Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

This is my current set-up.

CPU – Fx8350 Overclocked at 4.51 and running stable with Win 10 OS.
Mobo – Asus M5A99FX PRO R2
RAM – 16GB DDR3
GPU – Geforce GTX 960
Cooler – CM Hyper 212 Evo

I mainly use my CPU for gaming ( Guildwars 2, and few other MMORPGS )

Despite have a clock speed of 4.51, i find heavy FPS drops while playing Guildwars 2 in crowded areas and champion battles( as low as 15 ). I was wondering, will I see an improvement in FPS if I switch to Intel i7 4790 ( non K version , I do not plan to OC ) If yes, how much percentage difference will I notice? Is it worth the upgrade?

The total cost of this will be Indian Rupees 26,000 ( USD 400 ) for i7 4790 and Gigabyte B85 D3H motherboard. I also have a buyer whose interested in purchasing my FX 8350 and motherboard for INR 15,000 ( USD 230 ) If I take this route, I will end up spending approx USD 150.

Other options I’ve considered are going for a 120 mm liquid cooling kit and pushing the OC to 5 Ghz which will again cost me another USD 150.

I also checked on the new skylake i5 series and noticed they require DDR4 RAMS and I do not wish to go this route.

Please advise and thanks a lot for taking the time to read this.

Hey there,

I absolutely saw a difference in framerate when I switched from AMD to my Intel i5-4690K.

You mentioned that you wanted to switch to an I7 – though that might be a bit excessive since hyperthreading isn’t really used in games. I would suggest switching to a cheaper I5 model since it will perform the same as an I7 anyway.

I’m using a GTX 970, with my 4.0 GHZ 6 core AMD chip (Can’t remember the exact model number) I was getting about 50 FPS on all high / ultra settings in cities. On my I5, I get about 80 FPS in Divinity’s Reach.

You mentioned FPS drops in combat with many people – very normal, but the intel chips will perform with less of a framerate drop in these cases.

Hope this helps!

AMD is poor in MMOs.
And that’s only because of Player Crowd which is AMD’s bottleneck.

In single player games, like Witcher, AMD and Intel perform on pair – there were even tests where AMD was superior during Streaming.

But in MMOs? – only Intel.

You can try cooling that AMD with the absolute coldness of space and it will still suck.
AMD simply built bad CPUs in the last years, and that´s coming form a decade long AMD user. Maybe the coming Zen architecture will finally bring them on par with Intel again.

Just save the money on your overclocking shenanigans and buy an Intel CPU&Mobo instead.
BTW the i7s are a waste of money, IMHO. An i5 is pretty much all you need.
A quick google shows there are combo Mobos for Skylake allowing DDR3, so take that into account too.

Thanks for the prompt response on this guys.

I will be going the Intel way, However if i do go for the i7 4790 – wont it be more future proof than the i5 4690? Moreover, I am not planning on Overclocking this rig. It will remain stock.

Thanks in advance for your response.

Why not overclock? You lose out on so much performance by not doing so.

I setup a spare system for my newphew to play HoT on this weekend using only the HD4600 on the 4570, 8GB DDR3 1600 CL9 Ram and a 128GB ssd. Running on medium/low settings at 1600×900 that system is getting a solid 30FPS in/out of combat in the new zones.

the FX series from AMD is aged and cannot touch Intel in performance. Overclocking wont bring it any closer to the performance of a G3220, let alone a i7-4790 or anything else Intel has to offer. If the FX8350 doesn’t give you the performance you want, its time to rip and replace it.