The PC Builder's Guide

[TheEconomist]

The previous generation of cards should be about evenly priced and those are the cards I recommend for StarCraft 2. Anything else is probably overkill and will be limited by the CPU. As far as price though, I agree with you on the new ones. nVidia is always higher than a cat's ass until ATi lays the smack down. I wouldn't recommended the 5700 though unless you really need DirectX 11. You can get a cheaper previous generation card that performs better. I know, I have a HD 5770. I needed it for PS2 and Wii/GameCube emulation though so it was worth it but I don't know if anyone else would need it.

[spychi]

The previous generation of cards should be about evenly priced and those are the cards I recommend for StarCraft 2. Anything else is probably overkill and will be limited by the CPU. As far as price though, I agree with you on the new ones. nVidia is always higher than a cat's ass until ATi lays the smack down. I wouldn't recommended the 5700 though unless you really need DirectX 11. You can get a cheaper previous generation card that performs better. I know, I have a HD 5770. I needed it for PS2 and Wii/GameCube emulation though so it was worth it but I don't know if anyone else would need it.

I build few system on it on Blizzforums and from what I saw at newegg.com the gpu is hot on the market

[hyde]

I want to be able to run starcraft 2 at a bit better then just medium (I got some customoptions, but it's basicly medium)

Currently I got the nvidia geforce 9400 gt. And I would like to stick to the nvidia geforce series. But the problem is that I don't really know which graphic card to buy since I don't really want to buy the most costly.....

You should be running considerably close results like me if you upgrade your graphics card.
SC2 is CPU Dual core reliant.
Do not bother buying a new CPU. It would be better to just play on high-ultra than to buy a CPU. You can also consider overclocking if you know what you are doing...but thats a new fan (70$USD++) right there.


My Box
i7 920 @ 2.67GHZ
6GB of 1600MHZ DDR3 RAM
ATI 5770 1GB
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

Settings
1650X1050 resolution
Ultra everything (unless high is the max)
Shadows on ultra or whatever
VSYNC/FPS cap on

My Performance
The FPS is capped at 60 on my settings
I get 60FPS on menu and in some areas of the game, but I average around 40-55 in firefights and when I drag around the screen.

But never has the FPS dropped to a noticable amount and/or that it would hinder my gameplay experience

My recommendation:
1) Keep the CPU
2) Buy a new video card

Make sure if you intend to run it on Ultra, you NEED a Video Card that is advertised at 1000MB/1.00GB or higher. The Ultra shaders require 1GB of video memory. The Nvidia cards with 868MB supposedly can do it too, but you run the risk with texture thrashing and corruption if you play for a long time.
At least in my experience..

I recommend the 260 GTX since you like NVIDIA.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-359-_-Product

I preferably like ATI.. I have a 5770 and I can run Battlefield 2 Bad Company, StarCraft2, etc on max settings. It's cheaper too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-447-_-Product

EDIT: Stupid me, yeah like others have said - if you don't care about DirectX11 ... go get the previous generation cards. My friend managed to get an ATI 4890 (Whatever the hell the top line was) for only 200$. It might be hard since they have been on clearance for quite some time but try.

So it seems that I need a better CPU? Well I don't really want to replace that since it was the most expensive part I bhought xD (I guess I just have to pray for them to make quadcore work....)

No. Your CPU is only 300 mhz clock speed different from mine (YES I REALIZE the i7 probably has more cache) but from Tom's hardware benchmarks - SC2 is really just all about
1) Dual core or single core?
2) Clock speed on the two cores?
3) Your video card
The problem is that your 9400 is really underpowered and it can't possibly try to run ultra shaders, etc. Like you said, you're on medium but on a mix of custom settings. I'm willing to bet that the higher settings you are running are CPU bound and the low-med settings are GPU bound.
Anyways, I'm sure you can return the GPU card if it doesn't give you the performance boost?

[Sarov]

Merged Twilice's thread with this thread because it has more to do with building a PC than with StarCraft 2.

[Twilice]

Merged Twilice's thread with this thread because it has more to do with building a PC than with StarCraft 2.

Yeah, thanks. I never noticed the off-topic forum So I didn't knew about this thread.


@hyde: The CPU "QuadCore AMD Phenom X4 9650, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200)" According to everest. I tried to overclock it but whenever I change something, something else is changed automaticly (to the lower) It seems to either be some kind of "showing" bug or a "lock" so I thought I will keep it at original.

Hm, I think you are correctly now when I think about it the shaders and lightning are all very low. (lightning low and shaders medium iirc)
Also what are the texture trashing and corruption your talking about? I think I have noticed this with wc3 a few times and once with sc2. But I am unshure, a bit more info would be nice. (since it could also increase the chance that I will buy a new graphic card)

Thank you for your time all, I appreciate your help


****
Grafikprocessor Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
RAMDAC 400 MHz
GPU klockfrekvens 650 MHz
Minnesstorlek 896 MB (memorysize)
Minneshastighet 2000 MHz (memoryspeed)
Minnestyp GDDR3 (memorytype)
Minnesbuss 448 bit (memorytype)

Grafikprocessor ATi Radeon HD 5750
RAMDAC 400 MHz
GPU klockfrekvens 850 MHz
Minnesstorlek 1024 MB (memorysize)
Minneshastighet 4800 MHz (memoryspeed)
Minnestyp GDDR5 (memorytype)
Minnesbuss 128 bit (memorybus)

What does most of these mean? As far as I can se the ATi Radeon is far superior in any way including the price. Except for the memorybus which got a pretty large gap, why is this?

[TheEconomist]

I build few system on it on Blizzforums and from what I saw at newegg.com the gpu is hot on the market

Hot? Do you mean popular or just puts out of a lot heat? I don't know about the heat issue since my runs cool but if you mean popular then what is that supposed to matter? The benchmarks usually just barely above the GTS 250 1GB and often times well below the HD 4870. I bought mine because of the DirectX 11 support which was crucial to some things I need and because it was only 25$ more from the shop I was buying from (no brainer) but most people aren't going to use the extra features and they're going to pay 50-60 more for a card that doesn't really perform any better when they could buy a HD 4870 for 15$ cheaper and have a more powerful card.

@hyde: You have to factor in the turbo boost (3.46Ghz on mine) and the fact that i5/i7's are much more efficient in their clocks than Phenom so a 2.6Ghz i5/i7 could very well out perform a 3.4Ghz in some situations. It's almost guaranteed to beat a 3.2Ghz though IIRC.

@Twilice: The GTX 260 will outperform the HD 5750 in just about everything. The HD 5770 is only comparible in a few situations and it's far more powerful. (NOTE: I've had both )

[spychi]

high demand i mean

[Twilice]

Hot? Do you mean popular or just puts out of a lot heat? I don't know about the heat issue since my runs cool but if you mean popular then what is that supposed to matter? The benchmarks usually just barely above the GTS 250 1GB and often times well below the HD 4870. I bought mine because of the DirectX 11 support which was crucial to some things I need and because it was only 25$ more from the shop I was buying from (no brainer) but most people aren't going to use the extra features and they're going to pay 50-60 more for a card that doesn't really perform any better when they could buy a HD 4870 for 15$ cheaper and have a more powerful card.

@hyde: You have to factor in the turbo boost (3.46Ghz on mine) and the fact that i5/i7's are much more efficient in their clocks than Phenom so a 2.6Ghz i5/i7 could very well out perform a 3.4Ghz in some situations. It's almost guaranteed to beat a 3.2Ghz though IIRC.

@Twilice: The GTX 260 will outperform the HD 5750 in just about everything. The HD 5770 is only comparible in a few situations and it's far more powerful. (NOTE: I've had both )

But statistics the 5750 seems better.

[hyde]

Yeah, thanks. I never noticed the off-topic forum So I didn't knew about this thread.


@hyde: The CPU "QuadCore AMD Phenom X4 9650, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200)" According to everest. I tried to overclock it but whenever I change something, something else is changed automaticly (to the lower) It seems to either be some kind of "showing" bug or a "lock" so I thought I will keep it at original.

Hm, I think you are correctly now when I think about it the shaders and lightning are all very low. (lightning low and shaders medium iirc)
Also what are the texture trashing and corruption your talking about? I think I have noticed this with wc3 a few times and once with sc2. But I am unshure, a bit more info would be nice. (since it could also increase the chance that I will buy a new graphic card)

Thank you for your time all, I appreciate your help

Yeah basically, your video card memory stores in all the textures.
Think of textures as craploads of pictures the game uses to skin over the stuff, like the rocky look to the ground or the grass..etc..

Well anyways, I doubt this would happen in SC2 but "Supposedly" they do have 1GB Texture options...so...

This is texture thrashing, you tell the game to load in more texture size than your video card can handle. As a result, some loaded textures get kicked off or erased I assume, to make room for the other stuff.

@hyde: You have to factor in the turbo boost (3.46Ghz on mine) and the fact that i5/i7's are much more efficient in their clocks than Phenom so a 2.6Ghz i5/i7 could very well out perform a 3.4Ghz in some situations. It's almost guaranteed to beat a 3.2Ghz though IIRC.

Ah yeah Tychus is right, I was meaning to explain that but I didn't want to clutter my advice.

Yeah the i3/i5/i7 architecture is definitely more efficient/powerful. But so long as he has a dual core CPU that isn't that old (and its above 2.0GHZ) he can get by with a video card upgrade and at least run the graphical stuff on medium/high.


Oh but Twilice, I do not know how well older CPU's work on SC2 but you may always run into bottle-neck'ing your new video card if the CPU can't catch up...but I don't think StarCraft 2 is that "Heavy" on high settings.


But guys who are running it on Ultra, do you not find that the game is a bit of a pig? It doesn't run that well on my hardware compared to some FPS games I play on incredibly high settings that look much better than SC2.

[Twilice]

Hm, it does seem like with the lowest settings it can be run on like every computer, but with ultra settings it can only run on "super" computers.

But with the graphics cards, which one should I get and why? ATi radion is cheaper and looks better on paper, but tychus said the Nvidia GTX is better, why?