With Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl finally here, reviewers have gotten a hold of the game to see just how good it is. One of the first things we noticed is that it visually looks pretty outstanding, but that comes at the price of performance. Just ahead of release, some reviewers were noting it was “not ready for launch” as a result of poor performance and bugs.

Even still, the anticipation was high, and now we can get a real understanding of how well the game runs thanks to GPU benchmarks. It looks like anyone with an Intel Arc graphics card probably isn’t going to enjoy smooth gameplay though, as even the flagship A770 is struggling.

Intel’s current flagship Arc A770 averages just below 50 FPS at 1080p, even with upscaling

According to fresh benchmarks from the German outlet ComputerBase, running Stalker 2 is going to be a struggle on even Intel’s best discrete graphics card. Namely, that’s the Intel Arc A770 – a GPU that is best utilized for 1080p, certainly in modern titles. We noted it held “strong figures in 1440p, too” in our Arc A770 review, but it seems like Stalker 2 is a tall order.

At 1080p on the Epic preset with XeSS quality enabled, the Intel Arc A770 averaged 49.2 FPS, with 1% lows of 41.6. At 1440p Epic, this changes to 41.7 FPS average and 33.4 for 1% lows. The card was not tested in 4K, in case you’re wondering.

It is worth keeping in mind that we’re talking about the Epic preset here, even if XeSS quality is utilized to boost performance via upscaling. So, better performance may be achievable with some graphics settings adjustments.

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The benchmarks above were reportedly run on the latest Intel Arc 6299 driver version released on November 19th. According to the patch notes, the game should be optimized with ‘Intel Game On Driver support’ for both Stalker 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Even Stalker 2’s devs have acknowledged there are some “rough edges,” but they are working towards rolling out hotfixes in due time.

Considering that Nvidia’s pre-launch benchmarks revealed even the RTX 4090 isn’t enough to max out Stalker 2 at native 4K 60 FPS, it doesn’t really come as a surprise to see the budget Intel cards suffering. We recommend biding your time with Stalker 2, as the game’s performance should improve over time – especially if Intel continues to roll out more driver updates. We saw a similar story with the launch of Black Ops 6, where the Intel cards underperformed at launch.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.