Guild Wars 2

Guys hello, pretty self-explenatory title, I am planning on getting the following spec, mostly for GW2 but also for future games to come. I would like some feedback from people that actually have this spec (or seperate components of it) on performance issues or possible bottlenecks. I suppose I would have no issue with preformance on PvE content, I mainly need feedback/comments on performance on large scale PvE/sPvP and of course WvW.

System Components
Corsair GS 800 80+ (CP-9020014-EU,80+ Bronze)
Intel Core i7 3770K (s 1155 , 3.5 GHz , 8 MB)
Gigabyte G1 Sniper M3 (s 1155 , Z77 , DDR3 )
Corsair RAM DDR3 16GB (4×4)Kit 1600MHz Vengeance Gold
MSI R7870 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC
OCZ Vertex 3 Series 240GB SSD (2.5", Sata 6Gb/s, VTX3-25SAT3-240G)

Possible overclocking on CPU is of course something I can easily do. Suggestions and/or replacement of various components are welcome. Thanks in advance.

Thanatos.5102:

System Components
Intel Core i7 3770K (s 1155 , 3.5 GHz , 8 MB)
MSI R7870 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC

I build my own gaming desktops, and always follow this rule-of-thumb:
Intel / Nvida, or AMD / ATI

Only other things are power and cooling.

Make sure you have a good PSU, and if you plan to run SLI or Crossfire at some point, the PSU needs to have adequate overhead to handle the additional GPU.

As for cooling, a well vented case and good fan positioning will let you OC.

Cheers!

bri.2359:

Thanatos.5102:

System Components
Intel Core i7 3770K (s 1155 , 3.5 GHz , 8 MB)
MSI R7870 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC

I build my own gaming desktops, and always follow this rule-of-thumb:
Intel / Nvida, or AMD / ATI

Only other things are power and cooling.

Make sure you have a good PSU, and if you plan to run SLI or Crossfire at some point, the PSU needs to have adequate overhead to handle the additional GPU.

As for cooling, a well vented case and good fan positioning will let you OC.

Cheers!

Good point on the GPUs, I will actually build this one myself too but I think that ATI is more reliable at this point. Any feedback on how it will run on large scale events?

I run an i5 (3.3GHz) with 2 GTX670’s in SLI
Been playing GW2 since game launch on full eye-candy and the first lag I had was last evening in Lion’s Arch cos of all the new activity. It was probably more of a server thing than my hardware, cos never seen this before during DE’s with lots of players and effects firing off.

Not sure if this helps …

I sugest you get a sandybridge cpu if you want to try get the most out of OC’ing.

Bassicaly the sandybridge equivalent to the 3770k is the 2700k which you can get for around £215(OEM) to £275(Retail).

Clock for clock the 3770k is better but once you reach about 4.3ghz onAir cooling the 3770k will start running into problems with OCing..it will requir more and more cooling and will likely top out around 4.5ghz on average. You could get lucky and go a few hundread mhz more.
The 2700k however can easily reach 4.5ghz on Air cooling and will likely top out at 5ghz on water cooling.

The grpahics card is on form with a 560ti which i can tell you form experiance can run PVE with max settings 1920×1080 native sampling managing 45 to 60 fps. When it comes to WvWvW it matters even less becouse focus is shifted to the CPU.

The SSD you chose ..i personaly wouldnt go OCZ v3 ..the Coraisr Performance Pro series is a good solid SSD with the Marvel controller which is much more reliable than the sandforce controller.. so maybe you should look into that.

other than that ..dont forget to buy a good CPU cooler. I sugest the noctua NH-D14 for which ever CPU u decide on.. its the top air cooler out. (but mak sure it will fit your PC case and that your RAM isnt too tall ..i beleve the corsair vengence ram is to tall so you should proabably switch to G.Skill)

I built a desktop with an Intel CPU and ATi GPU two years ago and it’s been better and more reliable than my roommate’s Intel/Nvidia, and my best friend built an AMD/Nvidia which runs great as well, also two years ago. Coming up on three now.

It’s fine to mix CPU/GPU manufacturers, plus it gives you a greater amount of things to pick and choose from. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

@ Thanatos – ATi is great, lots of bang for small bucks. I have an older 5870 and it still rips this game a new one despite being quite old, you’d do great with a 7870.

Also I’m going to second the posterguy above me, Noctua is head and shoulders above any other brand when it comes to CPU coolers.

Guys thank you all, fantastic feedback. I will wait for more answers to get even more feedback and decide from there. Small question SolarNova, everyone says (same as you) that when it comes to large scale PvP it’s the CPU that will need to handle the extra burden. Any idea how this CPU is selected would handle such a situation? Could I at least expect a playable 30-40 FPS performance?
PS. I am planning to OC but not higher than 4,2-4,3 GHz, just to be safe

Though the question was aimed at someone else, I can add that I do get at least that much FPS on my older pre-Sandy non-OC i5 in wuvwuv so it’s fair to assume you would too.

I would make a guestimate that a 4 to 4.3ghz OC would get your around 20fps fps during LARGE pvp battles (60+ people). Average(say 30 to 50 people) pvp battles would probably net you 30-40 fps.

Again these a are guestimates.

Just to give you an idea. .my cpu with its OC (check sig) managed to get me 50 fps in a battle with 30 people, roughly, bashing at a gate.

4.3ghz is probably on the edge of being what could be considered as the ‘safe’ OC for the 3770k. once you get to 4.3ghz you might find temps start to get a little toasty on Air cooling… then again you might get lucky and be able to get to 4.4ghz before temps start peaking. its all down to the’ silicone lottery’.

.

First off, Intel processors and AMD GPUs work just fine together.
So do AMD processors and Nvidia GPUs.
I’ve built them all four ways and frankly it really doesn’t matter unless you have a motherboard compatibility issue. Buy the fastest CPU and GPU you can afford or the ones you can get the best deal for. Do not worry about matching brands.

The only catch is that some motherboards do not support X-fire or SLI. The motherboard you are looking at officially supports both.

Resist the temptation to massively overpower your computer.
The 800W power supply you have listed is plenty for dual GPU systems of this generation.
As long as you aren’t planning fairly massive RAID arrays of physical disks, 800W will power even an overclocked Ivy bridge processor and dual GPU system, with a decent amount of hard disks and room to spare. Spend your money on QUALITY of power supply. I prefer Seasonic, Antec, and rebrands of either of those two. (Corsair is most often a Seasonic rebrand.)

Some notes and warnings on your intended build.

-If you are going to spend $300 on a K-series unlocked CPU, please do yourself a favor and buy a CPU cooler better than the stock one Intel ships. The Intel stock cooling is embarrassingly bad for i5 and above. If you ever plan on overclocking, or would like to actually use your CPU to its full potential even at stock clocks, at least get a $30 air cooler.
Coolermaster hyper 212 EVO is $30 with rebate and is one of the best values for all but the most serious of overclockers. It will drop your under-load temps by 20 degrees Celsius or more over the Intel stock cooling.
I completely agree on Noctua making amazing solutions… but they are 2x to 3x as expensive as the 212 EVO. I think I’d rather spend the difference between a 212 EVO and a Noctua on a step-up on the GPU.

-The Gigabyte G1 Sniper M3 is very nice, but has a couple downsides you should know about.

1) From looking at a picture, the four RAM slots are going to be fairly close to the processor. It will be difficult to get four pieces of RAM in those slots and mount a nicer CPU cooler. Note I said difficult and not impossible. It all depends on the RAM and the cooler. The Noctua is going to make this even more difficult. (unless they have a new model I haven’t seen)

2) The G1 Sniper M3 has x16 and x8 slots for x-fire or SLI, but the board is Micro ATX and thus may make dual-GPU solutions less than convenient.
The x8 slot is the bottom one and blocks the front panel connectors and USB headers if you use higher-end GPUs that have dual-slot coolers. If you do not plan on SLI/x-fire in the future, or plan on using single-slot GPUs this is a non-issue.

-I really think you should make some minor sacrifices in CPU and RAM to bump the GPU up to 7950, 660Ti or better. That 7870 you list is $260 on newegg. You can get a Sapphire 7950 for $270 with rebate on Newegg. A 660Ti would be $20 more.

You can drop $70 by just bumping down to the i5 3570K. All you lose is hyperthreading and 100MHz turbo stock, and GW2 does not seem to use more than 4 threads at once. In any case, a 7950+3570K should thrash a 7870+3770K in most games for $60 less.

As I mentioned before, 4×4GB of RAM might be impossible using that that board and a decent cooler. It also seems overkill for playing GW2. Why not bump down to 4GBx2 and not only save the hassle, but the money too. Unless you have multiple VMs open at once, or frequently run a memory-intensive program, 8GB is pretty much overkill. 16GB is double overkill for most people. You will save $30-40 in the process.

Using those two steps you save $100-$110 which might put you in the range of a 7970 or GTX670! it would be well worth your while to spend an extra $10-20 on an 8GB 3570K+7970(GTX670) over a 16GB 3770K+7870!

I play on a 8GB 4.4GHz i5 2500K and GTX560Ti (1070core/4600ram) and have absolutely no frame rate issues. I am not sure why an SLI 670 system would. All of the systems discussed here dwarf my system by a significant margin.

Thalenduros many many thanks for your detailed analysis, you guys help me a lot. I’d appreciate anyone else’s feeback too

Ok guys, after taking into mind all of your comments I made some re-arrangements, that’s the new spec:

Corsair GS 800 80+ (CP-9020014-EU,80+ Bronze)
Intel Core i7 3770K (s 1155 , 3.5 GHz , 8 MB)
Sapphire 7950 with boost (Pci Express X 16 , 3GB)
Samsung 830 Series 128GB SSD (2.5", Sata 6Gb/s)
Corsair RAM DDR3 16GB (4×4)Kit 1600MHz Vengeance C8
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H (s 1155, Z77, DDR3)
Corsair Hydro Series H60 CPU Cooler

I cut down SSD’s size and changed to Samsung instead of OCZ for better reliability and gained enough money to go from 7870 to 7970. Also changed the motherboard for an ATX model instead of the m-ATX to avoid issues with RAMs and cooler’s space, for the same money. Any comments on the cooling device from anyone?