Request - Phenom II Starcraft 2 benches

[jvroig]

There's nothing more they could have done that they haven't already. Starcraft 2 didn't even exist back then.

And you also have it in your mind that a 5GHz i7 is what you need, something that doesn't exist. Are you also going to tell Intel to go back in time?

Look at posts 42-49, not only are people telling you that you aren't making sense, they are telling you that the game is playable (without needing a 5GHz i7), despite it unavoidably dipping below 60FPS at times.

 

[ModestGamer]

Sounds like shitty code. To need this much cpu to run a game ? WTF ?

 

[Axon]

My lord people I have yet to see a Phenom II that couldn't push a video card to its limits or close to its limits at real world resolutions and such. It can especially play a game at very playable frame rates.

So many Intel fanny's who thrive on "i'm getting higher framerate than you are". In which you can not actually see anyways. Your not going to notice much of anything going from 100 fps to 150 fps.

So stop the fannyism already. Intel doesn't even like you.


Jason

Exactly. What I was trying to say is that, even with a very weak video card, my AMD B55 runs the game extremely well. I'm sure if I bumped to a 5850 in my LAN rig, I'd get nearly the same frame rates as my i7 920, simply because there is a point of saturation. As it is, my 4890 maxes everything and does not dip below 60 as far as I can tell. I haven't done any precision benches, however. But I could care less - the game runs well.

 

[borisvodofsky]

There's nothing more they could have done that they haven't already. Starcraft 2 didn't even exist back then.

And you also have it in your mind that a 5GHz i7 is what you need, something that doesn't exist. Are you also going to tell Intel to go back in time?

Look at posts 42-49, not only are people telling you that you aren't making sense, they are telling you that the game is playable (without needing a 5GHz i7), despite it unavoidably dipping below 60FPS at times.

People seem really content with Ugly chix these days.... :\... Am I really asking for much? 60fps.. the standard set since for-rever rever.

 

[richierich1212]

People seem really content with Ugly chix these days.... :\... Am I really asking for much? 60fps.. the standard set since for-rever rever.

What resolution is your monitor?

 

[magomago]

dude tp4tissue wtf are you talking about? You act like no phenom2 can run this game, which is incredibly stupid. I know many people building systems based on this processor (because of price) who are playing the game very smoothly. Are we looking at FPS meters? NO. We are looking to see if the game is smooth. Hell, I'm playing this game on an X2 6000+ with a 8800GT at ultra settings (albiet I'm capped at 1280x1024 because of my monitors) and I'm not getting lag unless I go play a custom map of nexus wars. RTS is not the type of game that needs 60 FPS at all.
If you want the game to run more smoothly, then wait 2 years and buy it.

 

[RussianSensation]

From what I see i7 pulls ahead even @2560x1600. If you're buying/building a system for games, i5/i7 is the only sensible choice.

Core i5/7s have been faster than PII for a long time in many games, not just SC2:

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/gaming_the_core_debate,3.html

 

[beginner99]

My lord people I have yet to see a Phenom II that couldn't push a video card to its limits or close to its limits at real world resolutions and such. It can especially play a game at very playable frame rates.

So many Intel fanny's who thrive on "i'm getting higher framerate than you are". In which you can not actually see anyways. Your not going to notice much of anything going from 100 fps to 150 fps.

So stop the fannyism already. Intel doesn't even like you.

Facts have nothing to do with fanboyism. i3/5/7 are faster per core per clock than phenom II. Nothing new. But since most games are GPU limited that was not realy a big issue related to games.
SC 2 however is pretty quickly CPU limited as it seems and this was pretty predictable (RTS, SC1).

Personally I actually believe too that at one point you will need 5 ghz i7 like performance to play it smooth. say 3v3(4v4) fastest possible or zero clutter. If such maps ever get available.

SC1 minimum requirement was like a Pentium 100 mhz. But anything else than a quick 1v1 on a low map wasn't really possible. but in 5+ carriers and anything below a Pentium 2 was unusable. I don't really remember but with like 24 carriers even a Pentium 2 was too slow. You could say that's a stupid comparsion but I would not be astonished to see similar behaviour with sc2.

 

[LoneNinja]

People seem really content with Ugly chix these days.... :\... Am I really asking for much? 60fps.. the standard set since for-rever rever.

I'm used to RTS games being capped at 30fps, and they're perfectly playable to me if they stay above 20fps, but I haven't played anything newer than CnC 3. There are also users on this board who have spent more on their 1 computer than I have on my last 3, and far as I'm concerned mine game just fine. lol

 

[dguy6789]

The game is pretty darn intense. Some parts of the campaign are so intensive that it had my machine running in the lower teens fps wise and I have a 3.4Ghz Q9550. Granted, the vast majority of the game doesn't have any kind of slowdown at all, it's still pretty wild. This is the first game I've played in the 2 years I've had this rig(and I've played through Crysis and Warhead) that made me consider upgrading. The problem is i7s and DDR3 is so expensive. I don't think the performance gain is worth the price yet.

 

[nyker96]

Facts have nothing to do with fanboyism. i3/5/7 are faster per core per clock than phenom II. Nothing new. But since most games are GPU limited that was not realy a big issue related to games.
SC 2 however is pretty quickly CPU limited as it seems and this was pretty predictable (RTS, SC1).

Personally I actually believe too that at one point you will need 5 ghz i7 like performance to play it smooth. say 3v3(4v4) fastest possible or zero clutter. If such maps ever get available.

.

I think SC2 is badly written, uses only 2 cores, with each individual units on screen pretty much separate, this game like many RTSs should be optimized to use multiple cores and threads. Anyhow, if it does get optimized for say 4 or 6 cores, I think this disparity in performance would lessen. So as of now it's per core performance that matters since anything above a dual core is not used for this game.

But let's be honest if they do manage to patch it with a multi-core optimized version, i7s will still win over PII, this I have no doubt. But at least PII will do better than now. The i5/7s gaming architecture is very hard to beat.

 

[zebrax2]

Ok,, jokes aside.... High end hardware has no reasonable advantage in running windows.

Gamers on the other hand, can go without food for weeks while saving pennies for that new setup.

Most People buy high end setups primarily for video game performance.

Do not throw cherry picked examples of home-folders and extreme hobbyists at me, because they're not completely relevant.

So, yes, I do expect AMD to Go back in time, and not Fuck up.
Cuz after they won against p4, you know that more than a few choice people probably spent all day at a fucking golf course vs making their chips faster...

Yes, they should have foreseen starcraft 2 as a super game that could boost their sales dramatically....

If a new amd was to get only 10 fps in EVERY fucking game,, but a solid 60 in starcraft 2,,, They can still market that processor to the WHOLE of korea,,, and make billions.

So my stretch of an argument isn't much of a stretch at all.

Starcraft 2 could've been the civil rights movement for AMD.

1.) I'm almost 100% certain that a huge part of the cpu market are non-gamers even at the high end (servers, workstations)
2.) Developing this chips are hard.
3.) You seem to be under the illusion that SC2 alone can keep AMD afloat. SC2 gamers are nothing but a very small part of the market plus you assume that people will upgrade their CPU because of a single game alone which is false for the majority of users.

 

[Jovec]

I think SC2 is badly written, uses only 2 cores, with each individual units on screen pretty much separate, this game like many RTSs should be optimized to use multiple cores and threads.

Blizzard tries to keep the overall experience the same between the different levels of hardware. It's a design goal that's hard to argue with considering 12+ million WoW subs and an expected 8+ million SC2 sales by the end of the year. Of course there is no way to escape better performance/detail on higher end hardware short of artificial caps, but it's clear from World of Warcraft, seems clear from SC2, and likely will be the same for D3, that they are not going to do multi-threaded rendering or AI. Blizzard is probably the only company that has to cater to hard-core gamers and true casuals with the same games. Certainly they are the only one to have to do it with such numbers.

SC2 is very playable on AMD cpus - it's what I play on too. But SC2 is a very high profile example of where their relative lack of IPC is a weakness. For general usage, anything that isn't an Atom class CPU is powerful enough. For well threaded applications, core count can make up for and surpass higher IPC. GPU limited games are GPU limited. But World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 happen to be two very high profile examples that expose AMD's lower IPC.

 

[IntelUser2000]

SC1 minimum requirement was like a Pentium 100 mhz. But anything else than a quick 1v1 on a low map wasn't really possible. but in 5+ carriers and anything below a Pentium 2 was unusable. I don't really remember but with like 24 carriers even a Pentium 2 was too slow. You could say that's a stupid comparsion but I would not be astonished to see similar behaviour with sc2.

With enough units, my Pentium III 733 system lagged on Starcraft. No kidding. Though with Starcraft 2, it might be less demanding with more units since it balances rendering with CPU AND GPU.

I think SC2 is badly written, uses only 2 cores, with each individual units on screen pretty much separate, this game like many RTSs should be optimized to use multiple cores and threads.

It is multi-thread optimized. It's just that some of the threads are likely less demanding than others. That leads to =less gain.

 

[coffeejunkee]

60fps.. the standard set since for-rever rever.

Maybe standard for fps, but this is a rts, as long as you dont drop under 20, 25 fps its fine. All you really need is for the simulation thread to run above or equal to realtime. Supcom used to be the same.

Come to think of it, Crysis already kinda send that standard into retirement.

 

[badboyeee]

ive been playing with a stock AMD Opty 165 and 7600GT.. only did the first 6 campaign missons so far tho.. 1st mission i had it at 1920x1080p..then switched to 1600x900 by the 2nd mission @ ultra. by the 4th mission i have it set to medium still at 1600x900 and my FPS are in the twenties.. if i ever play multiplayer id probably have to set it to 720p and im sure missions will get more intense..

i keep forgetting to change my BIOS settings to overclock my CPU back to 2.5ghz before i bootup.. then i get too lazy to restart.. so I guess im satisfied with 1.8ghz at the moment lol

 

[Anubis]

Blizzard tries to keep the overall experience the same between the different levels of hardware. It's a design goal that's hard to argue with considering 12+ million WoW subs and an expected 8+ million SC2 sales by the end of the year. Of course there is no way to escape better performance/detail on higher end hardware short of artificial caps, but it's clear from World of Warcraft, seems clear from SC2, and likely will be the same for D3, that they are not going to do multi-threaded rendering or AI. Blizzard is probably the only company that has to cater to hard-core gamers and true casuals with the same games. Certainly they are the only one to have to do it with such numbers.

SC2 is very playable on AMD cpus - it's what I play on too. But SC2 is a very high profile example of where their relative lack of IPC is a weakness. For general usage, anything that isn't an Atom class CPU is powerful enough. For well threaded applications, core count can make up for and surpass higher IPC. GPU limited games are GPU limited. But World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 happen to be two very high profile examples that expose AMD's lower IPC.

FWTW WoW was patched to use 4 cores ~8 months ago

 

[Jovec]

FWTW WoW was patched to use 4 cores ~8 months ago

What people really mean when talking about this subject is multi-core rendering, which WoW doesn't do. It was patched to allow control via the ini file over which cores WoW is allowed to spawn threads on. This seemed to be in response to some issues with HT processors (and poor schedulers) with threads spawning on a the same real/virtual pair instead of two real cores, causing unnecessary slowdowns.

 

[exar333]

dude tp4tissue wtf are you talking about? You act like no phenom2 can run this game, which is incredibly stupid. I know many people building systems based on this processor (because of price) who are playing the game very smoothly. Are we looking at FPS meters? NO. We are looking to see if the game is smooth. Hell, I'm playing this game on an X2 6000+ with a 8800GT at ultra settings (albiet I'm capped at 1280x1024 because of my monitors) and I'm not getting lag unless I go play a custom map of nexus wars. RTS is not the type of game that needs 60 FPS at all.
If you want the game to run more smoothly, then wait 2 years and buy it.

Instead of waiting two years to plan this smoothly, how about using current hardare? Using 1280x1024 monitors is low, even by today's standards. I was by no means cutting-edge 6 years ago and had a L90D+ that was this resolution.

If you want to run a 24"+ monitor (which a lot of gamers on AT use) you need a FAST PHII or (better yet) a fast i5 or i7. I loved AMD back in the day, but their IPC is less than Intel. You just have to face the facts.

 

[exar333]

BTW - where the heck is AT with a SC2 performance review? It's the biggest PC game release in ages and all I hear is crickets chirping at the AT site. More Apple review crap (as usual).

 

[Joepublic2]

I'm still running an old c2d (65nm) clocked at 2.8Ghz with a 8800GT and I get mid twenties to thirties fps on anything except a carrier or battlecruiser victory fleet when it drops to the teens, but at that point I'm steamrolling the opponent(s) (because they allowed me to build 24 carriers lol) so it doesn't really matter. A Phenom II with a modern card will definitely be playable. It won't be glass smooth but it's still more than enough to devastate newbs.

 

[jtisgeek]

This thread 🙄 My 965 at 3.8 runs just fine even with FSAA on 1920 yeah that may be times in the single player I hit in the 30's but not very much.

All the amd hate makes me laugh in this thread.

SC2 doesn't seem to run much better on the 980x I think 6 cores makes it worst lots of problems with some highend system on there support forums.

Long story short fast computers run games better haha.:awe:

 

[nyker96]

Blizzard tries to keep the overall experience the same between the different levels of hardware. It's a design goal that's hard to argue with considering 12+ million WoW subs and an expected 8+ million SC2 sales by the end of the year. Of course there is no way to escape better performance/detail on higher end hardware short of artificial caps, but it's clear from World of Warcraft, seems clear from SC2, and likely will be the same for D3, that they are not going to do multi-threaded rendering or AI. Blizzard is probably the only company that has to cater to hard-core gamers and true casuals with the same games. Certainly they are the only one to have to do it with such numbers.

What you say might be true, but what's wrong with someone getting higher fps or more eye candies if s/he has better hardware? As long as the game can be played in lower end hardware it won't be a problem. Making it more threaded means as your hardware improves in the future when we can all get 12 or 16 cores cpus, the game will scale to better physics/graphics effects etc. Maybe there can even be an option to turn on smarter AI if you got more cpu cores for skirmishes etc. If you mean keeping the same experience as in the game look exactly the same on all machines, I don't see what Bliz has to gain in doing that. They'd probably loose customers instead of gaining.

 

[borisvodofsky]

What resolution is your monitor?

I don't mind the resolution as long as it's above 19x12 AT 60 FPS........ I use a 3007 full time.


For those of you who claims that frame dips does not matter in an RTS... YOU HAVE NOT played an RTS seriously enough. 😱

Intense Micro management... Yes, starcraft 2 ai does alot of the movements for you now, but at high level play, IT MATTERS.