Starcraft 2 graphics (Macbook Pro 13")

Set it to medium and see what happens. If it's not satisfactory, set it back to low. There's nothing you can do to improve your computer's performance except to make sure nothing else is running at the same time as SC2 and competing with it for hardware resources. You have a bottom-of-the-line computer and you're pushing it to play a top-of-the-line game. Performance won't be ideal.

No. As I wrote above, there's nothing you can do to upgrade your computer's graphics performance. The GPU is soldered to the logic board and can't be removed or replaced. The 320M is a more advanced GPU than your 9400M, but to get it, you'd have to buy a new MBP.

If you can, run windows on your Macbook, Starcraft 2 seems to run much better in Windows on the Mac. Mac OS is not very nice to games right now, though its getting better. I found the same thing was true with Steam games like Team Fortress 2, it just runs better in windows.

do you get the same multitouch capabilities and functions from the touchpad if you run windows 7 on bootcamp?

I don't play Starcraft II (or any game for that matter) with the trackpad but I can comment on the gameplay difference between OS X (10.6.4) and Windows 7 Pro (64-bit) on the newer 13" MBP.

Both handle "Medium" just fine, I find that one OS is not better than the other in terms of adjusting the performance sliders. But I will say that there were a couple of missions in the campaign where I did find that the machine to stutter a bit. Namely the last Zeratul mission and most of the final campaign missions on Char, especially the last mission (ground defense, haven't tried air defense but I imagine it'd be worse).

As with any shared GPU, there aren't many modern games that you'll be able to go much above low-to-medium if you want optimal FPS. I have not attempted SC2 on the 9400M unit but given benchmark scoring, etc. I personally don't think trying to get rid of your current model and upgrading to the latest one is worth the price difference. The performance difference is not that "night and day."

I have a macbook pro 17in with the same specs as your 13. Run under bootcamp and the performance is phenominal. I play at 1920 x 1200 on high with no problems.

There is a bug in the current nvidia drivers in OS X the affects game performance.

daveron: No 17" MBP has the same specs as the OP's 13" MBP. None is even remotely similar.

I strongly suggest you to run the game on bootcamp(But i don't think you would buy another version of the game), cause the GPU with the latest drivers under win7 are better than OS's one. I'don't really suggest this to everyone, but under win7 you can overclock a little bit the GPU, then you can run the game smoothly on medium(I personally tested this with a 13'')

thedarkpersian wrote:
But i don't think you would buy another version of the game

Once you link the serial number of the game to your battle.net account, you should be able to sign into the battle.net website and view your installed games. This will allow you to download the game for Windows or Mac OS X. The downloader is about 7GB and uses a Torrent connection to download, so it's usually pretty fast on most residential services.

I have the new Macbook Pro 13" (2010) and I was having difficulties on OSX. It barely even looked decent on Medium. I took the input I received online, bootcamped it with Windows 7 (64bit) and now it runs like a charm. I run it on high settings and it runs pretty smoothly for the most part. I highly suggest bootcamping if you're interested in gaming.

Hi mjb8797,

It's odd that there appears to be differences across machines. In light of all the recent discussions I decided to fire up Starcraft II in OS X on high settings and played about 3 hours last night without any hiccups. I even played a 4v4 bot match on very hard against the zerg and protoss and it never once buckled under load.