Guild Wars 2

So for the longest time ive played pc games on my laptop and its time for an upgrade. im new to pc building and i would like some recommendations for a gaming pc for gw2 and other mmos. i am hoping to be able to smoothly run the game on at least high settings with good fps. i would like to spend around 800 dollars but i am willing to push 850 or 900 if it would mean any significant increase in quality. thank you!

Well buy an :

- i5 (mid/high end (& preferably an unlocked one if you wanto to OC)) (4th gen)
mid/high-end graphics card 770,970, or r9 280 <- is more important then your CPU
- 8 Gb RAM do not waste money buying high performance RAM if you do not wish to OC your PC
- A decent (gaming/ enthousiast) mainboard (Audio and LAN should be included in the package) If you’re just going to run stock do not buy a set with special OC abilities. make sure you have the needed sata connectors, enough USB ports and so on.
- A decent CPU cooler.
- Buy a Solid State Drive (SSD) (pref 256Gb) and a good HDD (1 Tb should suffice)

If you buy a box make sure it has the right exterior connectors for audio, in a place you find easy to use. If you are placing your pc on top of your table, make sure the connections are on the botton, if you are putting it on the ground make sure you have then on top. If you put your pc on the ground make sure your PSU is cooling from the back, If it’s on the table it doesn’t matter too much. Buying and old box can be cheap but it is a shame to find you can only connect your USB 3.0 to the back just because there are no correct connectors on top…

Make sure you keep it clean. Dust causes errors and crashes due to dust bridges and will hinder the flow of air for cooling. the best 2 tools in the mechanical fitness of your pc are a can of compressed air and your vacuum cleaner.

Overclocking can provide some adiitional computing power, it is a trade though as your PC will use more power and the components will suffer in the long run. OC-ing voids warrantees. ALWAYS. You want to try it: NP, your gamble! OC-ing can destabilize systems and cause crashes, Also when buying and OC-ing a pc in winter, do not expect it to run as smooth in summer as ambient temperatures will rise and your PC will run hotter still! . A warmer computer will run SLOWER! we are at a time where your graphics card functions optimal at 80 C, and your processor as well.. you will need your cooling. more cooling tends to boost your performance.

If you gonna build yourself you should know you need
-Box
-Mainboard
-CPU
-cooler for CPU
-coolant paste(should be with you cooler, but custom tend to be better, use as little as possible but too little is fatal. This is what keeps you pc alive. Else ask an experienced friend.
-RAM
-GPU
-STORAGE (SSD/HDD)))
-connectors (should be delivered with your mainboard.)
- A philips screwdriver,
-a credit card/reduction card or whatever
- and some patience.

If you handled computer parts already you should be familiar with dangers of static discharge, so make sure you work grounded and be carefull. Most things are idiot proof…

Lastly prices vary, prices are coupled to the exchange rate with the dollar generally. I can give you details to a very nice set for 850 euro, but if the dollar becomes a bit higher , all of a sudden the set could costs you 30-40 euro’s extra.

edit: I forgot the most important part the PSU Without power you can have everything but it will never calculate. I have owned several PC’s before and in the past cases came with preinstalled PSU’s and they used to be powerfull enough, but it has been a while. Make sure If you buy a computer you buy a PSU with some watts to spare. OC-ing will raise watt usage (sometimes quite a lot) also if you want to put in some additional hardware it can be very nice to have a 100 wats to spare. never skimp on your PSU. try to get a certified one. If you never going to buy additional GPU’s never buy more then 100 wats too much. PSU’s tend to be fairly nicely priced untill 750-800 watts and I doubt you’ll need more. I myself running 2 GPU’s and a powerhungry mainboard and PSU needs 850-900 watts continously and I bought 1050 watt, just to make sure it will never be warm (PSU’s can run hot, especially if they need to use all the watts they were designed for… And It can be overloaded causing burnouts of parts and the PSU when not powerfull enough.) I have had 4 or 5 PC’s before and tend to salvage these things so I never buy new ones unless I know they will not handle the load I will use. It’s also the reason why I forgot to put it in.

Something like this would work quite nicely for the game….plenty of other AMD & INTEL setups for around this price on newegg……would leave you enough for a decent monitor, too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220737

1. Go Intel over AMD for the CPU. Individual core performance impacts overall performance more than going cheap with AMD and putting the bucks in the best GPU for your budget. Even the Pentium G3258 (unlocked dual core) can hold it’s own with most AMD CPUs with many more or slower performing cores in this game.

2. Don’t go cheep on the PSU.

3. see 1 and 2

You can peruse the budget builds at the following links for ideas. Don’t forget that the Microsoft tax (OEM Windows copy) is around $100.

http://techreport.com/review/27488/tr-christmas-2014-system-guide/9

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-budget-gaming-pc,4021.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mainstream-enthusiast-pc-build,4023.html

You could pair down the cost of a mid line/mainstream build by dropping items like an SSD boot drive and stepping down to a slightly less powerful but more bang for the buck video card. Just don’t scrimp on the PSU, bad place to save a few bucks.

Earlier pages in that TechReport article suggest alternatives for each class of item needed in building a PC.

I’m sure others will come along and post their PCPartpicker suggestions.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Well buy an :

- i5 (mid/high end (& preferably an unlocked one if you wanto to OC)) (4th gen)
mid/high-end graphics card 770,970, or r9 280 <- is more important then your CPU
- 8 Gb RAM do not waste money buying high performance RAM if you do not wish to OC your PC
- A decent (gaming/ enthousiast) mainboard (Audio and LAN should be included in the package) If you’re just going to run stock do not buy a set with special OC abilities. make sure you have the needed sata connectors, enough USB ports and so on.
- A decent CPU cooler.
- Buy kitten (pref 256Gb) and a good HDD (1 Tb should suffice)

If you buy a box make sure it has the right exterior connectors for audio, in a place you find easy to use. If you are placing your pc on top of your table, make sure the connections are on the botton, if you are putting it on the ground make sure you have then on top. If you put your pc on the ground make sure your PSU is cooling from the back, If it’s on the table it doesn’t matter too much. Buying and old box can be cheap but it is a shame to find you can only connect your USB 3.0 to the back just because there are no correct connectors on top…

Make sure you keep it clean. Dust causes errors and crashes due to dust bridges and will hinder the flow of air for cooling. the best 2 tools in the mechanical fitness of your pc are a can of compressed air and your vacuum cleaner.

Overclocking can provide some adiitional computing power, it is a trade though as your PC will use more power and the components will suffer in the long run. OC-ing voids warrantees. ALWAYS. You want to try it: NP, your gamble! OC-ing can destabilize systems and cause crashes, Also when buying and OC-ing a pc in winter, do not expect it to run as smooth in summer as ambient temperatures will rise and your PC will run hotter still! . A warmer computer will run SLOWER! we are at a time where your graphics card functions optimal at 80 C, and your processor as well.. you will need your cooling. more cooling tends to boost your performance.

If you gonna build yourself you should know you need
-Box
-Mainboard
-CPU
-cooler for CPU
-coolant paste
-RAM
-GPU
-STORAGE (SSD/HDD)))
-connectors (should be delivered with your mainboard.)

A philips screwdriver, and some patience. If you handled computer parts already you should be familiar with dangers of static discharge, so make sure you work grounded and be carefull. Most things are idiot proof…

Lastly prices vary, prices are coupled to the exchange rate with the dollar generally. I can give you details to a very nice set for 850 euro, but if the dollar becomes a bit higher , all of a sudden the set could costs you 30-40 euro’s extra.

Thanks for all the info! i will probably be putting in on the floor because i am going to use my tv for a monitor until i buy a computer monitor. even then it will most likely be on the floor still. but if you can give me the detail for a set for 800-850 dollars that would be awesome!

Behellagh.1468:

1. Go Intel over AMD for the CPU. Individual core performance impacts overall performance more than going cheap with AMD and putting the bucks in the best GPU for your budget. Even the Pentium G3258 (unlocked dual core) can hold it’s own with most AMD CPUs with many more or slower performing cores in this game.

2. Don’t go cheep on the PSU.

3. see 1 and 2

You can peruse the budget builds at the following links for ideas. Don’t forget that the Microsoft tax (OEM Windows copy) is around $100.

http://techreport.com/review/27488/tr-christmas-2014-system-guide/9

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-budget-gaming-pc,4021.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mainstream-enthusiast-pc-build,4023.html

You could pair down the cost of a mid line/mainstream build by dropping items like an SSD boot drive and stepping down to a slightly less powerful but more bang for the buck video card. Just don’t scrimp on the PSU, bad place to save a few bucks.

Earlier pages in that TechReport article suggest alternatives for each class of item needed in building a PC.

I’m sure others will come along and post their PCPartpicker suggestions.

cool!! thanks a ton!

Teon.5168:

Something like this would work quite nicely for the game….plenty of other AMD & INTEL setups for around this price on newegg……would leave you enough for a decent monitor, too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220737

thank you! that price tag is definitley appealing. ill do some reasearch

Wrong section for this

That said I do not exactly agree with Pax’s comment “mid/high-end graphics card 770,970, or r9 280 <- is more important then your CPU”. Since you noted that you were interested in mmo performance…your cpu matters more imo. You could run this game perfectly fine on a 100 dollar gpu and an upgrade to 300 dollar one would not really add much at all. However the difference between kitten (really how does 50 dollars get filtered) cpu and a $250 cpu will be rather noticeable.

Edit…I would not recommend that pre-built with the a-10 linked for this.

Edit#2…You can get a perfectly fine PSU for 30-50 bucks. There’s no reason to go overboard.

Essence Snow.3194:

Wrong section for this

That said I do not exactly agree with Pax’s comment “mid/high-end graphics card 770,970, or r9 280 <- is more important then your CPU”. Since you noted that you were interested in mmo performance…your cpu matters more imo. You could run this game perfectly fine on a 100 dollar gpu and an upgrade to 300 dollar one would not really add much at all. However the difference between kitten (really how does 50 dollars get filtered) cpu and a $250 cpu will be rather noticeable.

Edit…I would not recommend that pre-built with the a-10 linked for this.

True but video and cpu should be balanced, and from what I hear most peole have cpu power tro spare when running GW2

Small remark, It can be handy to have a DVD drive, but if your old PC has a SATA DVD, just remove it and build it in, it’s easy. should save you 15-25 euro

i did hear that mmo need more cpu than gpu. this is the first time ive ever built a pc so im pretty clueless on what is best and what i need. if anyone good give me a list or link of all the parts i would need in my budget, that would be awesome

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147107
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125556
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231550
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132287
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117372
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200014

i did a little research and found all theses to be in my budget. anything in here a no/dont need/need better/could go with cheaper? is there anything else id need

This is a great tool for messing around with building a rig

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

nicktroy.9106:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147107
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125556
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231550
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132287
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117372
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200014

i did a little research and found all theses to be in my budget. anything in here a no/dont need/need better/could go with cheaper? is there anything else id need

You’re missing a power supply and not a fan of that CPU cooler. Sadly being after Xmas holiday my preferred choice of inexpensive air cooler, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is out of stock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

As for a PSU, this will suffice nicely.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151118

Behellagh.1468:

nicktroy.9106:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147107
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125556
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231550
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132287
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117372
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200014

i did a little research and found all theses to be in my budget. anything in here a no/dont need/need better/could go with cheaper? is there anything else id need

You’re missing a power supply and not a fan of that CPU cooler. Sadly being after Xmas holiday my preferred choice of inexpensive air cooler, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is out of stock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

As for a PSU, this will suffice nicely.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151118

i was talking with a friend and he said i didnt need the cooler becuase some else came with one

Essence Snow.3194:

Wrong section for this

That said I do not exactly agree with Pax’s comment “mid/high-end graphics card 770,970, or r9 280 <- is more important then your CPU”. Since you noted that you were interested in mmo performance…your cpu matters more imo. You could run this game perfectly fine on a 100 dollar gpu and an upgrade to 300 dollar one would not really add much at all. However the difference between kitten (really how does 50 dollars get filtered) cpu and a $250 cpu will be rather noticeable.

Edit…I would not recommend that pre-built with the a-10 linked for this.

Edit#2…You can get a perfectly fine PSU for 30-50 bucks. There’s no reason to go overboard.

Yea, I have also heard that GW2 is more cpu intensive than gpu.

That being said, I run the game at high graphic levels with an older, overclocked AMD phenom II cpu and an older ATI radeon hd 8000 series card…..and it runs just fine….normally around 50-60 fps…

I do have to turn down the graphic levels during the huge T1 blob fights in wvw when there are well over 80+ people fighting, and in huge champion boss pve fights……but that is acceptable for me, when my rig’s internals are fairly old.

The higher end AMD cpus work just fine, imo, especially if you want to save some decent $$$ on the build. /shrug

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VZzdt6 I made this build for you. The HHD is a little bit on the slow side to save some money. I would defenitly update it in the future, since it’s also rather small once you install some games on it. The SSD defenitly is big enough for Windows, office and your browsers. I wouldn’t install your games on it because it’s way to small for that plus to make it work longer. With the overlocked GTX760 you’re good for GW2. If you however want to play games like AC:unity I would consider upgrading to a GTX970 (Asus or MSI). If you want to go SLI I would upgrade that power supply to a 650M or even a 750M, just to be sure you can handle power spikes.

nicktroy.9106:

Behellagh.1468:

nicktroy.9106:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147107
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125556
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231550
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132287
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117372
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200014

i did a little research and found all theses to be in my budget. anything in here a no/dont need/need better/could go with cheaper? is there anything else id need

You’re missing a power supply and not a fan of that CPU cooler. Sadly being after Xmas holiday my preferred choice of inexpensive air cooler, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is out of stock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

As for a PSU, this will suffice nicely.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151118

i was talking with a friend and he said i didnt need the cooler becuase some else came with one

You need to be careful with some mid tower cases and some of the larger video cards. There are some cards that will have problems with some mid towers due to their length in relationship to where the hard drives are mounted in the case. Read some of the reviews on the video card and you’ll see some saying it cramps everything in their midtower case. Not a huge deal, but something to be aware of.

Behellagh.1468:

2. Don’t go cheap on the PSU.

I just wanted to further emphasize this point, as it can’t be understated and it’s often overlooked.

Also, I didn’t see if anyone mentioned the GTX 750 ti as a possible graphics card, but it’s decent bang for your buck at ~$150.

NVidia, not AMD.

Get an ASUS motherboard.

For no better reason than that they’re cheap get a 4TB HHD. I recommend a 120ishGB SSD for your OS. Always have a separate partition if not entirely separate drive to store things so you don’t wipe it all out if you have to reinstall the OS.

Kal Spiro.9745:

NVidia, not AMD.

Get an ASUS motherboard.

For no better reason than that they’re cheap get a 4TB HHD. I recommend a 120ishGB SSD for your OS. Always have a separate partition if not entirely separate drive to store things so you don’t wipe it all out if you have to reinstall the OS.

Either Nvidia or Amd video card……they’re both comparable…all depends on which offers better bang for the buck for you. My wife’s machine has a nvidia(gtx) and I have an amd(ati radeon), and we’re happy with both cards when it comes to the game.

While ASUS makes some very, very nice motherboards,(I have owned several) you’ll pay extra just for the name. You can get really nice, very dependable gaming motherboards for a lot less…..just do your research on them.

Completely agree on the HD suggestion.

It’d be entirely possible to build a very nice gaming machine in the $800 price range.

Some of the advice on this thread is great. That barebones tower with the A-10 APU cpu? No. Do not buy that. That is not a good foundation for a gaming machine at all.

GamesMaxed.6197:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VZzdt6 I made this build for you. The HHD is a little bit on the slow side to save some money. I would defenitly update it in the future, since it’s also rather small once you install some games on it. The SSD defenitly is big enough for Windows, office and your browsers. I wouldn’t install your games on it because it’s way to small for that plus to make it work longer. With the overlocked GTX760 you’re good for GW2. If you however want to play games like AC:unity I would consider upgrading to a GTX970 (Asus or MSI). If you want to go SLI I would upgrade that power supply to a 650M or even a 750M, just to be sure you can handle power spikes.

the parts i bought are very similar to this. my power supply is 750 though

People keep overestimating the power needed. Unless you are going multi-GPU, a high quality 650 watt PSU will give quite enough overhead even in overclocked systems.

i ordered all my parts today! i had a friend who is pretty knowledgeable help me out but i pieced all the parts together before based on all of your helpful info. thank you so much everyone!

Well good luck. Don’t rush the assembly. Make sure the video card is in the correct x16 slot for maximum performance.

I’ll tell you one thing. All these people saying, blah, blah, GW2 is mostly dependant on the CPU are full of it. Let them try (like I did) playing GW2 on a GTX 8600 while sporting an i7 960.

GW2 is an unoptimised mess that heats up my new gfx card (and my old gtx 580) and (new) cpu faster than the most modern games I purchased on the Steam sales. Granted I have it running with anti aliasing via Nvidia Inspector but I do this with other games but GW2 is the only one that takes me into the 70’s (degrees).

Paul.4081:

ILet them try (like I did) playing GW2 on a GTX 8600

Just curious what museum it is? My gtx 970 never goes above 61o C while playing gw2 and i have it overclocked to 1517mhz. Check, gw2 is one of the games where i can use 4k resolution and it won’t affect my fps even in wvw ZvZ which speaks a lot.

This game is cpu bound and that is actually a fact. I hope they bring dx12 in future tho or at least dx11 as it would increase performance a lot compared to old dx9 they currenty have.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Paul.4081:

ILet them try (like I did) playing GW2 on a GTX 8600

Just curious what museum it is? My gtx 970 never goes above 61o C while playing gw2 and i have it overclocked to 1517mhz. Check, gw2 is one of the games where i can use 4k resolution and it won’t affect my fps even in wvw ZvZ which speaks a lot.

This game is cpu bound and that is actually a fact. I hope they bring dx12 in future tho or at least dx11 as it would increase performance a lot compared to old dx9 they currenty have.

It’s the museum of ‘My gtx 580 was dying and decided to try out my old 8600 while I waited on my 780 ti delivery’.

My temp’s may be considered high but I am running at 4x multisampling and….http://ipkonfig.com/guild-wars-2-bringing-antialiasing-to-the-game

I also use this with other games. The other games don’t go above 60’s though, not one. GW2 though. Granted all I do in this game is world bosses so all those particles etc. probably contribute to the temps with AA on.

Its depends what games you playing then. If your graphic card is 780ti then that temp is completely normal – under full load it reachs 83o C.

If you have games like Crysis 3, Metro give it a try and check your temps there, i seriously doubt that yours gpu temp will be under 80.

You can try to copy my setup below, courtesy of Speccy:

Some notes:
-> I chose i5 over i7 as it’s adequate enough and I admit, I don’t have much money when I bought this. lol

-> 16gb of ram is overkill. I hardly touch the 6gb mark, though I don’t multi-task on games, I only have 1 open at a time, along with browser (Opera, 10-20 tabs) and some messager (YM, Hangouts, Skype) and a music app (Spotify) – those along with other usual background process like a firewall (Zone Alarm) and antivirus (Avast) and spyware (Spybot).

-> My motherboard is not the best one out there, it can only support 4 hdds and has 2 USB 3.0 ports at the back. I can support 2 gpu’s though for SLI (Nvidia) or Crossfire (AMD).

-> My HDDs are supposed to be Western Digitals (I’m a fan, I admit, so it’s biased) but they are out of stock at the time I assembled so I settled to the 2nd best option IMO, Seagate.

-> This can run almost any games at max(I don’t have much, but this runs Advanced Warfare, Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 on max, I’m guessing they are good benchmarks) thanks to the gpu, and can run GW2 on max settings too thanks to both cpu and gpu. Though I am having trouble keeping more than 20fps on world boss events on a peak period, I don’t think I can do much (I’ve heard of people who has i7s run on same issue, so I don’t bother to look for solutions anymore)

I’m getting i7 4790k, gtx970, maximus VI computer with 8GB of memory. Will it be good enough to run WvW battles quite smooty?

Paul.4081:

I’ll tell you one thing. All these people saying, blah, blah, GW2 is mostly dependant on the CPU are full of it. Let them try (like I did) playing GW2 on a GTX 8600 while sporting an i7 960.

You do realize that the i7-960 is 3 generations old and the i5-4690K is like 50% faster? Heck the FX-8350 which gets belittled here for it’s low performance cores has about the same performance.

The i7-960 was a top line but affordable (compared to the 975) CPU, in 2009. But that all changed with Sandy Bridge came out in Jan 2011 and performance has been ratcheting up every generation after that.

As for graphics, the GT 730 or R7 240 are faster and in this case it’s entirely possible that your graphics card was actually the bottle neck for this game.

So it doesn’t surprise me that your performance wasn’t stellar then. I assume your performance is a lot better now.

does GW2 utilize multiple cores? I know a lot of applications don’t, so a fast 2- or 4- core would be better than a slower 8- or 12- core.
I’ll have to check CPU usage when I get home.

Targets.9802:

I’m getting i7 4790k, gtx970, maximus VI computer with 8GB of memory. Will it be good enough to run WvW battles quite smooty?

You should be good to go with that setup.

Mystic.5934:

does GW2 utilize multiple cores? I know a lot of applications don’t, so a fast 2- or 4- core would be better than a slower 8- or 12- core.
I’ll have to check CPU usage when I get home.

Here is the CPU usage and per Thread overall usage while I was in WvW a while back using Process Explorer. Note the CPU % on the thread list is overall and since I’m on a quadcore no thread can go over 25%.

Behellagh.1468:

Mystic.5934:

does GW2 utilize multiple cores? I know a lot of applications don’t, so a fast 2- or 4- core would be better than a slower 8- or 12- core.
I’ll have to check CPU usage when I get home.

Here is the CPU usage and per Thread overall usage while I was in WvW a while back using Process Explorer. Note the CPU % on the thread list is overall and since I’m on a quadcore no thread can go over 25%.

interesting. why so many gw2.exe instances? it looks like gw2 is using 55.78% total, or 2.23 cores.
I know my computer reads out cpu usage as a per-core amount. The most I’ve seen is two Toasts, each encoding a dvd movie at ~1100% combined (6 cores + hyperthreading)

Those screenshots show only CPU, memory, IO and threads used by a single copy of the game. It’s just some threads are started in a common thread of code so different thread ID (TID) but identical start address within gw2.exe.

The ATI threads, I’m using ATI graphics, are spun off by the driver for use by the game and that’s why they are counted toward the CPU total for the game.

On the CPU screenshot you can see the game is using around 67% while if you add up the CPU % of the top 11 threads (of 45) displayed you will get 66%.