Im looking at getting a surface pro 4 or an HP spectre x360 both of which come with the Intel HD Graphics 520 chip - does anyone know if Guru will run with this; all other min specs are met.
I am looking to be able to step away from the office and continue using GG in the garden.

I don't know, but if Intel Graphics cards are based on numerical values, I'd guess not, but if it has USB 3.0, you could probably benefit from a graphics amplifier. Of course, that would add a couple hundred onto you price tag, plus the cost of the video card of your choice.


EDIT: I just looked it up and the numbers don't mean jack. The 520 is actually better than the HD 6000. It would work, but I wouldn't expect amazing performance. It is integrated graphics, after all.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/212251

Thanks for the prompt reply JT - a graphics amplifier would defeat the object of the portability - I would just like to take my designing outside or in the conservatory from time to time.

According to the Intel website this graphics chip it can play Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on low settings which has a min spec of Geforce 650 so im thinking we should be good

Unfortunately, GG doesn't work the same as graphics heavy games! It pales in performance. Many folks around here complain that their rigs play games like that without breaking a sweat, but GG just crawls along. I'd wait for some more folks to chime in here with their experiences before jumping on that computer. I just looked up the 520 on passmark, and it rates pretty low- 765.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+520


Yeah, I know the graphics amplifier takes away the portability aspect, but perhaps you could do design work only on the go?

I have a Lenovo Flex 3 laptop with an Intel 520 graphics chip. I run GameGuru on it. I haven't had any problems running the editor. I haven't had any huge levels loaded. All the examples work ok. When I test them they only run at 20 - 30 fps with the default settings. Not great, but playable enough to check things out.

I've ran Guru through two laptops since the FPSCReloaded stage - both are high end Dell's with nvidia cards and Ram maxed out (32). Machines that to this day can run fallout4 (mid to low settings depending on which machine we are talking about) but sadly I could not develop properly with Guru. Too many crashes and slowdown to a crawl. Hours of work lost because of memory fragmentation and other evils. Even with the nvidia card Guru would always default back to the built in intel chip (not sure if that has been fixed).

Granted that Guru's performance has improved tenfold since the early stages but even so a heavily populated a map will slow big desktop down. Long story short, when I was due for an upgrade I reverted to a desktop for the first time in almost 12 years. Never looked back. Downside is that I can not develop while traveling, which I do a considerable amount of professionally, but I do not regret the trade off. Hope this gives you some insight. Good luck.

I've not seen a laptop run GG well ever to date. Granted I haven't seen a truly modern device running it but generally, considering the many times Lee has mentioned it's been aimed at low end users with laptops (when talking about optimisation) laptops just aren't up to the task. Again another reason the performance needs improving.

I tested my New Beginnings Project on one the other day, (an I3 with on-board video) suffice to say it ran badly, slideshow levels. After lowering everything to lowest and reducing texture sizes it ran a lot better but looked pretty awful and still wasn't running fast enough, causing all sorts of timing issues with my sounds and anims. I'm using timers in several areas, but when things get that slow it causes chaos. On my desktop I get rates of between 35 at lowest to 99 at best, averaging above 60 mostly. As you can see from the specs listed in my signature it's not a top end system by any means, but I've yet to see a laptop better it. If you do go for a laptop, make sure it is the fastest you can afford (plenty of ram and of course a decent CPU and GPU).

I`m running into the same dilema, plane to buy my desktop next month.
Currently running Lenovo laptop (specs in my sig), plus Intel HD graphics, honestly with minimus setting in metrics (tab tab), I'm getting just 16/20 fps with just a house in the map.

I'm working in a huge pack, and doing a level to test items, and as showcase, but I had reached a point where I can't play my level, so I can't test my items; sumarizing, I'm willing to wait my desktop, plus nvidia gtx card, plus a good video card, plus a least 16 gb ram, and so on.

Always has the doubt about Intel card, it is too bad for GG because the card, or because GG doesn't giving the nedded support to that card?

The last opt would seen odd to me, giving the fact than Lee worked with Intel, I though.

3com

To be honest, you'll have the same performance running GG on a potato.

@ 3com. Have you tried lowering the texture size in the setup ini? Change the dividetexturesize=1 to a larger number to half the texture size each time. I had decent results on that laptop I mentioned afterwards, it just looked bad. For testing though would probably suffice.

It will run, it runs on my old laptop from 2008. But not very good.

On my PC:
Everything is on highes settings in this games:
Game Guru Morning Mountain Stroll: 30 FPS and empty map 68 FPS
Rainbow Six Siege: 144 FPS
Black Ops 3: 127 FPS
Battlefield 4: 162 FPS

I would say, NO, you surface is not ready for GG.

Our LowEnd Test device is currently an i5 powered laptop running at 2.4GHZ with 16 Gigs of RAM and a Radeon 6850M. And there are very few GG maps that run on 25fps in high quality on this one. 40 fps max on lowest.

So you are that much out of the hardware comfort zone that it doesn't make any sense.

@ DVader
Thanks mate for the tip.
Doesn't mind in "dividetexturesize=1", I'll give a try next weekend.

Anyway with my desktop I'll be more productive (I hope so), even can be beta-tester and help the community, even myself of course.

3com