| BASIC GAME INFORMATION |
Year of construction: 2013
Genre:RTS
developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publishing house: Blizzard Entertainment
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is the first addition to the real-time strategy computer game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the second part of the StarCraft II trilogy. The plot of Heart of the Swarm begins three weeks after the end of Wings of Liberty. It focuses on the characteristics of the Zerg and the capabilities of Sarah Kerrigan, who appears as the hero of the Starcraft 2 Trilogy Announcement. Kerrigan is under player control in most missions. In addition, as the game progresses, you can take control of other Zerg heroes.
The expansion includes, in addition to the continuation of the single-player campaign, additional combat units and changes to the multiplayer game compared to Wings of Liberty. The addition includes 27 missions. The add-on costs as a full game and was released on March 12, 2013, as announced.
| THE GRAFICAL PART |
This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.
| Supported OS and graphics API |
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is supported on major Windows operating systems, which include a wide range of Windows XP up to Windows 8. Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers and will not receive support.
The priority and main graphics API for the game is DirectX 9.
| Game engine |
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is based on its own game engine developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The developers of Heart of the Swarm have added improved graphics to the game, better demonstrating both the appearance and behavior of the zerg and the surfaces of new planets, however, the system requirements have remained at the same level.
The game also uses the Havok “realistic physics” library. Unfortunately, we could not find more detailed information about the game engine, except for these press releases.
| Advanced Game Settings |
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm has both basic and advanced graphics settings. We can manipulate these settings very flexibly depending on the performance of your subsystem.
Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between minimum, medium, high and maximum graphics quality settings.
| Low quality settings | ||||
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| Medium quality settings | ||||
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| High quality settings | ||||
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| Very high settings | ||||
As you can see, the difference between high and low quality settings is simply colossal. At maximum high and medium settings the difference is almost not noticeable… |
| General visual design and game physics |
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is a mass product and one could not even dream of the fact that all the latest graphics technologies will be brought into the game, so the game can feel comfortable on almost any modern gaming PC.
But still, it’s worth giving the developer credit – visually the game looks quite impressive: the game locations are very vast and varied, the battles are quite colorful, and the game videos are designed in a cinematic style, even though they were made on the game engine.
Well, then we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.
| TEST PART |
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Test configuration |
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test stands |
Test bench No. 1 based on the Intel Socket 2 platform011 Test bench No. 2 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 3 based on the Intel Socket 1366 platform Test bench No. 4 based on the Intel Socket 115 platform6 Test bench No. 5 based on the AMD Soket AM platform3 Test bench No. 6 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 7 based on the AMD Soket AM platform2 Test bench No. 8 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 9 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 10 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform+ |
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Multimedia equipment |
3D monitor LG W2363D Monitor LG E2750 Dell U3010 monitor product provided by the company AMD 3D Vision Kit product provided by the company Nvidia |
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Software configuration |
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Operating system |
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64 SP1 |
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Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 314.21 AMD Catalyst 13.3 beta 2 |
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Monitoring program |
MSI Afterburner v2.3.1 |
| GPU test |
All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality by the program MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average and minimum FPS were taken as performance indicators. Below is a video of the test segment:
Our video cards were tested at separate screen sizes of 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. Multi-chip configurations from NVIDIA and AMD show excellent scalability. but the performance of these solutions was limited by the central processor.
Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080
At a resolution of 1920×1080 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTS 450 level again showed an acceptable FPS. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon HD 7770 or GeForce GTS 450.
Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600
At a resolution of 2560×1600 at maximum settings, an acceptable minimum FPS was shown by video cards of the level Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTS 450. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 650.
NVIDIA cards showed the best performance and price/performance combination in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, which is due to better optimization of GeForce video cards for games from Blizzard Entertainment and especially the series StarCraft II.
| VRAM test |
Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.
Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings
The optimal amount of video memory for this game is 1280 MB. for standard resolutions, and about 1500 megabytes for ultra-high resolutions.
| CPU test |
We tested processor dependence on 12 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920×1080 with maximum graphics quality settings, while our unit scale of 200 units was almost completely filled. Below is a video of the test segment:
Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is better optimized for the architecture of Intel processors, which showed more impressive results compared to AMD.
Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Intel%
Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 AMD%
The game can only load 2 processor cores; the game clearly doesn’t need more than two cores. This explains Intel’s clear advantage over AMD. What was most surprising was that on Intel processors the game automatically disables HT technology, most likely to avoid unnecessary problems.
| RAM test |
Testing of the RAM consumed by the game was carried out by monitoring directly through the Windows task manager. The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 16GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed memory.
Testing at various quality settings
As we can see, with various quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is at the level of 1100-1200 megabytes. The system will need 2 gigabytes of RAM for minimum settings and about 3 gigabytes for maximum settings.
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Rate the test |
Rate the graphics |
Evaluate optimization |