Guild Wars 2

Alright tech guru and master types, I need your advice. Here is what I am using currently to play GW2. The game runs just fine in almost every situation except for large zerg battles, where my FPS consistently drops to around 5.

I’ve been told that upgrading my processor is the main way to easily and cheaply bump up the performance on my current rig. But if I need to, I’m not completely against replacing almost the entire rig: MB, vid card, ram, CPU, everything.

Win7 Ultimate
Gigabyte GA-880GM-D2H Motherboard
AMD Athlon II X2 255 Processor 3.10 GHz
8gb DDR3 RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTS 450
onboard sound
2TB SATA HDD

I realize this is kind of a barebones description of my machine. I’m tech savvy enough to know things in general terms, and take apart and assemble the components of a PC, but not tech savvy enough to know what is optimal.

So…..opinions? I’m aware that a lot of my machine is out of date. When I built it originally it wasn’t meant to be cutting edge even then. Basically it’s a gaming rig on a budget. But since I’m looking to get competitive in WvW, I need to upgrade badly.

First suggestion is a better CPU. An Athlon X2 doesnt have much in the way of gaming power, I should know I have one also

If you want the cheap option just replace that with an AMD quad or better around the 4gz region. The more expensive option is to replace the motherboard and cpu with an intel setup. My preference would be an I7 cpu/board.

Second suggestion is new GPU. GTS 450 is a decent card but there are better available. Which one just comes down to how much you want to spend on a card.

Third and final suggestion is an SSD drive dedicated to gaming. It makes a major impact on load times compared to standard disc drives.

Thanks for the reply!

The main thing I’m concerned about is getting a better CPU, then having it not be compatible with my MB. A quick google search of the board turns up that it uses “Socket AM3” processors. A quick wiki of that turns up that it includes Phenom II, Athlon II, Sempron, and Opteron.

As far as I can tell, the Phenom II range of processors are the most powerful. Another quick google/amazon search turns up a AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition as what appears to be the best bang for my buck. But this is still only a 3.4Ghz quad core.

Additionally, I’m not familiar enough with the tech to know if it’s actually compatible with my board. It LOOKS right, though.

Ok first things first. Budget ?

A rig capable of running GW2 with ‘playable’ FPS in WvW will requir a not so insignificant amount of cash.

A AMD FX 8000 series CPU or better yet a Intel 3570k or 3770k are pritty much the best u can get atm and even they requir OC’s to keep the MINIMUM FPS from droping lower than 25 and 30 FPS respectivly.

GPU wise u can get away with 650ti or HD7770 and that should net u medium to high setitngs with good FPS. Personaly i would get a Sapphire 7870XT as its one of the best bang for buck cards out atm.

With out a budget i cant recommend a full build but i can say that budget wise for a proper upgrade ur gunna be looking at between $600 and $900 depending on whether u go AMD or Intel and how high u wanna go on the GPU.
That wil include a New CPU, Motherboard, RAM, CPU Cooler & TIM, GPU, PSU, and Case.

I’ll be honest, the idea was to upgrade the system for as cheaply as possible. Sadly, I think it’s just a little too out of date to upgrade with much effect. Even the 650ti uses PCI-E 3.0, which I don’t think is supported by the board, and the best processor available is the one I posted above.

What gets me is that the game runs almost perfectly on default settings when just running around in PvE, sPVP, or dungeons. sits right around 50fps. It’s only when I get into the large zerg battles in WvW that things get dicey. I’ve read that Anet doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong on their end, and players saying that it’s their refusal to optimize for current hardware.

I’m a little hesitant to buy and build a completely new system just to find out that performance in WvW doesn’t really increase that much. I’m not unwilling to turn the settings down to minimum to play in WvW, if that’s what it takes. To paraphrase the Architect, “There are levels of FPS I’m willing to accept.”

WvW is ALOT more CPU than Pve, dungeons etc ..hence ur FPS issues.

A upgrade will deffinatly give u a notable performance boost, specialy if u upgrade the GPU at the same time.

SolarNova.1052:

Ok first things first. Budget ?

A rig capable of running GW2 with ‘playable’ FPS in WvW will requir a not so insignificant amount of cash.

A AMD FX 8000 series CPU or better yet a Intel 3570k or 3770k are pritty much the best u can get atm and even they requir OC’s to keep the MINIMUM FPS from droping lower than 25 and 30 FPS respectivly.

GPU wise u can get away with 650ti or HD7770 and that should net u medium to high setitngs with good FPS. Personaly i would get a Sapphire 7870XT as its one of the best bang for buck cards out atm.

With out a budget i cant recommend a full build but i can say that budget wise for a proper upgrade ur gunna be looking at between $600 and $900 depending on whether u go AMD or Intel and how high u wanna go on the GPU.
That wil include a New CPU, Motherboard, RAM, CPU Cooler & TIM, GPU, PSU, and Case.

watch it sn, you will get infracted and your post removed if you keep saying things like this, after all the gods that be say the game runs perfectly fine as long as you meet min specs.

I agree with what you said, but, I can tell you, the gods of this place do not abide decent.

Check the BIOS version on the mother board It will support this and would be a big improvement. (might need to flash the BIOS) Overclocks really easy.
http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=3475
http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=46281&vpn=HDZ965FBGMBOX&manufacture=AMD&promoid=1323

Forgive me for being a bit slow here, but I’m not sure what I’m looking at with the first link, zerk.

The second appears to be the same phenom ii black that I noted earlier.

EDIT: Sorry, figured it out, but was on my phone so I couldn’t edit. I just need to make sure to get the 125w instead of the 140w, which doesn’t appear to be supported.

Just a somewhat late update. I went with the Phenom II black edition. Game runs smoothly with just that single upgrade. But kitten the stock fan is loud!

This would help with the noise if it will fit in the case and allow for a mild overclock, those chips will run @ 3.8GHz with just a multiplier change no extra voltage needed.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064
Glad you are happy with the upgrade alot of people on these fourms think that chip will not play the game but their wrong. A customer of mine is running the game just fine on that I OC it to 3.8 for him and paired it with a 560ti video card and gets 20 to 25 FPS in big zergs. This game is not worth sinking $800+ in upgrades for a extra 5 FPS.

Exactly, Zerk. Completely stock, no overclocking, the game runs fine in WvW on medium settings. I’m a bit of an oldschool FPS player, so I have no problems what so ever with turning down things like shaders or shadows to get more FPS.

Also, from what I understand WvW doesn’t run perfectly for anyone on any machine. I’m perfectly happy with the performance of the phenom II BE so far. I suppose my experience is colored by the crap way my machine ran before now, but meh. To each his own.