Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone. Firstly sorry for asking what must seem to some a very newbie question as far as computers go i know a fair bit but im still learning and need a second opinion. Secondly the computer im looking to buy is this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VIBOX-GA-FAST-AMD-DUAL-CORE-3-0GHz-DESKTOP-GAMING-PC-/220679382361?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item3361842559

My question being will this run guild wars 2? and if so what kind of frame rate should i expect at say average graphics levels. I know its not the best “gaming” PC in the world but I literally have a budget of £280 max and from what I could find this is not to bad for the price and I don’t care about having super graphics I just want to be able to run the game on above ultra low settings without lag.

Thanks for your time guys.

You can run GW2, but combining a 3 year old dual core CPU with a anemic video card isn’t a great combo.

Tomshardware did an article about looking at #of cores, overall clockspeed and video card at several different settings and resolutions.

However of couple of points before comparing what they list there to what that box has. First when they compared video cards they did it in a system with an overclocked Intel 6-core CPU, to reduce any impact caused by not “feeding” the video card as fast as the video card wants. And when they tested the impact of the CPU, cores and speed, they used a top end video card reduce performance issues caused by a slow video card.

Second, while they did test an HD 6450, it was one with much faster memory than the one that comes in that rig and graphics memory speed makes an enormous impact on performance, like 30% slower for the one in that rig.

While dual cores hurt performance at least it’s running fairly fast, the CPU isn’t going to be as much of a limiting factor as that video card.

As for performance, if you run it at 1280×720 at best performance (lowest settings), you might, might get 30fps. But I’m likely a bit overly optimistic with that estimate.

The video card is the biggest problem with that system. Sorry, you’ll need a bit more oomph for what you are asking.

Hey Behellagh thanks for a answer so quickly its appreciated. MY follow up question after checking out what you said is if I was to replace the graphics hard with a better one would the rest of the system be up-to to scratch is the card pretty much the defining factor with this system in its lack of power or even with say a £100 – £200 video card would the core still let it down in terms of performance.

If so is there anything better I could get for around the same price?

Then the next problem would be whether or not the 450 watt power supply is of a “modern” design or is it circa 2000 when the 12 volt supply didn’t need to be as powerful as today’s systems need.

Let me explain that. Power supplies put out a range of voltages, each one (3.3v, 5v, 12v) have a maximum amount of power that voltage can put out. Years ago power supplies didn’t need to supply a large amount of power at 12 volts so you could have a power supply that had a maximum output of 450 watts but it could only supply 200 watts at 12 volts. Flashforward to now, something like 90% of the power modern motherboards, video cards and CPUs use is pulled from the 12 volt supply while the 3.3v and 5v requirements combined hangs around 50 watts.

I’m pointing this out because video cards can use a lot of power and slapping a more power hungry video card into a system with a underpowered power supply can be disastrous. Now that manufacturer lists a lot of information about the various parts of that system, just not the power supply other than it’s maximum wattage. That sort of rings warning bells for me. They may use an alright power supply, one that could take a more powerful yet modestly power hungry card like the HD 7750 which uses 75 watts of power versus the HD 6450 which uses like 15 watts, and in both cases the vast majority of that power from 12 volts.

Okay, while I was typing this I found the specs of what I believe they are using as their power supply, a 450 watt model from a company called CIT and it is a model that doesn’t provide a lot of power at 12 volts so forget about the HD 7750, even an HD 6670 using faster GDDR5 could be too much for it (the card tops around 50 watts).

This means upgrading the video card would require you to upgrade the power supply to one of a more modern design as the current ones are designed to provide the overwhelming majority of their power at 12 volts. A power supply like this one (yes I know you are in the UK so NewEgg isn’t a viable source for you but I don’t have any UK mail order computer parts places on bookmark) from Corsair can provide 380 of it’s 430 watts at 12 volts, which would be plenty even for much more expensive and powerful video cards.

Going back to your root question, how much would the CPU limit your gameplay if you upgraded the video card. Well the game does use more than two threads so having only two cores will hurt performance, around 25% compared to a similar speed quad core according to TomsHardware (see the link in my previous post) when running an uber top end video card. This gap should narrow some when a less powerful video card is being used.

But these are the compromises that are ultimately up to you to make when you are on a very tight budget. Sorry I can’t give you better news.