothly with this config, or will this laptop just simply not do it?
Thanks for any help.
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ADAIR, StarCraft II, while not depending on the gfx card THAT much, relies heavily on the GPU Ram, so shared memory would obviously be the problem here.
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What graphics settings are you running it on when you play? Im assuming low.
The only thing I could think of is double check your graphics driver, and close any background applications while you play so you can free up your processor.
Last but not least I know there is a thread on here that has things you can do to the config file to help a little... Let me find it and get back to you.
Gl man. PM me for more. Ill help as much as I can.
-Panda
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adding ram probably wont help that much unless you run bunch of programs in the background. shouldn't leave any less than 2gb system memory if you're sharing the rest of it with the 4570.
any idea what the processor speed is? SC2 gets really CPU intensive when lots of things going on the whole map, esp. team games
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My laptop doesn't meet the minimum specs for running SC2 on low settings.....
It runs fine on Medium (I don't like the look of it, so I play it on low anyways)..... Granted, I've done some tinkering to make my comp a little more efficient than its standard setup.....
Not sure what the problem could be, but I really doubt it's the game..... It's gotta be your comp.....
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On September 27 2010 15:08 trippycarrot wrote:
adding ram probably wont help that much unless you run bunch of programs in the background. shouldn't leave any less than 2gb system memory if you're sharing the rest of it with the 4570.
any idea what the processor speed is? SC2 gets really CPU intensive when lots of things going on the whole map, esp. team games
2.2Ghz is what I found when I googled it.
-Panda
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An integrated graphics card rendering a modern game like Starcraft 2 is a huge problem. Your system's GPU is below the minimum requirements for Starcraft 2. Also, an integrated graphics card does not have access to all of the computer's RAM; it has access to what is labeled on the card, which is 512 MB.
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RAM isn't the problem here.
Honestly it's the combination of both CPU and a weak GPU (2.1 Ghz is pretty slow for SC2, which benefits from frequency more than extra cores)
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On September 27 2010 16:30 NathanSC wrote:
An integrated graphics card rendering a modern game like Starcraft 2 is a huge problem. Your system's GPU is below the minimum requirements for Starcraft 2. Also, an integrated graphics card does not have access to all of the computer's RAM; it has access to what is labeled on the card, which is 512 MB.
Uhh his card is a discrete card and is well above the minimum requirements for SC2.
And OP you have plenty of RAM. It's either your CPU, GPU, or overheating problem. I'm not familiar with AMD cpus but I am pretty sure that it is primarily a graphics problem. 4570 is a pretty weak card.
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Thanks for the replies, I didn't know I had such a trash GPU and slow CPU. Btw I usually close all the background apps, when playing SC2, it doesn't have much effect however.
Also when I'm playing games the CPU gets pretty heated, it goes up to like 50-55 °C.
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The description matches the normal CPU-limited pattern of a very sharp slowdown on low settings with many units engaged, and that CPU is going to struggle with 1v1 200/200 battles by my estimation. You'd get the same symptoms from thermal throttling but 50-55C should be much too low for that.
There's probably nothing you can do about it as SC2 has an absolute minimum CPU requirement just to keep up with the unit physics.
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I think it might be something with the graphics card, my friend seems to have to have the same problem in big battles where the fps drops to less than 5 fps.
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acer
laptop
;/ if you want to play on laptops, you need better than that.
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On September 28 2010 01:03 optical630 wrote:
acer
laptop
;/ if you want to play on laptops, you need better than that.
harsh
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A 4570 is a weak card? I got a Radeon 9250!
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only 3 gb ram with shared memory will create a ram shortage.
win7 uses about 1.5gb of ram, sc2 uses about 1-1.2 gb ram. and sc2 uses at least some 500 mb of ram of the graphics card. u see the problem?
also the cpu is very weak, and big battles in sc2 are very cpu intensive.
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It will probably not help but take a look at your power management profile and make sure it runs in "Performance" mode or something (at least while you play.) CPUs and GPUs normally run at a lower clock speed when they're not in full use, and depending on your profile they may take some time to ramp up to their full speed. A symptom of that would be some kind of freeze at the beginning of a big battle, or that your game would run smoother when your laptop is plugged. Of course, unless you like to play StarCraft with 2500ms lag over Starbucks' WiFi, your laptop is already plugged into a wall socket so it's already in Performance anyway.
Alternatively, you can open with double proxy barracks in every game, that will keep you away from big battles 
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OP, here is a comparison with my laptop, it sounds like your laptop *should* be able to run the game just fine:
My video card:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9300M-GS.9452.0.html
Your video card:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4570.13885.0.html
According to those specs and benchmarks, your video card is superior to mine.
I also have Win7 32 bit.
I also have 3GB of RAM.
I have an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (P7570). My CPU is better, but they are both dual core, so I wouldn't think it would be such a huge difference, kind of hard to say just by looking at the specs though.
The thing is SCII runs great on my laptop with low settings, easily good enough for me to feel comfortable laddering on my laptop, and I am the type of person that plays on low settings on my higher end desktop rig because I am anal about framerate.
It should be easy to find out if your CPU is bogging you down, just run perfmon. You can do this in Win7 by just typing perfmon in the start menu search box and then press enter. Then just click on performance monitor. The default graph will be processor time, which is what you want. Leave this running and go play SC2, do something that you know will cause the framerate to drop like you say. Then go back and look at the graph, if you see the graph maxing out at 90-100% for the majority of the time the game was also slowing down, you know it is your CPU and there is probably not much you can do (do check your power management settings like lotar suggested, that can hold back your CPU or GPU from it's fullest potential).
If it's not your CPU, then make sure all your drivers are up to date, try downloading ATI drivers from ATI directly instead of the drivers provided by your laptop manufacturer, and upgrading RAM might help as well. (I'm not sure if my video card shares RAM, so I might actually have more available RAM).
Hope this helps.
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On September 28 2010 04:13 Black Gun wrote:
only 3 gb ram with shared memory will create a ram shortage.
win7 uses about 1.5gb of ram, sc2 uses about 1-1.2 gb ram. and sc2 uses at least some 500 mb of ram of the graphics card. u see the problem?
also the cpu is very weak, and big battles in sc2 are very cpu intensive.
Yea, those were my thoughts too, but after I read the answers here I'm not so sure anymore.
Also, the minimum req for CPU is 2.6 ghz SINGLE core, and the recommended is 2.4 ghz DUAL core.
Is my 2.1 ghz dual processor really this bad? When I bought the laptop it was among the better ones in it's price category. I don't really know the main differences between CPUs, as I haven't really been a huge hardware geek the last couple of years, so I don't really have much knowledge in this. I should have tho.
On September 28 2010 04:31 Lotar wrote:It will probably not help but take a look at your power management profile and make sure it runs in "Performance" mode or something (at least while you play.) CPUs and GPUs normally run at a lower clock speed when they're not in full use, and depending on your profile they may take some time to ramp up to their full speed. A symptom of that would be some kind of freeze at the beginning of a big battle, or that your game would run smoother when your laptop is plugged. Of course, unless you like to play StarCraft with 2500ms lag over Starbucks' WiFi, your laptop is already plugged into a wall socket so it's already in Performance anyway. Alternatively, you can open with double proxy barracks in every game, that will keep you away from big battles
You gave me an idea actually, I ran my laptop in "Balanced" power plan, not in "High Performance", so I checked into it, and I found that under the "Processor power management" option the Minimum processor state is 5% when plugged in, in balanced mode, and in high performance mode the minimum proc state is 100%, when plugged in.
Can this be the problem? I usually only get the huge fps decrease at the beginning of the fight, then it usually sorts itself out. (Not counting Nexus wars 4v4, when there are like a thousand units on the map, and I constantly get 1-2 FPS, lol. Also 2v2s are quite bad when everyone is maxed out.)
My idea is that you can actually be right, and the CPU needs time with this power option, to get up to full speed. I should try it, and let you guys know, the only problem is that I got quite mad and deleted the game, because I play at mid-high diamond level (around 1500 points), so I figured that if I can't micro my shit I might as well give up on this game. Imma reinstall soon tho, if some of you finds that this might be the problem.
EDIT: some of you might wonder, how I got up to 1500 points playing like this, and my answer is that usually I dont need to micro that much in big battles, and still win, or last long enough to get back to normal FPS, and also my games aren't always long. But I got to the point where my inability to micro is losing me games, so thatswhy it is so concerning to me.
On September 28 2010 04:54 Treemonkeys wrote:+ Show Spoiler +OP, here is a comparison with my laptop, it sounds like your laptop *should* be able to run the game just fine: My video card: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9300M-GS.9452.0.htmlYour video card: http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4570.13885.0.htmlAccording to those specs and benchmarks, your video card is superior to mine. I also have Win7 32 bit. I also have 3GB of RAM. I have an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (P7570). My CPU is better, but they are both dual core, so I wouldn't think it would be such a huge difference, kind of hard to say just by looking at the specs though. The thing is SCII runs great on my laptop with low settings, easily good enough for me to feel comfortable laddering on my laptop, and I am the type of person that plays on low settings on my higher end desktop rig because I am anal about framerate. It should be easy to find out if your CPU is bogging you down, just run perfmon. You can do this in Win7 by just typing perfmon in the start menu search box and then press enter. Then just click on performance monitor. The default graph will be processor time, which is what you want. Leave this running and go play SC2, do something that you know will cause the framerate to drop like you say. Then go back and look at the graph, if you see the graph maxing out at 90-100% for the majority of the time the game was also slowing down, you know it is your CPU and there is probably not much you can do (do check your power management settings like lotar suggested, that can hold back your CPU or GPU from it's fullest potential). If it's not your CPU, then make sure all your drivers are up to date, try downloading ATI drivers from ATI directly instead of the drivers provided by your laptop manufacturer, and upgrading RAM might help as well. (I'm not sure if my video card shares RAM, so I might actually have more available RAM). Hope this helps.
This was quite helpful, thanks, I will try performance monitoring definitely. Also you say that you don't get these FPS drops at all while playing on your laptop?
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Exact same problem here Don't want to make another thread or take this one over but if anyone is willing to maybe help me as well, shoot me a PM!
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EPT
