StarCraft 2's PC and Mac system requirements announced

@Walter White

You're video cards and CPU are 600 minimum together assuming you got the cheapest 6 core on the market. Your PC is worth more than 800 bucks...

@Deschain - No. Just playable. It may be an old card, but it's has aged pretty well.

I'd upgrade to a 5XXX series, but the game developers are taking their time adopting DX11. Most of them still use DX9c. And a price drop on a DX11 card never hurts.

I recycled the GPU's from my X2 4400 rig. Same with the hard drives.

The RAM, CPU, mobo, and case cost me a total of $800. A bit over with tax and shipping.

I'm amused that people think I'm bragging, until 2 months ago, I was using an old Athlon X2 4200 for about 5 years. Windows 7 was slow as molasses, on my old rig.

@Walter White

8GB of DDR3 memory = 300.
case = 50 bucks
CPU = 200
mobo = 200

Guesstimates for people who think different. With shipping and tax, 800 pretty much is spot on. I think people assume that a 6 core cpu cost 1000 bucks (the intel 6core) so that is why you got negative comments. But yes you are bragging in a way. The fact you were obviously sick of your old cpu is evidence that you are happy to show you can stick it to win 7 now lol

But anyway, can you tell me what your super pi score is at 1M? I'm curious how my i5 stacks up.

@Walter White - (no edit) An athlon x2 4400 for the past 5 years.

@Walter White

MSY, mates and OCAU; all custom built for roughly $400.

And sorry, I was speaking in $AU (Roughly US80c). The cheapest i7 here is about $350, and a single 4870 was about that back when they still sold them.
And 8gb of DDR3 isn't cheap either, so I estimated your rig to be worth roughly AU$1500.

And 2 4870s are far from "just playable." I was doing 1080p gaming once with my single 9600gt, and getting smooth framerates.

@Esposch

it's closer to 1100 usd which I would guess to be around 1300-1400 au

@R Planteer

And yet SC2 will be able to run on more computers which is pretty smart financially.

@R Planteer

The models and textures are pretty well done imo. Nothing "crappy" about them. It's not really like Blizzard is known for mind blowing graphics anyway.

@R Planteer

Please, crank everything up to max, then get into a 4v4 match with hundreds of units onscreen at once. Watch your system crawl. There is nothing "crappy" with the graphics. You want every single unit detailed photorealistic? Ok. the game can already strain your system, go ahead and wish it put more of a strain on it. You don't make a CPU-heavy game photorealistic because the entire point of the game has hundreds of units onscreen at once.

@Drakkenfyre

1. No, this game cannot stress my system.
2. If what you said was true, then the min. requirements wouldnt be a six year old GPU.
3. Go compare this game t o DoW 2, and see that what I said is true. DoW 2's "medium" settings blow this away on its highest. While DoW 2 may not have as many units, it stil gets pretty hextic.

Blizzard did this on purpose for 2 reason. To have a larger target audience, and because SC 2 is nothing but a 1/2 assed project.

IMHO anyways.

@Colostomeboy If Blizzard does it right, and not like Valve, where episodic gaming means a new episode within 1/2 years instead of a new game in 5... it'll be fine. For a GOTY edition with all 3 episodes, you're still looking at 3 years till you can buy it. Can you really wait that long when everyone praises it as probably the best RTS game in a decade (or all time)?

@dariusdetiger

They are expansions, not games or episodes.

Major work has not even started on any of the expansions yet. I doubt it even comes out next year...(This year will be the first time in a very long time blizzard has had two major releases in one year)...But anyone who thinks SC2:WoL is not a full game needs to reevaluate their view on the game and stop buying into what trolls say. There are roughly 27 missions in the game and many of them take longer than an hour to complete. Add that to the Multiplayer and it's already a full game. But it does not stop their. You also get the galaxy editor which can be literally use to make any kind of game or map. The expansions will add another race specific 20-30 missions and probably make additions to multiplayer and the galaxy editor. In the end the game and expansions together would have been a 70+ hour single player game with a multiplayer game that has enormous depth. Personally, It's worth it to buy it now. A battlechest won't be coming any time soon at all. (WoW does not even have WotLK in it's battle chest yet)

@dariusdetiger

brood war added units. It's asinine to think these expansions would not. Besides that it's equally asinine to think blizzard has not taken future additions into account. And it would not negate anything, they would simply have to cater the new units to the old ones, not the other way. That way it leaves the original balance untouched for the most part.

@Deschain Broodwar didn't have a 5 month beta.

@Deschain and it also took Blizzard 3-5 years to get the balance to where it is now. Best believe they cannot afford to do that with Starcraft 2.

@dariusdetiger

And? that was 12 years ago. Blizzard has resources to do a 5 month beta now. Back then they didn't. If they could have they would have. You can bet the next expansion will also have a 5 month beta to play test. It's simply a part of the development cycle Blizzard is willing to do.

@dariusdetiger

Do you really think that in those 3-5 years they permanently scrapped all the units they talk about? Nope, they saved them for the campaign and to be balanced for the expansions. And there is nothing "blizzard can't afford". They are permanently supported by WoW. how do you think they got to spend the time play testing it in the first place? I mean saying the expansions will not have new units is like saying a Diablo expansion would not have a new class or two. It's just something that is a given.

@Kyle4

OpenGL isn't as optimized as DirectX. This is fact. In the beta when the Mac client came out, people were complaining immediately of 50% framerate drops switching from the Windows version to the Mac version.

@Drakkenfyre As a Mac owner and programmer I'll like to clarify that the massive drop is not due to OpenGL being less optimized as DirectX - it's due to OS X's architecture and how it integrates Open GL. If Blizzard had built SC2 with Open GL for Windows as well the frame rates would be fairly similar.

@phlipzters As long as under the "Energy Saver" preference pane you've selected "Higher Performance" you'll be fine - it might be playable on "Better Battery Life" but I'm not sure.