A Free-To-Play MMO? Neverwinter Performance, Benchmarked

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Neverwinter is a new free-to-play MMO in the Dungeons And Dragons universe, sporting an action RPG flavor. We benchmark it with a number of graphics cards and CPUs, uncovering a processor-oriented bottleneck along the way. Does your platform measure up?

Results: Medium Quality, 1920x1080

These benchmarks are generated on a Core i5-3550-based platform, allowing us to focus on the performance that different graphics cards produce. The following benchmarks are taken at the medium graphics preset with 2x AA and 16x AF, and with character detail distance dropped to 50%

All of the discrete cards we're using, except for AMD's Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 and Nvidia's GeForce GT 630 GDDR5, yield playable average performance. There's a very obvious platform bottleneck though, seeing that the Radeon HD 7790 and GeForce GTX 650 Ti yield almost identical results next to the high-end Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 680.

The Radeon HD 7750 and GeForce GTX 650 are a bit slower, though still reasonable at 34 FPS minimum.

We can see the bottleneck quite clearly looking at the frame rate over time chart.

None of these cards produce a significant frame time variance, with the results well below 15 ms.

Don Woligroski
103 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Yargnit
    Although I play on my desktop normally, I've briefly tested logging in to Neverwinter on my Ultrabook, and it is actually surprisingly playable with settings turned down.

    It's running a 3317u w/HD4000 4GB RAM on Win8 @ 1600x900 & it runs w/o issues on minimum settings (100% scale, 50% hi-res character draw distance).

    No exact numbers to report, but I can run around the main city (which with it being the central congregation point for everyone tends to be one of the laggier spots) without issues. Sure it doesn't look the best my any stretch, but it's workable without a doubt in a pinch.
    Reply
  • de5_Roy
    i can't believe it...
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/neverwinter-performance-benchmark,3495-4.html
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/neverwinter-performance-benchmark,3495-5.html
    i could believe fx8350 sinking itself to core i3 level performance (it's kinda fx8350's routine) but hd4000 significantly outperforming radeon 7660g in min., avg., and frame time variance? with dual core i5 vs quadcore a10 even...
    how would an overclocked i5 3550 or 3570k or fx6300 would fare in this game?
    Reply
  • rootheday
    well... would you look at that. Intel HD 4000 soundly beats the top AMD mobile APU
    Reply
  • silverblue
    The 4600M is horribly limiting - it's that low clock speed. I can only hope that AMD have learned their lesson and gone for a much higher clock speed for Richland's mobile derivatives.

    A good measure of how badly the 4600M is limiting performance would be to give the 5800K a run with its integrated graphics - there's a significant clock speed difference.
    Reply
  • Greg Williams
    TheCapuletI don't want a Neverwinter MMO. I want a Neverwinter Nights 3, with a proper toolset and brilliant online/modding community. That's what Neverwinter is all about. Twitch action has never been what this IP was about. Thanks again for ruining everything, WotC.
    You obviously missed where they said it is unrelated to Neverwinter Nights - different studio, totally different game. Neverwinter is merely a place in the Forgotten Realms. So bringing up 'waaaahhh, I want NWN3' is rather pointless here.
    Reply
  • Greg Williams
    Greg WilliamsYou obviously missed where they said it is unrelated to Neverwinter Nights - different studio, totally different game. Neverwinter is merely a place in the Forgotten Realms. So bringing up 'waaaahhh, I want NWN3' is rather pointless here.
    And I don't see how an MMO based on the Forgotten Realms ruins everything. Why can't you have both this AND NWN3? Just don't play this one, and play what you want... :)
    Reply
  • DarkSable
    Sure, you can use real money to buy in-game items, but you can also earn those items through by playing and trading in-game currency (Astral Diamonds) for paid currency (Zen, sold online through the game's publisher, Perfect World). This is an ideal way for a free-to-play game to operate: no restrictions on non-paying players, and everything in the cash store can be earned through play.

    I'm sorry, but this comparison is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Yes, it's easier to trade for pay-to-play content in neverwinter, but you then say that this is far better to DDO, where you can't...

    Except that you can. Playing even a little bit will give you favor with certain patrons. As you get more of this favor, you are AUTOMATICALLY given "turbine points" which is the currency you buy with money. You can earn everything in the game just by playing; sure, it'll take a little while, but I'm sure that neverwinters' solution will too.

    So don't make a claim that's completely wrong, please. The "review" parts on the game felt so biased it's not even funny.
    Reply
  • digiex
    That a lot of specs for an MMORPG.
    Reply
  • Cryio
    This joke "the price tag is free-ninety-nine" looses its importance when you realise that it accumultes to 1 dollar and therefore isn't free anymore.
    Reply
  • alidan
    wow... whats with the couboundness of this game...
    Reply