Another R1/R2 Starcraft II thread

Hey all. New to NBR, but it's seemed helpful, so I thought I'd give it a go. I might make it my new home.
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Anyway, the problem I am having is I have been trying to decide if I want an R1 or R2 for awhile. My main reason is lately at school I've been having 8-9 spare hours a week where I'm required to be there and have nothing to do. That's actually what got me in the market for an M11x.

However, most of my time is spent on Starcraft 2. I've searched the forums, gone through every thread, and can't figure it out.

It seems that the R1 was better at running this (I'm mostly looking for >27 fps on medium at least), in late game in say, 3v3. (I never really play 4v4 anymore as it's too random with the teams).
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So, I was set on the R1 as right now I configured it at $599 with a few upgrades and I had a -$50 coupon...and was waiting til next friday to order, and most reports have said it runs SCII well, even on high (some ultra...but I'm skeptical). However, today when messing with configurations, I noticed two things...
They have sold out of the R1 in silver (my color of choice over cosmic black as it's a fingerprint catcher) and the coupon no longer works on R1 models. So my total price is now $700 after adding bluetooth, 4GB ram (it jumped up $10 in a day), and shipping (not free on this model for some reason!?). $700 is significant compared to the $560 I could have gotten it for yesterday.

So lo-and-behold...they are running a special on the R2. $750 with 8GB ram, and $900 with the i7 upgrade and bluetooth. However, my -$50 coupon works (~$850) and shipping is free for R2. Also, I can get Soft Touch Black which was my favorite color config to begin with.

I know the i7 gains over the C2D were small (some cases, they were worse, it depends on optimization), but it'll be more future proof. However, this doesn't mean much if I can't run starcraft 2.

Also, the R2 (i7) had what seemed to be a lot of problems with this game, at least at first, and most people found it unplayable, even on low multiplayer.



So...
My questions are:
1) have these problems been ironed out or have people mostly just given up (or is there a pretty surefire update/workaround)?

2) Also, is the R1 still holding up and running it at at least medium settings now?

3) Anything else to take into consideration?

What I am asking is if anyone is having any recent experience with these and SCII with either the R1 or R2 and how it's going. Please, if you claim ultra or whatever on either model, provide some minimum fps numbers that you see during late game battles. (Note I will be installing a SSD when I get my m11x, if that changes anything)


Please help!

 

From what i've read and understood the R2 runs sc2 better because it has a better CPU.

 

This is not true. The gains are in fact substantial (in CPU-intensive tasks, including CPU-bound games) when using Throttlestop while overclocking. All reviews comparing the R1 to R2 don't take into account the fact that the i-series in the R2 are gimped by power limitations (erroneously) imposed by Dell. If you lift those limitations, you get a rather powerful CPU in return. This is largely why people are reporting excellent (ie/ ultra) performance settings with SCII.

Personally, if I were you, I would get the i5 (with the $50 coupon). $700 is a bargain for that machine, and there's virtually no difference between the i5 and i7 (so the extra $200 premium is NOT worth it, no matter how much you spin it). Also, if you can get a configuration with 4GB of RAM that runs you cheaper, then go with that, as 8GB is probably unnecessary for you.

 

Now it's been awhile since I played SC2 on my R2 i7 but from what I recall it worked fine unless I was in 3vs3 or 4vs4 and had massive amounts of units on the screen. I'd say the size of the screen was a much bigger problem than anything else.

Come to think of it I'm not sure I was using Throttlestop back then, so probably even better now. I'll see if I can test later tonight or tomorrow with Throttlestop plus SSD disk (which I didn't have back then) and get some results. I think I ran it on medium btw.

 

Using throttlestop, I have gome on some 70+ 3v3 hard ai/very hard ai compstomps

No issues, with medium settings, CPU effects to none, and textures to ultra

My other computer is an Xeon X3440 (i7 860 equiv) and a GTX570 setup So I'm not blind to the frames hovering around 20fps in late game.... but I'm never to one to slowdown others