Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’m about to get a new laptop (yes, laptop, I’m well aware that a desktop would have a way better price/perfomance ratio, but I got my reasons for getting a laptop, so plz no discussion about that), now I’m curious how well this components would handle GW2. I’m also going to play the new Star Wars Battlefront on it.
Here are the specs I’m currently looking at:
• 43,9 cm (17.3") Full-HD (1920*1080) Non-Glare IPS
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 6144MB GDDR5 with G-Sync
• Intel Core i7-4790K | 4 Cores| 8 Threads | 4,0 – 4,4GHz | TDP: 88 Watt
• 8GB (2×4096) SO-DIMM DDR3 RAM 2133MHz HyperX Impact
• 250GB m.2 SSD Samsung 850 EVO (MZ-N5E250B)
• 500GB / 8GB SATA-III SSH 5400U/Min Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD (ST500LM000)
• Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 (incl. Bluetooth)

Any thoughts? Something that doesn’t fit in? Any input appreciated!

That’s a desktop CPU, which is really strange, but a laptop with a decent quad core mobile i7 (which that should most likely have) will be able to handle the game fine. Do you have a link to the laptop you’re looking at?

It’s indeed a desktop cpu since I decided to get a XMG U705. It’s set up on a clevo barebone that offers the possibility of using desktop components inside a laptop
Unfortunatly I can’t give a link with the above setup already selected, just the page where you can configure the machine: http://mysn.co.uk/shop/xmg-u705-gaminglaptop.html

At first I wanted to go with the Xeon E3-1231 v3 processor, since it offers the best price-performance ratio by far. Unfortunatly it’s the only processor out of those available that does not support G-Sync. So I went with the 4790k, since it’s not that much more expensive than the other 4790’s while offering much more power.

It should run fine, but I know jack about laptop graphics cars, also, laptops tens to shear there GPU ram with system ram, in other words they have no ram of there own, but that might have changed in the last 10 years since I had dealing with craptops. Out side of fixing my farther-inlaws everytime he falls for a scam or gets a virus. Or both.

Yeah mobile GPUs changed a lot in the last 10 years
The GTX 970M will handle GW2 more than fine (I’m not really sure about Star Wars Battlefront though) since it doesn’t requires much from the GPU, it requires from the CPU and i7-4790K sure will take care of the load.

Resuming: Yeah that setup will handle GW2 really well, probably even at high settings.

In that case, you’ll be completely fine from a performance point of view

Thanks everyone so far!

I’m playing on a 3 year old laptop with an i7 3720QM (at least I think it was that cpu, can’t check right now since at work) and a GTX 660 and it already handles GW2 quite well on high settings. Though I do feel some dps drops in larger WvW battles and having played on BWE, I reckognized that HoT will probably stealth-increase the required hardware (just as they did back in the GW1 days with Faction, Nightfall and EotN). And since I wanted to get a new machine anyway…

@BroBelial: concerning laptop GPU’s there indeed happened a lot, as Belzebu already said. The selected GTX 970 comes with 6GB non-shared DDR5 RAM, so as long as we talk about GW2 I’m not worried about the GPU at all.
@BroBelial&Belzebu: say hello to Asmodeus and Luzifer, will you?

What I’m really curious about right now is- can anyone confirm how much or not G-Sync is noticeable in GW2 or games in general? All I’ve seen so far is the promo-video from nVidia and well… it’s a promo-video, ofc it looks good there and makes perfectly sense but it’s still just a promo-video…
Oh, another note- if I should go with a G-Sync setup, I’m thinking of “only” going with a regular 4790 or the S version for thermal reasons, since I read quite a lot about the K version getting quite hot :/

A k CPU will be the same temperature as the same non-k CPU at the same clockrate. It’s when you start overclocking that temperatures go up. For example, my 3570k doesn’t even go over 60 when it’s stock but at 4.6 GHx it starts pushing 80 while in games.

Just make sure you don’t put your laptop on a blanket or anything other than a smooth flat surface while gaming. The only limitation I see is that laptops are easier to overheat so just make sure your new baby can breathe!

Fermi.2409:

A k CPU will be the same temperature as the same non-k CPU at the same clockrate. It’s when you start overclocking that temperatures go up. For example, my 3570k doesn’t even go over 60 when it’s stock but at 4.6 GHx it starts pushing 80 while in games.

So that means that a K running without turbo @ 4GHz should be as hot as a S version running with turbo @ 4GHz? In that case the normal 4790 or the S version shouldnt reach the top temperatures a K would get? Did I get this one right?

@MoMo: thanks for pointing this out, though as a “long-time-laptop-player” I’m well aware of this issue Only thing that bugs me everytime I need/want a new machine is catching up with the latest hardware developments :/

Unholy thread necromancy by me…

Since I missed the last sale I decided to wait a little (save some more money, hope for another sale…) and guess what happened?
New series launched, now with Skylake CPUs available… though the performance leap is rather small compared to Broadwell/Haswell, they sound quite appealing as far as temperatures / power demand goes.
After playing with some configurations I got stuck with the question- i5 (4/4) or i7 (4/8) and how it will (if at all) affect GW2? As an actual i7 user I somehow skipped this question since using an i7 just felt naturally but now…
… I’m torn between an i5-6600 (3,3-3,9GHz) and an i7-6700 (3,4-4,0Ghz).
And another question- anyone using DDR4 RAM instead of DDR3 RAM that can tell me wether you really feel any improvement or if it’s just measurable but barely noticeable?

Nash.2681:

… I’m torn between an i5-6600 (3,3-3,9GHz) and an i7-6700 (3,4-4,0Ghz).
And another question- anyone using DDR4 RAM instead of DDR3 RAM that can tell me wether you really feel any improvement or if it’s just measurable but barely noticeable?

No one?

Only games comparison I can find looking at RAM type.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/8

Behellagh.1468:

Only games comparison I can find looking at RAM type.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/8

Thanks a lot for that link, was really enlighting Seems as if the difference between DDR4 and DDR3 is almost non-existant as long as one uses a “real” GPU and not the CPU-integrated one.

About the i5 vs. i7 dilemma- I did some research in the meantime and it seems that GW2 and most games don’t make good or any use of the i7’s hyperthreading. Since I don’t do any video rendering or similar stuff, I lean towards the i5 atm.
Still, since I would make an investment for the next 3 to 4 years and though I know it’s hard to foresee what will happen in the future- anyone got a link to a journal or something about that topic (game development making better use of hyperthreading)?

Well to be fair, cranking the graphics of any game to 11 tends to make the game GPU bound over everything else. You can read the generational games charts in that article and find that the i7-6700K isn’t any or just fractionally better than an i7-2600K for single GPU gaming. So does that mean you shouldn’t bother upgrading from a Sandy or Ivy Bridge?

Behellagh.1468:

You can read the generational games charts in that article and find that the i7-6700K isn’t any or just fractionally better than an i7-2600K for single GPU gaming.

Eh, you’re looking at a 30% clock for clock improvement from a 2600k to a 6700k. While that isn’t huge, it isn’t really negligible either imo, especially in CPU bound situations.

Behellagh.1468:

So does that mean you shouldn’t bother upgrading from a Sandy or Ivy Bridge

Personally I’d say you should stick with Sandy/Ivy (I upgraded to an Ivy i5 this summer myself because I didn’t think Skylake was going to be worth the price increase), but if you’re swapping to an i7/it from an i3 or from a locked to an unlocked CPU it could be worth it.

My point was most CPU reviews test games at uber settings which all but negate CPU differences in games with a single GPU. You might see a difference with multiple GPUs but there’s not a lot of PC gamers running SLi or CrossfireX..

As for this game, upgrading may not be worthwhile Vs overclocking the snot out of your current CPU but if you are building a new system from scratch, I would still favor the newest platform going forward, that is Skylake. Unless of course you use your PC for other purposes than gaming where the CPU performance improvements in Skylake over Sandy/Ivy Bridge/Haswell would matter.