Guild Wars 2

i5 Intel or FX 8350 and why.
8GB of memory or more and why if more.
How much would the video card affect both and what are the major specks to look for in the card.

I have always been a fan of AMD CPUs.

However, my next build will be using an Intel CPU for the following reasons:

1. Intel is currently the better performing CPU.
2. The 22nm technology uses less power = runs cooler (77 watts for an i5).
3. Support for PCI-E 3.0, although is isn’t fully utilized right now.

For RAM; I’ll probably start with 8 gig then expand as needed. I’ll probably go with Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600. I’ll be using dual channel (2 X 4gig). In my opinion, the small performance gain of ddr3 2400 vs. ddr3 1600 isn’t worth the added cost.

Why am I using only 2 sticks of RAM? Because I can use a lower (faster) command rate than with 4 sticks. With 2 sticks I can use a command rate of 1T and be stable. Most of the time 4 sticks won’t run at 1T and must use a 2T command rate.

For video card – get the best you can afford. Personally, I’ll probably go with a Geforce 660Ti to start with. The performance jump from a Geforce 650 to a 660Ti is pretty significant judging by the benchmarks I’ve seen.

Anyway, just my two pennies worth of advice.

I don’t have the numbers, but I’m fairly certain the 8350 will beat the i5 for gameplay recording and video editing. In both cases moar cores is the way to go. That said, the i5 is the better straight up gaming CPU. I’m guessing it’s out of your budget or you would have mentioned it, but an i7 would beat both, no question.

8GB of RAM should be good, although more RAM for video editing is always a good thing. If you can afford it, 16GB would certainly help.

I don’t usually look too much at specs for graphics cards, but focus more on benchmark comparisons. You’ll want something fairly good to keep up with GW2, and any other games you play (I’d say 650Ti at the absolute minimum for GW2, maybe a 7770 if you’re really tight). Tom’s Hardware’s Best Graphics Cards for the Money is a great place to start, although keep in mind the GTX 770 and 780 weren’t out when this was written (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html). I personally would say a sapphire 7870XT is one of the best deals out there if it fits your budget.

For gaming alone, more cores won’t increase performance and often for recording a bottleneck is the hard drive (assuming the rest of the build is solid), so get a quality SSD for recording onto.

CPU wise, Intel have the upper hand for gaming at the moment. The i5 3570k (Ivy Bridge) and 4670k (Haswell) are two of the best gaming CPUs around, you’ll have no problem with those for a while plus they, at least the 3570k, overclocks superbly. Having said that, an i7, due to the hyper-threading, will speed up video encoding and help with heavy video editing.
The guys above me have given some good advice for RAM, and as Basketcase said, if your going to be doing serious video editing, go for something higher than just 8GB.

Passmark is a great site for looking at hardware benchmarks and I highly recommend looking at it before you buy http://www.cpubenchmark.net/.

The others have mentioned the 650 and 660, note that there is a big performance gap between the 650 and 660, so go for the 660 if you have to choose between them. It was the same with the 450 & 460 and the 550 & 560, and go for the Ti version.

Some numbers on video editing:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-12.html

I haven’t seen any full reviews have been done on haswell i5s yet, but I don’t think the Ivy-Haswell improvement was enough to catch up on threaded tasks.

Either would be fine, though core for core, Intel is faster ATM where the piledrivers are more like an i3. Mostly you’re going to want an ssd for recording high quality video, because the faster the write speed, the higher quality the video and the less amount of lag in the video.