Dynasty
Space Core
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2004
- Messages
- 4,976
- Reaction score
- 17
*Kermit voice* Hey all!
Anyway, back to reality.
So, this weekend my new MSI GX740 laptop arrived at my doorstep from the US of A *grumbles at UK customs for holding it a week* and I have to say, the step-up from a Macbook Pro is immense, bar the screen quality.
Important Specs:
- Mobile i7 720QM 1.6 ghz - 2.8 ghz (Max turbo Frequency) 6 MB Cache
- 17" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) Widescreen Super Glare TFT Display
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (stock mhz 700/1000) - 1 GIG GDDR 5 (Although Dxdiag shows it at 2700-odd available memory, weird)
- 4 Gigs of DDR 3 memory @ 1333 mhz
- 500 Gig SATA HDD (7200rpm)
- Windows 7 64-bit (pre-installed)
Now, I'm a tad confused about some performance issues in Starcraft 2 so far. I have The Witcher 2 coming soon so that will be the real test, and I cant seem to find my old Crysis disc anywhere so cant use that as a new benchmark, but judging by youtube videos of The Witcher 2 being played on Alienware M15x's with an i5, same card and ram specs as me running over 40fps on mainly ultra settings, I should be fine.
Anyway, in Starcraft 2 all my settings are set to Ultra, 1680x1050 and I get 40fps-ish right from the get-go in any type of match (1v1, 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4). Great.
But the second any cloaked unit appears on my screen from an ally (ie I can still see them in the shrouded light-blue effect), or I go near almost anything to do with a large Protoss army or large base being attacked, my fps plummets to around 20 and lower. ''Weird'' I thought.
I tried a 1v1 map against a Protoss last night just to play around with the settings. Everything was on Ultra. I changed to 2d portraits, no reflections. Lovely 46-ish fps this time. Sweet. Amassed a horde of roaches and turtled outside his base, basically playing with my food for a laugh. No drops in fps worth noting, the usual fluctuations here and there, nowhere near unplayable.
Swarmed in with a 140/200 army into his base and unleashed hell once they were all inside all at once. Protoss shields went nuts on the buildings any my fps dropped to about 15 with each almost-perfectly-syncronised-wave of Roach spitting.
Should I really be experiencing this with these specs???
I believe SC2 is extremely CPU-heavy and doesnt actually require that great of a card to run it at max. So...why the hell is an i7 740qm at (should be, cant be sure) 2.8ghz potentially slowing the game down??? Even my Core 2 duo in my Macbook Pro didnt experience THIS much of an fps drop on medium and high settings.
My plan tonight is to try fiddling with the settings and turning off reflections, lower the shadow detail (who cares about that really) post processing, depth of field, halos and physics as they are almost all CPU dependant to see if that changes anything.
N.B.
Since Ive got the machine all I have done is installed the latest ATI drivers and Catalyst centre (installed over existing ones, not a 'clean' install, maybe try that), used the CCC to up the gaming performance sliders up to quality from half-way between quality and performance (going to slide those down again to see what happens) and us the CCC to overclock the card by about 50hz to make the HD 5870 run at 750/1020 from 700/1000, daren't go higher as laptops shouldnt really be OC'd.
I've been pointed by the guys at Overclockers.net to use MSI Afterburner during a playthrough this evening to see how the Cores and temps fluctuate, and to get 3DMark Vantage and check the score.
Its been a while since I had a ''performance'' PC, as I joined the console dark-side, so forgive me if my PC knowledge is a bit rough these days, but Im not completely inept.
Anyway, back to reality.
So, this weekend my new MSI GX740 laptop arrived at my doorstep from the US of A *grumbles at UK customs for holding it a week* and I have to say, the step-up from a Macbook Pro is immense, bar the screen quality.
Important Specs:
- Mobile i7 720QM 1.6 ghz - 2.8 ghz (Max turbo Frequency) 6 MB Cache
- 17" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) Widescreen Super Glare TFT Display
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (stock mhz 700/1000) - 1 GIG GDDR 5 (Although Dxdiag shows it at 2700-odd available memory, weird)
- 4 Gigs of DDR 3 memory @ 1333 mhz
- 500 Gig SATA HDD (7200rpm)
- Windows 7 64-bit (pre-installed)
Now, I'm a tad confused about some performance issues in Starcraft 2 so far. I have The Witcher 2 coming soon so that will be the real test, and I cant seem to find my old Crysis disc anywhere so cant use that as a new benchmark, but judging by youtube videos of The Witcher 2 being played on Alienware M15x's with an i5, same card and ram specs as me running over 40fps on mainly ultra settings, I should be fine.
Anyway, in Starcraft 2 all my settings are set to Ultra, 1680x1050 and I get 40fps-ish right from the get-go in any type of match (1v1, 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4). Great.
But the second any cloaked unit appears on my screen from an ally (ie I can still see them in the shrouded light-blue effect), or I go near almost anything to do with a large Protoss army or large base being attacked, my fps plummets to around 20 and lower. ''Weird'' I thought.
I tried a 1v1 map against a Protoss last night just to play around with the settings. Everything was on Ultra. I changed to 2d portraits, no reflections. Lovely 46-ish fps this time. Sweet. Amassed a horde of roaches and turtled outside his base, basically playing with my food for a laugh. No drops in fps worth noting, the usual fluctuations here and there, nowhere near unplayable.
Swarmed in with a 140/200 army into his base and unleashed hell once they were all inside all at once. Protoss shields went nuts on the buildings any my fps dropped to about 15 with each almost-perfectly-syncronised-wave of Roach spitting.
Should I really be experiencing this with these specs???
I believe SC2 is extremely CPU-heavy and doesnt actually require that great of a card to run it at max. So...why the hell is an i7 740qm at (should be, cant be sure) 2.8ghz potentially slowing the game down??? Even my Core 2 duo in my Macbook Pro didnt experience THIS much of an fps drop on medium and high settings.
My plan tonight is to try fiddling with the settings and turning off reflections, lower the shadow detail (who cares about that really) post processing, depth of field, halos and physics as they are almost all CPU dependant to see if that changes anything.
N.B.
Since Ive got the machine all I have done is installed the latest ATI drivers and Catalyst centre (installed over existing ones, not a 'clean' install, maybe try that), used the CCC to up the gaming performance sliders up to quality from half-way between quality and performance (going to slide those down again to see what happens) and us the CCC to overclock the card by about 50hz to make the HD 5870 run at 750/1020 from 700/1000, daren't go higher as laptops shouldnt really be OC'd.
I've been pointed by the guys at Overclockers.net to use MSI Afterburner during a playthrough this evening to see how the Cores and temps fluctuate, and to get 3DMark Vantage and check the score.
Its been a while since I had a ''performance'' PC, as I joined the console dark-side, so forgive me if my PC knowledge is a bit rough these days, but Im not completely inept.
