Guild Wars 2

The box should write i5/i7 or GTFO, have your fun with your 10 fps with more than 5 people on screen otherwise.

Nah, C2Quad @ 3Ghz would be “Recommended”. My Q6600 playes it pretty good @ 3Ghz. Anything lower it starts getting choppy.

Cbuzz.5083:

Nah, C2Quad @ 3Ghz would be “Recommended”. My Q6600 playes it pretty good @ 3Ghz. Anything lower it starts getting choppy.

Well, i also got this kind of CPU @ 3,0 GHz. The game runs pretty well in PvE, while I´m running alone (40+ fps). But as soon as there are more then 10 people interacting in my line of sight, my frames per second drop pretty hard (<20 fps).

World vs World is kind of unplayable, because of only getting 7 fps in zerg action.

Love your title: “Minimum CPU requirements unrealistic”
Nah, it’s not the CPU dude, it’s the GPU – those minimum GPU req are pretty dumb…

The minimums for this game to actually run decent are 2+ year old technology. I hardly see an issue there. We can’t all stick with 486s running games now can we?

I pretty much always take “minimum requirements” as “it will barely play”.

I played on a laptop with an A8-3520M @ 1.6Ghz and the integrated HD 6620G for a few days. It got about 25-30fps in unpopulated areas on lowest settings, although I never changed the resolution from the highest.

I actually got pretty far with it and even though the game wasn’t very pretty, it was “playable”.

I’m sure a decent i3 could do significantly better.

Another problem I see is that people are trying to use computers near minimum settings to power rather high resolution displays. When I see the minimum requirements, I take it to mean on a resolution that would have been the current standard when those pieces of hardware came out.

It might be better if they defined a different minimum for WvWvW, since it’s such a drastic increase in resource usage. Or allowing particle effects to be reduced / turned off.

I have to agree with Ceallach, people don’t seem to understand what minimum requirements means.

It means that hardware will be able to play the game at the utmost lowest settings period. It does not mean you will be able to do everything , it does not mean you can crank the graphics to max , and it does not guarantee an “enjoyably playable” experience in all content.

7fps in large scale PvP / PvE is more playable than the game simply not running at all , so with those 7fps you have met the minimum requirements.
If you want to try and squeeze out more , then overclock your cpu and gpu , turn settings down – especially shadows , and lower the resolution.

jimmothy.1563:

I have to agree with Ceallach, people don’t seem to understand what minimum requirements means.

It means that hardware will be able to play the game at the utmost lowest settings period. It does not mean you will be able to do everything , it does not mean you can crank the graphics to max , and it does not guarantee an “enjoyably playable” experience in all content.

7fps in large scale PvP / PvE is more playable than the game simply not running at all , so with those 7fps you have met the minimum requirements.
If you want to try and squeeze out more , then overclock your cpu and gpu , turn settings down – especially shadows , and lower the resolution.

I have the same FPS on 800*600 with everything on low and shadows/reflections off and on 1080p with everything on max with shadow and reflections on max.
I work for Texas Instruments and design integrated circuits according to performance specifications. If spec says it will work with those spec then it is expected to work with those specs, not well it works but it’s not really doing what is is supposed to, or it works but gets stuck from time to time. Selling that kind of product in my line of work would end in a lawsuit. Minimum means working at 25fps with everything on lowest settings which here is not the case. I have double the minimum requirements and still have a bad gameplay.

I have an i7 2690QM 2.2GHz (3.1GHz Turbo Boost) but still cant play this game smooth on all low and native rendering, like 20-30 FPS in every area, 5 in WvWvW.

-Radeon HD6490M 1GB (DDR5)

Check my sig for details. I play a ton of WvW. I set shadows on low, FXAA off but otherwise high settings at 1920×1200.

Insane sieges are generally 15-25fps but rarely under 20fps, playable imo. Everything else varies from 35-60fps. If I’m in a PvE mood I’ll do high shadows.

My wife has the same rig except an HD 5770. At Medium settings and low shadows in PvE it is smooth (20-40fps). Insane WvW sieges may dip to 10fps but generally 15-20fps.

Lonja.1034:

jimmothy.1563:

I have to agree with Ceallach, people don’t seem to understand what minimum requirements means.

It means that hardware will be able to play the game at the utmost lowest settings period. It does not mean you will be able to do everything , it does not mean you can crank the graphics to max , and it does not guarantee an “enjoyably playable” experience in all content.

7fps in large scale PvP / PvE is more playable than the game simply not running at all , so with those 7fps you have met the minimum requirements.
If you want to try and squeeze out more , then overclock your cpu and gpu , turn settings down – especially shadows , and lower the resolution.

I have the same FPS on 800*600 with everything on low and shadows/reflections off and on 1080p with everything on max with shadow and reflections on max.
I work for Texas Instruments and design integrated circuits according to performance specifications. If spec says it will work with those spec then it is expected to work with those specs, not well it works but it’s not really doing what is is supposed to, or it works but gets stuck from time to time. Selling that kind of product in my line of work would end in a lawsuit. Minimum means working at 25fps with everything on lowest settings which here is not the case. I have double the minimum requirements and still have a bad gameplay.

/laff Minimum requirements doesn’t mean 25 fps minimum framerate. Also if you have such a good job you shouldnt have a problem buying a new computer every 4 years. You work for TI and they don’t offer a pc purchase program? Reallllllyyyy?

25fps – this is where we get disagreement over what’s “minimum”.

When I was part of the WoW community, many people stated how they were playing on 7-14fps (and WoW supports even older systems and I could get 60fps in Stormwind on high settings on the machine that gets 25 in a quiet area in GW2).

We all have different ideas of what “playable” is. I had 14fps on WoW once and it was like watching a slideshow. I don’t know how people do that, but they do.

Tbh resolution will make very little difference if you have an underpowered CPU since it is still calculating the same physics, tesselation etc. If your CPU is underpowered and you lower resolution you see little to no improvement in Fps, GPU yes will make a lot of difference lowering resolution but only if the Cpu isn’t already bottlenecking the GPU anyway.

the minimum is fair, but they should have added at least other parts like….a recommended system requirements because some people might get misled and think they can FULLY enjoy the whole game with the minimum, like WvW or huge events

Yeah, welcome to MMO land. Minimum requirements in an MMO generally equates to 15fps when questing in a quiet zone with absolute lowest settings/resolution. It has no guarantees beyond that.

Some people just want to harvest/craft and use the trading post… minimum requirements will work. It would be difficult to do the main storyline without recommended settings.

the problem is the client is not optimized that well apparantly. any quad core with a gtx560+ and 4 gigs of ram can play this game well on ultra..

but you see some systems that are more high end that do horrible, in particular AMD

an i3 with a 470 and 4 gigs of ram should be able to play fine too, but just seems this game is picky system to system

It is not graphics intensive on gpu usage.. other mmos are tougher on a gpu and mmos are not gpu intensive anyways. This game IS intensive for an mmo on the processor. Might check to see how much you have running in the background too. It is a game that can run on 2 cores, but ideally runs on 4 cores. Hyperthreading makes almost no difference on it, thus why i7 is basically showing no performance improvement over an i5

I still wonder why people compare AMD to Intel at all.

8core BD: $150
4core Ivy: $220

AMD has better performance/price. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s a low-midrange CPU. You get what you pay for.
As for laptops, what AAA game were you able to play at launch that wasn’t a console port? Not Q3, not EQ1, not WoW, not Crysis. GW2 is no different. They are and always will be a generation or two in power behind desktops. Like GOSU said, if developer’s catered to this outdated “middle-of-the-pack”, we’d still be playing WoW on pentium 4’s. 2 year old hardware is plenty good, and hardware in 2 years will be more than enough. Your PC is not a kitchen appliance.

The minimum requirement for this game isn’t unrealistic at all.
People just need to stop having unrealistic expectations of it.