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.
- Guild Wars 2 Is Here. How Does It Run?
- Image Quality And Settings
- Test System And Graphics Hardware
- Benchmark Results: Best Performance Preset
- Benchmark Results: Balanced Preset
- Benchmark Results: Best Appearance Preset
- Do CPU Frequency And Core Count Matter?
- Guild Wars 2 Is Accessible, But Still Very Scalable
Great review as always! Really appreciate it
intel has moved on from their core2 line, and came out with higher preforming parts, amd has moved from athlon and phenom line to... a new architecture, i dont know if they match the old one yet or not.
but when you are doing a cpu test on a game like this where its very scaleable, it would be nice to see the core 2 dual and quad, also a phenom dual tri and quad core (from what i understand athlon and phenom for most gaming scenarios are the same) because many of us have the old dual core, and quad core cpus, and dont feel the need to upgrade because its just not nessassary for normal computer use yet.
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 ...
Anyone know? at stock speed and at 3.8 O.C....
Great review as always! Really appreciate it
Duh, we want to know this stuff.
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
It will be cpu limited, you'll get around 35-40fps
gpu wise, the gt version of the 7800 will perform about the same level as the 6450 in question. a low end core 2 duo will be on the lower end of the cpu chart.
Also DX9, are they serious? THIS IS 2012. DX10 is 6 years old. Get with it already and learn to code a game engine. Its not like this is a multi-platform game.
the 650m will perform similarish to the 7750 in question
being dx9, it allows users who still use windows XP to play without someone creating a mod or use the directx hack to force xp to run it. I mean skyrim also runs on DX9
Thats why I really hope that piledriver/steamroller pulls through.
That really makes you wander, if games/programs really know to put Bulldozer to work. I think it just sits there, idling at least 50% of processor raw power.
intel has moved on from their core2 line, and came out with higher preforming parts, amd has moved from athlon and phenom line to... a new architecture, i dont know if they match the old one yet or not.
but when you are doing a cpu test on a game like this where its very scaleable, it would be nice to see the core 2 dual and quad, also a phenom dual tri and quad core (from what i understand athlon and phenom for most gaming scenarios are the same) because many of us have the old dual core, and quad core cpus, and dont feel the need to upgrade because its just not nessassary for normal computer use yet.