Guild Wars 2

i like how all benchmarks are useless when it comes to Guild Wars 2

however, my christmas wish:

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti Windforce 2X

quite powerful, and very low in price, therefore, i am able to get a second one to SLI up with in the future

i’m wondering why my current older, slower card, a GTX580 is still priced twice as much as a GTX650

3. A push-me, pull-me case fan setup is best. You need to pull air in to the front of your pc and push it out the back. Make sure that there is a fan behind your PCI bus or video cards and one in front of your hard drives.

Sorry this is a myth; in fact without specific load balance this results in serious inefficiencies. Speak to a mechanical engineer or better yet, to a millwright who has to actually deal with these things daily (on a much larger scale). There are reasons a dual setup can be an improvement in some cases but it has nothing to do with being superior to a proper single discharge setup, only because it may improve over a poorly designed setup, that is all.

RollingBob.8502:

3. A push-me, pull-me case fan setup is best. You need to pull air in to the front of your pc and push it out the back. Make sure that there is a fan behind your PCI bus or video cards and one in front of your hard drives.

Sorry this is a myth; in fact without specific load balance this results in serious inefficiencies. Speak to a mechanical engineer or better yet, to a millwright who has to actually deal with these things daily (on a much larger scale). There are reasons a dual setup can be an improvement in some cases but it has nothing to do with being superior to a proper single discharge setup, only because it may improve over a poorly designed setup, that is all.

highly depends on the case/cooler/other fans/other components location how to setup your fan for the best cooling
for example:
i got a big CPU cooler with 2 fans on each side (blows air OUT behind and suck air IN at the front), 1 fan at the ceiling (blows air OUT) and one at the bottom of the tower (blows air OUT)
i have a sprocketed big tower…nice for cooling purposes but it just draws dust in like a magnet

sure, my CPU is roughly 1~2°C more warm as it would if I’d had the front fan of my CPU cooler set to blow the air out, but then my NB and RAM temps would go significantly higher
it’s about the temps and lifespan of my complete system…a PC doesn’t just revolve around the CPU

i like how the air flows out of every side of my big-tower

so depending on your overall sytem, apply a little bit logic to the fan setup, monitor your temps and trial ’n error around if you know about the risks of messing with the insides of a computer

RollingBob.8502:

Sorry this is a myth; in fact without specific load balance this results in serious inefficiencies. Speak to a mechanical engineer or better yet, to a millwright who has to actually deal with these things daily (on a much larger scale). There are reasons a dual setup can be an improvement in some cases but it has nothing to do with being superior to a proper single discharge setup, only because it may improve over a poorly designed setup, that is all.

You do make a good point but I think that every fan slot should be filled with carefully chosen fans in a high end gaming PC.

In fact, the Alienware Command center and Active Thermal cooling provides configurable load balancing controls. There are configurable curves for each fan that are on a graph that has fan speed on one axis and PCI Fan or Hard Drive fan on the other. The curve can be changed by dragging a portion of it for less or more agressive cooling. There is also an interface where the fans can be hard-wired to a specific speed. I use the curve setup so my fan speeds vary between about 15% and 50% depending on load or temperature. I have two curve setups saved, one with more aggressive cooling on an actual curve, the other with linear cooling on a straight line. I use the more agressive cooling with Guild Wars 2 and PlanetSide 2. The fans are synchronized so they both increase or decrease speed at the same time at the same rate depending on temperature.

I had serious heat issues before I started using the Alienware Active thermal cooling. Remember that I am not using the factory video cards. There is a plastic wind tunnel or cover that vectors extra cooling from the hard drive fan directly onto the video cards.

wauwi.9162:

i like how all benchmarks are useless when it comes to Guild Wars 2

however, my christmas wish:

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti Windforce 2X

quite powerful, and very low in price, therefore, i am able to get a second one to SLI up with in the future

i’m wondering why my current older, slower card, a GTX580 is still priced twice as much as a GTX650

3DMark11 scores are a good relative measure of performance. They do not necessarily predict MMO performance because they do not also measure cpu usage by audio devices, the effect of voice chat or network throughput and processing on performance.

There is some truth in this statement. I have noticed that the more CPU and GPU horsepower I give GW2, the more it takes. GW2 scales itself up to your setup unless you manually change your settings. Is this a good or bad thing? You decide.

More benchmark results, this time with my CPU turbo-boost overclocked to 4.1 GHz (overclock on demand, not full time overclock).

P13466: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5063246

X4955: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5063331

Note that the Xtreme score actually went down slightly but the Physics score went way up. The physics score is essentially a cpu benchmark. Yes, it does include physics processing on the GPU but physics is very cpu intensive.

Regarding airflow and fans, it is nice that people put some thought into the issue and don’t just buy the party line, which I often see as misinformed. It sounds like most of you are putting some thought into the subject, so let me leave you with a thought experiment just to test your own preconceptions:

You have a tube about 6 3/4" ID and about 10 feet long, total internal volume 10 cubic feet.

Take a 6" fan with housing that fits the end well. Apply it to one end of your tube. The fan discharges the air out of the tube at the rate of 1000 cubic feet per minute (CFM).

question 1, to see if you follow; how many times does the tube have its internal volume of air replaced? Answer: 100 times per minute. Easy peasy.

Now we turn the screwplate around and instead of evacuating the tube we are charging the tube. That means extra air blows out of the other end. Same question, at 1000 CFM how many times per minute does the tube volume get replaced? Still easy peasy, the answer is 100 times per minute. It doesn’t matter if the fan charges or discharges, the tube has to flow 1000 CFM if the fan flows 1000 CFM.

Okay, test your preconcieved notions: we put a fan on each end, both identical 1000CFM flow, one charges the tube and one discharges. How many times does the tube volume get replaced per minute in this case?

A: 100 times
B: 200 times
C: 100000 times

If you think it is anything other than A, please rethink and if still sure about your answer please post your reasoning (I am assuming simplified classroom physics here so please don’t try and obfuscate the lesson with minor variances due to non-ideal circumstances).

RollingBob.8502:

Regarding airflow and fans, it is nice that people put some thought into the issue and don’t just buy the party line, which I often see as misinformed. It sounds like most of you are putting some thought into the subject, so let me leave you with a thought experiment just to test your own preconceptions:

You have a tube about 6 3/4" ID and about 10 feet long, total internal volume 10 cubic feet.

Take a 6" fan with housing that fits the end well. Apply it to one end of your tube. The fan discharges the air out of the tube at the rate of 1000 cubic feet per minute (CFM).

question 1, to see if you follow; how many times does the tube have its internal volume of air replaced? Answer: 100 times per minute. Easy peasy.

Now we turn the screwplate around and instead of evacuating the tube we are charging the tube. That means extra air blows out of the other end. Same question, at 1000 CFM how many times per minute does the tube volume get replaced? Still easy peasy, the answer is 100 times per minute. It doesn’t matter if the fan charges or discharges, the tube has to flow 1000 CFM if the fan flows 1000 CFM.

Okay, test your preconcieved notions: we put a fan on each end, both identical 1000CFM flow, one charges the tube and one discharges. How many times does the tube volume get replaced per minute in this case?

A: 100 times
B: 200 times
C: 100000 times

If you think it is anything other than A, please rethink and if still sure about your answer please post your reasoning (I am assuming simplified classroom physics here so please don’t try and obfuscate the lesson with minor variances due to non-ideal circumstances).

Interesting post. Lets get started:

The volume of a cylinder is

V = PI*(Radius**2)*height

V=PI*(6.75**2)*10*12

CFM = V/1000CFM

From what I see it is a marketing piece for alienware.

Which, I just have to throw in this plug, AW laptops are some of the few that offer firewire outside of the convoluted MAC universe and musicians often snatch them up used just because of this. But that is a musician topic and not a GW topic, really if I were building a game rig I would go with mid-range and nail the price/performance rather than try for the absolute best FPS benchmark I could find.

I am running dual Asus GTX 560 Ti cards in SLI with factory overclock, nVidia driver beta version 306.97, i7-920 rev C (the first batch of i7-920s off the assembly line, they don’t overclock quite as well as the D and later revs) manually overclocked to 3.5GHz., Corsair V8 CPU air cooler, American Power 750 watt power supply, 12GB of DDR3/1600 ram overclocked manually to 1675 at 9-9-9-27-2, Gigabyte X-58-UD5 motherboard with Bios rev 12, in an Antec 1200 case with 2 extra 120mm fans aimed at GPUs, all fans running on full. Windows 7 SP1 on a Patriot 120 GB SSD as well as GW2. Various other HDs.

This is by no means a new system, the newest items being the video cards at 1 year old.

Game is running with no problems, responds quickly and frame rate at a minimum of 50FPS. CPU usage and temp (30 C/86 F) fairly low and GPU temps of 60 C and 40 C respectively. 560Tis rated at 105 degrees C.

Enthusiasts build and manually overclock their machines, they don’t buy them pre-built. Power users do it either way, their is a distinction.

There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who know binary and those who don’t.

There is a new Nvidia Driver out, that was flagged by Nvidia update, 310.70. I downloaded and installed it on my M14x and got a significant 3DMark11 boost. However, the driver is not available on the Nvidia website. Here is the benchmark result

P2466: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5137329

If anyone has any more info on this new driver please share it with us.

driver version 310.70BETA is still (again?) available on at the nvidia homepage

no noticeable performance changes in any of my games except a little bit smoother gameplay in some “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” custom storys

not a big fan of benchmarks…they never ensure the shown performance when actually launching applications/games

according to some benchmarks, my computer would be powerful enough to run a space cannon (big laser used for pyrotechnic shows)

most benchmark tools just focus on one component (at a time), which is the problem imo

the best benchmark is to use your computer normally and decide yourself how well it performs

oh and that site that Samaul linked said his installed driver is not approved, because 310.70 is a BETA driver

wauwi.9162:

driver version 310.70BETA is still (again?) available on at the nvidia homepage

no noticeable performance changes in any of my games except a little bit smoother gameplay in some “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” custom storys

not a big fan of benchmarks…they never ensure the shown performance when actually launching applications/games

according to some benchmarks, my computer would be powerful enough to run a space cannon (big laser used for pyrotechnic shows)

most benchmark tools just focus on one component (at a time), which is the problem imo

the best benchmark is to use your computer normally and decide yourself how well it performs

oh and that site that Samaul linked said his installed driver is not approved, because 310.70 is a BETA driver

The 310.70 Mobile driver is out, the desktop one is still in beta.

I am still waiting for the 310.70 desktop driver. Has anyone tried the beta version?

Just for the record…

My rig: NF780i, 8GB PC6400, 1kW PSU

QX6700 stock 2.66ghz
GTX470 SLI stock 610, 1674mhz

Average fps w graphics maxed out with a few players fighting event mobs inside a small town populated with npcs: 19fps

QX6700 oc’d to 3.6ghz
GTX470 SLI oc’d to 810, 1910mhz

Average fps w graphics maxed out with a few players fighting event mobs inside a small town populated with npcs: 23fps

This game crushed my heart.

There is a new Nvidia driver out, 610.37

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/54625

I am trying it out tonight.

GunAngel.7415:

Just for the record…

My rig: NF780i, 8GB PC6400, 1kW PSU

QX6700 stock 2.66ghz
GTX470 SLI stock 610, 1674mhz

Average fps w graphics maxed out with a few players fighting event mobs inside a small town populated with npcs: 19fps

QX6700 oc’d to 3.6ghz
GTX470 SLI oc’d to 810, 1910mhz

Average fps w graphics maxed out with a few players fighting event mobs inside a small town populated with npcs: 23fps

This game crushed my heart.

Try autodetecting settings in game. Hopefully that will lower your settings.

Don’t remember if I have posted in this thread before, but here is my rig:

Asus G74SX-DH72
Intel i7-2670QM 2.20GHZ Quadcore 8 CPUs
GTX 560m 3GB
16 GB RAM
etc. etc. etc.

Is SLI or CF going to give you more “performance” than using a single card? It depends.

The two overall objectives to adding an additional GPU is to increase performance and to a lesser extent lower the single GPU load (less noise from cooling fans).

In a “perfect world” where your game/application is purely GPU limited the best case example of adding an additional card will double your performance: IE: Single card = %100ut/60FPS, Dual card = 2x%100ut/120FPS.

In a “perfect world” where your game/application is purely CPU limited best case example of adding an additional card will perfectly split the GPU load between the two cards: IE: Single card = %100ut/60FPS, Dual card = 2x%50ut/60FPS.

The #1 thing to remember is that we don’t live in a perfect world. Adding an additional card rarely (if ever) gives you %100 more performance or perfectly split the GPU load. (without any additional overhead)

So what does using a SLI rig with GW2 buy me? Mostly a quieter game box. With a single 570 I was getting ~80-100% GPU utilization and after a while lots of cooling fan noise. The SLI setup gives me ~25% FPS improvement and ~30% utilization improvement. Granted – its not anything to write home about but I find that the game is much smoother and my living room is indeed much quieter.

IMHO/YMMV.

Never take notes about computers from someone who own alienware….

The opening posts sounds a lot like “i have a lot of money and want to brag about my 2 alienware PCs”. For most regular users following applies:

- use a vacuum cleaner but don’t touch components nor chassis. I’d guess this is pretty obvious but apparently not. I’ve always cleaned with vacuum and it works just fine. Never had a single damaged component. Compressed air cans are expensive, you’ll be equallly good with the 20€ compressor you bought for your race bike. Matter of fact, I use exactly that at my job to clean high end industrial PCs (compared to which alienware is a joke).

- don’t use sli or crossfire. It’s asking for problems, and not worth it. Really … it isn’t. You’re paying over 500€ for an increase in fps that’s barely noticeable. I have a single gtx 560. It cost me 120€ and I run 30fps in LA on highest.

- use the newest non-beta drivers. Again, beta drivers are simply not worth the hassle. Obviously, I’m speaking from professional experience. It’s what I recommend my customers, some of whom built the components in the PC you’re currently using to read this post.

- Stock fans on minimum speed are fine as long as you don’t overclock. Don’t fret over it. Just maintain your machine with regular vacuum cleaning. Regular means once a year or so. Overheating PCs just shut down, you will not damage anything wit heat. If your PC doesn’t have BSOD, cleaning is not necessary. Also don’t overcool your room, just make sure you’re comfortable, even if that means having your gaming PC in a 30 degree room. Really… it doesn’t make that much of a difference. We test our machines in an 80 degree celsius sauna with 95% humidity on 100% load. They can survive a rough time, this is 2012, not 1999.

- get an SSD and 6gb or 8gb ram (depending on triple or double channel). Ram is most important for an MMO, not video card. SSD cuts down on loading times which is enjoyable but in no way improves visual performance. A 128GB SSD is more than plenty for a dedicated gaming machine (win8 + 2 games) and costs 90€.

My machine is 2 years old. It has an i7 920 with 6gb ram. Only the videocard is new, but that was a treat, not because it was necessary. The old hd 4890 worked just fine. However I got a third monitor cheap and 4890 only has 2 outputs. After two years a man can give himself a new toy I think, even if said toy doesn’t really bring anything

30 fps in LA is a benchmark line. As long as you have that while turning around, you’ll be fine. Anything higher is merely bragging rights. Feel free to pay for that but it is in no way useful, necessary or even visible.

Building a good machine nowadays is dirt cheap. Just throwing that out there, it’s important. Not everyone has a mother or sugardaddy paying for their toys. In fact, I’m paying for other people’s toys, can’t waste everything on invisible frames. Any modern pc with at least a dedicated videocard will run GW2 on max settings. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

thanks Samaul. this was very helpful

NDM.3795:

Never take notes about computers from someone who own alienware….

true indeed. this guy sounds like someone who just bought his overpriced dell the day before he posted this useless thread. this thread is a complete waste of space.

come to think of it…why are you want to “getting the most out of your high end nvidia card” in terms of performance, if it’s high-end anyways? i can’t even find a game which challenges my GTX580 on max settings.
still can get 10-15% more out of it safely by overclocking it…

sure, 3 screen sorround gaming @120FPS 3D Vision would probably a little bit too much for my GPU…but high-end ones still laughing their cores of because of the lack of challenge.
keep in mind, that most are sold overclocked.

sure, quality-wise, there is some tweaking potential, but for GW2, those changes you can make at the nvidia cp are barely or non-noticeable (depending on your screensize/resolution), except for disabling ambient-occlusion – it makes terrain invisible in GW2 (btw, nice opportunity to see all the useless, performance draining reflections you usually wouldn’t see :P)

oh and that “alienware owners doesn’t know anything about hardware” is…well…let’s just say “the smartest sentence”
sure, TC doesn’t made himself shine by doing all those imo irrelevant benchmarks but a few of his first-post tips are quite helpful – for tweaking “decent” or “good” GPU’s.
got myself a DIY PC, runs flawlessly now (long road until i was satisfied with my OC profile) but i still looking at some alienware pc’s like a child wanting a new toy.
some of them are really well made and balanced considering the fact that they are assembly-line-PC’s.
solid, nice price – perfect for starters who don’t know or don’t wanna know in-depth stuff about PC’s, but still want to enjoy playing games in high quality.
would make a nice “basic starter pack” for enthuasiasts as well lol

TL;DR
-some of TC’s tips are helpful for someone with a decent~good nvidia cards.
-alienware is a nice option for PC-newbies ho wanna play games in high-quality.
-this thread doesn’t make that much sense, unless the title is changed into simply “how to get the most out of your nvidia GPU”.

my tips:

-make sure you GPU got enough support to prevent bottlenecking (a good same-generation CPU and a PSU, powerful enough to fire it up as well as a mainboard which supports it’s BUS-type, for instance, if you plug in a PCIe 2.0 card into a PCIe 1.0 slot, the filetransferrate is just half of what it would be capable of)

-in case that GW2 throttles, remove any dust from your GPU’s fan and if it still throttles, manually set the fanspeed of your GPU’s fan with a tool like MSI-Afterburner (turorials @google.com)

-don’t OC your GPU unless you reached it’s reasonable limits and only if you know what you are doing (no, 200+FPS is NOT a reasonable limit :P)

-if you really want to tweak ’n test around, mess about at the nvidia control panel while you keep monitoring quality and performance after every change, which can be quite some work – the outcome is different on every system, screen, GPU, CPU, driver version…all that can and will have different performance/quality outcomes, even on 2 pretty similiar systems @ the same settings.

NDM.3795:

Never take notes about computers from someone who own alienware….

Hrm why is that? I own Alienware and have been using computers, including several boxes custom built by myself, for over 30 years now, as well as 6 years of tech support for Microsoft for Windows XP.
I don’t think your assumption is a fair statement at all.

NDM.3795:

Never take notes about computers from someone who own alienware….

I thought the same thing and wondered why this was stickied. I’m a PC enthusiast and overclocker too and would never dream of paying a company for something I could build a lot cheaper myself and with better components!

• WARNING NVIDIA 314.07 Driver *

I just downloaded and installed the following driver

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/57096

I upgraded from the 310.90 driver which was working very well with GW2 and other games. I used Treexy Driver Fusion to do a clean install. After installing the 314.07 driver and enabling SLI, I rebooted and experienced the following issues

1. .NET Framework error caused by Alienware Command Center Thermal Controller which caused my case and cpu fan controller application to fail to load.

2. 3DMark Advanced nv1.00 crashed on startup and refused to load.

I was not experiencing either one of these issues before installing the 314.07 driver. If 3DMark Advanced fails to load after installing a new video driver, it is a sign there is something seriously wrong with the driver.

I uninstalled the 314.07 driver, ran DriverFusion and reinstalled the 310.90 driver. Everything is back to normal. 3DMark now loads as it should. Please post your issues with the 314.07 driver, if any here.

Ok so I uninstalled and reinstalled Alienware Command Center and 3DMark Advanced. I then re-downloaded the 314.07 driver. Then I uninstalled the 310.90 driver, ran DriverFusion and reinstalled the 314.07 driver. Now no more conflicts with 3DMark or the ACC. 3DMark launches and runs good. My guess is that I got a bad driver installer or a bad driver install.

The 314.07 driver appears to work well with Crysis 3, GW2 and PlanetSide 2.

NDM.3795:

Never take notes about computers from someone who own alienware….

So much this^^

1. If you are having issues with a pre built dell why not just take it back to where you purchased it from?

2. Why is this stickied?

curios about air flow. if you leave the side off of your pc is that bad on temperature? i have an antec 1200 and always leave side of for some reason or anther ???

Raztax.2978:

NDM.3795:

Never take notes about computers from someone who own alienware….

Hrm why is that? I own Alienware and have been using computers, including several boxes custom built by myself, for over 30 years now, as well as 6 years of tech support for Microsoft for Windows XP.
I don’t think your assumption is a fair statement at all.

A fairer way to put it might be “never take advice about high-end gaming PCs from someone who strongly and repeatedly advocates for Alienware PCs”, which the OP does. This should not be stickied. It contains almost no useful advice is borderline advertising spiel. Buying an Alienware PC once or twice because you have far more money than time, or just don’t feel homebuilding is worth it, is fine, but when you’re like the OP, and basically instructing people to do that, and overstating various problems in order to boost your position, whilst claiming to be a total expert – then that’s really bad (you aren’t doing that – the OP is).

winterlove.6834:

curios about air flow. if you leave the side off of your pc is that bad on temperature? i have an antec 1200 and always leave side of for some reason or anther ???

That’s generally very bad.

Leaving the side of the case off will give you three problems (amongst others):

1) Case fans will basically be doing nothing for you – as the PC will no longer have airflow through it (certainly not in the designed way). That’s bad if you have any (most people do).

2) Any dust and fluff will flow directly into the case, potentially causing problems unless you keep the PC internals v. clean – which potentially means interfering with them more than may be healthy.

3) All it takes is a spill or a misplaced foot and it’s ALL OVER for your PC.

So put the side of your PC back on! After getting any dust etc. out of it.

I just wondered yea I have a lot of fans its an antec 1200 case very nice but I broke my back and just tend to sometimes leave it off cause im always in there it seems lol. but yea bad habbit I didn’t think it made a huge difference but prolly right

@OP

Why is this topic called this way? I mean, beside the point where you say what driver you use, the others are so generic that this could work very well on AMD cards as well. No point in calling it a Nvidia performance boost thread.

Also… while i understand that OC is not for anyone, saying you shouldn’t OC your gpu or cpu unless there is a factory OC its plain crap.

It’s not a bad thread, most of the advices you gave are common sense for most but could help some people. Its just the title that bugs me and that the mods gave it a sticky without renaming it.

Samaul.6073:

I drive a liquid-cooled Alienware Aurora R3. My monitor is a 23" 1080p Alienware 3D monitor. I am an experienced high end PC enthusiast and overclocker.

Sorry but this is just too funny.

Burn.5401:

Samaul.6073:

I drive a liquid-cooled Alienware Aurora R3. My monitor is a 23" 1080p Alienware 3D monitor. I am an experienced high end PC enthusiast and overclocker.

Sorry but this is just too funny.

The same thing I thought lololol

Dane Henson.7860:

Burn.5401:

Samaul.6073:

I drive a liquid-cooled Alienware Aurora R3. My monitor is a 23" 1080p Alienware 3D monitor. I am an experienced high end PC enthusiast and overclocker.

Sorry but this is just too funny.

The same thing I thought lololol

Just because people own alienware computers doesn’t make them idiots or less than people who build their own. I have my certificates in computers, and working on my degree. I still own an Alienware and so what? Maybe I had 1500 bucks to blow and didn’t feel like making my own computer because I have more pressing things to be working on. Anyway, just because you can afford an alienware that may be overpriced or not is irrelevant. Peoples skills are not always reflected by what they have “right now”.

AS for nvidia related: http://www.geforce.com/drivers/geforce-experience

Some people who are not as savvy with video cards and tweaking optimal settings might be interested in this. The downfall though is they haven’t released a GW2 monitor, but hopefully will soon. This worked fine for skyrim, waiting to see what they recommend for GW2 when it is added.

For those worried about heat, things like evga precision are available to watch your temp. My 2x 450’s sli’d were getting pretty hot even with liquid cooling.. I upgraded to a 650 and now it is fine. Those cards were just so close in the system I have I don’t see how they could ever stay cool. Hoping to build my next computer now that i have a fallback, that is if I don’t get bogged down with time restraints again. If your going to do something, do it well.

I just completed my first build. Was wondering what settings you guys think it will run GW2 at.

Specs are:
>cooler master storm enforcer /w Front: 200mm led fan(intake), Back: 120mm fan(out), Top: 200mm fan (out), and CPU fan: cooler master 212 evo (pushing through radiator to back fan).
>Asus P8z77-V LK Mobo
>intel 3750k i5 cpu
>gigabyte Nvidia 760 2GB 3xwindforce gpu
>antec HCG 620w modular PSU
>samsung 120gb SSD
>windows 7 ultimate OS
>asus LED 23" monitor
>8gb ddr3 1600 memory
Build cost around 1150-1200 USD

Thanks for your input.

I’m a superior PC overclocker, i have my i7 over clocked to 3.6GHz and i have lots of RAMS (which i downloaded from the internets) i also have alot of high speed dust in my PC (free download from the cloud) and my GW2 plays perfectly on LOW. I also play it on high to take cool screenies and post them on facebook. My PC is 3 years old and i still play COD4 Yeeeeee hawwwwwwwww.

Seriously though, anyone having issues with SLI and GW2? specifically pinky gittering display?

Oh and also, Room temperature matters as obviously the air outside gets oulled into the machine, so cooler outside = cooler inside and that mean my 2 GTX570s cool down and give me better FPS. If i get shyte FPS i just open my door.

I am not having any serious issues w/ SLI (dual evga GTX 580 classifieds) but I don’t really see a big performance gain. After the removal of culling I turned that up to “Highest” and I have every setting maxed out. My frame rate drops considerably when there are a lot of other players on screen. My GPUs don’t get to more than 60% total usage. My GPU temps are generally below 60c with an ambient room temp of ~23c. GPU mem usage is around 2GB out of 6GB total.

I then assumed that it was simply that they are routing a lot of the calculation to the CPU but I’m not seeing much an hit there either. I have an i7 3930k overclocked to 4.5GHz and that sits at no higher than 30%-40% when i’m playing. Temps on all 6 cores are normally around 55c-60c, again with an ambient room temp of ~23c.

My memory is nearly always below 40% (assuming I don’t have a ton of other things running) out of 32GB (~12GB-13GB). This includes some misc monitoring tools and gamepad/headset software ect.

However, I did notice a significant performance gain when I turned of player names. It may even simply be coincidence but things seemed to work a bit better when I turned them off.

Just a note about the temps. I have a liquid cooled machine so my temps might be a bit lower than most. Also, if it helps I’m running the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme (ROG) mobo.

I spent £680 on my computer.
Crappy motherboard with just enough slots for what i need.
8 GB Ram (with that patch that lets me go over 4GB or w/e)
Intel quad core 2.6 —> OC to 3.0 GHZ
Nvidia 660MX TI (nearly half the cost of my pc)

I run on ultra high with a few selective options toned down for PVP purposes (ie hiding some grass etc)

Old Case from 1994
Originally had my temperatures at 90 degrees C (obv very bad)
Had FPS between 10-50 FPS

Went and paid £20 to replace stock heatsink on CPU with new one
Paid around £45 for my silent fans
I now have 3 intake fans, 3 Outtake fans, the fan on my GPU and one on my CPU
All fans are silent (for when my GF sleeping)

Temperatures dropped from 90’c to 23’C
I now get between 70-110 FPS in almost all areas.
Minimum of ~35 FPS in WvWvW zergs (ie at stomemist with all players around)

Havent yet tried changing from standard drivers, will give that try when can be assed. May also be worth upgrading my onboard sound card.

I have degree in Applied Computing, i built my first fully custom pc at 9 (im now 21), but must admit im more of a programmer than a hardware master.
I find it funny how people can pay over a grand for a PC and still have lower performance than my <£700 computer.
I agree about the Alienware hardware being highly overpriced, then again I have always built extremely low budget performance PCS.