Best CPU?

Best CPU?

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Posted by: Tademait.3058

Tademait.3058

Q:

Hello. I want to build a new PC and I can’t decide which processor to choose. I’ve read that i5 6400 is great budget CPU but gets over-performed by i3 6100 in single-thread. Does GW2 uses more cores? Other choices are older i5 4460 or faster i5 6500. I’d like to pair it with either GTX950 OC or GTX 960 (maybe wait for new generation of GPU). How big will be the difference between i3 and i5 and is it worth the money?

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Posted by: revox.8273

revox.8273

first of all, i5 6400 demolishes the i3 6100 in gw2, the real price/performance king right now its the i5 6500 (costs a 10 $ more) wich i highly recomend for gw2
the diference between i5 4460 and 6500 is around 5%
as for GPU, if u dont play other games i will pick the gtx 950, but if u also play newer titles like doom for example, you should go with gtx 960. both these cards consume around 120W and you dont need a big psu. you can wait for polaris to launch at the end of this month and take a look at price/performance ratio
and of course go with at least 8 gb of ram

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Posted by: Tademait.3058

Tademait.3058

first of all, i5 6400 demolishes the i3 6100 in gw2, the real price/performance king right now its the i5 6500 (costs a 10 $ more) wich i highly recomend for gw2
the diference between i5 4460 and 6500 is around 5%
as for GPU, if u dont play other games i will pick the gtx 950, but if u also play newer titles like doom for example, you should go with gtx 960. both these cards consume around 120W and you dont need a big psu. you can wait for polaris to launch at the end of this month and take a look at price/performance ratio
and of course go with at least 8 gb of ram

Do you have personal experience? How big is the difference between the Skylake i3 and i5 and both these Skylake i5s?

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Posted by: revox.8273

revox.8273

i do build PCs for friends and sometimes customers, between those skylake i5s the diference is in ghz 2.8 for i5 6400 and 3.2 for the 6500. (kinda 10% performance gain for the 6500)
the i3 6100 does beat the i5s in core per core battle by a fair amount, but gw2 uses 3-4 phisical cores so the i5s do beat the i3s by a good chunk of performance ( like 30-35% in gw2)
my brother roks the i5 4460 in gw2 and he plays mostly on high settings at 1080p
i still use an older SB 2500 i5 and play on med to high settings (we both run with 8gb ram and gtx 750 ti )

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Posted by: Agemnon.4608

Agemnon.4608

first of all, i5 6400 demolishes the i3 6100 in gw2, the real price/performance king right now its the i5 6500 (costs a 10 $ more) wich i highly recomend for gw2
the diference between i5 4460 and 6500 is around 5%
as for GPU, if u dont play other games i will pick the gtx 950, but if u also play newer titles like doom for example, you should go with gtx 960. both these cards consume around 120W and you dont need a big psu. you can wait for polaris to launch at the end of this month and take a look at price/performance ratio
and of course go with at least 8 gb of ram

The RX 480’s are going to be out at the end of the month, though AiB cards will be out mid July since we all know blower fans underperform.

The GTX 1070 is a great card (the new Nvidia generation is out) but if you want a lower price range then the AMD 480 will have between 390 and 390x performance for $230. If you want Nvidia but don’t want to spend much on a 1070 then I’d wait for the GTX 1060’s.

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Posted by: BrotherBelial.3094

BrotherBelial.3094

I get good/great performance out of my i5 4690K. I run the game on full, and I don’t notice frame drops. I also have an GTX 960 gaming 2GB. Full specs on my sig.

i5 4690K @ 3.5Mhz|8GB HyperX Savage 1600mHz|MSI H81M-E34|MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2GB|
|Seasonic S12G 650W|Win10 Pro X64| Corsair Spec 03 Case|

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Posted by: Killface.1896

Killface.1896

Get the 6600 and the 1070 GPU and you will have solid PC for years

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Posted by: Fermi.2409

Fermi.2409

but if u also play newer titles like doom for example, you should go with gtx 960

If you’re looking at a 960 now, there’s no reason to get one over an R9 380. Waiting for an RX 480 also wouldn’t be a terrible plan. Personally I’m thinking pretty hard about getting one

As for CPUs, if you’re buying a locked one get an i5-6500. Otherwise, the best CPU for GW2 is going to be an i5-6600k OC’d as high as can you push it.

HAF 912 | i7-3770k @ 4.5 GHz | MSI GTX 1070 GAMING 8GB | Gigabyte Z77X-D3H
EGVA SuperNOVA B2 750W | 16 GB DDR3 1600 | Acer XG270HU | Win 10×64
MX Brown Quickfire XT | Commander Shaussman [AGNY]- Fort Aspenwood

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Posted by: Tademait.3058

Tademait.3058

1) I’d choose 960 over 280 becuase the difference is minimal but price difference in my country is bigger. Plus “team green” has some features like shadow play and game stream. Btw. OCed 950 is somewhat equal to 960 so that would be best now.
2) i5 6500 is the highest I’d like to go and even that is high. Don’t be like “i7 or nothing” or “buy 1070 or 1080 for futureproof”. The prices are horrible and I don’t want any GPU now. I’ll buy the 970 if it drops or RX later. Currently I am leaning towards the i3 because the difference in games is minimal and I don’t want to spend $80+ just to get some boost in GW2.

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Posted by: revox.8273

revox.8273

depends on what you rly want, amd or nvidia when it comes to r9 380 vs gtx 960, maybe go for 960 for shadowplay and lower power consumption. but when it comes to performance there is that 1-2% in favor of r9 380 in the majority of games
consider that gw2 is a CPU bound game, the better cpu u get, the greater experience, yes the oced 950 its similar to a non oced 960
if u like to pvp mostly, the i3 is perfect but if u do alot of zerg oriented content like bosses you might feel some fps drops here and there

(edited by revox.8273)

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Posted by: Rhyse.8179

Rhyse.8179

The ideal CPU will depend on what you can afford. I suggest prioritizing features and then assessing cost.

Modern games don’t usually bottleneck at the CPU, they bottleneck at the graphics card. So if you’re on a budget and can save a few bucks on the CPU, and put those bucks into a better GPU, then do that. Games are now fully mulithtreaded (they weren’t yet when I buiilt my compy) so a 4+ core is highly recomended – but overal clock speed still matters more. MMO’s are slightly different, in that they also bottleneck at the memory bus (GW2 in particular is a memory pig). So here’s what you want:

-A high clock speed (aka, a 3.2 GHZ 4-core will be better then a 2.8ghz 8-core)
-Multiple cores (4 is fine, even 2 works if money is tight. Actually, do they even make 2’s anymore?)
-The best GPU you can afford for your build. Pay attention to ram speed more then size – 2gb of DDR5 will be better then 4gb of DDR3. More threads (Nvidia and ATI use different systems, so their thread numbers can’t compare directly to each other, fyi) and higher GPU clock speed are also key.
-A mobo with a fast memory bus. Make sure it matches or exceeds your RAM.
-Faster RAM is > More ram. 4gb of of 2400mhz ram will be better then 8gb of 1600mhz. Up to a point that is. There’s no point in getting ram that faster then your MOBO can handle, or faster then your PCI bus, since it’s mainly going to be interfacing with the GPU anyway.

For reference, I built my rig about 4 years ago and it’s still going great. It only has an I3 dual-core 3.2 GHZ – and I still haven’t found any games that it chokes on. Well, not true, Kerbal Space Program brings it to it’s knees, but that’s a raw-CPU physics simulation game so that’s expected. Mainstream games are still no sweat. I have upgraded the video card regularly though. CPU is not what you should worry about – put your research time and money into a graphics card.

“I care nothing for a festering industry that wantonly refuses to
provide a service that I’m willing to purchase.” – Fortuna.7259

(edited by Rhyse.8179)

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Posted by: Decrypter.1785

Decrypter.1785

i would personally go for an i5 4590 , i did much research and this is sick for gaming , buy n thank me later

[WM]give us in game ladder

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Posted by: stephanie wise.7841

stephanie wise.7841

I would say go with i7 3.2ghz+, turbo mode(intel feature overclocking) up to 3.9 ghz official will go the extra mile to 4.2 ghz if needed unofficial. take one that can be overclocked(k model) if you need to do some over clocking. not recommended to overclock over 4.2ghz since cpu start to fry and you reduce the life of the cpu. you also need water cooling to overclock extra cost, if something fail in the water cooling unit and you have a leak, water and electric component not good idea. probably better with intel chip since they are better in calculation then amd, amd a little faster then intel since amd usely make their component linking alittle shorter, but since intel does the math better in comparison it is like the choice between a calculator this is better at doing the math or one that is faster at making the calculation happen, since the end result is what is important you are probably better with a intel cpu,

also i7 comes with hd graphic on the cpu. and direct x 12 will have some performance option that utilize that in the future(have to be put in the game). to use all your gpu power on board.

as for graphic card take one that is capable of dx 12 that is good enough to play gw2. I would not suggest to go crazy in the gpu part since new model of gpu will come out for tier 2 and tier 3 of direct x 12 in the future. so it might not be the best time to invest in gpu. new graphic card will offer new feature for performance. so right now take a dx 12 compatible card.

one thing to consider always when building or getting a pc is that the slowest component in the system is always the hard drive. and the system always run at the speed of the slowest component so that is where you should invest if you want performance. think about ssd they are pretty cheap now have good performance and team it up with a big hard drive hybrid mode. will give you extra performance.

take a 256 gb ssd or more and 1 tb hd or more.

also take a 64 bit system. you can add more memory 32 bit is limited to 3.5gb.

32 bit will probably go away in the near future. if you look in the past it was 8 bit 16bit 32 bit and now 64 bit.

for memory the more the better. also consider that gpu that do not have their own memory reserve 45% of the ram memory to make graphic. the operating system also have a percentage reserve for it to work. and each program or process on your system will use some memory. I would say 8gb as minimum for more performance 16 gb for mid to high performance 32 gb for high performance 64 gb. any more then that right now is for business system that have more then one cpu on board .

(edited by stephanie wise.7841)

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Posted by: Julius Seizure.4985

Julius Seizure.4985

I am going to let you in on a little secret. A Haswell CPU with higher single core clock speed will outperform most current Skylake models for this game.

Is it a better CPU overall for gaming? No.

Is such a Haswell product better for GW2 specifically? Yes.

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Posted by: stephanie wise.7841

stephanie wise.7841

Hello. I want to build a new PC and I can’t decide which processor to choose. I’ve read that i5 6400 is great budget CPU but gets over-performed by i3 6100 in single-thread. Does GW2 uses more cores? Other choices are older i5 4460 or faster i5 6500. I’d like to pair it with either GTX950 OC or GTX 960 (maybe wait for new generation of GPU). How big will be the difference between i3 and i5 and is it worth the money?

nope at the moment gw2 use only one core it is still using dx 9 high level api and suffer from cpu bound issue. dx 12 will solve that issue but gw2 will need to optimize the game for it. not done yet. that means that when there is to many graphic at the same time the game data is idle on the cpu it is waiting for the api and driver that also use the cpu to solve the game data validation and hazard before it is sent to the gpu. so the cpu go very high in usage and the gpu is waiting for the data.

dx 12 solve this by removing the abstraction layer so the game dev can write and validate and solve the hazard before it goes to the cpu. so that the data will not wait idle on the cpu and will go strait to the gpu. dx 12 also make multiple core communication cpu to gpu possible.

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Posted by: Healix.5819

Healix.5819

If you want to play on high settings, 3 cores are required to enable high-res textures.

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Posted by: Ansau.7326

Ansau.7326

To OP, the best cpu out of your option is either the i5 6400 or 6500. The second is about 10% and if the extra price is less than that choose it, if not then the 6400 will be quite good.
Despite having higher single core performance, the i3 6100 has only 2 cores which are short for a game such cpu intensive as gw2.
About the gpu, a GTX 950 is more than enough for Gw2 at 1080p.

I am going to let you in on a little secret. A Haswell CPU with higher single core clock speed will outperform most current Skylake models for this game.

Is it a better CPU overall for gaming? No.

Is such a Haswell product better for GW2 specifically? Yes.

Sorry but that’s nonsense. There is not a single theoretical reason to say Haswel is better than Skylake.

Skylake has better IPC, faster cache and access to ddr4 which brings higher bandwidth.

And it has been proven Skylake is quite better than Haswell at gaming in cpu intensive scenarios.

Ansau – Sylvari Mesmer – Exiled Warriors [wE] – Gandara

i7 5775c @ 4.1GHz – 12GB RAM @ 2400MHz – RX 480 @ 1390/2140MHz

(edited by Ansau.7326)

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Posted by: Julius Seizure.4985

Julius Seizure.4985

To OP, the best cpu out of your option is either the i5 6400 or 6500. The second is about 10% and if the extra price is less than that choose it, if not then the 6400 will be quite good.
Despite having higher single core performance, the i3 6100 has only 2 cores which are short for a game such cpu intensive as gw2.
About the gpu, a GTX 950 is more than enough for Gw2 at 1080p.

I am going to let you in on a little secret. A Haswell CPU with higher single core clock speed will outperform most current Skylake models for this game.

Is it a better CPU overall for gaming? No.

Is such a Haswell product better for GW2 specifically? Yes.

Sorry but that’s nonsense. There is not a single theoretical reason to say Haswel is better than Skylake.

Skylake has better IPC, faster cache and access to ddr4 which brings higher bandwidth.

And it has been proven Skylake is quite better than Haswell at gaming in cpu intensive scenarios.

Wrong. A cheaper Haswell processor with a higher single core clock speed will almost always outperform a Skylake model with more cores but lower single core speed for GW2 specifically— and be cheaper too. I never said Haswell was overall better than Skylake, all I did was specify that it is currently a better CPU option for this game specifically, mainly due to granting much higher single core performance for dollar spent.

DX9 vs DX12 gaming. Thus why I wrote what I did.

But what if the models have the same single core clock speed? Well then, yes, by all means purchase the more expensive Skylake model if you wish. It is the superior product for the future of gaming, but not specifically for GW2 as it currently runs.

OP— the question between i3 and i5 depends on how much PC gaming you do beyond GW2. If all you really play is GW2, then I would probably just go with the i3 and save money for an i7 down the road. If you play a lot of PC games currently, and specifically newer titles, then go with the i5 as it is better for them.

(edited by Julius Seizure.4985)

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Posted by: Ansau.7326

Ansau.7326

You think that higher clock makes Haswell better, but the thing is the differences are just 100MHz in favor of Haswell, but it is negated by the higher IPC from Skylake.

But there’s a much more impactful thing: Skylake cache outperforms Haswell no matter what, and memory is a key factor in cpu intensive games.
That’s why both Broadwell and Skylake don’t need to be clocked as high as Haswell to get the same performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMUPZn3z5h4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9XndYYHYlA

Ansau – Sylvari Mesmer – Exiled Warriors [wE] – Gandara

i7 5775c @ 4.1GHz – 12GB RAM @ 2400MHz – RX 480 @ 1390/2140MHz

(edited by Ansau.7326)

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

The game uses multiple cores but, like all software, becomes capped at the speed one thread can execute so instructions per second is important. On the other hand there are enough threads to keep more than two physical cores busy so a true quad core like the i5 is better than an i3 with it’s two physical cores but four logical cores because of hyperthreading.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

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Posted by: lilypop.7819

lilypop.7819

OP: My 2 cents …

As it’s a new PC and expected to last say five years, you should go for a four core. Almost a no brainer really as newer games will increasingly not run on two cores over a five year period.

Imo, the best value Intel CPU atm are the 4th gen ones. There has indeed been improvements in intel cores but I am not that sure the price differences are merited for those improvements. Raw performance improvements have been on the scale of 5 to 15% whereas the price differences can be up to 50%.

Would most definitely wait for the RX 480/470/460 etc.

For what it’s worth, my own intentions are to buy a RX 460 and pair it with a Athlon X4 860 and/or a RX470 to pair with a i5 4770. I am pretty confident that the latter will saturate out GW2’s performance and graphics, the former is a little iffy but possible. The differences between these two for DirectX 9.0c/GW2 are likely to be minor when playing actually playing, imo.

(edited by lilypop.7819)

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Posted by: Fermi.2409

Fermi.2409

For what it’s worth, my own intentions are to buy a RX 460 and pair it with a Athlon X4 860 and/or a RX470 to pair with a i5 4770. I am pretty confident that the latter will saturate out GW2’s performance and graphics, the former is a little iffy but possible. The differences between these two for DirectX 9.0c/GW2 are likely to be minor when playing actually playing, imo.

A 470+i5 build would destroy an Athlon+460 build for this game. A 460+i5 build would destroy an athlon+460 build for this game. As long as you have a competent GPU, in populated scenarios your CPU is going to bottleneck you incredibly hard.

In the open world your GPU will matter more, but a 7850 can run the open world on high settings+sweetfx@1080P/45FPS so the required hardware there is pretty low-level

HAF 912 | i7-3770k @ 4.5 GHz | MSI GTX 1070 GAMING 8GB | Gigabyte Z77X-D3H
EGVA SuperNOVA B2 750W | 16 GB DDR3 1600 | Acer XG270HU | Win 10×64
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Posted by: lilypop.7819

lilypop.7819

I am not so sure.

I currently run GW2 with these processors and common R7 260x GPUs. The old DirectX9.0c benchmark I ran has the i5 and Athlon systems at 24K and 19K respectively, BUT there is little subjective difference whilst playing. I have no problem switching between the systems, which I do depending on the day of the week.

Both processors are clearly bottlenecking with the 260x playing GW2 (setting are as defaulted by the game, but I think I turned shadows off on the Athlon, char limit is medium, fps are 30 to 50, a variation that is not noticeable). But the un-utilised capacity on the 260x is of the order of 15 to 20% so the bottlenecking is of no concern – it’s just not worth to me to go for more powerful processors, I’m very happy for the game quality.

So I don’t think changing to RX 460/470 GPUs is going to do much more than increase the spare capacity with GW2. BUT I will be keeping an eye out for any Direct12 GW2-like game that comes along something I wouldn’t consider possible at present.

Interestingly I have just spend £40 on six/seven highly rated games via Steam’s Summer sale, – Dead Souls I, Brothers, Empire of Ages II/III, Icewind Dale, Grim Flamdango and Oath of Eternity – only the later appears to be non-DirectX9.0c.

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Posted by: stephanie wise.7841

stephanie wise.7841

The game uses multiple cores but, like all software, becomes capped at the speed one thread can execute so instructions per second is important. On the other hand there are enough threads to keep more than two physical cores busy so a true quad core like the i5 is better than an i3 with it’s two physical cores but four logical cores because of hyperthreading.

how can the game utilize multiple core if the game engine use only one core and dx 9 use only 1 core?

also agree use quad core. it will be worth it, for other games and stuff.

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

The game has multiple threads therefore it runs on multiple cores. However whatever thread takes longest to run in a fixed amount of time becomes the limiting factor and that is tied to the core’s performance.

Even Dx11 is limited to a single core once you are down at the driver’s kernel level code. That is one of the major differences in Dx12 over Dx11, it moves a lot of that code out to the user level of the driver which can run on multiple cores, assuming the calls to the driver occur across multiple threads.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

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Posted by: stephanie wise.7841

stephanie wise.7841

The game has multiple threads therefore it runs on multiple cores. However whatever thread takes longest to run in a fixed amount of time becomes the limiting factor and that is tied to the core’s performance.

Even Dx11 is limited to a single core once you are down at the driver’s kernel level code. That is one of the major differences in Dx12 over Dx11, it moves a lot of that code out to the user level of the driver which can run on multiple cores, assuming the calls to the driver occur across multiple threads.

multiple thread was out even on single core. the processor was making a fast process switching so that it appears to be running in parallel(illusion). it is not because it as multiple thread that it is using multiple core.

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Yes but on a multicore system, the OS will schedule threads across all available cores. And since the game engine requires two cores, single core systems aren’t even an issue.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

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Posted by: sirsquishy.2619

sirsquishy.2619

Just to physically show how multi-threaded GW2 is, this is my task manager before and after GW2 was launched with my character entering Combat. Mind you this is an i7-QM with 4 cores/8threads.

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

To pummel home the point, here’s what Process Explorer is saying about it. Note the thread list shows total CPU . Because I’m running on a 4 core/4 thread system, no thread can exceed 25.

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Posted by: stephanie wise.7841

stephanie wise.7841

Just to physically show how multi-threaded GW2 is, this is my task manager before and after GW2 was launched with my character entering Combat. Mind you this is an i7-QM with 4 cores/8threads.

where is the before and the after? you have only 1 image.

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Posted by: stephanie wise.7841

stephanie wise.7841

To pummel home the point, here’s what Process Explorer is saying about it. Note the thread list shows total CPU . Because I’m running on a 4 core/4 thread system, no thread can exceed 25.

yes it also say run better on 2 core. since it use the same engine that gw1 was using on windows xp that use 1 core thread and one hyper thread. one extra logical processor it is still the main core that does the job. even if you get 2 logical processor representation.

you can read about hyper threading to learn more between 2 core and 1 core with hyper threading and what is the difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading

on less I am mistaking and they modified the engine to use 2 real core and 2 extra hyper- thread.(dual core) but in that case I think it would say that it work better on 4 core or 4 logical processor. not to confuse with quad core that use 4 core and 4 extra thread, making 8 logical processor when you view it in the task manager.

one thing is sure is that if it use direct x 9 it use only one core thread to send the graphic job to the gpu.

from what I can recall of hyper thread it use ram memory to create a virtual logical processor to processe extra data. then you need more memory to have more core. probably why system today that have 4 core and 4 extra thread have 8 gb of ram or more. also the need for the 64 bits to have more then 4 gb of memory. the more task and process are running the more memory you need.

So having more core and more memory gives advantage even if the game use only 1 core since the other task and process can be split on the other cores even if the game use only one core. free up the traffic on the core that the game use.

(edited by stephanie wise.7841)

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Posted by: sirsquishy.2619

sirsquishy.2619

Just to physically show how multi-threaded GW2 is, this is my task manager before and after GW2 was launched with my character entering Combat. Mind you this is an i7-QM with 4 cores/8threads.

where is the before and the after? you have only 1 image.

It’s in the same image, you can see the Lull and then the Spike when GW2 was launched. Just look at the image.

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Posted by: lilypop.7819

lilypop.7819

Ah but you have to understand what your looking at!

First off four logical cores are moreorless worthless to GW2. That’s not to say work is not being done, it is, but that work is not utilised with respect to GW2. At best HT Technolgy can only yield around 20 to 30% of the worth of having real physical cores. As such the images above presents an illusion of 8 cores when in fact in terms of efficiency you can only gain the equivalent of one additional physical core (and only under certain circumstances).

The second illusion is a bit subtle. Suppose a 4 physical core processor had only 1 thread composed of 100 links – which have to be executed in a fixed sequential order. The extremes of choice would be to execute the whole thread on one core, giving it 100% loading and the others 0%, or flick the links across the four cores – in sequence – to give all cores 25% loading – over the time frame of the execution of the whole thread. The core loadings may be different but each method would take the same time!

Designers do the latter to balance thermals across the whole processor die.

Looking at an image of this thermal load balancing would give the viewer the illusion that four threads were being executed whereas only one is deployed.

At an extreme your image could have been achieved by a single thread!

FWIW: I believe that in going from 2 to 4 physical cores you gain around 10 to 15% in processor performance with respect of GW2 with no GPU bottleneck. Essentially GW2 is single thread dominant but with sufficient additional asynchronous minor threads to more than double-up on the processor loading of the dominant thread – should there be provision available to do so.