Guild Wars 2

So I’m thinking of purchasing a new graphics card lately to replace my HD 6850. So I looked at the 7850,7950, and 7970. Which of these would give the bigger boost to fps and would make the game look better?

I’m kinda of on a budget so the 7970 is not an option atm until I save more.

i5 35780k
ASRock Z77 Extreme4
8 gigs of RAM.

In order of performance, the 7970 is the best, followed by the 7950 and finally the 7850. All are fine cards for running GW2, so really your budget is the deciding factor. They are all are significant upgrades over what you have now.

If you’re leaning toward the 7950, however, I’d take a look at the GeForce GTX 760 instead, which will perform as well but should cost slightly less. Currently the 760 is the best card available for a $250 price point.

When in doubt, always check the latest hierarchy chart from tomshardware.com, which updates every month. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

What rez are you running? Is your GPU running at 90-100% while in game? Are you overclocking your CPU? What kind of FPS are you getting now? Unless running really high rez the 6850 should be able to handle the game on higher settings ok, and if you are not OCing that CPU you are missing out on allot of almost free performance, so you might be better off investing into a good CPU cooler and trying your hand at OCing if you are not already.

Better than what I have, but I run all my games on a separate hard drive and they work with no errors or lag on the highest settings.

Well I’m not overclocking and I get anywhere from 60 to 80 fps on average pve. I’ve get about 20-30 fps on really big fights in wvw. My resolution is 1680×1050 and most of my settings are on high except my shaders, since I can’t stand everything being so glossy.

How would I check my GPU usage while running the game?

GPU-Z Performance graph is off the Sensors tab.

You can also check the bus interface to make sure that the PCIe slot is running x16 (Graphics Card tab, half way down, right column). If it doesn’t seem right run the built in render test. Click on the ? next to the Bus Interface box will bring up instructions and the launch button.

Alternately get Process Explorer, which is the Windows Task Manager on steroids. It includes GPU Usage tracking on the System Information window.