Guild Wars 2

Currently running:
Core-i5 3570k
Radeon 7850 2GB
16GB Ram

I would really like to play at native 2560×1600 but in intense WvW battles my fps drops to 10ish (it is fine in PvP and dungeons – I don’t do large scale dragon battles much but I suspect it would be similar to WvW)

Should I upgrade the CPU, GPU or both in order to get my FPS up?

Uhh, is your graphics card at 100% usage when the drop to 10ish FPS happens? If so, upgrade your graphics card. If not, overclock your processor. Other than that you can start petitioning to get a better engine created to run the game D=.

Oh, also make sure WvW character detail is set to lowest, and perhaps at that resolution you might need to enable culling.

thanks, I’ll test it out

GW2 only uses 2 threads, so your best bet is just OCing your CPU as high as it will go. Although, a GPU upgrade could help if it’s being maxed out, but CPU is definitely more important.

Fermi.2409:

GW2 only uses 2 threads, so your best bet is just OCing your CPU as high as it will go. Although, a GPU upgrade could help if it’s being maxed out, but CPU is definitely more important.

No its not, it was using atleast 3cores last time I checked.

muslumgurseks.4951:

Fermi.2409:

GW2 only uses 2 threads, so your best bet is just OCing your CPU as high as it will go. Although, a GPU upgrade could help if it’s being maxed out, but CPU is definitely more important.

No its not, it was using atleast 3cores last time I checked.

Indeed, Guild Wars 2 has more or less 50 threads it generates, however, only a few are really large and noticeable on the CPU usage. These few are the reason behind why you’ll see FPS drop in WvW and other large crowded areas of the game. They are too large for one CPU core to handle and bottle neck the game.

Since all you are changing is resolution, then a more powerful video card will help in general as you go from pushing 2-2.3 megapixels at 1920×1080/1200 to 4 megapixels. But that’s not going to help you in WvW.

And other than overclocking, there isn’t a lot you can do. While the game does indeed have 50 or so threads, altogether it’s less than three cores worth of work so more actual cores won’t help. Performance differences from an i5-3570 to an i7-3770 is minor due to the slightly bigger L3 cache. Splitting real cores into two “logical” cores doesn’t help much in terms of gaming. You already use an Intel ivy bridge quad core so unless you want to gut your system for Haswell then your option is just overclocking.