StarCraft® II

@aennoral

lol so can you sticky this guide so it doesnt get lost in the jungle and is easier to reference. the search engine doesnt actuallly work very well ("mac performance guide" doesnt even find it, only a reference to it.) so many problems in the tech support are in relation to mac performance i dont see why you wouldnt want to post something that alleviates a majority of them. its stickied on the US site. put your name on it if you want so you can dominate the sticky underworld ;)

how about the resolution? I have a macbook pro with 1440 x 900 resolution. Should I keep the same within starcraft2? or should I prefer a lower one?

I suggest using the native resolution of 1440x900 (doing it myself) or running windowed (cmd + m). The graphics scaling is not pretty, and the resolution is the least of the performance problem on the Macbook Pros.

@jorian -- Thanks, this was very helpful. Now lets hope for some Apple/Blizzard patches...

I have the mid 2010 13" macbook pro, followed the guide, with the fps caps. And I must say, sc2 suddenly became very zippy, and looks much better :) Thank you for an amazing guide!

Thank you for taking the time to write this, ill try it out when im out of work.

Thanks a lot! Worked out perfectly!

Ah darn it! I updated to 10.6.4 and have an nvidia card! :-(

Anyone know how the issues related to the nvidia card bugs are going to be resolved?

I have this strange issue where it'll work perfectly and then when it switches from gameplay to a cinematic or the other way round the frame rate will drop enormously. After a couple of switches from full screen mode to window mode it'll be fine again. :/

Cool!
Thanks for the guide!

With Shader low the game looks pretty bad... but it's a good compromise.

Hope Blizzard and Apple will figure out about it.

Also: I noticed that if I use medium Shader and decrease the from native resolution, it works not so bad...

Have a MacBook Pro 13-inch mid-2010 with the nVidia 320M videocard. The game running fully on the settings the game thinks is fine (medium) cooks the MBP up.. I'm getting 80-100 degrees celcius and the fans spin so hard people on Skype can even hear it :P.

I get pretty nice fps, so that's not the problem. Campaign runs great and looks impressive for a laptop. Although when going multiplayer, say 4vs4, I endlessly lag.. (no, i have 800/100 kbp/s connection).

Ok, I changed it to low settings when playing multiplayer, changes? Nope.. Still very hot and the GPU goes lagging after some cooking time inside the MBP's casing.

Putting the MBP on a little blocks to give the venting even more space didn't help a bit :(..

I gotta say that the game is surprisingly good to control with the touchpad of the MBP. I'm in awe!

Please keep this thread alive...I pretend a solution..not just a compromise to play this game.
We have high end systems and we paid for a working Starcraft 2. Blizzard please fix it.

Definitely agree!
Hey Blizzard, any blue post here?

Please keep this thread alive...I pretend a solution..not just a compromise to play this game.
We have high end systems and we paid for a working Starcraft 2. Blizzard please fix it.

Thanks! With this guide I was able to make my game experience more fluent and more beautiful to look at. I hope they will make the game even faster, my iMac handles WoW pretty well so it should handle this game too.

Keep it up!

Definitely agree!
Hey Blizzard, any blue post here?

Please keep this thread alive...I pretend a solution..not just a compromise to play this game.
We have high end systems and we paid for a working Starcraft 2. Blizzard please fix it.

I guess we get improved performances when Apple/NVIDIA/ATI include better drivers for OpenGL in OS X. Hopefully this will happend during the OS X 10.6.5!?

Found a site where all versions of OpenGL drivers is included for OS X: http://homepage.mac.com/arekkusu/bugs/GLInfo.html

One get another point of view from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL

I'm not qualified to verify that OpenGL versions are the same for Windows and OS X. I'll have to pass this one forward =)

I'm running a 2010 MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5, with 4GB 1067 Mhz DDR3 memory, and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics card (256MB).

In game i keep experiencing cutscenes and occasional spouts of gameplay where it effectively looks like a rainbow..all the colours go crazy and the game becomes un-playable. The game also crashes trying to access some menus, or, for example, when i try to purchase upgrades in the Armoury in campaign mode.

I've turned all graphics to the minium to try and resolve the issue but it doesn't help..

Can some one give me a heads up on any of this and help me with a possible solution please?!

Cheers

This is good. In my case the game is pretty playable on Low with the frame rate locked at 30 (was all over the place before locking it). I didn't find the prettiness worth the tradeoff with the suggested settings for my late 2008 MBP w/ 9600m...

Still, thanks a lot, looking forward to a patch or two to get this up to speed.

I can't set my shadows setting to low. Just stays at medium. Anybody an idea?

Guys, here some good news from Apple:
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/08/04/apple-seeds-snow-leopard-graphics-update-to-developers/

Hope this gonna solve something.

Guys, here some good news from Apple:
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/08/04/apple-seeds-snow-leopard-graphics-update-to-developers/

Hope this gonna solve something.

Yup, I just noticed the same thing. I sincerely hope this graphics update was initiated by the widely spread graphics problems concerning StarCraft II and that Apple/nVidia took actions to correct it.

Thanks for this.

Hope Blizz update soon so I can get the best out of the game though!