Starcraft CPU Throttling: Not Working?

[HiRez]

I have the latest Starcraft patch with the CPU Throttling checkbox, but it doesn't seem to have much if any effect. Whether it's on or off the game consumes about the same amount of CPU, in the 45%-60% range on a 2.16 GHz Core2Duo MacBook Pro. I tried restarting the game after making the change, no effect there either.

45%-60% (of BOTH cores, measured with MenuMeters, Activity Monitor, and command-line top) seems like A LOT for a low-resolution 10-year-old game on modern hardware. I have 4 GB of RAM and no other apps running. Normally I wouldn't care too much, except that I'm playing SC on a laptop and the heavy CPU usage heats this metal slab up to knee-scorching temperatures and cranks the fan up pretty loud. Am I missing something?

EDIT: I'm playing in Mac OS X, no Boot Camp, dual boot, Parallels, Fusion, etc.

 

[MrM]

I noticed the same thing. Running the 10.5.7 on a 2.4ghz BlackBook. There is little to absolutely no difference for me.

 

[HiRez]

Same deal on my iMac now too. Weird. Maybe it only works in the Windows version and they forgot to take the checkbox out of the Mac version?

In any case, that's way to many CPU cycles to run an old game like that, it should be a lot more efficient. Even when idling (menu is up, nothing moving), it's still using the same amount of CPU.

 

[spencecb]

Same deal on my iMac now too. Weird. Maybe it only works in the Windows version and they forgot to take the checkbox out of the Mac version?

In any case, that's way to many CPU cycles to run an old game like that, it should be a lot more efficient. Even when idling (menu is up, nothing moving), it's still using the same amount of CPU.

I agree that it is a lot of CPU cycles, but you have to remember it was written a long time ago. We should be thankful that Blizzard is willing to put time and effort into updating the software to make sure it runs on each new update to OS X. Not many (if any) other software companies would do that for a game this old.

Blizzard knows it's customers are loyal, and they are giving back to us. And it's something I appreciate.

 

[HiRez]

I agree that it is a lot of CPU cycles, but you have to remember it was written a long time ago. We should be thankful that Blizzard is willing to put time and effort into updating the software to make sure it runs on each new update to OS X. Not many (if any) other software companies would do that for a game this old.

Blizzard knows it's customers are loyal, and they are giving back to us. And it's something I appreciate.

Oh, no doubt, I agree with you on that. Blizzard is the best, I especially appreciate the fact that you can now run it without the CD. I mean the CPU thing is no big deal, really, it's just that the presence of that new CPU Throttling checkbox would seem to indicate they wanted to address that, but it looks like for some of us at least, it doesn't seem to be working. I'd feel kind of stupid making feature requests for a decade-old game, but I wonder who we could ask about it.

Signed up for the SC2 Beta, that'll probably make me forget about it if I get in.

 

[tYsopz]

My MB cpu is heating up to 80°C when running SC, though I haven't played SC for quite some time, so it haven't really bothered me.

IIRC it's possible to limit how much cpu power an application can use in terminal. Unfortunately I can't remember how it's done.

 

[carlosbutler]

hmm i dont know how you were able to look at the CPU usage when playing the game. min cant minimise or anything. but looking at the history CPU graph it was about 55% for both CPU's on 3.06GHz iMac!

it must be for emulation or something although i was under the impression that starcraft originally came out on mac and was then ported over to windows and stopped on mac and then came back to mac. dont know, dont really mind either since the fans on my mac never ever seem to rev up and its always below 60

 

[elmancho]

I have the same problem, plus it's become really buggy in 10.6, not to mention lack of iccup support (even tough blizz can't really do anything about it).