Does SC2 run very hot on a MacBook Pro ?

[sinser]

I received my copy of SC2 yesterday, had no much time, so I just tested it for half an hour.
These are my system specs:

MacBook Pro 15" (Early 2008)
Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn 2.5 GHz
4 Gb Ram
nVidia Geforce 8600M GT with 512 MB


The laptop is attached to an external 21" ACD.
I tried SC2 on the latest Mac OS X using both the following graphic settings

medium - 1200 x 800 (suggested settings)
low - 1680 x 1050

In both cases the computer gets very hot since I saw the GPU reaching 78-80 Celsius. And that using a cooling laptop pad.
Is this normal ? When I play WOW it usually doesn't go higher than 70-72 Celsius even in 25 man raids. I must say that in WOW I capped the fps to 30.
I'd like to know about your experience with this and if there's some trick I can use. Thanks.

 

[Hellhammer]

Speed up the fans with SmcFanControl. SC2 should be more demanding than WoW is and 80c isn't that abnormal for GPU when gaming

 

[sinser]

I must say that I'm worried and disappointed. The game runs really hot just going thru tutorials with vents spinning at 6000 RPM. Looks like there's a bug as I've read that here and elsewhere http://www.guru3d.com/news/blizzard-confirms-starcraft-ii-overheating-bug/

 

[jakeguy99]

eh iv topped that heat...90+. I cant wait until winter when i dont need to turn on my heat since i can just use my laptop as a personal heater. Saves a lot of money.

 

[aki]

This is covered in other threads but the essential info is:

- overheating on some hardware is a "known bug"
- it is caused by skyrocketing framerates
- you can confirm your own fps with opt+ctrl+F or alt+ctrl+F
- you can manually limit your fps by selecting the v-sync option under Options/Video (disabled by default). This will prevent your fps rising above 60 fps.
- you can also manually set a framerate cap by adding two entries to the variables.txt file (however there are reports that SC2 currently ignores this in either the OSX or both versions)

In general if you are concerned about heat, you should consider iStat Pro or iStat Menus for monitoring, and iStat Menus or smcfancontrol for manual fan control.

 

[MrCooperS]

I play SC 2 daily and I've done it with 2 MacBook Pros with the same hardware (i7 4GB RAM, HR, AG, 500GB HD) and one averaged around 78 to 80 degrees celsius and the other averaged around 75 to 77 degrees celsius.

 

[sinser]

I found out that u can cap the framerate by editing the file variables.txt that can be found in ~\Documents\Blizzard\Starcraft2. I don't remember the exact syntax but u can easily google for it. I capped mine to 30 and it helps a lot. I use the same framnerate cap thing on WOW. Unfortunately MBPs run decently Blizzard games but they can easily run a bit too hot.
After the framerate cap I'd say that average CPU temperature is around 70-74 C, basically the same values I get while playing WOW.

 

[Ainze]

Relax, those sound like normal temps. I have the 9600M GT MBP and mine routinely gets to 85-90 degrees when playing any mordernish game. The fan speed varies, and so I guess that 85-90 is where the software is configured to keep it. I've been getting up to 6000rpm during this summer, though is normally about 4000rpm.

Either way, sounds normal to me.

 

[Stormquist]

My 15" I7 with 4gb ram runs sc2 at 1650x1050, recommended high settings @ 75-79C. Fans are at 4500rpm at that temp.