Guild Wars 2

I will soon be building a PC that is primarily used for studying but will be decent enough to play some games, GW2 being one of them. Most of the parts I’m pretty sure on except the CPU as I understand the CPU is what Gw2 relies on most.

Would the i3 – 6100 which has only two cores be enough? or should I go for something with four cores? Does Gw2 even utilize more than one core, therefore choosing a CPU with good single core performance be better?

Regarding installing Gw2 on HDD vs SSD. Has anyone gone from HDD to SSD and noticed better performance. I am happy with running the game on medium settings if need be.

Thanks for any advice in advanced.

GW2 actually requires more than 2 cores if you want high-res textures. For just playing though, 2 cores should be enough, however, keep in mind that the CPU would be nearly dedicated to GW2. It’d be best to go with a 4 core, especially if you wanted to plan for future games. For an example of CPU usage, on an i7 2600k with only 3 cores, GW2 is using 90% on high settings.

An SSD will greatly improve your loading speed. Using a single HDD for everything is what can kill your performance in terms of loading. For high drive usage programs, you really want a dedicated drive so that only 1 process is using it at a time. Keep in mind that loading isn’t limited to the loading screen, but every object that appears to you. If you greatly reduce your load speed for example, it will cause stutters as you rotate the camera and objects load in. Personally, I have an older SSD and in comparison to a dedicated HDD, it’s roughly 3x faster, and on the HDD I can watch things pop in after a loading screen, like the UI and ground.

Healix.5819:

GW2 actually requires more than 2 cores if you want high-res textures. For just playing though, 2 cores should be enough, however, keep in mind that the CPU would be nearly dedicated to GW2. It’d be best to go with a 4 core, especially if you wanted to plan for future games. For an example of CPU usage, on an i7 2600k with only 3 cores, GW2 is using 90% on high settings.

Agree with everything you said, just wanted to input my findings from extensive monitoring.

Gw2 uses around 70-80% of my i5 4690k @ 4.2ghz with not many extra programs running.

MSI Afterburner+RivaTuner Statistics Server, Antivirus, and Fan controller software.

Programs like Firefox still start up nearly instantly on the other monitor while playing,though.

As the others have said, you will need a solid CPU. Ideally an i5 4690(K). I have one and run it at stock speed and GW2 plays very well. My complete spec is in my signature. I have 2 HDD, one with my OS on, and the other with all my games etc.

I went from HDD to SSD and it makes a lot of difference on loading times, A LOT, some maps went from 20~25 sec load down to 5.
Also, it is pretty cool to turn on your PC and be ready to use in literally 10 seconds.

Thank you all for the input. I have decided to get a 4 core and am looking at these CPUs;

i5 6600 (latest gen)
i5 4690

I know the latest gen CPUs/Mobos are a bit more expensive but it will give some room for future upgrading if needed.

Currently the performance difference will be barely noticeable, it at all, but as you said, it will give room for future upgrades. So if you can afford the i5 6600 go for it.

Healix.5819:

GW2 actually requires more than 2 cores if you want high-res textures

Actually, you can turn on high-res textures when you’re playing on an i3 just fine; it’s hyperthreaded so the game registers it as a quad core CPU. An i3 will actually do pretty solidly at GW2 except in super zergy scenarios or LA. That being said, I’d go with something like this:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/QsmT6h

An i5-6500/6600 vs i5-4690 really comes down to what’s cheaper. Since that motherboard supports DDR3 you end up at the same price as you’d be at to get a 4690 so you might as well go Skylake. You can also grab a 6600 for another $15 or $20 but you only get another 3% performance so it’s your call as to whether or not it’s worth it

Healix.5819:

For an example of CPU usage, on an i7 2600k with only 3 cores, GW2 is using 90% on high settings.

I have the worst in-game performance with both my wife’s and my desktops in this game, my wifes is a i7 2600k @ 4.2ghz with a 780ti gtx card and mine is a 4770k i7@4.3ghz with a 780ti gtx card that being said I never see cpu usage on either system peak more than 11% with gw2 running, However my gpu is pegged at around 98% usage. On both said systems I never see more than 25fps and when I try to glide even at lowest possible settings and resolution set to 1280×720 when the glider activates I get around 3 fps. I am wondering if the problem I am having is some how tied to gw2 only accessing 1 core of my cpu now. Anyone have any clue why this would be happening? I have tried both 32bit and 64bit clients.

Rafoie.2465:

Healix.5819:

For an example of CPU usage, on an i7 2600k with only 3 cores, GW2 is using 90% on high settings.

I have the worst in-game performance with both my wife’s and my desktops in this game, my wifes is a i7 2600k @ 4.2ghz with a 780ti gtx card and mine is a 4770k i7@4.3ghz with a 780ti gtx card that being said I never see cpu usage on either system peak more than 11% with gw2 running, However my gpu is pegged at around 98% usage. On both said systems I never see more than 25fps and when I try to glide even at lowest possible settings and resolution set to 1280×720 when the glider activates I get around 3 fps. I am wondering if the problem I am having is some how tied to gw2 only accessing 1 core of my cpu now. Anyone have any clue why this would be happening? I have tried both 32bit and 64bit clients.

How much ram do you have?

I recommend an i5-4690K or an i5-6600K. Even if you dont want to overclock the stock clocks of the K-versions are higher resulting in better single-core performance for a small price.

SSD will result in faster loading times. Objects will load faster when you move around so the lag spikes when objects are loading will be shorter or unnoticeable.

i5, 8GB, a GTX 960, an SSD along with a media storage drive and a quality PSU (people always cheap out on the PSU).

Just a heads up if you’re building a new machine, don’t forget to map your fans, CPU, GPU and System fans are all separate things, any software you use might only control 1 segment, so use the BIOS to set the CPU and System fans, and then something like afterburner to set the GPU fans.

DON’T forget to look at the temperatures on the first few days to make sure you didn’t mess up anything, specially the thermal compound in your CPU cooler.

Rafoie.2465:

I have the worst in-game performance with both my wife’s and my desktops in this game, my wifes is a i7 2600k @ 4.2ghz with a 780ti gtx card and mine is a 4770k i7@4.3ghz with a 780ti gtx card that being said I never see cpu usage on either system peak more than 11% with gw2 running, However my gpu is pegged at around 98% usage. On both said systems I never see more than 25fps and when I try to glide even at lowest possible settings and resolution set to 1280×720 when the glider activates I get around 3 fps. I am wondering if the problem I am having is some how tied to gw2 only accessing 1 core of my cpu now. Anyone have any clue why this would be happening? I have tried both 32bit and 64bit clients.

To me that sounds like overheating.

Get some tools to look up the temperatures of the machines components.
Since I bet you have those machines for a few years now, I’m really betting it’s just dust build up that will be causing overheating and the severe performance drop.

Check out if every fan is working correctly, replace them if they’re broken, frankly for the chassis I’d just buy new ones anyway since they’re only about ~4EUR/USD each, maybe new CPU coolers too since after market ones are easy to find, either that or make sure the ones you have get VERY clean once you’re done cleaning them.
So just take apart every component, clean up everything NOT with a vacuum cleaner, use a compressed air can or a bicycle/football pump.
When putting it back together make sure you get the thermal compound back properly with the pea method, maybe replace the thermal compound on your GPU’s as well (YouTube it to learn how) lastly, a fresh windows install always gives it a hand.

As I reported elsewhere, almost by accident I ran GW2 on my HTPC.

Spec: AMD A6-6400 (two cpu cores), 8GB RAM (1600MHz), loading GW2 via a USB 3.0 memory stick.

Settings: 1920 × 1280, quality set to low (settings were automatically determined by the game)

Got FPSs in the range 20 to 30 – as determined by the options page – playing PvP and running around VB for about two hours with a smallish zerg event chasing. LA took around a -5fps hit though.

No judder, no stutter, no halts on spinning around visual or audio, (even did the flying bug bubble hero quest in VB twice); all very playable, imo.

Very impressed I can tell you, as I didn’t even expect GW2 to load!

Might also say that the drawback of GW2 being on a memory stick was quite minor, loading took longer but not excessive, and once in a zone, I only saw render loading in VB in the far distance – something you have to watch for rather than notice really. BTW Windows 10 will use any unallocated RAM as a Write Cache, max physical RAM loading was 41% with 8GB. There was a big graphical hit for using only 4GB RAM. Note also that the A6 reserved roughly 750MB for it’s GPU cores (has 6). GW2 32-bit was used. Data suggests you would be wise to run GW2 with more than 4GB if your using an APU and no discrete GPU.

The long and short of it is that if a two year old A6 can deliver playability under these circumstances I wouldn’t get too picky regarding much more powerful CPUs and graphic cards.

I am building another HTPC based on the Athlon 5350 (zero fan PC – hopefully), if I get the chance I’ll give that a go as well – unfortunately I don’t have the Win 10 licence and planned on using SteamOS for some older games gameplay, or as a Steam client to my more powerful gaming PC (a X860 and 260x, 8GB, loading from a 2TB SSHD).

Oh on the latter I get 30 to 40 fps on what appears to be max settings (I leave the game to configure these). Apart from a more ‘fuzzy’ picture, imo, and quicker loading (which doesn’t matter much anyway) there wasn’t much difference when actually playing. I can tell you I give this PC a few ‘dirty looks’ after finishing with the A6 machine – from DirectX 9.0c benchmarks the former is three times more powerful.