Playing GW2 with integrated graphics?

[Gibson.4036]

Hey to all the more tech savvy people in Tyria.

My teenage son has been looking to build his own computer for a while, and has been saving up. I just ran across some articles recently talking about how some integrated graphics on CPUs are actually as strong or a little stronger than the bottom rung dedicated GPUs, and with the current GPU shortage and inflation, might be a reasonable way to build the beginning of a gaming rig with the idea of adding a dedicated GPU later when the supply bottleneck is over.

Example articles: https://www.pcgamer.com/ultra-budget-gaming-pc-build/ and https://newbcomputerbuild.com/the-best-500-gaming-pc-build-2021/

 

Minimum specs regarding GPU have always been pretty opaque to me. They always list a couple cards and say "or better", which seems like a fuzzy way of saying what the game requires.

So my question is: Would GW2 play smoothly on low settings on the integrated graphics of something like the AMD Ryzen 5? What about Path of Fire which seems to slow down computers more than Core and HoT? Or would it be better to just wait until the GPU crisis dies down?

 

 

[Orimidu.9604]

Not too well. The core game would run just fine on almost anything recent in iGPU, but the expansions make use of more modern resources. I run the game on a RX 570 8GB (which you can find pretty cheap on ebay and some other markets now) and I can get by with everything on high with d912pxy.