starcraft 2 slowdown

Drexel

Hey I got a 7 hours pass for starcraft 2 and really like it. Am goina buy the full game but seem to be havin a weird problem thats stoppin me. While playin it every 10min maybe the game will slow down for 20 to 30 seconds and my cpu usage goes right up to 100%. My system is well able to handle the game and it doesnt seem to matter what settings i put the graphics at.

This happens offline as well as online and it doesnt seem to matter whats going on on screen. Can happen at any time.

This doesnt happen with any other games. All drivers are up to date so not that either.

I cant post on the battlenet forums until i buy the full game so cant get help in there.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks!

gearoidof

You might be having an overheating bug:

http://rts-sanctuary.com/index.php?portal=DOW2&showtopic=186714

Drexel

nope ive already added in them 2 lines. Think that was more for the graphics card. Its my processor thats goin up to 100%

Its a right balls cause i really wanna play it!!

DirkVoodoo

I get horrible slowdown for the first 20 seconds of a mission, then nothing.

Drexel

ya there seems to be a few little bugs. I think im goina buy it ne ways. Its not makin the game unplayable. Might buy the retail version and do a fresh install and see what happens!

Overheal

what are your system specs

Drexel

Hey they are

AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 3.0GHz
4gig ram
Windows 7 32bit
GeForce 8800GTS

Should be more then enough to handle it. Same thing happens if i put all settings to low or to high!

DirkVoodoo

Any programs running in the background that might be hogging resources? Anti virus, etc.

Drexel

nope. Ive tried with nothin running and my anti-virus turned off!
Its a really weird problem. Happens in no other game or ne thing!

Overheal

have you defragmented your hard drive recently or since installing SC2.

Drexel

ok thats not something i would ever do to be honest but it I checked it out and windows is scheduled to do it once a week. It says last run on the 4/08 and says 0% fragmented. Not too sure if that means it did it r didn't do it!! The 4th was Wednesday and i would have installed Starcraft sat or maybe Sunday id say.

Overheal

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/

fair bit handier than the windows utility.

Drexel

thanks for the link overheal. Defraged with that program but made no difference. I dunno whats up with it. Im not goina worry about it any more cause il drive myself mad tryin to sort it. Thanks for all the help everyone!

areyep

jonny666 wrote: »

thanks for the link overheal. Defraged with that program but made no difference. I dunno whats up with it. Im not goina worry about it any more cause il drive myself mad tryin to sort it. Thanks for all the help everyone!

I'm having the IDENTICAL problem you are Jonny666. I have a Gigabyte laptop with more than enough processing power and a Geforce 9600M GS video card, 4 gig of RAM, Win 7 with Direct X 11, latest drivers, all other unneccessary programs disabled, defragged, plenty of free HDD space left, unneccessary Windows 7 features disabled, and despite all this, the game will run beautifully for a few minutes, then grind to a slowdown for a minute or so, then pick up again back to full speed without an issue. Can happen in game or suring the cutscenes. I try pressing F10 to go to the main menu during the slowdowns and wait a minute or so, sometimes it'll work and it'll run well again when I go back in but not always. And yet this same laptop handles other graphics intensive games without an issue.

Now, I did see a message when I installed the game saying my graphics card wasn't recognized, so I suspect this is the problem and that the game hasn't been optimised for use on all systems or with all graphics cards. I'm hoping, being it's so new, that a patch will come out in due course to address such issues. Until then though I'm giving the game a miss - I have plenty of other games to keep me busy in the mean time.

A shame really given Blizzard had such a reputation for games that would always run without a hitch no matter what the system, but then that gives me hope they'll address this issue asap.

Drexel

areyep wrote: »

I'm having the IDENTICAL problem you are Jonny666. I have a Gigabyte laptop with more than enough processing power and a Geforce 9600M GS video card, 4 gig of RAM, Win 7 with Direct X 11, latest drivers, all other unneccessary programs disabled, defragged, plenty of free HDD space left, unneccessary Windows 7 features disabled, and despite all this, the game will run beautifully for a few minutes, then grind to a slowdown for a minute or so, then pick up again back to full speed without an issue. Can happen in game or suring the cutscenes. I try pressing F10 to go to the main menu during the slowdowns and wait a minute or so, sometimes it'll work and it'll run well again when I go back in but not always. And yet this same laptop handles other graphics intensive games without an issue.

Now, I did see a message when I installed the game saying my graphics card wasn't recognized, so I suspect this is the problem and that the game hasn't been optimised for use on all systems or with all graphics cards. I'm hoping, being it's so new, that a patch will come out in due course to address such issues. Until then though I'm giving the game a miss - I have plenty of other games to keep me busy in the mean time.

A shame really given Blizzard had such a reputation for games that would always run without a hitch no matter what the system, but then that gives me hope they'll address this issue asap.

is it your processor thats causing the trouble?

areyep

jonny666 wrote: »

is it your processor thats causing the trouble?

Could be ... the laptop is a Gigabyte Q1580V. It has an Intel Core2 Duo P8700 2.53GHz Processor. Of the video card a Dec 2009 article on the laptop says of the video card:
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS: Slower clocked 9600M GT and therefore a bit slower and cooler. In conjunction with an 9100M the 9600M GS is able to use HybridPower to save current.
These cards should be able to display all current games with fluent framerates but not all with high detail settings. Especially demanding games like Crysis, Age of Conan, or Mass Effect are only playable with lower settings. Less demanding (and older) games, like Fifa 08, Command & Conquer 3, or Battlefield 2142 can be played with higher detail levels.

OK, I expect SC2 will struggle on higher settings. But the slowdowns happen with all the lowest settings on, just as if I had medium settings. The laptop doesn't run excessively hot when this happens either - other games can make it run hotter than this, so I doubt very much it's an overheating issue. But it's interesting that you ay your CPU hits 100% activity at these times - back it in mine is doing the same. All I can say is it gives me hope to see others are experiencing the same as you and I as this means they'll most likely have to address the issue.

Drexel

seems like your system should be able to run it fine alright. As for other people having the same problem, i've being checkin out the tech support forums on bnet and cant really find many people with the same problem we have. You're right, best we can hope for is some sort of patch

areyep

I tweaked Windows 7 today, disabled any services or start up programs not needed. The system is about as streamlined as I can get it. Ran Starcraft 2, and for the first 10 minutes it ran like a dream, but then the slowdown started. Perhaps as you say Jonny, maybe it's the CPU ... still though if this is the case then why does it run like a charm even when I have over 100 units all doing their own thing and heaps of in game activity, then crawl to a snail pace later on when there's bugger all activity? All I can say is thankfully I'm not playing a live opponent - I'd have my ass wooped! Still though I'm not impressed when you pay so much for a game based on it saying your system will handle it at medium settings, only to find it behaves this way.

Overheal

googling shows lots of people with this problem just as baffled as yourself.

I think its time to hit up the Battle.net forums themselves and see if Blizzard has any knowledge of the problem or a workaround.

areyep

Interesting ... I've spoken to a number of people at work who've also bought the game. One guy went out and bought a brand new super video card just to run SC2 nicely, and even with a super CPU in the PC it still experienced slowdowns after 10 mins or so. Another guy said he had the same problem, but only under Win XP and Vista 32 bit. When he installed Win 7 64 bit, the problem disappeared. And one of the guys here, who's pretty computer savvy, said he is of the understanding that SC2 was optimized for use on 64 bit systems, and that the slow downs are a memory leak issue that isn't a problem on 64 bit systems. Two guys here, one running Mac Snow Leopard 64 bit, the other Win 7 64 bit, said they've had no slowdown issues - the same PC though running 32 bit OS has the slow downs.

Well ... I'm not installing a 64 bit OS just yet. SC2 will have to wait as I don't want to have to go through a complete system overhaul just yet. I'm hoping a 32 bit patch for the game will come out but I think this may be the root cause of our problem.

Funky

I run it on a 5 year old Dell with Win XP with no problems at all. Don't know what your problem might be but it'd be strange if it was caused just by your OS being 32bit. Have you tried asking on the tech support forums for help?

Drexel

ya i dont think its a 32bit problem. Over on the bnet tech support page there is loads of people with a whole list of problem. One problem is related to the game not recognizing certain fairly popular ATI graphics cards which is shockin really. Considering how long the game took to come out ud think they'd have gotten simple things like that right. The forums are a bit of a joke too really i think. Not many replies from blizzard and whoever is replyin doesnt seem like they know a whole lot.

areyep

Funky wrote: »

I run it on a 5 year old Dell with Win XP with no problems at all. Don't know what your problem might be but it'd be strange if it was caused just by your OS being 32bit. Have you tried asking on the tech support forums for help?

Oh well, that's good news! I didn't want to make the switch to 64 bit just yet

Tried everything tech support suggested but there's no change. It does seem however that 32 bit/64 bit may have an impact, as evidenced by the same computer here at work running the game fine under Win 7 64 bit but having issues under 32 bit. However from what you say the problem's far more deep rooted than that - from all I've read and Jonny's last post, it seems Blizzard are going to have to address this as too many people are having problems.