Guild Wars 2

As you can properly tell from the topic title, I’m far from a PC spec expert but lucky for me some of you are so I’m wondering if any of you could help me out.
I’m looking into buying a new computer that will be able to handle guild wars 2 on max settings (mostly in pve because I suck at pvp)
So here are most of the specs of the computer desktop I’m thinking of buying.
Processor
• Intel® Core™ i3-2120 Processor (3.30GHz, 3MB L3 Cache, 2C)
Operating System
• English Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
Memory4
• 6GB4 Dual Channel at 1333MHz
Hard Drive
• 1TB Serial ATA (7,200 rpm)
Video Card
• 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 545
Optical Drive
• DVD+/-RW (Read/Write)
So if any of you could tell me if these specs would be able to handle gw2 in all Max settings (PVE wise) and also tell me how it would handle in PVP (world vs world).

Thanks a bunch

No not on max. Especially if you are going to do WvW. You will most likely have to spend 1500 dollars at least to play this game on max. I would get an i7 and right now because nvidia 6xx cards are having trouble, I would get a radeon 7970 and I would increase the ram to 8 gb as well.

This should give you a pretty good idea of the requirements to play this game at different presets:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268.html

6 gigs of RAM is sufficient to run this game as well as any other. Your bottleneck is probably the CPU. This game is more CPU dependent than GPU. Unless your running a Virtual Machne or RAM caching, you should be fine using 6 gigs. You should look at your background startups and see how much RAM the PC is using on applications and Windows. If your using 50% of the RAM just for that, then yes you will be running into issues playing the game. i3’s struggle when you get to games like Skyrim.

The gpu is extremely weak. You should still run the game pretty ok.

I’ve been reading around on Google and the general consensus is that its best for me, to either pay a shop to build a computer for me or build it myself, well I can’t build computers so I’m guessing I’m going to have to pay a store to do it for me.

So I was wondering if any of you could post all the items that I would need to have a good gaming computer that could run GW2 on max settings with no lag and if you could go the extra mile and tell me the cost (Preferably in £ but $ is fine to) that would be amazing.

Thanks a bunch for the help guys and gals.

By the way my budget is around £500-£1k i want the computer to last atleast 2-3 years in terms of being able to run games on max settings.

zqa the monk.6094:

By the way my budget is around £500-£1k i want the computer to last atleast 2-3 years in terms of being able to run games on max settings.

If you want a decent computer to run 2-3 years with max setting, you need to look at DX11 and DX11.1 cards. I’m sure you can push up to $1500.

My rig costs $3000 alone if you ask. Single GTX680 runs GW2 on High Preset 60-80FPS average. That’s 1x $500-600 GPU.

$1000 for 2x GTX680 will runs around 90-160 FPS in some area. WvW drops 50 for sometime but not always.

So you have a budget for $1000.

CPU – $200-300
Motherboard – $200
PSU – $100-150
Chassis – $90 – $100
——————————————-already at ~$700.
You have $300 left for GPU not counting HDD or other Monitor mouse keyboard.

A decent DX11 GPU to run everything at max you need to hit $400+ alone on it.

All my info on the market price is based on from last year and now ranging from all online retailer and locals. There isn’t much to ask to get lower, if you want lower. Get some second hands.

Overclock.net does has it own marketplace, a lot of users including myself are selling last gen PC components.

Like I’ve sold 2x HD6970 for $200-$250 each and it was a steal.

Thanks for the reply DJ I think in $ my max expenses $1500. If you could be more specific with the CPU and what I should get that would be great as I don’t really have any clue about PC parts and im guessing i will need to be specific in what I want when i go to the computer store.

Thanks again.

I’m not building the computer myself as I wouldn’t know where to start.

You should have a look at Tom’s Hardware System Builder Marathons, and check the system for your price point:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-overclock-benchmark,3276.html

I’m not sure where you live but I’ll give you the product model and part numbers:

CPU: http://goo.gl/RALrx
Motherboard: http://goo.gl/ekYSc
PSU: http://goo.gl/DiHKk

That’s the start.

GPU choices: (depends on your res, I assume you have 1080p. Those will do fine but I can’t guarantee for future games will always run at Ultra.

Range $250-$350.
GTX670
GTX660Ti
HD7870
HD7850

If you can’t built it yourself that’s fine, but look up those spec if you want to choose a premade (which is more expensive).

Thanks both of you I think I’m going to copy paste the $1000 configuration which is around £700 and depending on how much it will cost for them to build the computer for me it should leave some room for a monitor. By the way just so I’m sure that 1k configuration will run GW2 on ultra settings smoothly PVE wise on top of PVP? Just want to make sure so I don’t kitten it up.

(http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-overclock-benchmark,3276.html)

I suggest getting an AMD gpu just to be safe for gw2 since there is still a lot of issues with nvidia cards right now. The 7970 is about the same price and performance as the 670.

What issues with Nvidia? …Glitchs? BSOD? I have none to be honest with both running.

K guys, thanks for all the help i just need one more thing (well i hope) I’ve just spent a while customizing a computer online (they build the computer and delivery it to me) and i was wondering if yall could evaluate the specs and tell me how it would perform (first tell me how it will perform and then tell me some improvements you would make). The total cost came to £640 which comes in budget as I need to buy a monitor as well

The site I used was (down below) could anybody tell me if they have heard/used this site basically do they have a good reputation
http://www.cclonline.com/

Here are the specs….

?XFX Pro 650W Power Supply Unit x 1
?TP-Link TL-WN781ND 150Mbps Wireless Lite N PCI Express Adaptor x 1
?Intel Core i7-2600 3.4GHz Quad Core Processor x 1
?Asus GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB Graphics Card x 1
?Seagate Barracuda 500GB Hard Drive x 1
?Samsung DVD RW SH-222BB/BEBE 22x SATA Black x 1
?8GB Kingston Hyper X Red Limited Edition DDR3 1333Mhz Kit x 1
?Gigabyte GA-H61MA-D2V Motherboard x 1
?CiT Imp Micro ATX Black Interior Mesh Case x 1

zqa the monk.6094:

Thanks both of you I think I’m going to copy paste the $1000 configuration which is around £700 and depending on how much it will cost for them to build the computer for me it should leave some room for a monitor. By the way just so I’m sure that 1k configuration will run GW2 on ultra settings smoothly PVE wise on top of PVP? Just want to make sure so I don’t kitten it up.

(http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-overclock-benchmark,3276.html)

Check this page for expected performance using the best appearance preset, as you can see, the GTX 670 is a sure bet for 1920×1080p.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-6.html

zqa the monk.6094:

Here are the specs….
?Asus GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB Graphics Card x 1

Stopped reading right here!

does the GTX 550 suck or something xd or would it just be better of me spending a bit extra on the 670?

Also are the other specs all in check?

zqa the monk.6094:

Here are the specs….

?XFX Pro 650W Power Supply Unit x 1
?TP-Link TL-WN781ND 150Mbps Wireless Lite N PCI Express Adaptor x 1
?Intel Core i7-2600 3.4GHz Quad Core Processor x 1
?Asus GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB Graphics Card x 1
?Seagate Barracuda 500GB Hard Drive x 1
?Samsung DVD RW SH-222BB/BEBE 22x SATA Black x 1
?8GB Kingston Hyper X Red Limited Edition DDR3 1333Mhz Kit x 1
?Gigabyte GA-H61MA-D2V Motherboard x 1
?CiT Imp Micro ATX Black Interior Mesh Case x 1

• PSU is very good (made by Seasonic, single-rail)
• WiFi is ok
• CPU is last gen, get an i5-3xxx at least. The first number represents the generation – 2 for Sandy Bridge (last gen) and 3 for Ivy Bridge (current gen).
• GPU sucks (~32.1fps@1920x1080), more than twice as slower as a GTX 670 (~71fps), almost 0% future-proof.
• HD is ok
• DVD is ok
• RAM is bad, you need at least DDR3 1600MHz RAM
• MB is bad, at least get something B75 based (not overclockable), ideal would be a Z77 chipset (overclockable)
• Case is Micro ATX…… You can’t use that lol, it’s for micro ATX motherboards! You’l have a hard time fitting a lenghty gfx card in there.

Just curious, if you have no experience in system building, why would you think you could come up with a better system build than Tom’s Hardware, that have been doing those System Marathons almost every month, for so long?

This is just a back up incise can’t find a store to build a computer for me (or they go way over buget) as I don’t trust any of my friends with £100+ cash. Also I know I suck at system building don’t worry. lol

Check on those systems at Tom’s Hardware, and read up why they chose the components they did, for the $500, $1000 and $2000 systems. They also benchmark them extensively afterwards.

Especially, read the article where they compare the value between them all:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/System-Builder-Marathon-August-2012-GTX-670-Kepler,3280.html

Thanks, yeah I think I’m gona go for the 1k build which will leave me space for a good monitor.
Do you know and sites which would allow me to fully customise the tower (and also give me a quote of the price) as http://www.cclonline.com/ has restricted customization? If not thanks for all the help

I was just checking that site, you can put all the components in the basket and add http://www.cclonline.com/category/215/Desktop-PCs/Custom-PC-Build-Services/ and they will assemble everything.

Use these as your starting point on that site, should be around £870:

• Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Processor 6MB L3 Cache 5GT/s Bus Speed (Boxed)
• Gigabyte Z77-G1-SNIPER-M3 Motherboard
• 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws-X F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 1600MHX DDR3
• MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Graphics Card
• 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black 3.5" Hard Disk Drive
• Lian Li PC-K57B Black Lancool Series Midi Part-Mesh Gaming Chassis
• XFX Pro 650W Power Supply Unit
• Gold-Level System Assembly

hmm with delivery im sitting at about £890

monitor is going to cost me around £130 (im guessing the monitor is not that important) and I will also need to purchase the wires (how much will they cost over all).

You can decrease a bit the CPU specs if you’re not overclocking:

• Intel Core i5-3550 3.3GHz Processor 6MB L3 Cache 5GT/s Bus Speed (Boxed), still very good (Turbo upto 3.7 GHz)
• Intel Core i5-3450 3.1GHz Processor 6MB L3 Cache 5GT/s Bus Speed (Boxed), a bit slower (Turbo upto 3.5 GHz)

Wires? Anything not included on the motherboard box or the GPU box?

As for monitors, I suggest you search for models rated at 2ms response time, there are some good ones on that site.

No, i mean the wires for the tower to link to the monitor and power Source est. or is that included. also i was able to keep the price under 1k i just got a cheap monitor (monitor is ok right XD?)

Acer S231HLbid 23 inch (Full HD) Widescreen LED Backlight Display

Don’t buy i7s they are not worth it as you’d not get any more performance than the i5.

If the 670 is too much money, a 7870 should max this game out.

Esrever.8613:

If the 670 is too much money, a 7870 should max this game out.

True, but on everything else the 7870 is around 30+% slower than a GTX 670.

Personally, when I buy stuff this expensive I always think — If I’m spending this money to buy something good, might as well last me as long as it can, so going for the “just enough for specifically game X” usually has a bigger price tag in the end.

VirtualBS.3165:

Esrever.8613:

If the 670 is too much money, a 7870 should max this game out.

True, but on everything else the 7870 is around 30+% slower than a GTX 670.

Personally, when I buy stuff this expensive I always think — If I’m spending this money to buy something good, might as well last me as long as it can, so going for the “just enough for specifically game X” usually has a bigger price tag in the end.

The 670 is also almost 2x the price as the 7870, so you are spending 80% more money for 30% performance, you are paying a premium for something you don’t need and its a lot of money.

Fwiw, I play the game on max settings with this spec – on autodetect (which is pretty much max apart from shadows) and even in WvW FPS doesn’t dip below 50 (and I’ve been in some massive battles). It’s actually solidly on 60 with vysnc on since a patch last week;

i7 2600K (this is better value than the ivys, for me, it overclocks in a more stable way and runs cooler) – it can max the game at stock speeds before any overclocks.

EVGA GTX 670 (people say the 6xx range has problems in general – they don’t. It’s either a very specific card or it’s unique to very specific configurations. I’ve had no performance issues with this card, and if I have vysnc off the average FPS is into the 90s most of the time, 120s when no one else is around and never below the 50FPS mark in WvW)

8GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM

Corsair Force 3 SSD.

Win7 X64 Pro (Home just as good for gaming).

The 670 is around £290-300, the 7870 is around £200-210, so you are spending 33% more, for more 33% performance… Ignoring the fact that the 7870 will become obsolete 33% faster!

VirtualBS.3165:

The 670 is around £290-300, the 7870 is around £200-210, so you are spending 33% more, for more 33% performance… Ignoring the fact that the 7870 will become obsolete 33% faster!

670 is 300-330 and 7870 is less than 200.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/search_results.php?sortby=&groupid=&search=7870

190 for 7870 cheapest

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/search_results.php?sortby=&groupid=&search=670
320 for 670 cheapest

320/190 = 68% more expensive.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-159-GW
Gainward GeForce GTX 670 2048M £309.95

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search_results.php?sortby=&groupid=&search=7870
For £190 there is only a B-grade card, sorry, but pass
Average low ~£199.99

1-200/310 = 35.48%, which makes the GTX 670 only 35.5% more expensive than the 7870, making those extra £110 worth it.

The price of a 670 is easily worth it. Easily.

VirtualBS.3165:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-159-GW
Gainward GeForce GTX 670 2048M £309.95

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search_results.php?sortby=&groupid=&search=7870
For £190 there is only a B-grade card, sorry, but pass
Average low ~£199.99

1-200/310 = 35.48%, which makes the GTX 670 only 35.5% more expensive than the 7870, making those extra £110 worth it.

thats not how you do fractions.

Esrever.8613:

thats not how you do fractions.

Err….Percentages are normalized to 100%…. Yes, that’s how you do fractional percentages…

Do NOT waste money on buying a very good graphics card for guild wars 2.

World vs World is CPU bound, even with a modest GPU.
I recently upgraded my machine, from a Core 2 (OC to 4.05GHz) to a i5 (OC to 4.30GHz)
I still have same gfx, but framerate is doubled in normal situations, and four times as good in WvW.
I have a GTX285, which is ancient.
In WvW my GPU use is anywhere from 50%-80%,
in the largest battles my GPU is used less, because my CPU can’t feed it.
Once the battles calm a bit, my GPU goes to 100% and FPS goes up again.
To be said, I always stay above 30 FPS and have 60 fps most of the time.

Unless you have a monster screen or play a lot of other games, don’t waste more money than a 560Ti or equivalent would cost you.

If you wanna save money on CPU get a i5-2500k, even my granny could oc it to 4.0GHz

VirtualBS.3165:

Esrever.8613:

thats not how you do fractions.

Err….Percentages are normalized to 100%…. Yes, that’s how you do fractional percentages…

no. You seem to not get the difference between percent increase and percentage points.

190*1.35 = 256 which is clearly not the price of the 670. Try again.

If one of the cards are 200 and the other is 300.
The ones that is 300, is 50% more expensive than 200.
However 200 is 33.3% cheaper than the one for 300.

Anyways, if the price target is 600GBP, then buying a 310GBP card is waste, because the rest of the system will have to seriously be cut down on.

The boards, sniper.m3 is a micro -atx board. You can also save 40 on getting a standard Z77 board, like GA-z77-d3h.

A 660Ti is about 10% slower than the 670, and costs 70 less. (and they give you a free Borderlands 2 copy, which you can probably sell for 30 or something).

If you are going for a “k” cpu, then not adding a third party cooler is a crime, a CM 212 EVO is less than 30GBP.

A 660Ti is a lot more than 10% slower. It flat out struggles to get 60FPS in quite a few games, according to benchmarks. The 670 doesn’t.

Dam, thought this thread would’ve died out by now ? well I think I’m going to go for..
• Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Processor 6MB L3 Cache 5GT/s Bus Speed (Boxed)
• Gigabyte Z77-G1-SNIPER-M3 Motherboard
• 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws-X F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 1600MHX DDR3
• MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Graphics Card
• 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black 3.5" Hard Disk Drive
• Lian Li PC-K57B Black Lancool Series Midi Part-Mesh Gaming Chassis
• XFX Pro 650W Power Supply Unit
(ty virtual) on top of a monitor this leaves me with £30 left over of my 1k spending budget. So with this £30 are there any small improvements I can make to the list above or should I get windows 7 operating system?

ZaxanRazor.6235:

A 660Ti is a lot more than 10% slower. It flat out struggles to get 60FPS in quite a few games, according to benchmarks. The 670 doesn’t.

The 660Ti is limited by memory bandwidth, which means that things like 8xMSAA is gonna kill it’s performance.

If you look at normal 1980×1080 res with either FXAA or 4xMSAA or lower, the 660TI is pretty much dead on the 670. In some games like Portal 2, it’s actually faster.

670 is however clearly the better card, but the 660ti is 220, (including borderlands 2 which sells for 40-50 new) and the 670 is 290 on the site they’re linking.

I have never tested them against each other myself, so my numbers is clearly based upon reviews I’ve read like:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review/12
This review does also include 7950 and 7870 in the benchmarks, so you can compare against those too.

I do not own neither a GTX660TI or a GTX670, so I’m not biased, like most people are when it comes to stuff they have spent their money on.

I still have a GTX285, which I can confirm can run this game maxed at 50-60 FPS most of the time at 1680×1050 res. I do believe the client has had some improvements since the test toms hardware did. For reference this card is ranked between the 7770 and the GTX560 in toms hardware graphic card hierarchy.

Test that was linked: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-6.html

zqa the monk.6094:

Dam, thought this thread would’ve died out by now ? well I think I’m going to go for..

(ty virtual) on top of a monitor this leaves me with £30 left over of my 1k spending budget. So with this £30 are there any small improvements I can make to the list above or should I get windows 7 operating system?

You posted this just before I answered

Get a full ATX board, the sniper is fine, but it is a micro board, and expensive micro board. Z77-dh3 is a nice mainstream boards, or get a z77x board if you want it a bit more fancy.

And get a third party cooler, do it, just don’t ever think about getting a “k” CPU on a stock intel cooler!
Most tower coolers is more than enough, CM 212 EVO is a popular and cheap one, CM 412s is actually priced the same at that store, but it’s a bit bigger.

Tanira.8157:

zqa the monk.6094:

Dam, thought this thread would’ve died out by now ? well I think I’m going to go for..

(ty virtual) on top of a monitor this leaves me with £30 left over of my 1k spending budget. So with this £30 are there any small improvements I can make to the list above or should I get windows 7 operating system?

You posted this just before I answered

Get a full ATX board, the sniper is fine, but it is a micro board, and expensive micro board. Z77-dh3 is a nice mainstream boards, or get a z77x board if you want it a bit more fancy.

And get a third party cooler, do it, just don’t ever think about getting a “k” CPU on a stock intel cooler!
Most tower coolers is more than enough, CM 212 EVO is a popular and cheap one, CM 412s is actually priced the same at that store, but it’s a bit bigger.

Opps
Tanira, you can properly tell I have little to none computer spec building skills what so ever so would you mind finding me a suitable motherboard on top of a cooler from this site…
https://www.cclonline.com
thanks a lot by the way is there any point in getting the i7 instead of the i5 Intel core how much of a difference in performance does it have on GW2 mostly and also games like BF3 and skyrim on max setting. Apart from those 2 improvements you suggested do you have anymore(keep in mind that if the current spec setup I have after you 2 improvements will run the games stated before on max settings with ease id rather not spend anymore cash)

Thanks a bunch

I was using the reference point of the GTX 670 for all my percentages. Anyway, this should give a precise comparison between GTX 670 vs AMD 7870:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/598?vs=548

Also, between GTX 670 and GTX 660 Ti: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/598?vs=647
660Ti and 7870: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/647?vs=548

@Tanira.8157: My list of components above is specific to the shop the op referred http://www.cclonline.com. The sniper.m3 is a great board for that price point, with a good audio and network chip — here’s the feature comparison between both:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/comparison/list.aspx?ck=2&pids=4140,4168
I also agree that the 660Ti is a great card, although a bit memory bandwidth starved.