I'm planning to pick up a new system to coincide with the release of Starcraft II, but I haven't been keeping up with gaming hardware for a while... What system do you feel is the best value currently that will let me turn up all the settings to high, but won't cost an arm and a leg?
(NOTE: I'm not a cheapskate so an arm OR a leg is fine, but not both... I guess that would be an arm XOR a leg.) :)
Blizzard recommends [1] that a PC should run Vista or Windows 7 and have:
For Macs, it's recommended that you have:
However, I don't know what specific system to suggest.
[1] http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=26242I built a machine just for StarCraft II. I use a 24" 1920x1200 Dell LCD with all of the settings maxed and get 60-120 FPS. It gets a little choppy, however, when I use Page Up/Down to zoom in on gameplay, but one usually only does that during replays and not live gameplay.
Here are the specs from March, 2010:
I already had some Western Digital drives and a case. Solid-state drives seemed overkill; all I would save would be game boot-up time.
I planned on overclocking the system a bit. I turned on EVGA's "dummy O.C." mode to peg the CPU at 3.23 GHz, used the Radeon Afterburner app to push the GPU clock to +900 MHz, and haven't bothered to push anything further.
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Alternatively, I use a MacBook Pro for development. I got one with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 4 GB of RAM and dual NVIDIA GeForce 9400M/9600M GT graphics chips. I play the Mac StarCraft II client at medium settings at 1440x900 resolution and it's pretty consistently smooth -- about 25-50 FPS.
Hope that helps.
I'd suggest the following:
If you're looking to mitigate cost but still have some significant power, I'd have to agree with the i5. The extra cores in an i7 is nice but for gaming, including StarCraft, you won't see enough different to warrant the price jump. Instead, invest in a faster i5 vs. an equivalent i7.
Definately keep memory above 4Gb, although keep in mind to make use of anything above 3.6Gb you'll need to be running a 64-bit OS. Again, if you're trying to get as much bang for your buck, you'll find that Dual-Channel memory doesn't take much of a performance hit compared to the newer Triple-Channel memory and when comparing DDR2 vs. DDR3, DDR3 still doesn't provide enough kick to be worth the significant cost increase.
An SSD for the OS/Main Game you're playing plus a standard drive will be key to providing the best experience you can get. If you're looking for a compromise, I'm using a Seagate Momentus XT that is a hybrid SSD drive. It uses 4Gb of SSD attached to a regular drive and frontloads the most commonly used information to the SSD portion. It doesn't quite perform as well as an SSD, but it does consistenly perform better than standard drives and costs significantly less. I picked mine up for aroun $130 and it is a 500Gb drive, whereas a good SSD at 128Gb will cost at least that much if not closer to $200.
Definately get a widescreen monitor if you don't already have one, as you'll want to take advantage of higher resolutions and games that tailor to widescreens typically put you at a disadvantage when you aren't using one. If you can, look for a widscreen that can handle 1920x1080 or 1920x1200.
The most important part you'll pick up is your video card. Definate pick something with 1Gb of RAM or better on it. As previously stated by other posters, the 9800 GTX is a good choice that doesn't break the bank, although if you want to push the system farther you might consider something more along the GeForce GTX 275 line. Alternatively, ATI has the Radeon 4870 and even better, the Radeon 5870.
My baseline MacBook ran the Beta just fine. I'd go 27" iMac :)
I have this machine [1]. I run everything on all the highest settings and it never slows or glitches. It is super quiet, and frankly, bad ass. You can get it for under $1500 at best buy.
[1] http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=8je5Ot4HBnKOdT81