First, we begin with a match showing a Protoss player, HuHuman, exploiting the terrain to the extreme on the map Delta Quadrant. Watch him abuse his helpless Zerg opponent using great micro-managing skills.

The next game is a classic, long, epic game on Metalopolis between BratOK playing as Terran and Socke playing as Protoss. There’s so much action in this game, it might make you think there are two players are controlling each side!

This game, cast by Artosis - a great player by his own right – features IdrA, the infamous professional Zerg player, fighting against none other than BoxeR, playing as Terran. BoxeR, a legend of StarCraft 1, has dominated the scene for many years, and is often credited with inventing modern Terran play. A Korean, his fan club is the largest in the world as far as professional players go.

In this clash of titans, one can definitely see that BoxeR does not play a standard game, and it’s often unclear whether his StarCraft 2 skills have yet to become refined or if he’s exercising his own unique style of play. Will BoxeR, the ultimate Terran player, prevail against IdrA, the ultra-methodical and unstoppable Zerg player?

Our next game of the day was played on the Asian server, a Zerg versus Protoss. After quick fast expansions by both players, this Metalopolis game geared up for a macro war. Notably, the Zerg player takes great advantage of Nydus Worms, using them to the extreme to exert constant pressure on his opponent and maintain map control.

The game sealing today’s update is nothing short of insane. Played between fan-favorite TheLittleOne as Terran against Dimaga, the highly-talented and often unorthodox Zerg player, this game features unit combinations that will make your jaw drop with awe – especially since both of these great players actually make them work!

***

How do we manage to keep up with all the videos posted, you ask? Simple: we use a dedicated video panel that is automatically updated with videos from several select channels!

The SC2Blog team is proud to present our newest addition to the site: the StarCraft 2 Video Feed Panel. This page will be updated as new videos are added to the various channels, comfortably laying them all out for you to see. Soon, filtering and sorting options will be added to provide even greater utility. Bookmark it and enjoy the latest and greatest StarCraft 2 replay videos!

Think your channel should be on our page? Let us know in the comments or on Facebook.

Click through to see the full high-res version. Big thanks go to our reader Jason for creating this great looking, helpful chart!

If you do, it’s time to sharpen your pencil. We will ship a new, sealed in box, EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB to the creator of the best StarCraft themed flipbook animation. If you are not familiar with the concept, here’s a good sample video to get your started:

How to enter the contest:

1. Draw an original StarCraft-inspired flipbook animation.
2. Make a video like the one shown above.
3. Submit your entry by either sending it directly to Anderson@SC2Blog.com or by posting on our Facebook page for others to see and comment on!

On August 21st, we will post the qualifiers here for our readers to vote on. Voting will last for 4 days, and the entry receiving the most votes will win the card! Runner ups will not go unnoticed, and will get some awesome StarCraft-related prizes as well.

What are you waiting for? Get arting!

For many, getting to play StarCraft 2 is as easy as going to the store, buying and installing the game; for others, who have fallen out of the race to maintain a modern computer, capable of playing new games, it may not be so simple. Now that StarCraft 2 is finally out, the time has come to get some new gear, and one of the main things to consider is the graphics card.

Nvidia has just released a new graphics card – the GeForce GTX 460 – targeted at those wishing to get a cost-efficient gaming system without breaking the bank, and we will review it here today. As well, we’re going to go over some more hardware and recommend the best parts for a system built to play StarCraft 2.

At $199 ($229 for the 1GB variant) and including a trial coupon for the game, this card is positioned to compete in the mid-range graphics card arena and provide exactly the right amount of GPU-juice for StarCraft 2. Can the card really live up to this claim? The guys at Nvidia have sent us a shiny new EVGA GeForce GTX 460 with 1GB of memory to test just that.

THE CARD

First of all, let’s go over the card’s story and specs. If technobabble isn’t your thing, skip right ahead to the results down the line.

The GTX 460 is Nvidia’s second Fermi (GF104 core) graphics card, released after the GeForce GTX 465 – a more expensive variant that was essentially a stripped down version of Nvidia’s higher-end GeForce GTX 480 card. Not priced competitively, it didn’t do so well in the market.

The 460 is everything the 465 should have been in the mid-range market: as a slightly updated design, it performs more efficiently per clock cycle; it also has a higher price/performance ratio than the rest of Nvidia’s GTX line. It is indeed priced very competitively, performing better than the equivalent AMD model – the Radeon 5830. Not only that, it also overclocks like a champ: enough to outperform much more expensive cards and go toe to toe with its older and more powerful brother, the GeForce GTX 470; but more on that later.

SPECIFICATIONS

 —————————— GTX 460 1GB GDDR5   |   GTX 460 768MB GDDR5 ——————————

Graphics Clock                             675                                 675

Processor Clock                          1300                               1300

Memory Clock                            1800                               1800

Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)         37.8                                37.8

Memory Interface width             256 bit                            196 bit

Memory Bandwitdh (GB/sec)      115.2                               86.4

Maximum Power Draw                160W                              160W

Price                                           $229                               $199

TEST SYSTEMS

We tested 3 different cards in different price ranges, attempting to isolate GPU performance and determine the sweet spot for StarCraft 2 gaming. As well, two different CPUs were used to evaluate the impact of the CPU on performance.

System #1: Old/Mainstream

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 @ 3.6GHz
• Motherboard: Asus P5B
• Hard Disk: Intel X-25V SSD X 2 (RAID 0)
• Memory: Kingston DDR2 800MHz 1GB X 4
• Video Driver: Nvidia – 258.98 WHQL; ATI – Catalyst 10.7

• Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit, freshly installed

System #2: New/High-End

• CPU: Intel i7 860 @ 3.8 GHz
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
• Hard Disk: Intel X-25M SSD
• Memory: Kingston DDR3 1600 MHz 2GB X 2
• Video Driver: Nvidia – 258.98 WHQL; ATI – Catalyst 10.7
• Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit, freshly installed

THE TEST

Two different replays were used. The first is of a typical 15 minute 1v1 game on Kulas Ravine, testing normal gameplay conditions with two players only. The second is a 2v2 game, meant to test our systems in an environment with 200-food armies clashing.

We tested the GTX 460 under many conditions: 1680X1050 using the high graphics option preset and high texture levels; 1920X1200 using the ultra graphics preset and ultra texture levels; 1920X1200 ultra with 4xAA/8xAF; and 1920X1200 with 4xAA/8xAF – overclocked. We also tested the impact of the windowed fullscreen mode on performance.

As well, we compared the GTX 460 using 1920X1200 ultra against ATI’s low-range Radeon HD 5750 card and Nvidia’s high-range GTX 470 card.

You can download both replays here:

1v1 | 2v2

We measured the minimum, average and maximum frames per second (FPS) in each test. The more powerful a system is, the more frames it can churn out in a given time frame. In the 1v1 game, we started measuring at minute 5:00 in the game and stopped at the end. For the 2v2 game, recording started at minute 26:00 and lasted till the end once more. If you wish to replicate our test with your system, download Fraps, play the replay until the aforementioned time point, hit the Fraps benchmark hotkey while simultaneously unpausing the game (Hotkey “P”), and let it record on “Faster” speed until the of the replay.

RESULTS

We began by benchmarking the GTX 460 and quickly noticed that it’s highly CPU-bottlenecked when tested on the main benchmarking system with the relatively old C2D E6700 CPU, even with its high overclock speed. Therefore, to make future tests more GPU-dependent, all tests were conducted with “Physics” turned off and “Effects” turned to low, as both of these options rely mostly on the CPU.

To start things off, we compared the different cards to see how the GTX 460 holds up against them. We used the highest quality settings – without anti-aliasing (AA) or anisotropic filtering (AF), as the ATI drivers don’t support them in StarCraft 2 – to make sure the different graphics cards show their strength.

Since StarCraft 2 isn’t a particularly graphics-intensive game, it’s not entirely surprising to see the $229 GTX 460 performing almost as well as the much more expensive, $350 GTX 470. It’s also easy to see that our 2v2 test was heavily influenced by the CPU, as the different cards show very little difference between them in the minimum FPS measurement.

Next, we evaluated the GTX 460′s performance using different quality settings and added a test to determine the effect of fullscreen windowed mode as well.

While lowering the resolution and decreasing the quality clearly has an effect on speed, the GTX 460 is more than able to take on the high resolution and maximum graphics quality settings and allow for smooth play. Throwing anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering into the mix and further increasing image quality still allows an acceptable gaming experience, though the intensive 2v2 test brings the minimum FPS level below what we’d recommend for serious gameplay. For those of you who are playing on struggling systems, it is important to note that windowed fullscreen mode takes a significant toll on performance. While it makes quickly tabbing out of the game easy, it’s definitely not worth it if it means the game itself becomes less playable. (Extra note: using an SSD makes tabbing out and back in, in normal fullscreen mode, much faster!)

Next comes the overclock test. As we mentioned, the GTX 460 is an amazing overclocker. Using the EVGA Precision overclocking program, our card easily achieved a 21% increase in core clock and 18% increase in memory clock – and we were quite conservative about pushing it! Using GPUTool and HWmonitor to stress test and monitor the card, we quickly increased the speeds until finding a stable point.

And off we were again to test the card! We chose to compare the most intensive graphics settings, running the ultra quality with AA and AF benchmark.

The GTX 460 benefits very nicely from overclocking, though the system is still clearly bottlenecked by the CPU. The most amazing find in our overclocking test, though, is the fact that the GTX 460 is almost completely unfazed by the extra speeds! Temperatures and fan speed at maximum operation levels remain almost exactly the same as when operating at standard levels; a 2-3C degree change at most, and almost 30C degrees below the maximum operating temperature as stated by Nvidia. What this means is that this level of overclocking can be applied indefinitely, increasing the value of this incredible card even further.

Lastly, we tested the GTX 460 on a system with an extremely fast CPU – Intel’s recent i7 design, running at 3.8GHz. It doesn’t get much faster than that, and it showed in this benchmark.

As we suspected, the mainstream system with the relatively old CPU is indeed quite bottlenecked by it. When installed on the newer system, the GTX 460 shows just how held back it was before, and confirms that it is more than sufficient to handle anything StarCraft 2 can throw at it. To get more information about different CPUs and their effect on StarCraft 2 performance, check out Techspot’s excellent writeup on the subject.

At this point of our analysis, we can whole-heartedly confirm Nvidia’s claim: to play StarCraft 2 at the highest quality settings, one does not need more than Nvidia’s new ~$200 offering – the GTX 460. And not only StarCraft 2, mind you; other reviewers have already crowned the GTX 460 as the “$200 king”.

CONCLUSIONS

In order to get the best performing computer for StarCraft 2 without going overboard with the expenditure, one should get:

1) An Intel i5-760 processor – another $200 wonder. Since StarCraft 2 only utilizes two cores, quad core CPUs such as the one used in our faster test system are somewhat of an overkill for it and for most other games. The 750 is the current sweetspot for Intel CPUs – despite its four cores, its price/performance ratio is hard to beat even in a dual core limited game – and it can also be heavily overclocked, which leads us to

2) A nice CPU heatsink/fan combo. We recommend one of the following models for their high price/performance ratio, quiet idle noise levels, and relatively powerful cooling abilities. Our first test system is equipped with a Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B, as can be seen in the picture above. Our second test system sports a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus. The Xigmatek HDT-S1283 is a nice solution that’s cheaper.

3) An LGA 1156 board such as the one in our new test system or an Asus P7P55.

4) A good graphics card. It’s hard to not recommend the GTX 460 we reviewed here – it certainly does an amazing job and can handle everything StarCraft 2 can throw at it even at the maximum quality settings. At the $200-$250 price range, choosing the GeForce GTX 460 is a no-brainer.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is available for purchase around the globe. Battle.net 2.0 is live, and hundreds of thousands are enjoying war, in all its glory… and all its horror.

SC2Blog staff attended launch parties around the world, celebrating 3 years of following StarCraft 2′s development in the public eye, and picking up their own, pre-ordered copies. Those who have chosen to get Collector’s Editions have received one of the most beautiful gaming artifacts to have ever hit mass production.

The Collector’s Edition comes in a big, beautiful double “sliding door” package, giving it a unique and rugged look that is unlike any other. Due to its size and the distinct pseudo-metallic texture, the box immediately stands out in any store or gamer room.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Collector’s Edition is packed with features, both tangible and digital.

• The Art of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a 176-page book featuring artwork from the game
• An exclusive 2GB USB flash drive replica of Jim Raynor’s dog tag, which comes preloaded with the original StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War expansion set
• A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, cinematics with director’s commentary, and more
• The official StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty soundtrack CD, containing 14 epic tracks from the game along with exclusive bonus tracks
• StarCraft comic book issue #0, a prequel to the comic series
• A World of Warcraft mini Thor in-game pet that can be applied to all World of Warcraft characters on a single Battle.net account
• Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit

Everything inside the box is of the highest quality, including a functional dog tag 2 GB USB drive. Its rough feel is just what you’d expect from its looks, with a push-and-slide USB connector and a fitting neck chain to hang it on.

The most important “show and tell” item is certainly the 176 page StarCraft 2 art book. For those who have followed SC2′s development, the pages will contain many familiar sketches and 3D renders of units and environments that have been introduced, scrapped or changed along the way.

The behind-the-scenes DVD and the full soundtrack CD has great value for true StarCraft fans, shedding light on StarCraft 2′s development – from its very inception to the delicate gameplay decisions made close to the release to the public. Considering the correlation between StarCraft and the professional Poker world, it wouldn’t be surprising to find the StarCraft 2 soundtrack playing on iPods during long tournament grinding sessions.

For those who won’t have many opportunities to brag about their recent purchase in the real world, one of the nicer perks is without a doubt a special set of Battle.net portraits that are available only to owners of the Collector’s Edition.

With so much awesome in one package, the StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty Collector’s Edition has great sentimental value for those who have been following the StarCraft Universe since it was introduced, over 12 years ago. Even if this is the first StarCraft game you purchase, you will quite likely get to appreciate it as much as we do soon enough.

We’d like to let all of our StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty beta test participants know that the first phase of the beta test will be coming to an end in all regions on Monday, May 31. The beta test will be unavailable for several weeks while we make some hardware and software configuration changes in preparation for the final phase of the beta test and the release of the game. We plan to bring the beta test back online for a couple of weeks prior to the game’s launch to complete our testing. We’ll have more details to share about when this final beta-testing phase will begin at a later date.

With the game launching on the 27th of July and phase two of the beta only commencing a couple of weeks prior to that, StarCraft 2 addicts are going to face a harsh withdrawal for more than a month. Fortunately, replays will still be available and the map editor will be fully functional, though no game of any sort will be playable since Battle.net servers will be down.

Final StarCraft 2 Beta Key Contest

If you’re aching to play some StarCraft 2 for the little time left in the beta, we invite you to participate in our third and last beta key contest! This time, we ask you to create StarCraft-related demotivational posters.

Over the next three days, we’ll be giving out 15 StarCraft 2 Beta keys to readers who create the best, most creative and most entertaining demotivational posters.

Instructions:

1) Create a demotivational poster. Poster generators are allowed.
2) Post the picture or link to it in the comments or post on our Facebook page, along with your email address.

By Saturday, May 22nd, we’ll select the top submissions and send out the keys!

A) Don’t have a StarCraft 2 Beta key
B) Want a StarCraft 2 Beta key

… and you’re witty and/or creative enough to think of a cool T-shirt concept, getting a StarCraft 2 Beta key is just one comment away!

Over the next 72 hours, we’ll be giving out 20 StarCraft 2 Beta keys to readers with the sickest, wittiest, most creative StarCraft-related T-shirt ideas. Yes, it’s that simple.

Instructions:

1) Write or sketch out a T-shirt idea.
2) Post the text or link to the picture in the comments or post on our Facebook page, along with your email address.

On Friday, April 30th, we’ll exchange a key for your idea if you’re in the top 20!

P.S W8VY64-8XVH-HNXD6Z-HFY6-T2NZRW

A) Don’t have a StarCraft 2 Beta key
B) Want a StarCraft 2 Beta key

Well then, things just got a lot simpler for you. We will be handing out 24 StarCraft 2 beta keys to anyone posting a real picture of themselves with ”SC2Blog.com got me into the StarCraft 2 Beta” boldly hand-written on either shirt, skin or anything large enough to not fit into an oven!

All you have to do is publish that picture on one of the following:

1) An active public forum
2) Our Facebook wall
3) A YouTube video

And then post a link to it, along with an email, in the comments!

Yes, this time it’s that simple. And even simpler, here’s a freebie for ye of high APM!

HY6TY9-RKNY-Z2F2ZY-Y6FW-TH9ERK

Update: This giveaway has come to an end. GL HF in the next ones!

Queued Sniping: How to take out entire groups of biological units within seconds by shift-sniping with multiple ghosts.

Multiple Nydus Worms: How to improve the chances of a successful invasion and increase your unit transport throughput.

Hunter Seeker Flanking: Hunter Seeker missiles are the only projectiles in the game that can be outrun. Spreading Terran Ravens around and launching the missiles from multiple positions will prevent your opponent from evading these energy-costly funballs.

For more StarCraft Science, check out the scientist’s YouTube page!

StarCraft Scientist – the newest addition to the SC2Blog crew, will be exploring and documenting these useful, tricky game mechanics, and we will post them for your viewing pleasure. Without further ado:

Smart Blinking: How to blink a large group of Stalkers over a cliff with no Protoss left behind.

Might take some practice, but one can’t really cliff-blink a full contingent of Stalkers without it.

Void Ray Micro: Keeping your Void Rays charged and ready for battle may require a high APM count to pull off, but considering the fact that a fully charged Void Ray can output up to X4 the damage, it’s often worth the clicks!

Xel’ Naga Tower control: Manipulating the tower to keep it under your control while your unit stays safe from harm.

Creeping up cliffs: How to make Zerg creep tumors spread creep up to inaccessible higher ground with just a little help from an Overlord.

That’s all for now! If you like the videos, make sure to subscribe to StarCraft Scientist’s YouTube channel, and if you have some tips and tricks of your own that you’d like to be made into tutorials, leave them in the comments or post on our Facebook page.