Guild Wars 2

Basically wondering how this build would perform at max graphics settings in say Lions Arch or WvW zergs?

Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
GeForce GTX 465 w/ 1GB DDR5 – http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-465
FX 9370 Black Edition 4.4GHz Eight-Core Socket AM3+ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113346
Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514
12GB DDR3 Memory
730 Watt power supply (If I remember correctly)

I know the graphics card could be better but that’s what I’m working with atm

Really not worth spending that much on one of those pre-overclocked AMD cpu’s.(iirc they are just 8320’s with a overclock) Also those overclcoked FX 9 series CPU’s only work on certain motherboards that are ratted for the insane TDP those CPU’s have.

If ur gunna spend around that much money you would be better of getting a 3570k or 4670k + Motherboard. It would perform much better in GW2, specialy if OC’d.

In LA with max settings (except reflections becouse bugged) you could get around 35 FPS in the worst case with a OC’d Intel CPU. And AMD FX series cpu like the 8350 or that OC’d one, would get around 15 FPS less.

SolarNova.1052:

Really not worth spending that much on one of those pre-overclocked AMD cpu’s.(iirc they are just 8320’s with a overclock) Also those overclcoked FX 9 series CPU’s only work on certain motherboards that are ratted for the insane TDP those CPU’s have.

If ur gunna spend around that much money you would be better of getting a 3570k or 4670k + Motherboard. It would perform much better in GW2, specialy if OC’d.

In LA with max settings (except reflections becouse bugged) you could get around 35 FPS in the worst case with a OC’d Intel CPU. And AMD FX series cpu like the 8350 or that OC’d one, would get around 15 FPS less.

I have to second this!

A i5-4670K +Z87-G45 Motherboard ran me 420~ after taxes
A HD7790 ran me 107 after taxes

I reused the rest of my old system, AM3 Phenom II X6….ect, to rebuild. And Havent Looked back.

I would say, go barebones, get the same setup. Cheap CL9 DDR3 1333 Ram (2×4GB would be fine) and a cheap 500G HDD. If you have a PC already you dont need an optical drive, just get a 4g or 8g USB Flash stick, and use that to install windows.

A PSU+Case should only run you 40-50 bucks in total. You should be able to run that entire rig on a 400w PSU (most cases that come with PSUs are rated at or near 400w).

So, the list;

I5-4670K – 219~
MSI Z87-G45 – 179~
HD7790 107~
PSU+case 34.99-49.99
500G SataIII hdd – 49.99

that is what I would do :-)

If you are buying a new desktop, go for one with an Intel i5 quad core.

I should have said everything I listed I already have except for the Motherboard and CPU, I’m trying to figure out what Motherboard/CPU I can throw in to make GW2 run perfectly. Someone recommended the Motherboard and CPU I linked and so I wanted to get some second opinions.

I’m not very tech savvy when it comes to processors, whats with all the AMD hate I see everywhere I go? To someone like me who doesn’t know a whole lot AMD looks more powerful, usually has more cores, and is a ton cheaper than Intel. Yet I hear that Intel is better? So confusing when the numbers say the opposite! Can anyone briefly explain by chance?

Those clock numbers are just that ..numbers. They dont actualy mean one is better than the other. A 10 year old cpu at 5ghz say ..wont beat a new cpu at 3ghz.

The simplest way i can currently think to explain it is like this…

Think of it like car engines.
A 2.0 highly tuned racing engine vs an American 4.0 v8.

The V8 is bigger, and likely has more torque, but the 2.0 racing spec engine would annihillate it. Think Fomula 1 engine.

AMD has bigger clock figures at stock, has more cores, but Intel’s cpu’s do more with less. The only time an AMD will beat an intel is in truly multithreaded applications, at which point AMD will start showing its power. Problem is games are very rarely truly optimised to run in such a way, most games take their performance from single thread grunt, of which Intel is king at the moment.

These are numbers that u should look atm.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
BUT do take into consideration if the CPU overclocks or not. No point getting a Xeon cpu for example, not only becouse they dont OC..but also becouse the ones that score near the top on that list cost a bucket load of cash.

Ahh I see, that actually was a pretty good explanation!

Question tho, what is multitreading? Like what applications use that? And what advantage does that give to those applications vs single thread?

Ok so every program nowerdays can send commands/data to the CPU through multiple …lanes….
Think of it like a checkout in a superstore.

Old CPU’s used to be 1 Core (1 thread). Which meant 1 checkout. Any program had to use just that 1 check out doing 1 thing at a time.

GW2 has around 50 threads. So A single core/thread CPu would have to run all those threads 1 after the other.
On a multi core/thread CPU thigns can happen at the same time. And remember we are talking very small periods of time less than 1/10 of a second for loads of commands/threads to go through. But even so ..the more ur CPu can handle at once the better.

Problem is it requires the program (Gw2) to be made in a such a way that it can seperate what it wants to do into multiple smaller threads that can be processed quikly and efficiently instead of 1 or 2 big threads that use up all the CPU’s ‘single thread performance’ and leave its other threads doing almost nothing,. This is hard to do without causing a variety of problems ..which i wont get into ..technical :P.
Anyway end result is most games are not very well optimised for this and have only a couple of ‘main’ threads with a load of really small ones, and thus only efficiently use a couple of a CPU’s cores/threads.
In GW2 there are 2-3 main thread and about 47ish really small ones, when those big ones hit the peak performance a CPU can handle per thread, alll the other GW2 threads have to slow down to keep pace with those big ones. This is why u will see overall CPU utilisation sitting at say 70% or 50% ..and ur GPu suage at 50% ..yet ur FPS is only 30..becouse 1 Thread is maxed out and everythign else has had to slow down with it.

So whilst an AMD FX8 or 9 series has 8 cores, and an Intel i5 only has 4, GW2 can only effectly run up to 4 of those core/threads anyway.

Then ofc Intel i7’s have ‘hyperthreading’ ..which is bassicaly making each of the 4 ‘checkouts’ (cores) handle 2 items (threads) at once instead of 1. Its not as effective as adding another 4 checkouts (cores) ..but its better than just handling 1 thing at once.

AMD’s 8 core CPU’s are actually not ‘true’ 8 cores ether, as every 2 cores uses 1 set of resources……but .. tbh i cant really explain this part very easily so ill just stop here :P

Anyway the types of programs that actually use all threads, and are multithread optimised are things like compilers, rendering programs, and other such programs.

Also.. im Dyslexic so im probably not the best person to try explain this kinda stuff, i know it ..its just a PITA for me to put it in writing for other people to understand :P

For someone like me that is not very technical that explanation really wasn’t to bad. Think I understood everything even if it were just a basic explanation lol.

So looks like I’m gonna want an Intel then for best GW2 performance

SolarNova.1052:

Ok so every program nowerdays can send commands/data to the CPU through multiple …lanes….
Think of it like a checkout in a superstore.

Old CPU’s used to be 1 Core (1 thread). Which meant 1 checkout. Any program had to use just that 1 check out doing 1 thing at a time.

GW2 has around 50 threads. So A single core/thread CPu would have to run all those threads 1 after the other.
On a multi core/thread CPU thigns can happen at the same time. And remember we are talking very small periods of time less than 1/10 of a second for loads of commands/threads to go through. But even so ..the more ur CPu can handle at once the better.

Problem is it requires the program (Gw2) to be made in a such a way that it can seperate what it wants to do into multiple smaller threads that can be processed quikly and efficiently instead of 1 or 2 big threads that use up all the CPU’s ‘single thread performance’ and leave its other threads doing almost nothing,. This is hard to do without causing a variety of problems ..which i wont get into ..technical :P.
Anyway end result is most games are not very well optimised for this and have only a couple of ‘main’ threads with a load of really small ones, and thus only efficiently use a couple of a CPU’s cores/threads.
In GW2 there are 2-3 main thread and about 47ish really small ones, when those big ones hit the peak performance a CPU can handle per thread, alll the other GW2 threads have to slow down to keep pace with those big ones. This is why u will see overall CPU utilisation sitting at say 70% or 50% ..and ur GPu suage at 50% ..yet ur FPS is only 30..becouse 1 Thread is maxed out and everythign else has had to slow down with it.

So whilst an AMD FX8 or 9 series has 8 cores, and an Intel i5 only has 4, GW2 can only effectly run up to 4 of those core/threads anyway.

Then ofc Intel i7’s have ‘hyperthreading’ ..which is bassicaly making each of the 4 ‘checkouts’ (cores) handle 2 items (threads) at once instead of 1. Its not as effective as adding another 4 checkouts (cores) ..but its better than just handling 1 thing at once.

AMD’s 8 core CPU’s are actually not ‘true’ 8 cores ether, as every 2 cores uses 1 set of resources……but .. tbh i cant really explain this part very easily so ill just stop here :P

Anyway the types of programs that actually use all threads, and are multithread optimised are things like compilers, rendering programs, and other such programs.

Also.. im Dyslexic so im probably not the best person to try explain this kinda stuff, i know it ..its just a PITA for me to put it in writing for other people to understand :P

Not a bad explanation at all, But let me clear a couple things up.

GW2 has around 50 Threads in all, as you stated. But it only has 1 main thread. As long as that one main thread has to wait for %RDY on the CPU (Process Latency) because of other tasks, or the other smaller threads running, the game will hit its ceiling pretty quickly with that CPU hardware. That is the root reason why the i5 and i7 for GW2 will beat out any of the AMD FX8 and FX9 Cpus.

The FX’s have a module that shares the L1, L2, L3 cache and 1 I/O Path per 2 Cores. Where Intel has Dedicated L1, L2, L3 and I/O paths per Core. That is the BIG and main difference between the Intel i-series and AMD’s FX-Series.

If GW2 was built for 2-3 Main threads, I think AMD would win here and not Intel.

GW2 will also use up to 6 Cores. I have tested this myself thoroughly. You can get GW2 to span more cores by forcing affinity (Ive successfully gotten GW2 to span across 32cores so far) but there are absolutely no performance gains because, again there 1 main process.

For GW2 to be useful on more then 4 or even 6 Cores, your CPU Clock has to be 5-6Ghz per core. Else that single thread is what is holding you (really the game) back.

I wish they would rebuild the engine and make it multi-core friendly. This game can be beautiful when set to max (Did it for the first time since building my i5-4650K system) and what a WOW. But the performance hit when there are a lot of sprites and textures on the screen is why we run the game in less then adequate in-game settings :-)

Yea ..what he said

Was getting tired last night, i ran out of oomph when i got the FX modules and such lol. Nicely explained.

No, if GW2 was built for 2-3 main threads AMD would not win out because when an Intel core isn’t trying to handle two threads at once with HT on the i7 it is significantly faster.

GW2 has 40+ threads with around 6-10 having around 1/4 core or more worth of CPU load with 3 threads over 50%.

It’s the OS that assigns threads to cores. Yes there are ways to force the issue but I doubt ANet used any of those techniques since they don’t know every player’s system and what else they are running. That’s the whole purpose of the OS, arbitrate fix resources across multiple application while convincing each application it has the whole system to itself.

Behellagh.1468:

No, if GW2 was built for 2-3 main threads AMD would not win out because when an Intel core isn’t trying to handle two threads at once with HT on the i7 it is significantly faster.

GW2 has 40+ threads with around 6-10 having around 1/4 core or more worth of CPU load with 3 threads over 50%.

It’s the OS that assigns threads to cores. Yes there are ways to force the issue but I doubt ANet used any of those techniques since they don’t know every player’s system and what else they are running. That’s the whole purpose of the OS, arbitrate fix resources across multiple application while convincing each application it has the whole system to itself.

Not getting into the Intel vs AMD battle here. But unless Anet wants to recode their game to be multi-threaded we will never know how this application would perform :-)

This isn’t about AMD vs Intel fanboyism but simple fact than an FX core is significantly slower than an Intel core in performance and reducing the multithreaded-ness of an app to 2 to 3 is in Intel’s favor even if the threads have similar loads.

The strength of the FX design is when all cores are similarly loaded and not when it’s being under utilized. Intel’s strength is a faster core that can be more efficient, usually, if it’s given two threads to do simultaneously rather than sequentially as is normally done via multitasking. The FX competes with that by wrapping two thread, lack of a better description, cores within “a module” as AMD calls it.