Guild Wars 2: Your Graphics Card And CPU Performance Guide

[ichihaifu]

[citation][nom]mmstick[/nom]No, my Phenom II X4 955BE was destroyed by the current AMD line.[/citation]
I have pIIx4 965 BE with HD 5850 and I can run balanced (with some options put to higher) with ease and the new line struggles? Yeah, I can see the facts here.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

no C2Q love ? AFAIK, Q6xxx and Q9xxx are still going strong.

 

[rdc85]

[citation][nom]esrever[/nom]The game runs great on my setup and I love it. Playing on a phenom II x4 and a 6850.[/citation]

Thanks, good the hear that....


edit:

I have a Phenom II 955 @3.7Ghz with an HD7970 and am pretty disappointed with the performance.

I realise the 955 isn't exactly the latest processor these days but I'm usually in the 25-45 fps range playing GW2 and in a game that is making good use of four cores I'd expect to be at least matching the SB i3 with its minimum 39fps.

I am planning on an upgrade next year anyway, but in my mind an overclocked 955 shouldn't have any trouble doing 45-60fps in a game like this if it was properly optimized.

Err, so I should just aim for balanced setting for the best play rate?

I think i will need to upgrade my network connection first before buying....

 

[bobbyp86]

I have a Phenom II 955 @3.7Ghz with an HD7970 and am pretty disappointed with the performance.

I realise the 955 isn't exactly the latest processor these days but I'm usually in the 25-45 fps range playing GW2 and in a game that is making good use of four cores I'd expect to be at least matching the SB i3 with its minimum 39fps.

I am planning on an upgrade next year anyway, but in my mind an overclocked 955 shouldn't have any trouble doing 45-60fps in a game like this if it was properly optimized.

 

[BlackBrigade]

AMD should just dump their waste of space FX line and bring back the Phenom II's X6 which are faster if not the same performance. This has been such a slow year for PC upgrades, choosing between slow retarded AMD parts or retardedly priced Intel parts.

 

[ojas]

before i read, a humble request: please do a similar article for sleeping dogs

 

[ojas]

@Don
In the Core scaling graph, you've called SB-E "dodeca core" => 12 cores. Isn't it a hexacore with HT?

BTW, For those people asking about the Core 2 series, they perform just about as well as the llano A8 series does (though still a bit higher per clock).
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/399?vs=89

Ed.: Clearly, it appears that AMD's best shot at catching Sandy Bridge at 3 GHz is a quad-core Bulldozer-based chip at 5 GHz or so. Sorry, couldn't resist

:lol:

 

[mayankleoboy1]

^ and for any major PC game that is released. Why does Toms do only a few PC game performance reviews ?

 

[spookyman]

I guess a pair of GTX 690's will not have a problem running this game?

 

[mousseng]

You tested the game only in DirectX 9. Where is DirectX10 and 11? Or aren't they implemented yet (post-release patch)?

DX11 may come in a later patch, but they've said for now they're sticking to DX9 for compatibility purposes.

 

[Reynod]

I think Don was having a bit of fun with us !!

 

[razor512]

on my system, Phenom II X6 1075 overclocked to 4.04GHz, and a GTX460 1GB (GPU at 860MHz, and memory at 1900 MHz)

I get around 45 - 50 FPS most of thentime with everything maxed out at 1920x1080

for sleeping dogs, on the same specs, I can max out everything except the AA (keep it on normal, this is due to only having 1GB of video memory) and hold 60FPS most of the time (I keep vsync on because it will jump to around 70+ FPS and get some insane screen tearing)

I am also using the high res texture pack. That game looks good and it is well optimized (looks better than guild wars to by about 20 times and performs better)

 

[AntiZig]

Nice article, but I'd like to mention that this was run on the beta client. As of 8/26 performance has changed for a number of people.

Thanks for running through the tests, Don, appreciate it.

 

[leongrado]

Arenanet is still working on optimizing the game (I think/hope). I know I know the game was very very clunky in the first two beta weekends but at headstart the game is much smoother.

 

[haplo602]

folks, stop the DX10/DX11 nonsense ... this is an MMORPG (sort of) that needs to run on many hw configs with most somewhere average and below average by todays standard. they'd work against themselves with DX10/11 since graphics engine is one of the last parts that make a good MMO.

 

[Wisecracker]

A real review would have compared higher resolutions in CPU scaling instead of simply using 1280x

The editor comment was WAY out of line.

 

[Onus]

My 970BE @3.8 with a HD7870 has been playing well on max settings. I'd have liked to have seen a Phenom II on the charts though, and a C2D.
I like the events too, except when I'm the only character in range when one pops up and get croaked before deciding whether or not to participate.
Graphics is a lot better than GW1, but NPCs often look like they're in another layer, rendered with a different palette.
...and there are still bugs. I can't bind to my tilt wheel.
There is at least one other Georgia Tech alumnus (or student) playing, because I couldn't name my Engineer "George P Burdell." Oh well.

 

[bobbyp86]

[citation][nom]rdc85[/nom]Thanks, good the hear that....edit:Err, so I should just aim for balanced setting for the best play rate? I think i will need to upgrade my network connection first before buying....[/citation]

Don't get me wrong you'll still be able to play the game ok, that was my fps on maximum settings at 1080p and it was definitely the CPU which was the bottleneck so your 460 should be fine. My Cpu gadget was showing about 85% usage on all four cores. Setting the visuals to balanced doesn't help me much but going to minimum puts me at a more or less steady 60fps (v. sync.)

I am in the Sylvari area at the moment and don't remember noticing any frame rate problems when I played a beta weekend in the Human and Norn areas a while ago, so it could just be that specific area or maybe some kinks got into the system before release.

I will try a different area but I'm hoping Arena Net can find some more power from the AMD CPUs.

 

[AntiZig]

Arenanet is still working on optimizing the game (I think/hope). I know I know the game was very very clunky in the first two beta weekends but at headstart the game is much smoother.

hmm, it has been a completely opposite experience for me. Ran excellently all through betas, and saturday morning of headstart - 60 fps no problem. Sunday evening, after a small patch, same exact settings, my system cannot get up above 30. Not sure what Anet changed, but it's frustrating to having to go from 60 fps to 30 and below in a matter of 36 hours.

 

[cookoy]

Great review. Lots of effort to test all the cpu-gpu combinations at 3 presets with different resolutions.

 

[Dax corrin]

Looks like my GTX 460 OC will handle this just fine at 1680x1050 on my meager 22" monitor.

 

[spookyman]

Honestly though..

If you play any MMORPG, you turn off most settings. I know I turn on everything for Everquest but I dont. Why? It gets in the way of playing or raiding.

 

[SirTrollsALot]

So is it better than swtor or a wow killer?

 

[Guest]

You need to take into account that these performances tests appear to have been done during a beta event and do not take advantage of performance optimizations done by ArenaNet up to release.

The DirectX 9 renderer flag does now show up in the release client, and was not present during the last couple of stress tests either.

There are also some missing graphics optimization settings.

 

[jkbharrison]

I beta tested GW2 using a GTX 280 and the game ran well. I couldn't run everything on max, but for the most part all settings were above normal. Last week I upgraded to a GTX 670 and have been getting very poor results.

2012-08-27 10:46:42 - Gw2 - Everything on max
Frames: 499 - Time: 20000ms - Avg: 24.950 - Min: 16 - Max: 33

2012-08-27 10:47:59 - Gw2 - Turn reflections off
Frames: 714 - Time: 20000ms - Avg: 35.700 - Min: 17 - Max: 51

2012-08-27 10:48:52 - Gw2 - Reflections, shadows off and shaders on low
Frames: 859 - Time: 20000ms - Avg: 42.950 - Min: 22 - Max: 63

I've used 301, 304, 305, and 306 driver versions. The results above are from 306. Please advise!

Win 7 64 bit
12gb ram
SSD
i7 920 @ 2.67ghz