I thought I had a decent computer, and it looks like others are playing successfully with lessor systems, but every time I play there is a bunch of lag and I get the message that my computer is slowing the game down. When I play SC, I shut everything else off. I went into the settings, and they are all on "low" and set for 2d. For resolution, I'm at 16 bits. The saddest part of all this is that I built my system specifically for SC a few years ago when they first announced it! Anyway, here's what I have: Pentium D 3.06 GHz overclocked to 3.22 GHz GeForce 8400 GS 256MB overclocked to 514 MHz Core clock and 467 MHz memory clock (I just heard about overclocking video cards a couple days ago and it made no difference at all) 2 Gigs 800 MHz DDR2 I debated on whether I should get another video card, but is THAT really what is holding me back? I bought a Core 2 Duo on eBay yesterday, an E6300, will that make any difference?
I think 256 with pixel shader2.0 is the min requirement. Shouldn't be chugging along on low settings though. Could it be your internet connection?
Is there a way to "check" that? I have no problems downloading stuff. Unless it isn't supposed to take about 8 hours to download SC2 for example.
Try http://www.speedtest.net/ . If it's your computer that is lagging you, it's more likely to be your video card that is the main problem.
Network lag in-game has a lot more to do with latency than bandwidth. Generally if you're West Coast US or East Coast US you'll be fine, especially if you're playing during "prime time" (evening). If you're in Europe or Australia they can probably also match you with local people, if there are enough of them playing. If you're in some far-off location like Southern Chile, or playing with people from your buddy list who are far away, or downloading stuff at the same time, you're a lot more likely to have lag. In this case, I'd be more likely to blame the video card, especially if the UI is nonresponsive (e.g. if during battles you experience a low frame rate and jumpy graphics)
Just for giggles, I tried all the settings on "Ultra". Gameplay didn't seem any different, although the graphics were jawdropping amazing. I am guessing this means that the connection is the problem, otherwise wouldn't using "ultra" settings hopelessly lag if the video card was the problem? On the speedtest website, this was the result: Download 0.67 Mb/s Upload 0.32 Mb/s ping 42 ms Not sure what the numbers mean, but they have a little bar graph that says my speed is much slower than ISP average...
12.72 down 2.63 up Slightly lower than the comcast average. Do you have a particularly old modem? My friend has had his since cable internet was available in our area. When his speeds went to ****, Comcast told him it was the modem. A guy came, swapped it out, solved the problem. I'd say you should call your ISP.
That means you download at around 100 KB/s. While that's not insanely slow, that is pretty slow for today's standard. Your ping is pretty average. You would know if it was your hardware causing the slowdown if you would get frame loss. Meaning the game would freeze for a second and you couldn't move ANYTHING. Otherwise it will be your connection, which your speedtest kind of confirms. Contact your ISP and see if you can get that fixed/upped. 3 Mb/s down is a pretty decent average. Not the fastest, but you won't get any lag in online games, and you can download things relatively quick
I dont see how the ping effects your gameplay. Since your playing on blizzard-servers, the ping to those is interesting, not to the nearest server (like speedtest chooses). For example here my outcome: Since i live in cologne 4ms isn normal. But if id try the same test to a server in lets say dublin the ping would generally slow down. Even the speed is affected by the servers you choose, some of them don't handle large traffic (for example a speed-test on a server in Eindhoven (Netherlands) results in 20mbps down, 1 mbps up and 40ms ping)..... Blizzard had a feature for WoW showing your ingame ping, witch was really handy. knowing your Ping to the gameservers matters more than your ping to a random server near you.
