Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone. My current graphics card a R9 280x is starting to make noise and sometimes goes to black screen during playing games. I want to get a card.

I can only afford either a GTX 960 or R9 380.

If anyone has these cards, could you please let me know how they perform with GW2? or which one I should get?

Also I have only used AMD cards before and I hear in guild that Nvidia cards are better for GW2. Is this correct?

GTX 960 is good enough to play GW2. Personally I have the GTX 770 which is a little better than the 960, so I assume the 960 would be able to run GW2 just fine also, since I can run GW2 and another game at the same time without any drawbacks.

I’m not very familiar with AMD cards, but the general consensus should be that AMD makes a lot of noise.

I have an AMD R9 270x and it runs GW2 very smoothly , and it isn’t noisy at all.
The R9 380x will deal with GW2 like a beast.

I have a friend in RL with a 960, it’s very nice in this game @1080. The CPU is an i7-2600.

The GPU itself is not taxed as much in GW2 as other system resources as compared to other games. You should be fine going with a consumer-level gpu. It is the cpu and ram you want to look at if you are going to expand anything as that will give you the most bang for your buck.

I have had GW2 go to black at times and it appears to be a bug somewhere. If your GPU is making noise you may want to have the GPU fan looked at. It could be as simple a fix as just using a can of air on it.

I have an R9 290 and had to use SweetFX to even start to get the card to turn on. To me the biggest difference in AMD and Nvidia is heat. Nvidia cards typically run cooler and most people will argue that they have better performance. It’s been a battle since both companies have been making GPU’s.

Guild Wars 2 just doesn’t use any GPU resources well ..uses very little.

If you’re having performance issues I’d definitely look to upgrade cpu, mobo, ram as those three will increase performance (obviously depending on what you have).

I’d use a hardware scanner and see how hard you’re actually pushing your machine and see where you can improve it.

960 is really good, and runs GW2 on full with no problems, it will give you good fps out side of big zurgs. But even in zurgs the game will be playable with between 25-35 fps depending where you are in the fight.

Captain Inzane.4756:

To me the biggest difference in AMD and Nvidia is heat. Nvidia cards typically run cooler

That 100% depends on the specific model you get. For example, reference 290xs run hot as kitten while a Tri-X one will only get to the mid 70’s or so under load.

Captain Inzane.4756:

and most people will argue that they have better performance. It’s been a battle since both companies have been making GPU’s.

That all depends on the price point, really. See what you can get in your price range, look at the benchmarks, buy what gives you higher framerates. A 960 vs a 380 will basically trade blows, so I’d personally grab a 4 GB 380; 2 GB of vram in this day in age isn’t quite enough imo and it’ll run you $180 or so vs $170 for a 960/2 GB 380.

Captain Inzane.4756:

If you’re having performance issues I’d definitely look to upgrade cpu, mobo, ram as those three will increase performance (obviously depending on what you have).

Definitely this, though upgrading your ram won’t be worth it unless you’ve got super kitten RAM (Like the 1066 MHz stuff in the computer I’m on atm; if you’ve got 1600 mhz stuff you’re not going to get much from upgrading).

I’d use a hardware scanner and see how hard you’re actually pushing your machine and see where you can improve it.[/quote]

Both gpus are good values for their prices, but coming from a 280x, it’s a tiny downgrade, specially with the 960.
Despite that, both are still more than capable of running this game. 380 is a bit more powerful, but 960 is cooler, quieter and consumes less power.
Also, Nvidia has had a lot of problems with its drivers for the past 6 months and, even it’s not as awful as before, there’s still people having some issues.

I have the r9 285 overclocked, it’s the same as the 380, and it can run the game at 1440p nearly ultra with Reshade enabled at 55-70fps and 30-35fps in zergs (everything maxed with shadows and reflections disabled, and character limit quantity to medium).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83EamUJwFFU

The 960 should perform pretty much the same.

Ansau.7326:

Both gpus are good values for their prices, but coming from a 280x, it’s a tiny downgrade, specially with the 960.
Despite that, both are still more than capable of running this game. 380 is a bit more powerful, but 960 is cooler, quieter and consumes less power.
Also, Nvidia has had a lot of problems with its drivers for the past 6 months and, even it’s not as awful as before, there’s still people having some issues.

I have the r9 285 overclocked, it’s the same as the 380, and it can run the game at 1440p nearly ultra with Reshade enabled at 55-70fps and 30-35fps in zergs (everything maxed with shadows and reflections disabled, and character limit quantity to medium).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83EamUJwFFU

The 960 should perform pretty much the same.

I have an MSI GTX960 Gaming 2GB. And I get what you get fps wise (out side of zurg play in the open world I can get over 100 fps, but that is map dependant.) with everything on max. So for me it’s a lot better, but then over the years, I’ve found GPU performance is as unique to each system it is in. Just because one person is having amazing fps, it will not ring true for everyone.