Guild Wars 2

Specs:
i5-4590
gtx 1070

I upgraded my graphics card yesterday. I enabled on-screen-display in msi afetrburner so I could see how bad the bottleneck is and decide on upgrading the CPU.

I was on WvW for about 2 hours running with my Zerg, doing Zerg things and getting into fights with blobs. GPU usage never went past 50% and spent most of the time in the mid 40’s. Which is fine for now. I was concerned about CPU usage which spent most of the time in the mid 70’s and spiked once to 82%. Even in fights, where FPS dropped to 20, the CPU was tipping away at 78% usage. I have a 60 hrz monitor but the only time I got 60fps, was running places, and even then it was in the low 50’s more than 60.

TLDR: CPU capping at 82%, how do I get it to use 100%

You can’t. Due to the game client’s design the bottle neck, especially in zergs, is the primary game thread and that, actually any thread, can’t run faster than whatever the performance of a single core is. And while the game has over 30 threads, only a few use a significant amount of CPU time and in the end still needs to periodically sync to the primary thread.

And unlike other game engines which are more GPU dependent, a GTX 1070 isn’t going to help performance significantly in this game.

Behellagh.1468:

a GTX 1070 isn’t going to help performance significantly in this game.

You seem to really know GW2, What CPU would you recommend? I’ve been thinking about getting a I7-4790k and overclocking it hard. I’m on an i5-4590 now, so with the i7-4790k I wouldn’t need to buy new ram… or do you reckon a newer CPU would be worth the extra cash. Let me know mate, cheers.

If you have a good z97 motherboard get a 4790k or a broadwell i5 5675c and overclock it. If not the best thing would be to jump to skylake with a 6600k+new motherboard+fast ddr4 (+3000MHz).

But I doubt you’d see a big improvement, the 4590 is already a quite fast cpu. First I’d try to optimize your computer.
Make sure the gpu is working at pcie 3.0 x16 speed, and disable some ingame settings: Reflections, shadows and put Character Model limit to “low”.

Honestly staying with your 4590 isnt a bad option. Granted you can get more FPS by upgrading to a K or C model if you have a Z series motherboard (the Broadwell-c’s do require a Z97 though), and overclocking to 4.4ghz+. Its just that the upgrade isnt really worth it for GW2 alone.

Your logical upgrades are as follows though

4670K(Z87/Z97), 4690K(Z87/Z97), 5675c(Requires Z97)
4770K(Z87/Z97), 4790K(Z87/Z97), 5775c(Requires Z97)

The only drop in on a H or B series Chipset would be the 4790k due to it being the fastest clocked Haswell CPU there is. 4.0ghz base 4.4ghz Turbo, the Medium Clock while loaded is 4.2ghz. But that is a 350USD CPU. The only other 2 options would be a 4690 or the 4790 as those are the 2nd highest Clocked CPUs stock, however neither of these can be overclocked which is why you would only pair them with a B or H chipset.

But have a look here for a good Idea of what to expect.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9532/the-intel-broadwell-xeon-e3-v4-review-95w-65w-35w-1285-1285l-1265/7