Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been playing GW2 off a 2008 mac book pro for the past forever and it really sucks. Because of this, I’ve kinda decided to put aside some money to build a new computer. It’s not going to be just a gaming computer though – I will probably use it for just general browsing/work too as this computer is pretty much on life support. I did some research and found some interesting stuff. Everyone says that you have to go intel for gaming, and that AMD sucks, but it looked like in most cases AMD wasn’t lagging behind too far, if at all. In one example, someone had a 8350 stock vs a 3570k stock with the same everything else going into the same zones, and the AMD chip didn’t show any signs of weakness or inferiority. With this in mind, I made two builds – A cheaper build and a more expensive build. Here they are:

Build 1 – AMD
CPU – FX 8320 Black Edition 3.5GHz with plans to overclock
CPU Cooler – 212 EVO
Motherboard – Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Socket AM3+ AMD mATX Motherboard
GPU – NVidia GeForce GTX560Ti 1GB
Memory – Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR3-1600 (2 × 4gb)
Hard drive – 1tb WD black
Power – Corsair CX Series CX600M 600 Watt ATX Modular Power
Case – Cooler Master HAF912 Mid Tower ATX Computer Case

I chose the 8320 because it seems to have very good potential for overclocking. It looked, to me at least, to be better than intel chips of the same price and on par with intel chips of higher price. The motherboard was chosen because it seems to have many options, such as crossflex, 4 usb 2.0 slots, 2 usb 3.0 slots, all for a pretty cheap price. The GPU seems to be powerful, and can be found relatively cheaply if you really look around. 8gb of memory seemed plenty enough for me, and I didn’t see the need to add kitten as the regular internal hard drive could suffice (although, I have seen 64gb SSDs for like $35, so that might be worth the investment, just to put windows on it for quick boot times). I chose 600 watts because I feel that is the best choice, the 212 EVO is known for being a good fan which would be needed in order to overclock, and the case looked like it had good airflow for a decent price.

Now, onto the more expensive build:

CPU : Intel Core i5 4670K 3.4GHz with plans to overclock
CPU Cooler : Hydro Series H100i Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard : MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate Socket LGA 1150 ATX Intel Motherboard
RAM : Ballistix Sport XT 8GB DDR3-1866 (2 × 4gb)
GPU : GV-N670C-2GD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2048MB GDDR5
Storage : 1tb WD Black + 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 256GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive
Power : Corsair CX Series CX750M 750 Watt ATX Modular Power Supply
Case : Corsair Vengeance Series C70 ATX Mid Tower

I chose the i5 4670k because, while this is the more expensive build, I wanted to keep it within a price range, and it seems like games are more GPU based in general that CPU based anyways. I went with liquid cooling instead of a fan because liquid cooling is quieter as well as more efficient. The motherboard seems to be a quality motherboard, with a fine pricepoint. I still went with 8gb of ram, but went with DDR3-1866 instead of DDR3-1600 for faster speeds. I chose the 670 because it is in the top 15 on videocardbenchmark without having a terribly high price-point. Alternatively, it could be upgraded to a 770 for about $50 more. I stuck with the 1tb WD black, and added a 256gb SSD so that I can store things on it that need to be opened more quickly. The power supply was upped to 750 watts because I predict that I will need the extra power, and from what I’ve seen, the Corsair Vengeance Series C70 is a very fine case.

So taking this all into account, we have two different builds. With the cheaper one, I save between $300-$400 depending on the parts. With the more expensive build, I get a slightly better CPU (some may argue much better), a more powerful GPU, and all in all upgraded everything. My question is the extra $300-$400 really worth it? Will the playing experience actually be worth an extra $400? Thank you for all the feedback you can provide, and any constructive criticism and suggestions are welcome.
Thanks – Sam

I stopped reading the first build at the AMD FX-8320.

For GW2, the Intel is vastly superior.
A CM Hyper 212 Evo is just as efficient and substantially quieter than a liquid cooler if you’re not planning on overclocking. But if you are, the load temperatures are where the liquid cooler shine.
Protip, never shop for RAM based on their speed. Unless you’re doing CAD work, it makes no remotely noticeable difference. DDR3 800 CL6 keeps up fairly well with DDR3 3000 CL13.
I’d personally recommend Seagate Barracuda from personal experience. WD have been grindy and fail more often.
750 watt PSU has a higher capacity and thus with the higher capacity, the peak power usage will be a lower capacity so in the long run it will last longer.

You could go with the 2 64 GB SSD like in the AMD build and RAID them for double speed on the Intel build if you wanted.

I do apologize but I don’t have much to say about the AMD build if you’re building to play Guild Wars 2. I upgraded from an AMD FX-8350 to an i7 4770K and I can easily say that I will no longer recommend AMD CPU for Guild Wars 2 unless they’re on a tight budget in which I’d recommend the APU because the built in GPU on it is fairly capable compared to the Intel offerings.

Buy the Intel build. You’ll want more power in the beginning which will save you money in the long run. The AMD build may be cheaper (I made the same mistake) but when it comes to other games, even those you want to try, it may be not enough and you will probably need to spend more money on a new graphics card. Aside from the difference in generation and power between the 560 and 670, the 670 also has an additional gig of ram which will also be handy if you want to play other games.

On some other points, save some money and make some compromises with the SSD and Corsair H100. Are they truly necessary and also swap the 670 for a 760 or 770 depending on the cost.

The Intel build you have is that much higher than the AMD because you went out of your way to make it so. This is more like midrange AMD based build vs higherend Intel based rig, the $400 extra is not because it is Intel, but because you picked higher end parts everywhere in the Intel build, why not stick with the same part but just get a Intel mobo/cpu?

Number one, you are getting a K line Intel yet say you will not overclock, that is extra cost for no reason. You add in a AIO cooler over highend air cooler, because you think it is better, but it is not, time and time again, every review site has shown highend air to cool better than AIO (all in one) coolers, if you want watercooling and the temps and low noise to go with it, do a custom loop, the 212 will do just fine here as well. You get faster RAM which does nothing for gaming or most computer work, there are very few things done on computers that will bottleneck on RAM bandwidth, the idea of faster RAM is always better has sort of dropped off, on the core2 chips and those before, RAM speed had a HUGE impact on what kind of over clocks you could get because you OCed by changing the front side bus speed and as such the ratio of the RAM, today we OC by unlocked multis and as such the ratio is not changed as the FSB stays the same. Then you give a huge bump in cost to a GPU over the AMD system, then you add on an extra SSD, and not just any, but one of the highest priced SSDs out there that will not ever show its performance in day to day or gaming and for less than the cost of the pro and the 1TB black you could get a 480GB M500.

If you keep everything the same, but get Intel over AMD and as such a pretty good boost in GW2 performance, it will cost you about 60-70 bucks extra, not anywhere close to $400.

Ok another question has popped into my mind. I can pick up 2 refurbished 560ti’s for less than one 760. Would it be better to get the 2 560ti’s and run them sli than the 760 alone? I know GW2 is spotty with sli, but would it possibly be better?

Refurb is spotty as it is. What you get is what you get, hardly any warranty on it. You’re better off with the GTX 760.

In my opinion, you should go for:
MSI Z87 Gaming Edition board (I dunno any specific model)
I5 4670K
Hyper 212 Evo
120 GB SSD and you can put GW2 on it and load times will be blazing fast
1 TB HDD Seagate Barracuda
GTX 760
650 watt power supply
8 GB RAM DDR3 1600.

It seems like you intentionally cheaped out on the AMD build and made the intel one far superior. You really shouldn’t do that to be honest, or get parts that you may not even use. Like the H100 Corsair CLC. Closed loop liquid coolers only shine in load temperatures. Air coolers are far superior to them and much quieter if you’re not overclocking.
I happen to have a Corsair H100 but I do not overclock my i7 4770K under it often. It runs 3.5 GHz most of the time. I use it because it takes up less space around the motherboard than an equally capable air cooler. It’s a lot noisier too. Don’t be mislead that CLCs are quieter. It doesn’t matter for me, however as I use a headset for all of my audio.

Alternatively you could up the power supply to a 750 and have headroom for future graphics card upgrades. The rest of the machine won’t need to be changed. Not for a number of years anyway.

It seems I’ve made enemies everywhere by putting lower end stuff with the AMD processor. I wasn’t really going for a “make the AMD processor build on par with the Intel build” thing, I was going for “Here’s a cheaper build that utilizes an AMD processor because they are cheaper than Intel processors and I paired up the cheaper AMD processor with cheaper stuff that can still preform pretty well so that the difference in game between my cheaper built AMD build and the more expensive Intel build that will get you 70 fps in game on high settings is minimal, because getting 30fps and getting 70fps isn’t the end of the world and you can play a game with this build that is $300-$400 cheaper than a higher-end build that will get you ‘better’ fps” but it seems my message got distorted. But I am glad that in these responses I have leaned lots about this subject. The reason I didn’t just throw the Inter cpu on the AMD build was kinda the same reason you don’t put a 6.8 liter supercharged engine in a minivan. The AMD had a purpose – be a cheaper build that can still play the game on medium-high setting and get appropriate frame rates. The Intel build (with all the upgraded parts) was supposed to be the one on higher graphics settings getting like 60fps instead of 30. Sorry for any confusion. But I am glad for all the feedback. It has enlightened me much

With how the game works, you’d be throwing money away for performance you could get with the same price. FX-8 or Intel i5? Some of them are the same price, some are not. But one of them performs much better than the other.
I’m only saying though, if you’re just building for GW2, forget about AMD.

Ok well then I suppose I have one last question. Is the overclockability of the 4670k a gamechanger over the 4570? If you overclocked a 4670k to say 4.2 or 4.3 GHz, would you see a signifigant improvement over a 4570? (like 10-20+ frames difference)
Thanks

Maybe around the 10 fps area. from 3.4 to 4.2 isn’t a substantial jump, you’ll see a difference in FPS compared to the same overclock on the AMD which will see maybe 1 or 2 fps increase.

Alright cool I think I’m going to look into the build you posted above
Actually one more thing now that I think about it.
A bunch of games are more GPU intensive than others. So a question I ask is what would play better – a i3 4340 with a gtx 780 or a i5 4670k with a gtx 750?

I’d stick with the i5 4670K and GTX 760. i3 is a locked processor and does not overclock easily at all.

Overclocking often times does not give a huge boost to FPS, what is helps with are minimal FPS, which is when most people start to notice FPS, when you get into an area that “lags”. Sure, the AMD system might do well in the game, but clash into a wvw zerg and the difference of 15 extra FPS on the minimal side can mean the difference of playable or not, people get far too caught up in max FPS, where it all is at however is minimal. There was a 20 something page review on stuff like this, one GPU got 80FPS in a game, while another only got 60FPS, but everyone who played the systems all picked the one that only played at 60FPS, why you ask? Because while on a benchmark the first GPU seems great on paper, it had bad drops to minimal FPS of 24, while the second never dropped under 50, but because these short drops were so short, the benchmark gave it a higher average rating than the other card.

I say all this because there is allot more to system building than just numbers, asking what games better etc matters on what you plan on doing with it and what you plan on playing with it, as well as what resolutions you plan on gaming at. Most games today are not CPU or GPU limited, most all midrange cards can max most games at nice FPS, the need for highend only comes into play with multi monitor or very high rez screens. Games like GW2 however, are limited by CPU power, we are at a point in time where we have the GPU power to max the game, but not a CPU with the power on a single thread to max the game, we have CPUs far powerful enough to max it, however the game is limited on being able to use all CPU threads at once, and so for the most part goes unused.

GTX 760 and 4670k are a great setup together for a gaming rig. I would stick to your WD Caviar Black choice for hard drive though, as WD and Hitachi remain over 95% survival rate for Annual failures, whereas Seagate has some of the worst reliability ratings among hard drives down in the 70% range for annual survival rates. Especially on their Barracuda drives as some of the worst in the market.

Stick with an 840 EVO 250GB for SSD, as it will be cheaper, newer model, as well as same speeds. I would of course not recomend a 750watt for a PSU that will probably never hit more than 400watts… But that’s just me. I would look into investing into maybe a Seasonic X650, Corsair HX650, or similar. The Seasonic X650 tends to be my go-to gold standard of PSU recommendations, however, right now Amazon has the Seasonic SSR-650RM for just $99 of which JonnyGuru gives an amazing rating, which would be what I recommend for you.

I would definitely check out the previously mentioned CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo for the cooling, even if it’s only a temporary solution. Otherwise grab an Phanteks PH-TC14PE for some of the very best air cooling can offer you. I’m not a personal fan of those All In One coolers, I prefer actual liquid cooling setups, but if you need to save some space and don’t want a giant tower sink, the H100i would save some space in that regard and is an ok performer. Just look around at all options.

You should be able to play all current modern titles at decent specs dependent on resolution played at. Avelos got you onto the right path, especially since you have an interest in Guild Wars 2.

I had a really nice post typed out, and the forums ate it!

anyway, let my summarize.

Stick with Intel, get an i5-4670K as everyone else in this thread has recommended.
Your GTX 760 is over kill for this game, so go for it!

Since your going to want to OC that K cpu, you need to be aware of all your cooling options.

The best water AIO is the H100i. However I had one die on my and almost ate my CPU (cause I clock at 4.9Ghz, and the system didn’t shut down when the temps got to 105c when the AIO died) So I started to look more seriously at air cooling again.

This is the review I came across and used to guide my purchase of the Prolimatech CPU cooler I now use. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-heat-sink-haswell,3554.html

I would not recommend spending any money on a evo 212, even if its temporary. As all high end Air coolers are going to run you 80-120 bucks, you should put the 30-40 bucks that 212 is going to cost into the purchase price of your final cooler. Running Prime95 for CPU Temp Testing, stock on my GNSS I get 45C, OC to 4.0Ghz(1.2v) I get 58C, OC to 4.6Ghz(1.29v) I get 63C, and OC to 4.9Ghz(1.38v) I get 73C’s.

You will want a 650w 80+ rated PSU. CX650, X650, HX650’s are all good choices (as recommended by Sobe). But if you decide to go outside of those series, then I would recommend getting a PSU that has decent cable management and a SINGLE 12v rail and still rated at 80%.

Lastely, you will want a good case to support your overclocking. Air flow is a must, as the ambient case temps of the Haswell series needs to be 25c’s or less for a stable OC. Having lack of intake fans (120MM) cable channeling (wire mess management) and small chassis (tiny case area between the MB and drives) plays against the ambient temps of your system. So you want a case that’s pretty open and has a good methodology to it for air flow. One recommendation here is a RaidMax ATX-248NWU, and my other is a Cooler Master HAF XB EVO, which is what I recently moved to for the best ATX Airflow I could find.

And for the record is not that AMD is terrible or anything like that. Its just that GW2 uses 1 thread for the games graphical rendering. And AMD has a 65% weaker per core performance then Intel does. If GW2 ever changes that to be multi-threaded, then I think we can expect BETTER things from AMD. But today, that is just not the case. So that is why most are recommending Intel on these forums today. Its not to bash up AMD.

PIC – My current system.

I’m looking at GW2 benchmarks right now and apparently two 750’s that are SLI are better than one 760, and cost less. I thought that GW2 wasn’t very SLI friendly, however. Any insight?

Rammmuel.1806:

I’m looking at GW2 benchmarks right now and apparently two 750’s that are SLI are better than one 760, and cost less. I thought that GW2 wasn’t very SLI friendly, however. Any insight?

2×750′s will run you about $300. And a single 760 will be $249
and there is no way 2×750′s are better then 1×760.

760 is 188% faster then a single 750.

And GW2 benchmarks should be taken with and grain of salt, because there are so many factors that need to be calculated in order to get a average FPS and compare the different GPUs against it. Currently there is no Benchmark that does this correctly just for GW2.

always run single card solutions until your resolution dictates you need 2 gpus.

The downsides of sli/CF are always there, but the potential gain is really only evident at the 6 megapixel (3×1080p) or higher resolutions

a 760 or even a 270 will be overkill for this game and will run most other games at 1080p@ultra settings smoothly

Pro tip, R9 270 is literally the exact same spec as the R9 270X but is around $50-$80 cheaper usually.

yeah the r9 270/x has the same gpu/vram. The only difference is in clock speed and power draw/connectors.

270 reference has only 1 6pin and is at max capable of 150w power draw which is the reason for the lower clock speeds. Also not much room for oc due to the power limits.

270x reference is rated 180w and has either 2×6pins or 1×8pin. Max power available 225w for more overclocking headroom.

Though a few board makers (MSI) have 270 boards with 2×6pins or 8pin. These would be the ones i would buy if i was in the market for a 270.

Bro, I would say go for the more expensive build.

For GPU, I would say get the 750. It’s not that expensive and it is an AMAZING card.

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GDDR5-1GB-2xDVI-I-Graphics-GV-N750OC-1GI/dp/B00I9I8MWS/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1399031628&sr=8-5&keywords=gtx+750

For that build, a 750?….. 1GB VRAM and 128-bit memory bus…… Just… no

If you are building a modern gaming pc, you want at LEAST 2GB (along with 256-bit width or more). Games are already starting to take advantage of well above 2GB at just 1920×1080. And then if you play on today’s mainstream screen resolution (2560×1440), then 2GB will do nothing but hurt you performance-wise, so 1GB isn’t anywhere near viable for any modern game setup (few exceptions of course, but would be unwise to do so for a setup to last through games), unless you are building a retro machine or something of the sort. He already has a good idea for a GTX 760 or GTX 770, dropping it to a 750 Ti even would more than half the performance of the setup, a 750 even more-so.

Doesn’t have to be at least 256bit. 192 is just fine. Remember, 128 and 192 bit are sweet spots for budgets.