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Notice to Starcraft II players
Shinami
Member UncommonPosts: 825
Please read the article from the link above.
Any of you experiencing the same problem? I would really hate to see people lose their hardware over a "minor bug."
Comments
The hardware failures are due to inadequate cooling. My GPU (heavily overvolted too) only hits 75c @ 50% fan speed in the menus. GPUs should be able to take any workload without frying themselves, even a menu running at 300fps. It's common practice to fps cap a menu, and I'm glad Blizzard is fixing this, but it's not their fault that people with laptops gaming in bed with no downclocking feature are having their GPUs fry.
I've personally played many games (STALKER and Shattered Horizon to name a couple) that stress GPUs far more than SC2s menu does. If your computer is one of the ones affected by this "bug" you need to dust out your computer and invest in new case fans or a laptop cooling pad, because it's a matter of time before you encounter another game that stresses your computer even harder.
I was playing the game on high settings even though I had no business doing so and my card did get very hot and maybe would have gotten fried, but I just turned it off, played on lower settings and everything was fine. Just turn down the graphics a bit so your card doesn't have to work as hard or just get a better fan.
No issues here. I play in Windows 7 and my gpu stays as cool as a cucumber.
Overheating is becomming an issue with newer hardware. It is partially users fault and hardware companies fault.
Users overclock without adequite aftermarket cooling devices, which is their own fault. They will blame it on the applications which stress heat the most of course and say they need to fix it.
Hardware companies are increasingly becomming the problem though. They refuse to release devices with adequite cooling devices for stock configurations. When a device overheats with settings as you bought it...there is a problem. It could be user error, however this is rare, due to the fact that, as user who doesn't change stock cooling devices probably won't mess with case fans either. So improper case cooling is a rare situation.
Something more common among user error, is improper air space for computers. Most desks are pushed against a wall with the computer covered on the sides, top and bottom for air flow. Add the wall it is pressed against and that leaves one open place for fresh air. If the fan in the front is blwoing out, or non existant...you will definately face heating issues.
So I will not say it is entirely one persons fault. I think hardware companies need to work to be more power efficient like intel has been doing, and thus lowering heat, AND users need to teach themselves about proper computer heating.
Users need to inform themselves on a lot though, and they never do. So let's hope hardware pulls through.
I run a passivly cooled GTX250 and it stays below 55c after several hours of SC2 and I have it clocked by 10%. I have two 12" case fans running at just 800rpm (silent) and a silent PSU with a 12" fan that sucks air out of the case.
Honestly the gaming community should be aged to the point that if this has happened enough to warrent an article, then they deserve their hardware becoming toast.
More than likely tho' a few people out of the loop with desktop replacement laptops made for linkable news.
Learn your settings people, and your limits.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
It only made it to the news because a Game Informer employee got fried.
This was an issue brought up in beta and blizzard put in a frame limiter on the menu screen - not sure why it was removed in retail. SC2 does like to work the gfx card.
But in truth SC2 is not doing any thing that the gfx card (properly cooled) can't handle, it is not over clocking it or running the fans at a low speed, I can bet most of the people effected have overclocked cards crammed into tiny air tight cases.
I was asking out of curiosity ^_^
I run on a room that maintains room temperature at 60 - 65F and my temps are cool. The very same thing happened when Oblivion came out years ago. The game was so demanding many card temperatures heated up like crazy.
The game is not overclocking your gpu or lowering you fan speeds. The game is only using that which you, the user, have said is availbe for them. If you allow too much, it's not the games fault.
Not true.
When undergoing game programming, when you build an engine or embedded engine...the very first thing you do is actually set a framerate limitation as part of the base programming. The second thing you do is build a class along with a function linking to that class which creates the locking mechanism. You see....its very easy to program a game to max out any video card. I do it for fun with Quake 3 Arena.
...since for the quake 3 engine all you have to do is simply rename the .pk3 files to .zip and then you can extract and work with the base code itself. ^_^ I'm at my 12th year of doing crazy things in game programming.
It is up to the user to make sure that the hardware he or she owns is cooled and maintained, but its also up to the game programmer to not program malicious code into their game. I remember years ago when I played RYL-2 that game inherently had a way or accessing the game files which caused hard drive thrashing.
In short, the game programmer, nor the user have total liability. I can easilly code a game mod that will fry your processor or video card in a short time, while the System Owner can be a total idiot and keep his system in a 90 degree room without adaquate cooling or decent caseflow.
Why weren't they able to prevent this? What's the use of the closed beta?
The programmer has liability if the problem is common enough. Then the fault is in the code and not in the hardware.
Games are mass consumer products and therefore should not require any special computer related knowledge to run. Blizzard in my opinion does have a liability of writing code that cooks some PCs.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."