FPS issue in longer games/with many units onscreen

No matter what my graphics are set at, my FPS just takes a massive nosedive whenever there are tons of units on the screen. In the past, my desktop - a bit over 3 years old - has handled SC2 on Ultra just fine (ATI Radeon 4870, 4 Gigs of RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 3.00 GHz ). However, after a certain point (I haven't laddered in a good while so I'm not sure after what point/patch this issue started occurring), my FPS just falls tremendously during games, going into the high teens/low 20s with a lot of lings and banes on the screen, with the game itself sometimes stuttering (as in, becoming a slideshow for a second or two).

For example, I just played a 2s game with my friend in which we went for 2-base all-ins against 2 Zergs. I pushed up the ramp with my Terran friend (I had an immortal/sentry/stalker comp, he had a bunch of marines, hellions, and some medivacs). The Zergs push forward with roaches, lings, and banes, and to complement my drop in FPS, my game completely stutters a bit, and our push is easily repelled thanks to me being unable to forcefield effectively. It's worth noting that earlier, I played some 1v1s against my Terran friend, myself playing as either T or P, and I never had noticeable fps/stutter issues, so it seems like it only becomes a problem when lots of units are on the screen (i.e playing against Zerg or in team games).

I've tried testing this, jumping between Low and Ultra settings, and no matter what, I get about the same (shitty) FPS, which makes me confused as to what the problem could be. I tried clearing the shader cache (going into ProgramData/Blizzard Entertainment/StarCraft II and deleting the "Maps" and "Versions" folders), but that didn't help things.

Anyone know what the issue could be and how I could fix it? I realize there is a feedback topic on battle.net but I figured I'd ask here anyway in case someone had a problem similar to my description and managed to fix things.

I'd also like to add that my laptop experiences similar issues, though I'm not sure if it's the same problem. With my laptop, if I set my settings to low, I start the game with about 115 FPS, but as the game goes on, it eventually falls down to 5-20 FPS making things almost unplayable. My laptop used to achieve a steady 50-60 FPS on medium about a year ago, so I'm not sure what the problem is there either. If anyone knows anything about that, then I'd greatly appreciate some advice there too.

Last edit: 2012-08-09 18:18:34

DarKcS Australia. August 09 2012 19:02. Posts 1181

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Seems normal and it's always been this way for me. Always use low shaders, or late game won't be playable.

Last edit: 2012-08-09 19:03:23

Die tomorrow - Live today

Krymming Sweden. August 09 2012 19:22. Posts 35

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since patch 1.5 I get micro stuttering with everything on low even though I have x2 Radeon 6850 and AMD phenom 2 3.0Ghz. So I'd blame the patch, as I always do when I loose games

No excuses, play like a champion

Tapppi Finland. August 09 2012 20:26. Posts 64

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Its a problem with the patch. It sometimes uses 90% of my qud core 3ghz processor in MENUS. Fps drops happen randomly, not always. But when they do they pretty much make the game unplayable. Graphics settings dont matter.

You want me to fix that for you? Oh no....

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