Starcraft Q.

[System]

I know its not BF2 but it is getting on my nerves and all I can say is wtf?

From time to time I go on BW (xp to starcraft) with my buddy and play online. Frequently, and I mean very frequently, I will crash to desktop or after a game everything goes black and I have to push buttons like mad until I can finally find my task manager to close the game.

So, what the heck is the problem? I always say its such an old game my computer can't run that slow and ends up crashing :cry: . Then again, my buddy is running on a crappier rig but none the less a C2D one and he doesn't crash like I and he also is on vista...

[badsubby]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Hey man. How many fps do you get in battlefield 2 because I am planning on upgrading to the same setup. Thx.

Sorry cant help you with starcraft, i dont even know what that is.

[System]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Hey man. How many fps do you get in battlefield 2 because I am planning on upgrading to the same setup. Thx.

Sorry cant help you with starcraft, i dont even know what that is.

Lol np.

I'm not expecting much out of this thread but it's worth the effort eh.

As for FPS, it caps me off at 100. It will not go under or above that. So this is why I'm going to say it is maxed out with everything on high, maxed AF/AA via driver at 1680x1050 res.

Runs great. You should sit back two more weeks though and wait for the Q6600 to drop half price on july 22.


EDIT: Forgot, the best becnhmark06 score I got was in the 1o,8oo's with this.

[ConscriptVirus]

Re: Starcraft Q.

dont kno any answers, but that reminds me to install SC cuz my friends have been playing it alot recently and i mite want to join them . but they all have pretty decent comps w/ XP and they can run SC fine, so maybe its just something wrong with ur computer. overheating maybe? who knows

[badsubby]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Lol np.

I'm not expecting much out of this thread but it's worth the effort eh.

As for FPS, it caps me off at 100. It will not go under or above that. So this is why I'm going to say it is maxed out with everything on high, maxed AF/AA via driver at 1680x1050 res.

Runs great. You should sit back two more weeks though and wait for the Q6600 to drop half price on july 22.


EDIT: Forgot, the best becnhmark06 score I got was in the 1o,8oo's with this.

Do you get the same fps online or is it singleplayer only, lol? People always tell me that they get above 100fps but it is always in singleplayer never multiplayer. Please clarify me on that. Thank you for such a detailed response.

BTW, you can get rid of the fps cap by entering game.lockfps 999 in the console during singleplayer or multiplayer.

[System]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Do you get the same fps online or is it singleplayer only, lol? People always tell me that they get above 100fps but it is always in singleplayer never multiplayer. Please clarify me on that. Thank you for such a detailed response.

BTW, you can get rid of the fps cap by entering game.lockfps 999 in the console during singleplayer or multiplayer.

Oh, that was multiplayer man. I never tried changing the cap on the FPS. I think that was what I had in SP mode too but again, I never changed the cap.

I'll do it tomorrow when I wake up and post back the results. Bottom line is this rig owns BF2. Its only drawback is the ISP - being satelite. That and I'm not taking advantage of the dual ethernet ports which takes some load off your cpu (packet flows - one port is in and the other is out reducing the work load on the cpu according to NVIDIA).

Ps. The load timings are very fast too. Sometimes I click on a server and with in seconds I'm in it, and thats because it takes me time to move my mouse to the join button. Other times it can take a little bit longer, nothing more than a minute me thinks. And take it from me, I am prolly one of the most impatient ppl you'll ever talk to. I yell at red lights when I'm in the car - I tell'em to hurry the F up. Lol

[badsubby]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Hey thanks a lot for responding. What windows you using, xp or vista?
Has 4gb of memory benefited you when you upgraded from 2gb? Have you seen any performance increase by overclocking your cpu to 3.4ghz. (Jesus, thats huge) ?

What about when it gets really busy at one flag such as arty, bombing, tanks, infantry etc., then do you lag a little bit?

[System]

Re: Starcraft Q.

dont kno any answers, but that reminds me to install SC cuz my friends have been playing it alot recently and i mite want to join them . but they all have pretty decent comps w/ XP and they can run SC fine, so maybe its just something wrong with ur computer. overheating maybe? who knows

Totally over looked your post last night. SC is old skool. I think I will give SC2 a chance when that comes out. I tried setting the affinity to one core and that seemed to help out a lot. Still ended off the night crashing to desktop though.

And I highly doubt its a heat problem... I don't have any problems in BF2 or any other game. I think my CD is possessed from its dial up days of usage Lol..

Hey thanks a lot for responding. What windows you using, xp or vista?
Has 4gb of memory benefited you when you upgraded from 2gb? Have you seen any performance increase by overclocking your cpu to 3.4ghz. (Jesus, thats huge) ?

What about when it gets really busy at one flag such as arty, bombing, tanks, infantry etc., then do you lag a little bit?

I'm running XP32-bit and only have 2.8gb of ram recognized currently so I am not seeing any performance increase.

As for OC'ing my cpu, things seem faster, my boot time was 45 seconds? I'm not sure, I forgot now. Of course, it would be slower now than it was when I first booted up because there is more "junk" on the computer (come to think about it, thats more so because of the raptor HD, not the CPU). Either way, it's not like it is hurting. You can easily OC a E6600 to 3ghz on stock cooling though I advice you invest in an after market fan. My CPU idles at 30-35 C and I've seen it after exiting games at 40-48 C through NVIDIA monitor - software provided with the drivers that you too would be using.

I do not lag in BF2, period. Ok I lied, sometimes my ISP lags me out, but my computer doesn't. Coming from a P4 + AGP 7800 OC system I've noticed many inprovements (Though I never had an issue at flags or arty with that set up either). Namely, loading times are way faster and solo'ing in the chopper is easier than ever. When I switch to TV mode it is instant were as my old rig was a second or two in delay.


Basically to sum up what I said, You're good with 2 GB of ram. I'm going to switch over to 64bit whenSP1 comes out for Vista to utilize my other sticks. Get an after market fan for the CPU for better cooling.

EDIT. If you do plan on getting 4 GB of ram like I did, make sure you buy something to cool it provided you went with pc8500. When I upgraded to 4gb of ram I started to crash - first I didn't have enough voltage (1.85v vs 2.3v required) and then randomly I would crash and reboot from a blue screen very fast. I ID'd it as being a ram issue after taking out the sticks and running at a lower voltage again everything was fine. So I bought an OCZ mem cooling hardware (also in my sig) that clips onto the ram slots and uses 3 pin fan header port. No problems since.

[badsubby]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Totally over looked your post last night. SC is old skool. I think I will give SC2 a chance when that comes out. I tried setting the affinity to one core and that seemed to help out a lot. Still ended off the night crashing to desktop though.

And I highly doubt its a heat problem... I don't have any problems in BF2 or any other game. I think my CD is possessed from its dial up days of usage Lol..



I'm running XP32-bit and only have 2.8gb of ram recognized currently so I am not seeing any performance increase.

As for OC'ing my cpu, things seem faster, my boot time was 45 seconds? I'm not sure, I forgot now. Of course, it would be slower now than it was when I first booted up because there is more "junk" on the computer (come to think about it, thats more so because of the raptor HD, not the CPU). Either way, it's not like it is hurting. You can easily OC a E6600 to 3ghz on stock cooling though I advice you invest in an after market fan. My CPU idles at 30-35 C and I've seen it after exiting games at 40-48 C through NVIDIA monitor - software provided with the drivers that you too would be using.

I do not lag in BF2, period. Ok I lied, sometimes my ISP lags me out, but my computer doesn't. Coming from a P4 + AGP 7800 OC system I've noticed many inprovements (Though I never had an issue at flags or arty with that set up either). Namely, loading times are way faster and solo'ing in the chopper is easier than ever. When I switch to TV mode it is instant were as my old rig was a second or two in delay.


Basically to sum up what I said, You're good with 2 GB of ram. I'm going to switch over to 64bit whenSP1 comes out for Vista to utilize my other sticks. Get an after market fan for the CPU for better cooling.

EDIT. If you do plan on getting 4 GB of ram like I did, make sure you buy something to cool it provided you went with pc8500. When I upgraded to 4gb of ram I started to crash - first I didn't have enough voltage (1.85v vs 2.3v required) and then randomly I would crash and reboot from a blue screen very fast. I ID'd it as being a ram issue after taking out the sticks and running at a lower voltage again everything was fine. So I bought an OCZ mem cooling hardware (also in my sig) that clips onto the ram slots and uses 3 pin fan header port. No problems since.

Thank you very very much for such a detailed answer. You answered all the questions that I had in my mind. Thanks once again.

[System]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Thank you very very much for such a detailed answer. You answered all the questions that I had in my mind. Thanks once again.

NP - I like to kill two birds with one stone

EDIT:

PS. I just did the fps thing for you in SP and I had 210+. Moving around it ranged between 120-200+. This was done in a chopper flying low low to the ground and moving around fast.

Remember everything is maxed out (including AA/AF via driver settings) and res is 1680x1050.

And I have some personal recommendations for you:

A) Consider buying the Q6600 after july 22nd - huge price drop.

B) If you are considering going into SLI, get a better PSU now. I heard OCZ has one that lets you take out unnesseccary cords that you don't need freeing up room inside your case thus providing better air flow for cooling.

C) Don't chicken out on hardware. If you want it, buy it. I want the 22" version of my monitor and the 5500 version of my speaker system... Oh well

What is your build going to be like anyways>? I based it off of mine but what routes will you take that I didn't or that you won't take that I did take (thats a tongue twister Lol)?

[badsubby]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Well you have a very detailed sig lol but I will tell you some of basic upgrades that I will be performing.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (dont know if I wanna overclock it)
OR Quad Core E6600 (there is not a huge difference in benchmarks though)

Nvidia 8800 gts 640 mb (have to decide which one, xfx, evga, asus, pny, bfg ,etc) I dont wanna spend extra money on gtx for 138 mb. It should be very satisfying for my bf2 experience since I do not buy too many games that easy. I must be convinced pretty bad. Last game I bought was Battlefield 2 in June 2005. LOL.

2gb ram

680i motherboard

Use my existing powersupply (650)

Alienware ALX case (it is pretty freaking huge, full chasis with liquid cooling)

X FI card (dunno which one yet)

Use my 250 gb HD.

Thinking of getting a raptor 74gb.

Forgot: Use existing AGeia physx card for God knows what reason (there are not too many games out there for it)

Stick with my Dell 2007 WFP 20.1" (Native res: 1680x1050)

So, what do you think about it. Let me know thx.

[System]

Re: Starcraft Q.

Well you have a very detailed sig lol but I will tell you some of basic upgrades that I will be performing.

Believe it or not, it use to be even more detailed but than I ran out of space:shock: Lol.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (dont know if I wanna overclock it)
OR Quad Core E6600 (there is not a huge difference in benchmarks though)

Nvidia 8800 gts 640 mb (have to decide which one, xfx, evga, asus, pny, bfg ,etc) I dont wanna spend extra money on gtx for 138 mb. It should be very satisfying for my bf2 experience since I do not buy too many games that easy. I must be convinced pretty bad. Last game I bought was Battlefield 2 in June 2005. LOL.

2gb ram

680i motherboard

Use my existing powersupply (650)

Alienware ALX case (it is pretty freaking huge, full chasis with liquid cooling)

X FI card (dunno which one yet)

Use my 250 gb HD.

Thinking of getting a raptor 74gb.

Forgot: Use existing AGeia physx card for God knows what reason (there are not too many games out there for it)

Stick with my Dell 2007 WFP 20.1" (Native res: 1680x1050)

So, what do you think about it. Let me know thx.

I think it is hot. Wait, mine is hot and yours will be colllld. brr, with that liquid cooling

Go with EVGA for your GPU. Main reason being is the step up program that they offer in NA (north america). You have 90 days to directly change your GPU for a better one and all you have to do is pay the difference in price. I am about to upgrade my GTX to an Ultra because the difference is 10-20 CDN now. If it works I'll let you know.

On top of all that I am very satisfied with my EVGA MoBo/GPU.

The Quad core cpu's are in the best bnechmark06 rigs. Supreme Commander utilizes multiple cores if your into RTS gaming. If your into media/editing or just have a bunch of stuff open, quad is better than dual. I'd like to upgrade to quad, how about you buy the quad and we trade our cpus? Lol.

As for the raptor, when you get the chance I suggest you buy it. Woah, fast fast fast! With a 5 year warranty to back it up and a brand name WD you can't go wrong!

If you do end up getting an E6600, it is a really great cpu to OC. From what I understand about the Q6600, it runs like a P4 - Minus the crap performance of course. Don't forget to check if your ok to go quad becuase it takes twice the power of a dual core 60w vs 125w or something...

Are you ok with OC'ing things?

[badsubby]

Re: Starcraft Q.

I am not a big overclocker. If things are working fine, I usually dont see the need to overclock until you really wanna take a risk for no apparent reason. I did use nTune (:censored: ) to overclock my system safely but that program screwed it up. It changed my gpu's memory clock from 1200 to 2400. Pretty close to frying the 2 cards.

Thx for the info on the evga. did you say there is a difference of only 10-20 DOLLARS between gtx and ultra?

Thx for the suggestions regarding the quad core. Do you think my 650 PSU should be good or no? I don't wanna spend more on the PSU.

Thx.

EDIT: Take a look at these benchmarks. Dual core is still kicking quad's @$$.

[System]

Re: Starcraft Q.

I am not a big overclocker. If things are working fine, I usually dont see the need to overclock until you really wanna take a risk for no apparent reason. I did use nTune (:censored: ) to overclock my system safely but that program screwed it up. It changed my gpu's memory clock from 1200 to 2400. Pretty close to frying the 2 cards.

Thx for the info on the evga. did you say there is a difference of only 10-20 DOLLARS between gtx and ultra?

Thx for the suggestions regarding the quad core. Do you think my 650 PSU should be good or no? I don't wanna spend more on the PSU.

Thx.

EDIT: Take a look at these benchmarks. Dual core is still kicking quad's @$$.

I try to OC every I can from the BIOS simply because the BIOS is final. As for OC'ing vid cards I tried to use rivatuner but I wasn't able to get anywhere. When I did OC it I had a lot of crashing problems, prolly because I never upped the voltage and I don't know where to go for that. All in all, gpu oc'ing sounds really scary to me at the moment so I stay away from it.

When I said difference of $10-20, I was referring to date of purchase of my GTX vs the ultra price currently.

I would imagine that the PSU would be able to handle a Q6600. My PSU is "SLI" certified (my a55 though, not for an 8800 gtx) and I just use it to power one card and oc everything else. I think if you go to slizone.com they may have a place where you can check if your psu will be ok.

as for your bnechy remarks, I didn't see a linky but I do have an answer. Pretty much all games are single threaded and more recent ones are dual thread for dual cores. There are not many games out that can take advantage of a quad core cpu yet kind of like your physx card. The fact of the matter though is that quad is a future path.

[RocketChild]

Re: Starcraft Q.

You know, I still play SC on BNet and I have had a couple CTDs...and I mean only a couple. I do find though that SC behaves very flaky around screen savers and task schedulers. Also, I have had to reinstall it a couple of times because it likes to flag software on my box as something BNET does not like. At least it installs in 4 seconds. Hell, it takes me longer to type in the key than install the thing.