Both 5870 and 480 unable to handle Starcraft II official campaign at 30 fps

[SKYMTL]

First of all, if you have a properly performing system with a decent GPU, this mission should not be an issue at all. Yes, it is simply the most intense and unit heavy 30-50 minutes of the single player campaign (anyone beat this on Normal and able to unlock the +250 kill achievement?) but the only way to really bog down a system with it is to build more than a dozen and a half carriers or more.

The issue is these 18++ carriers will likely lead you to loose the mission on anything but the easiest mode due to their build times and resource-sucking costs. No only that but they are quite weak against the hybrid enemies faced in the mission. Yes, the main point of the mission is to die (no, really) but I have found it extremely hard to get the 1500 kills using a carrier-centric force; even on Normal.

Here is the thing: what we are seeing is a completely unrealistic test conducted in what seems to be sub-par conditions. Within the game itself and even in multiplayer, there is no way a player would be able to build up the unit quantites seen in that mission. It also seems like the cards in question may be throttling due to the game's heat bug. Nonetheless, the mission really does display a worst case scenario for Starcraft 2 which makes it perfect for GPU benching.

I tried last night to recreate the framerates the original article talks about but I just can't. With 16 carriers my HD 5870 + i5 were still working at 40-60 FPS.