Starcraft Performance?

Hi tbharber,

On the 11" MBA with 2GB of RAM I'm getting about 12-14 FPS on medium settings (on average), based on the on-screen unit count. It would peak at about 25-26 FPS then would dip several times to <10 FPS when I filled the screen with roaches and marines. If I dropped the settings to low and turned everything to low I saw my average FPS move closer to 20-21 FPS and peak at about 28-29 FPS. Again though, when things got busy it would quickly dip to 10-12 FPS. I suspect that the 4GB of RAM upgrade would help, but I certainly wouldn't expect 15-20% gains as a result of the extra RAM.

On the 13" MBA with 2GB of RAM I'm getting about 22-24 FPS on medium settings (on average), based on the on-screen unit count. It would peak at about 32 FPS then would dip several times to <15 FPS when I filled with the screen with carriers and void rays. If I dropped the settings to low and turned everything to low I saw a similar FPS jump and was setting close to 30 FPS with the occasional jump to the high 30s. I never was able to routinely stay over 35 FPS under any scenario. Again, I suspect doubling the RAM would help.

I ran a replay of a 7 minute session today on the MacBook Air 11" 1.4GHz at 1280x720 High Quality.
It started out at 30 fps but dropped to 10 fps once the screen action got crazy.

I got almost identical results for the MacBook Air 13" 2.13Ghz at 1280x800 High Quality.

Compare that to the MacBook Pro 15" 2.66GHz at 1280x800 High Quality: steady 50 fps.

When I first launched Starcraft, the "recommended" setting was 1152x720 Medium Quality. I'll try re-running the tests at those settings to see if it can hold up the frame rates.

I set Starcraft to 1152x720 Medium Quality as suggested by the app.

Just observing the range of frame rates in the the most "heated" part of the replay session,
11" MBA 1.4 = 16 - 21 fps
13" MBA 2.13 = 45 - 50 fps

so is playable during the peak of 3 vs 3 online game on low setting?

EvilSLJ wrote:
so is playable during the peak of 3 vs 3 online game on low setting?

Absolutely. I will say that there are some units which gave me more problems then others. For example, Carriers, Dark Archons, and mass Mutalisks would have things be dicey for me. Especially if there were 8+ carriers with full payloads bombing my troops. So expect your FPS to drop out but it'll still be in a relatively acceptable range.

At the recommended 1152x720 "Medium" setting for the MacBook Air,
I did a replay of a 2x2 session. At the portion with the most action,
the 11" MBA 1.4 = 18 fps
the 13" MBA 2.13 = 30 fps
the 13" MBP 2.4 = 5 fps
the 15" MBP 2.66 = 44 fps