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5870 and Star craft 2

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

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I think both are probably true. It all depends on how intensive tomshardware's saved loop was for the game. Remember that in that video he is only just starting out in a game and you can only see his own units (no battles, etc). I also believe the guy in the video is not using any AA due to the earlier drivers I'm guessing? This will also account for the higher fps.
 
I ran starcraft 2 at 1920*1200 on a 4870x2 with all maximum settings (no AA), and found reasonable performance. This was before crossfire was enabled, so I was effectively playing with a single 4870. I never saw "jerky" framerates, except for one one mission where you can have your entire army cloaked ('in utter darkness')

When I switched to a GTX480, I saw a big improvement in performance in the more intense scenes. Typically I saw framerates of well over 40fps with a single GTX480. Enabling 4xAA did not lead to significant slowdown - certainly no noticeable loss of performance. From the benchmarks on Toms it doesn't seem like the nvidia cards perform significantly better than the ATI (at least without AA), so I imagine you will see similar performance to what I did.

Remember that the kind of performance required for an FPS game will not be needed from an RTS. That said, I don't think you'll have a problem.


Also, note that the 5870 loses only 16% of its framerate going from 1280*1024 right up to 2560*1600 (a factor of three more pixels...), which indicates your CPU speed will play a large part in the performance.
 
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Ok, different question all together... I do love rts games, was big in to the whole cnc genre, especially back in the day when Red Alert 2 was king of the hill.

Is Star Craft 2 worth buying? Does it have multiplayer longevity?
 
Played through sc2 fine on my 5870 at 1920x1200 all max settings and I play the odd skirmish where I like to build until i reach the maximum unit cap and it was very smooth. There is tons of replayability, mainly online though blizzard. If you enjoy an online skirmish it will keep you busy for ages. I keep going back to supreme commander though, I just prefer the scale.
 
1 5870 is ample performance for this game, though only if your not useing any AA

i play the game at 1920x1200 with a 5970 @925/1210 and the game @ 4x aa all maxed and its perfectly smooth. but forget AA if your useing just 1 5870.
 
opethdisciple said:
Ok, different question all together... I do love rts games, was big in to the whole cnc genre, especially back in the day when Red Alert 2 was king of the hill.

Is Star Craft 2 worth buying? Does it have multiplayer longevity?
Click to expand...

More a question for the games forums but...

I really liked starcraft 2. I'm not big into the whole competitive multiplayer thing, but the single player has more content than any other RTS I've played. I'd say it's well worth buying.

As for the gameplay, to be honest I think part of the appeal was that it reminded me strongly of old-school style RTSs. I think this game is more like the original red alert than any game I've played since.

I can't speak for the multiplayer, as I never really gave it a chance, but my impression is that it's very serious, very brutal, and very cut-throat. I completed the campaign on brutal difficulty without any issues, but I still couldn't get anywhere with the multiplayer.

Anyway, give it a go. I was pleasantly surprised by it :)
 
1920x1080 on a 4870 with ultra settings/maxed out, smooth as butter.

AA is pointless on a game like StarCraft II. You can only notice bad aliasing if you zoom all the way in, in which case you are doing it wrong.
 
1920x1080 and maxed settings, plays super smooth and looks absolutely gorgeous! Game never stutters for me and my cpu is OC'd to 3.8 atm.
 
Strange, I run 4xAA with a 5870 and it's smooth as butter lol, just make sure you have the latest drivers and add AA through catalyst. Awesome game, I'm sure even a 8800gtx can max this game lol!
 
Marine-RX179 said:
May be tomhardware's stress in unrealistic scenerioc like having 8 players all reached the unit cap, and all send them to a single screen area at the same time? :D
Click to expand...

This. Toms made a extreme worst case benchmark, the type I like personally (like the official BattleForge one). Now that I'm playing the game again on Hard and Multiplayer @ 1920x1200 with 4xAA and everything is Silky smooth with my 5850 (clocked to 1062/1249). Although it seems Nvidia have the upper hand with AA and SC2
 
One thing I'v learnt this time around during my drawn out purchase of either a 470 or a 5870 (which I choose the 5870), is benchmarks and reviews around the web, offer very very little.

Each, differ and contradict each other... best is forums like this and maybe you tube, where you can actually see the cards running and playing games.
 
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