Guild Wars 2

I’ve got an older computer that runs GW2 with barely enough fidelity to be playable. We’ve got all settings on “Low” and the game is playable, however in certain situations like jumping puzzles, it isn’t quite good enough and the sluggishness causes a jumping puzzle failure and much player frustration.

I wanted to get your tips on the best way to determine if the system is primarily CPU-bound or GPU-bound when GW2 gets sluggish. If it is CPU-bound, I’ll probably get a new system since this one is pretty old and options for a better CPU will be limited and probably not worth it. If it is GPU-bound though there are a few options out there to get a better video card for not much money that will work with this system.

I don’t want to spend the money on a new video card though if we’re CPU-bound. What’s the best way to tell where my GW2 bottleneck is?

We need to know the system specs.

Thanks Abomally. Here are the specs, although I was hoping for a more general test or determination I could run to see where the bottleneck is. I’ve read on the forums in various places that GW2 places more burden on the CPU, so that’s why I was cautious to spend the money on a new video card since that may not be my bottleneck here.

OS: Windows 7 32-bit
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 5000+
RAM: 3Gb
Video: NVidia GeForce 310
HDD: Western Digital WD74

Orion Templar.4589:

Thanks Abomally. Here are the specs, although I was hoping for a more general test or determination I could run to see where the bottleneck is. I’ve read on the forums in various places that GW2 places more burden on the CPU, so that’s why I was cautious to spend the money on a new video card since that may not be my bottleneck here.

OS: Windows 7 32-bit
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 5000+
RAM: 3Gb
Video: NVidia GeForce 310
HDD: Western Digital WD74

Build/buy a whole new system. Your entire system is lacking and aged for this game.

I suggest looking at a desktop with a G3220 and either a GTX750 or R7 260x if your on a budget

But your system is not worth upgrading.

edit Just to show you a baseline build you can work with click here – http://pcpartpicker.com/user/sirsquishy/saved/YCLfrH Total: $369.91

It does not include an optical drive nor OS. I am not sure what you have available to you otherwise, but generally I do not buy PCs with either since I use a retail version of windows.

The Image attached uses a G3258 clocked at 4ghz (1ghz faster then a G3220) but the performance will be very similar in wide open areas with the settings in the screen shot. Also, My r7 260x is about the same speed as the suggested GTX750.

Excellent advice and feedback – thank you! I think I’ll plan to follow that advice and start looking at options for a new system. I hadn’t seen that pcpartpicker site before either – I’ll be adding that to my favorites list.

GW2 is heavily CPU dependent. I would go for a high clock quad core CPU (Intel if possible). I would also upgrade to Win7 64-bit.

My primary system is newer (Intel Core i7, 8 core) with 12Gb memory, an SSD, and an NVidia video card with a 750 Ti and DDR5. It runs GW2 very nicely with all settings on high. I’d love to buy an even better system and move this system down the line to be my new secondary, but unfortunately the budget isn’t there for that particular option right now. Per the discussion above upgrading my existing secondary system doesn’t sound wise, so I’m probably looking at replacing it with a better budget system.

Thanks to all for the feedback and advice.

Just as a follow up, I was planning to research new systems, but I changed my mind since I found a promising video card for a good price so I figured I wouldn’t be out much money if it didn’t improve things in the older system too much. The old system could only take a single-slot video card, so after researching some options I picked up a Gigabyte card based on the NVidia GT 730, 2Gb GDDR5. I’m happy to say it made a huge difference. My Windows Experience Index for both gaming and desktop graphics went up by 2 points each, and now on the older system I’m running at all GW2 graphics settings on “medium” and getting between 50fps and 60fps. (Probably could even go to some high settings except for zerg events.)

Anyway, just wanted to pass along that follow up info in case anyone is making a similar decision. If you’re looking for an entry level single-slot video card, the one I got was the “Gigabyte Ultra Durable 2 GV-N730D5-2GI GeForce GT 730 Graphic Card – 902 MHz Core – 2 GB GDDR5 SDRAM – PCI Express 2.0 x8”