Guild Wars 2

was wondering how this game runs off of the intel hd graphics 4400 using the i5 4210u?

i don’t need to know how bad intel hd graphics sucks just want to know how it runs.

so if you are using a laptop with the specs above please let me know asap.

thanks

something between https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNO3xNcgt1A
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yF2vHBGA3c

maybe a bit faster, in terms of fps

It should be respectable, definitely requires mostly low settings and nothing higher than 1366×768 though. What notebook are you looking at? The native resolution of the screen and the thermal management are the most important factors. A lot of these ultra-thin devices that use ULV intel chips tend to throttle more than full sized laptops, and that can limit the maximum potential of the hardware itself.

I’ve tried GW2 on an Ivy Bridge i5 3210m/HD4000 laptop, and it was playable on low settings with medium/high textures only. Smoke effects will absolutely cripple the framerate, especially if you’re stacked in a tight corridor where the smoke takes up most of the screen, but in most other situations the framerate was manageable. You can still do a little WvW/world boss farming thanks to the player model culling settings, but it won’t be smooth.

I’d say you can probably average 20-25fps when it really matters, like in a dungeon run, but you’ll see a lot of dips down to 10-12 when certain effects are happening, particularly smoke (or a 2fps slideshow if it fills the screen). I really wish they’d let us adjust the LoD of the smoke effects as that’s the number one killer of low-end machines.

Of course you’ll see like 45-50fps on occasion, but that’s when taking a leisurely stroll in a mostly empty zone, so don’t let people sway you into thinking that’s the norm. I’ve used HD4000 hardware (HD4400 is slightly better) but my CPU was stronger than the i5 4210u, and it’s playable but barely. Even my everyday use i7 2630qm Nvidia GT 555M machine chokes under smoke/zerg content (even with player model culling) on low settings.

I am looking at a Lenovo yoga 2 pro with the i5 4210u and intel hd graphics 4400 with 8 gb of ram

Yeah that’s one of those ultra thin 2-in-1’s, you should try to ask around on some tech forums or something and see if any owners report throttling while doing heavy gaming. A quick search for yoga 2 pro throttling shows a few reports of CPU throttling for the i7 version when in tablet/tent mode, but the i5 version in laptop mode may be fine, worth verifying from actual owners, though.

The screen is 3200×1800 so you definitely won’t be able to play GW2 at native res, and even 1600×900 (which would give you the best image quality since it’s a direct multiple) would probably be out of the question. On a screen that small it should look fine at 1366×768, but there will be a slight amount of stretching.

Ultra notebooks and miniUTX PC’s have crippling throttling issues. There are apps you can get to lock the fans at full tilt and CPUs at full duty cycle, but you still will want to have an 8" HP house fan under it to keep the thing from melting.

Here is a beautiful chart for mobile video card performance comparison:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

Note: The Intel HD 4400 is 286th on the list.