[SOLVED, pretty much] SC2 performance woes: Rubberbanding, stuttering (lag?)

[Plimogz]

UPDATE 2011-01-24: It seems that despite this being on a barely hours-old windows installation, with nothing installed but the bare essentials, the default background processes were enough to degrade my game experience. Downloading and running game optimizing software helped a lot; it ain't quite perfect yet, but at least I have a good idea where to keep looking.

My SC2 FPS often (i.e once or twice per minute isn't uncommon) drops to about 0 for a split-second. At this point I'm using a 2500K @ 4Ghz, 4890, WD FAEX 1TB drive.

My guess is that it must be network related but I've tried playing in guest/offline mode: still stutters. Besides that I've tried lowering CPU or GPU dependant settings (this was on my PhII system) and all that does is move my min-avg-max FPS between say 20-50-100 and 25-60-150.

I've tried monitoring my GPU usage / FPS with Afterburner, but I think the minimum polling interval must be too long (100ms) to catch the dips in FPS or GPU activity, because the stutters would never show up on the graphs. But, here's something I find odd, the coil/cap whine coming from my Gfx card always goes completely quiet for the split second that no SC2 frames are being rendered.

So, there it is, anyone else getting Lag-like stuttering in SC2 even though their hardware is more than up to the task and that they're actually playing offline? And better yet, does anyone know how to fix it?

 

[Lonyo]

Do you have any applications open in the background while running SC2?

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Probably a long shot, but try reinstalling video drivers?

 

[digitaldurandal]

Turn your overclock off and see if it will fix the issue. I have heard that the game is sensitive to cpu overclock and will often have issues before other more gpu intensive games.

 

[Plimogz]

Do you have any applications open in the background while running SC2?

just Afterburner and Catalyst Control Centre, pretty much -- I've just gotten through putting together my new socket 1155 system and installing Windows 7, SC2 and the two aforementioned apps are pretty much all that's installed at the moment.

Probably a long shot, but try reinstalling video drivers?

The drivers were actually installed moments before SC2.

Turn your overclock off and see if it will fix the issue. I have heard that the game is sensitive to cpu overclock and will often have issues before other more gpu intensive games.

Okay, I've tried this and it doesn't help.

Alright, those were fine suggestions all, unfortunately I'm still stuck with this annoying little quirk... I'll post back later with some links so you guys can see exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[Nintendesert]

Are you experiencing any problems in other games?

 

[Plimogz]

I haven't really been playing much of anything else, frankly. But as a quick sanity check I fired up Alien Swarm and sure enough, it was smooth as silk.

This problem that I'm having with Starcraft II has been bugging me for a while now: I saw it on my old system and the only two components both machines had in common is VGA and PSU. I've played through a number of Blizzard game patches and monthly ATI driver updates, and it seems to me that there's always been this stuttering...

 

[coreyb]

isn't a 4890 an extremely weak card?

 

[Plimogz]

Nah, a 4890 still packs a decent punch. I do not think that the card is too weak to play the game, per se. Although I have not ruled it out as a possible explanation for this choppy video, be it because of drivers, or even failing hardware, or whatever else I dunno.

Besides, I was playing on medium/low settings earlier this week when I wrongly took my video card for the bottleneck -- turns out I was CPU-limited all along -- and even at the very beginning of a game when I only have like 10 units gathering stuff and FPS is like 300, there would be sudden jumps in the animated movement of my units.

I would guess that the safe money is on this being a software problem rather than a hardware issue; but whatever it is, it sure is bugging the heck out of me.

 

[coreyb]

It would bug me too. I would just re-install everything and see what that does. Or search google for other people who have had the problem and solved it.

 

[imaheadcase]

Did you install motherboard drives, for LAN/chipset, etc when you did new install?

I would invest in a better video card though, spending $150 on a Nvidia 460 GTX would work wonders for you.

 

[Plimogz]

RE: Drivers --> Yeah, I downloaded the latest stuff from the manufacturer and installed it.

RE: 460GTX --> ATM the only times that my FPS drop below 60 (except for these stupid stutters, that is) is during huge battles and whenever it does fall below 60, my GPU usage comes down as well, because it isn't the Gfx card having a hard time keeping up, it's the CPU.

This machine may very well be terribly unbalanced for just about every other recent game out there, but for SC2 @ 1920x1200 w/o AA, the 4890 and 2500K seem to go fit together reasonably well.

...and I'm really hoping to hold out 'til 28nm GPUs to tell you the truth.

 

[ss284]

Do you happen to be playing over wireless? I used to have an issue with the build in windows wireless stack checking for new APs exactly once every 60 seconds. I don't remember the fix, but it should be googleable.

 

[Plimogz]

Nope, I'm playing over a cables with a cheap D-Link router and a cable connection which Pingtest.net apparently grades as an A.

On a positive note however, I have downloaded and run the free demo version of a program called Gamebooster and I do believe that it lessened the stuttering problem by shutting off all unneeded background processes. So much for me not needing a game optimizer...