Starcraft 2 Performance Analysis

After 10 whole years, the sequel of one of the best RTS games is finally here. So it's time to see how well the game performs.

We'll use a Q6600 with 4GB DDR2 and an Nvidia GTX295 to see how well the game runs. We don't need to use a powerful I7 CPU, as we want to see the optimization of the game engine. We chose ultra settings with 1600x1200 resolution and fired up the game. SC2 merely supports quadcores as you can see bellow. It's funny but i expected better optimization from Blizzard, especially since the game is CPU intensive and is released only for PCs

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We have about 50% usage of our Q6600, which explains the slow-downs when we have a lot of units (more units -> more cpu calculations) on screen. On the other hand, the GPU usage is around 30% in-game and in cut-scenes it's 100%. As a result of this, we can force the FSAA and won't notice any frame drops in-game. I have to admit though that the game doesn't need a lot of FSAA. The minimum framerate in a battle with a lot of units was 20, though there are some missions in the campaign that hit it pretty hard, even when there aren't a lot of units on screen.

These slowdowns seem like an optimization issue that begun during the second phaze of Starcraft 2 beta, so hopefully Blizzard will address this in future patches. Nvidia also has to optimize their drivers, as there are glitches and issues with SLI, even with the latest 259.09 WHQL drivers. If you have an SLI combo, i suggest running the game in Single GPU Mode to avoid all those conflicts.

Furthermore, Starcraft2 runs well in older PCs. We tested the game with a E6600, 2GB DDR2 and an Nvidia 8800GTX and the game run surprising well with a mix of High and Ultra settings. We didn't notice any slowdowns (apart from the cut-scenes) so rest assured that this game will run on your PC even if it's not top notch.