Guild Wars 2: Your Graphics Card And CPU Performance Guide

Benchmark Results: Best Appearance Preset

The Best Appearance preset adds FXAA, with maximum texture, shadow, post-processing, and reflection detail. These benchmarks reveal how mid-range and high-end cards fare when Guild Wars 2 is cranked up as high as it can go.

The Radeon HD 7750 and GeForce GTX 550 Ti had no trouble through 1920x1080 at the Balanced preset. However, they're both knocked down to about 30 FPS minimums using the Best Appearance setting. The graphics cards we add to the field scale pretty much as we'd expect.

Three of the cards cannot quite manage a minimum of 30 FPS at 1680x1050, but they're close enough that we'd still consider them playable. More than half of our GPUs aren't able to push minimum frame rates higher than 40 FPS at 1680x1050.

At 1920x1080, you need at least a Radeon HD 7770 or GeForce GTX 560 to use the best-looking graphics preset offered in Guild Wars 2. It's preferable to get smoother performance using the Balanced setting when it comes to slower cards.

Cranking our test resolution up to 2560x1600 complicates the story quite a bit.

Using a 30" screen and Guild Wars 2's Best Appearance preset causes most graphics cards to choke. Only the top four cards manage to maintain more than 30 FPS throughout the benchmark run. None of the boards we're testing can keep above 40 FPS, including the powerful Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 670. At its highest detail setting, Guild Wars 2 clearly demands a potent graphics subsystem.

  • cmcghee358
    Hmm.. shame I can never touch an MMORPG ever again...
    Reply
  • haplo602
    get your graphs and test setup to match:

    Radeon HD 6450 512 MB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 6670 512 MB DDR3
    Radeon HD 7770 1 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 6850 1 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 7870 2 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 7970 3 GB GDDR5

    where's the 6850 in the graphs ? There's a 6870 instead ...
    Reply
  • rdc85
    I'm wonder how my pII x4 955BE will perform, there none in the chart...

    Anyone know? at stock speed and at 3.8 O.C....
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    Interesting. The less-than-$100-without-external-power-connector Radeon 7750 is a balance card providing appealing visual while still runs good framerates at 1080p. I imagined if you tinker with the Best Appearance preset a little bit you can get better image quality without framerates dropping below 30. I mean let's face it, who plays on their PC without tinkering the settings here and there, that's just stupid.

    Great review as always! Really appreciate it
    Reply
  • stingstang
    I'm disappointed that this neglects the post processing bar when determining if the best appearance setting is enabled when taking in to account processing ability. I have an fx4100 and an hd 7950. How will that do at high grahhics settings?
    Duh, we want to know this stuff.
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    9536678 said:
    get your graphs and test setup to match:

    Radeon HD 6450 512 MB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 6670 512 MB DDR3
    Radeon HD 7770 1 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 6850 1 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 7870 2 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 7970 3 GB GDDR5

    where's the 6850 in the graphs ? There's a 6870 instead ...

    Although it's probably a typo, there's probably no need to use the 6850 as well since the 7770 should perform similar
    Reply
  • dudewitbow
    Now I wonder where some people got the idea that GW2 was nvidia favored O_o
    Reply
  • dormantreign
    You gots me wanting to buy this game......
    Reply
  • serhat359
    stingstangI'm disappointed that this neglects the post processing bar when determining if the best appearance setting is enabled when taking in to account processing ability. I have an fx4100 and an hd 7950. How will that do at high grahhics settings?Duh, we want to know this stuff.It will be cpu limited, you'll get around 35-40fps
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    Guild wars 2 min system requirements is Core 2 Duo 2.0 Geforce 7800, I would like u to test base on that too.
    Reply