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High-ish settings for GW2?
Hey there! I'm curious as to how well my PC will handle GW2--I'm well aware that any information you guys can offer me is pure speculation, but I'd like to hear what you think and maybe get some advice regarding a graphics card update. I did my very first build a few months ago on a pretty tight budget (<$500), and ended up with this:
OS: Win 7 Ultimate x64
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 T Black Edition @ 3.20 Ghz
Mobo: Biostar TA870U3+
Graphics: AMD Radeon 6770
RAM: 8GB
PSU: 650W
Memory: 320 GB 7200 HD x 2
So, how do you think GW2 will play on the given specs? I'm hoping to run it on high settings as-is, and maybe max with an upgraded card. I was thinking of getting a second 6770 and using my mobos Crossfire feature, but I've heard some pretty negative things about Crossfire. Another option is replacing my 6770 with a more powerful card--maybe a 560 ti or a 6850 would be better? I've been waiting for GW2 for several years and want to have the best visual experience possible! Thanks guys!
Edit: Also, alot of people have said that the system requirements won't surpass GW by much. If I had to guess, I'd say that there will be significantly higher requirements. On my system I can run GW1, max settings, 4x AA, the works--and still be at 60 fps.
Comments
My honest opinion mate would be to wait and play the finished game. Although your gfxs card would be classed as entry level i believe it will still be able to do a job and in mmo's the biggest telling factor is ram/cpu - which you have an abundance of, and newer games should also (you would hope) scale well with multiple cores.
And most people would also suggest not going with crossfire because of the lack of support for both nvidias and amd duel card systems - and i may also hazard a guess there is a high possibility that only one of your pcie slots is 16x and the other 8x or 4x (could be wrong here) meaning you wouldnt get the fully benefits of "full" crossfire.
As far as how well your system will be able to run GW2, i would think alot on high/max just turn off aa/shadows, and you should be fine.
Watch the first video in this link from Kotaku on this past weekend's beta test. He goes over the various graphical settings a bit, though not very in-depth. Notice the PC he's using:
Beta Test System Specs Here's the basics on the machine I'm running Guild Wars 2 on:
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz
Video: Dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 570s
Memory: 6GB Kingston DDR 3
Storage: Game is running of a 128MB Samsung SSD Drive
Sound: Yes, There is Sound
There are no other players around either, and his PC takes a huge hit in FPS after only on medium settings, and he's running GTX 570s in SLi. Granted, he is running fraps, and ANet probably have some kind of diagnostics running and its still beta. Now picture how this would run in the Mists with several hundred players on screen, tons of flash bang magic, skills & abilities going off, etc etc etc...
Its probably going to take a rather beefy PC to run GW2 on maximum all-the-while maintaining a decent FPS. Just gonna have to wait until we get into beta or after launch to know for sure...
Kotaku were in the minority of people who actually experienced any sort of FPS issue. Most people ran the game just fine with fraps on without any SLI or Crossfire and still managed medium/max available while fraps was running.
I also know for a fact that some of the demo machines from one of the conventions last year that people were playing GW2 on had a GTX460 with 1080p screen.
Amd FX-8120 (8 cores) 3.1GHZ
Corsair vengance 16 gb 1600 mhz
Gtx 580 SC
i dont think i would have any problem runing it tho in wvw dont matter spec cause alwais we gonna have some low fps due to the maxive grp of person doing all sht toguether wish is basically normall in any others maxive mmo but lets see the final state of all
You should have some room to spare.
Planning on running it across 3 monitors with an i7-950 and a 7970 both quite heavily overclocked so if I can pull that off then you should be fine. I manage BF3 on this setup so I imagine GW2 would be fine as well although it probably depends on the CPU somewhat more than GW2 does but that shouldn't be an issue hopefully as I have it clocked at 4.3Ghz just now.
Also just to clarify on this, from the first reply to the OP.
'and i may also hazard a guess there is a high possibility that only one of your pcie slots is 16x and the other 8x or 4x (could be wrong here) meaning you wouldnt get the fully benefits of "full" crossfire.'
You'll only see a noticeable decrease in FPS when going down to 4x on the PCI-E bus, 8x is fine. It does of course depend on your setup somewhat (Dual GPU boards like the 6990 or 590 might see a bigger difference) but for the most part the differences are negligible.
Max settings, its and MMO bub not a full fleshed out 3d experience.
You left out the most important part - the resolution you play games at.
You'll get away with playing the game on reasonable settings at 1680x1050 for example but I wouldn't be expecting to max it at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 let alone throwing in 4x AA or something.
There will be a free weekend before launch, or you could pre purchase it to get into the beta if you want to be sure exactly how well it will run.
You might need to upgrade the GFX card if you plan to run at better than medium settings, but then again, this is just speculations. Once the NDA is lifted you can get info on what kind of card you need to max out the game if that is your intentions.
You might as well stay cool and get the right gear instead of being in a hurry. Besides, Nvidia is releasing their next gen cards any day now, it might be wise to wait and see how they perform (and affect the ATI prices for that matter).
1) Your processor doesn't exist. There is a Phenom II X4 955 and a Phenom II X4 960T, but not a 955T. Either of those should be fine, however.
2) You do not have 320 GB of memory. I'm guessing that's hard drives salvaged from an older computer. I hope they're not in RAID 0.
3) Listing "650 W" as your power supply, as though that gives any real information about the power supply, worries me. Because if you bought the cheapest "650 W" power supply you could find, then it would probably fry if you pulled 400 W from it, and start causing problems far below that. What power supply do you have, anyway?
Your processor and video card should be able to handle GW2 just fine, anyway. Not necessarily at max settings, but enough to make the game look nice. At least if something else in your computer doesn't die outright.
"Storage: Game is running of a 128MB Samsung SSD Drive"
I sure hope that means a 128 GB SSD, not 128 MB.
"Sound: Yes, There is Sound"
Great line.
"You'll only see a noticeable decrease in FPS when going down to 4x on the PCI-E bus, 8x is fine. It does of course depend on your setup somewhat (Dual GPU boards like the 6990 or 590 might see a bigger difference) but for the most part the differences are negligible."
Dependence on PCI Express bandwidth varies wildly from one game to the next. Some don't care if a card has x16 or x4 bandwidth available. Others don't like it if you restrict the card to x8.
"Edit: Also, alot of people have said that the system requirements won't surpass GW by much. If I had to guess, I'd say that there will be significantly higher requirements. On my system I can run GW1, max settings, 4x AA, the works--and still be at 60 fps."
They're almost certainly wrong. My laptop/netbook with Radeon HD 6310 integrated graphics can run GW1 smoothly at those settings, too. And that's slower than even the lowest end discrete cards that AMD or Nvidia has released in the last four generations.
ArenaNet has a pretty good track record of not requiring super high end hardware while still making their products look good.
That doesn't mean that it will MAX MAX SETTINGS on every video card out there, just that it will probably still look very good even with some settings turned down a notch or two.
All in all - wait until the game is out before you decide to spend any money. I recommend that for a lot of reasons:
* Beta is not a released product, the system requirements could change by a lot by the time the product is available (and sometimes even afterwards, the first few patches can often dramatically improve performance).
* Your system may (and probably will) run the game just fine. You may not be able to turn on every setting on MAX MAX SETTINGS, but it will probably look good regardless
* You may not like the game, and not realize it until after release (*cough* FFXIV)
* After the game is released, we'll probably see more detailed information on which hardware it likes better, and there could very well be new hardware available. New Intel CPU's are due soon, nVidia is in the middle of launching a new product line, etc.