Guild Wars 2 - System Performance (with video) - What's yours like?

Drafell

The purpose of this thread is to get a general feel for game-play performance on different systems.

We built my wife a new machine on which to play Guild Wars 2 and also as a decent quality workstation.

Her existing laptop, an Aspire 5552-3452, lacks the horsepower or graphics quality to even play on lowest settings. The game runs, but it is not playable in any sense of the word.

So this is the system we built:

Processor: i5-3570k Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz
Graphics 1 (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics 4000
Graphics 2: Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 OC 2GB
RAM: 8gb G-Skill DDR3 12800 (9,9,9,24)(dual-channel)
Hard-disk: 128gb OCZ Agility 4 SSD
O/S: Windows 7 Home Premium - 64bit

Due to general interest, I decided to do some video capture during the stress test to demonstrate the difference in graphics quality and to see just how playable the game is without dedicated graphics.

Here are the results:

Integrated Intel HD 4000 - 1920x1080

The game is actually quite playable using just the Intel HD 4000 graphics. If you are wanting to build a system to play Guild Wars 2 but cannot afford a discrete card, then I highly recommend forking out the extra for this processor.

Note that the game-play appears to be slightly choppy in the first video. This is an artifact of running the screen capture while playing. However, the game does start to feel less responsive when you dial up the settings.

Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 OC - 1920x1080

You can see an immediate difference in the quality of the rendering and general smoothness. There are a couple of areas where the game skips a few frames although that is, again, due to the screen capture process.

I also played on my Acer Aspire 8730-6951. Although this machine can play on medium settings, it cannot play reliably at 1080p display resolution. I find myself having to reduce the screen resolution to 1366x768 to get passable game-play.

So the real question is "Do you need to buy a dedicated card to play Guild Wars 2?"

If you are building a new computer, the answer is a definite "No."

Invest a little extra in a good processor with a modern integrated graphics chipset (HD 3000+) and you will be able to play the game fine at reasonable detail levels.

Please feel welcome to post your own experiences below.

Edit - I will see if I can get video capture on my laptop during the Friday stress test

The_Korrigan

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition @ 3.4ghz (Zalman air cooler) - Gigabyte MA770-UD3 Motherboard - Radeon HD6870 1GB DDR5 @ 950/1150 - Soundblaster X-FI Surround 5.1 with Logitech 5.1 speakers - 8GB of Samsung DDR2-800 memory - Antec TruePower New 750W PSU - 2 x 1TB Western Digital Caviar WD10EARX SATAIII (Raid0) - LG DVD Writer and Blu-Ray reader - Hanspree HF237 23.7" Full HD (1920x1080) and Philips 200WS 20" (1680x1050) Monitors - Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Running GW2 with everything maxed out (best settings), no slow downs even in tremendous World vs World action with dozens of players on the screen.

Badaboom

E8400 3ghz dual core, 8 gigs ddr2, gtx 460 se and ssd drive, 1920x1080 with vista 64.

Max settings were 20-30 fps. 1 slider down from max was 40-60 fps.

Aerowyn

Intel 2600k @ 4.5GHZ

GTX 670 Windforce Running at 680 Speeds

Crucial M4 solid state drive

8GB G.Skill Ram Running at 1866

ASUS P8Z68-V PRO Motherboard

 

My settings are as follows slider set to best appearance. FXAA ON, Post Processing OFF, Shadows HIGH, Reflections Terrain & Sky. 

With these settings i can hit upwards of 130 fps but I run with vysnc on usually which caps me at 60 fps but game plays smooth even with a TON of people on screen and effects all over.

fiontar

AMD Phenom II x6 @ 4.03 Ghz

8 GB DDR 1600 Ram

Galaxy GTX 570 (factory super-clocked).

Win7 x64

All settings maxed, Post Processing OFF, average Frame Rate in Queensdale ~64 FPS.

This was about a 20% increase from the last stress test and about a 35% increase from BWE3. I bought the GTX570 with the hope of running max settings between 45-60 FPS, so I'm happy with the performance I saw today. No lag when running with a zerg.

joerockshaha

My laptop ran superbly!!! It has an ATI Mobile Radeon graphics card, Windows 7, and Intel Core I7 (dont know anything else haha). The game overall ran smoothly and according to plan, only issues i had today was when i was in parts of the human starting area it would go blue on me, like the backround just went blue and i was like ok... this is really odd.

Southpaw.Gamer

I plan on recording TONS of gameplay with my setup using DXtroy recording software.  Don't know what DXtroy is? Look it up.  Long story short it's like FRAPS but better.

 

2600K @ 4.9 OC

 

16GB Memory 1800 Hz

 

580 classified GPU

 

Installed on an SDD

 

I will be doing my best to record with the highest possible settings in the game, but if I must I'll lower the settings.  I refuse to record in anything less than 1080P though.