Starcraft II GPU performance/IQ

I've only played a handful of missions so far, but I don't really notice any jaggies in-game at 1920*1080. I know they're there, because I could see em if I looked for em during the tutorial, but while playing the game proper they absolutely don't jump out at me.

It also runs at 60fps at all times with everything at max on my dual 4890s, except during some of the menu sequences. For example going to the armory in the Hyperion, FPS drops to ~48ish. I suppose it's the DoF and other post-processing shit that causes that. Not that it matters, as the cutscenes play out just as well at a slightly lower framerate. I don't notice a thing, really.

 

Righto, as an end user I don't care what API they use as long as they're not leaving features and/or performance on the table.

In this case they've most certainly left out a basic feature. As for performance, I don't know enough to say whether they could make any significant gains in DX10 while still having to support DX9.

BTW I don't buy the having to wait much longer bit. They could've been working on a DX10 renderer for years now. And they are Blizzard, with infinite money.

 

Its funny because if it was other developer You would easily accept a 'lazy developers' argument.
And about gameplay its exacly that same as starcraft 1 - 12 years old game - with new units and skills.
And at last graphic do not downgrade gameplay, but it can add to the gameplay.
For me Starcraft 2 [i played beta] looks like good 4 years old game - its enough for most players, but still disappointing for such high grade and rich developer and so long development cycle.

I think Blizzard has too high fame based on old titles and even cons are converted to pros or just bashed as with a gameplay argument [still nothing change for 12 years].
Yeah its good to not change great game, but its also really safe play from Blizzard, especially after so many years and so many great RTS'es.

Ps. I'm really counting for Diablo 3, but design choices [WoW like graphic style] really bothers me - Diablo 3 is for me last change to redeem Blizzard as a epic developer, but its me ;]

 

Happens with me too, on a 5870.

 

Well, you probably already know by now about this:

http://twitter.com/CatalystMaker/statuses/19739897631


So all of this irate chatter has amounted to nothing. I'm really rather surprised to see this kind of attitude coming from mature people who have been around awhile and ought to know better than to ever even remotely consider making high-end 3d-card purchases on the basis of rumor, speculation, and innuendo. Of all possible reasons to buy a high-end 3d card, those have to be the worst reasons imaginable. And if off-the-cuff PR statements were the major factor in choosing among 3d cards, then looking back at the Derek Perez PR days at nVidia there's no doubt in my mind that nVidia would have gone belly up years ago as nobody would ever have bought a nV product solely on the basis of his often very strange (if not twisted) PR convolutions...

Speaking of Starcraft II, I saw the game today on the shelf for the amazing, outrageous rip-off price of $59.95, and I'm going to pass this one up for awhile until I can read some reviews on the game and until the price falls to sensible levels. I might even insist that Blizzard offer up a *gasp* Demo of their new Starcraft II game before I'll consider buying it. I think something's wrong when a game is released sans demo and sans pre-shipping reviews, and I won't change my mind about that. But here's the thing...

Is the game itself any good...? If it isn't, or it's just a mediocre rehash of Starcraft 1 with better graphics, then I certainly don't give a darn whether the game can be AA'ed or not, because I'm not going to own it. I also feel like asking the sincere question as to whether in its grab for as much cash as it can lay its hands on in as short an amount of time as possible, whether Blizzard has any console plans for this game. I haven't been reading much about it, tell the truth, but the first thought that crossed my mind when I heard that the game didn't internally support FSAA was "Aha! Console thinking!" since most consoles are far less interested in in-game options like FSAA than people who play games The Way They Ought To Be Played--and that is, on a computer with a keyboard and a mouse.

So....here I am reading this thread populated by irate people who also have yet to review the game or play a demo--and by "demo" I don't mean silly and contrived FMV's and so on--I mean a good solid demo that I can play in order to get some sense as to whether this is a game I want to buy, not necessarily now--but ever. So please, if someone can link me to such a demo I'd love to try it out--and I'm not alleging that pre-shipping demos and reviews of Starcraft II don't exist, I'm just saying I need some help finding them because I haven't been able to up to now.

Since when, in the year of Our Lord 2010, does it make any sense for a game developer to release --what is being trumped up as a blockbuster game for computers-- without demos, without reviews, and most damning of all, without an in-game setting for FSAA? As I said, I'm thinking that Blizzard was thinking "Consoles here we come!" and so this feature just wasn't a part of their "A" list. If I'm wrong here I'll be happy to take my lumps and move on... But there's also a part 2 that I'm thinking about...

Part 2 is really no more than any canny developer will do with a game release--he codes the game to be as graphically consistent as possible with the largest array of 3d cards still in use that he considers relevant. He does this because the number of the copies of his game he sells is of far greater importance to him than the graphical eye-candy he will have to spend time and money coding in. So he writes a graphical engine that will appeal to the largest mean of 3d display capability already in place instead of to the much smaller groups who clamor for the very latest in graphical feature support. That makes perfect sense, but...

It still doesn't excuse Blizzard from doing what many smaller, much poorer software developer houses have managed to do: and that is to create a graphically scalable game that supports not only the mean capabilities of most 3d cards extant in the market, but also supports the high-end features of the newest 3d cards that many people shell out hundreds of dollars to buy--and often just because they want to see those effects made real in the games that they buy.

So I think first of all that the matter of ATi FSAA support in Starcraft II has been settled as stated in Terry's quote as I linked it above. More importantly, though, the question remains at least for me as to whether this game will be enjoyable enough to make me care whether I can FSAA it, or not! But assuming it is "that good" of a game, and I hope it is, then we already know that ATi is going to pick up the ball where Blizzard dropped it and patch in some sort of FSAA so that ATi players can have that feature on even though Blizzard didn't think the feature was important enough for anybody to have for any reason, apparently.

In the old days, as D3d was just firming up as an API, it made perfect sense for IHV's to write drivers that overrode in-game settings for various 3d-game features, because most of the time there were no in-game settings for much of any 3d-game feature support at all! Today it makes little sense for any game developer, especially one with the resources of Blizzard, to write 3d game engines for computers that lack native support for such basic, universally supported and accepted features as FSAA. The correct way to support a 3d gpu feature is inside the game itself, whereas writing drivers to override the developer's game code to support those features is only a last resort, and the worst way to support such features.

Blizzard was wrong here and made a major tactical blunder (and I think the lack of playable demos and pre-shipping reviews were blunders, too), no doubt about that, but kudos to ATi and apparently nVidia, too, for picking up the ball that Blizzard dropped with respect to 3d feature support native to Starcraft II. But the key question for me still is whether the addition of FSAA support will come to mean that much in the end. If the game is very, very good, then I think FSAA support will add a lot. But if it is just a middling game with roots into the last century of Starcraft 1 that are so old the game positively creaks because of them, then it may be that all of this fuss about FSAA inside Starcraft II will turn out to be much ado about nothing.

One last reiteration and then I'm done! Heh... For me, personally, the $59.95 retail shelf price for the regular version of the game, and the lack of pre-shipping playable demos, and the absence of pre-shipping reviews, all added up to me as insulting. Not only insulting, but condescending, too. All I can say to Blizzard is that if the company wants my business it will have to do a lot better than it's done so far with StarCraft II.

 

But Walt these are the types of intangibles that don't come up in bar graphs that make people stay with Nvidia. While I agree Blizzard should be the one supplying anti-aliasing (and that as a consumer we ultimately want them, and not the ihv's, to provide anti-aliasing), the bottom line is digi didn't get to use anti-aliasing today in SC2 while other (nvidia) consumers did. When was the last time amd supported anti-aliasing in a game that nvidia didn't?

Moreover, if I was an amd consumer, I would be more concerned about the lack of performance in sc2 than the lack of msaa. Blizzard and amd have a "partnership". I have the expectation that through this "partnership" the 5870 should preform like (or close to) a 480 at launch (at resolutions other than 2560x1600). I don't think that's unreasonable. And yet amd blew it again. A 5870 is barely better than a 460 in SC2!

We've heard from various amd employees over and over that "development relations are really good now!", but these Saboteur/SC2 type launches are still happening and imo unacceptable (and the lack of msaa has nothing to do with it).

 

Play in Windowed mode. Then manually stretch the window so it takes up all/most of the screen. Alt-tabbing between applications and back to SC2 is instant just as if you tabbed from Office to Photoshop and back and forth.

Regards,
SB

 

Wasn't there some game or two that Nvidia forced the publisher to remove the update patch on which allowed for AA but only on AMD cards since Nvidia was behind a DX Level? Maybe it was about 2 years ago? I honestly cant remember the name, but there was some big stink about it.

In either case, it really doesn't matter because once you realize gaming should be about fun, not having to battle political market fragmentation issues, or tech issues or updates you'll be converted to a console gamer.

 

Assassin's Creed.

 

The directx 10.1 path in ac allowed for faster msaa (but msaa was still present on the directx 10 path).

 

I really don't know how AMD continues to pull off this trick where it gets more credit for doing nothing than the guys who are trying Neat trick I must say.

 

I admit I haven't really played any other RTS games in past few years but are there any that actually look better than SC2? I've tried supreme commander and that didn't seem to be anything special.

There was a special option to run it windowed, maximized and without decorations. Pretty much indistinguishable from running fullscreen

 

Well, I've tried it on my x800 and yeah.. graphics was not impressive at all. Only played the first mission but I don't think my computer will struggle that much on this configuration @1280*1024@low-mid details

Incidentally, I indefinitely borrowed an 8800 gts 320 so i am free now

 

Company of Heroes, World in Conflict, DOW 2, C&C4 and yes Supreme Commander forged alliance looks better and has so bigger scale. In addition You have games like Total War Empire that totally destroys all mentioned earlier. [cant of course compare SC 2 to Sins of the Solar Empires that is quite pretty too, but its Homeworld type of game]

 

Didn't DX10, 10.1 and 11 bring several improvements in effectivity, which boosted performance in several (DX10/10.1/11 patched) games? Most PC's are equipped by modern hardware, so I don't understand why it isn't dvantageous to utilize it for better performance...

 

Does SC2 look that bad?

 

I looked at a few screenshots and videos of those games and from them it didn't really seem as if they were significantly better. Mostly it was just bigger range for zooming in and on occasion better environmental physics.

I've played some versions of total war some time ago and that too didn't seem like it would have insanely good GFX. Again, just loads of units and better zooming.

Perhaps our definition of "better graphics" is different? For me it's mostly the environmental detail and special effects. Being able to zoom in to see a single unit fill your whole screen (at generally horrible detail) or to zoom out to view the whole map with units replaced by icons doesn't quite define good graphics for me personally.


[edit]
When I said earlier I haven't played many RTS'es I mainly meant it as that I haven't played many that would look better than SC2. I've played Empire/Napoleon/Rome: Total War, Universe at War: Earth Assault and supreme commander 1. None of those seemed to have that good gfx imho.

 

Yeah, I've having the problem with my 5870, just wondering if Nvidia users are having the same problem, apparently they did during beta but a driver update fixed it. Apparently AMD cards were fine during beta but are now having the problem in retail.

Does appear to be AMD only according to this thread http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/166496881

I'm wondering if AMD actually worked with Blizzard on this game at all, we've had the AA force issues (Going to be fixed though) Poor performance compared to Nvidia cards at the same price point e.g a GTX 460 shouldn't be just a little slower than a 5870 with the 5830 being much, much slower, and now this slow alt tabbing.

 

Everyone's entitled to an opinion. IMHO Starcraft 2 looks quite good, and the ingame cinematics are better then pretty much any other game out there.

 

CoH holds it quite well and all in all in DX10 tops it not just visually but togehter with physics, animations, destruction and everything else going on with thick particle effects. DOW2, Supreme Commander and WIC look noticably worse than SC2 max settings shots I've seen.