Guild Wars 2

For what ever reason a CC company decided to give me a CC with $300, naturally I want to upgrade my PC.

These are my current specs.

GPU Geo Force GTX 650
CPU AMD FX™ 4130 QUAD CORE 3.8GHZ
MOBO Asus M5A78L-M/USB3
8G Ram

What can I get for the most bang for my budget?

better GPU, the CPU is decent… but you need more juice to enjoy the graphics

It’s really kinda hard to suggest anything without knowing a little bit more. Off the bat I want to assume your current rig is a premade, so I would need to know a few other things before making any recommendations.

What is your PSU? We need to know if your current one can handle the added load of a beefier gpu/cpu/or overclock.
What is your case? We need to know how much room there is for a larger gpu or a cpu cooler.

That all said for $300 I’d change both, I wouldn’t blow it all on one or the other as the remaining component would most likely be the bottleneck. (example if you spent 300 on a gpu, your fx 4130 would be your limiting factor)

Since this is a dx9 game, single-thread performance matters a lot, so improving the cpu really means a fps increase. You have two ways:
- Get an after market cpu cooler and overclock your cpu as much as you can. This will need messing with the bios and spending time to learn how to OC and to get it stable.
- Get an intel i5, since they have around 80% more performance than yours. This will also require a new motherboard, so you’ll nearly spend all your budget.

If you want to upgrade the gpu, go for a $200 range one, like gtx 760, gtx 960, r9 280 or r9 285. They offer enough performance to play at +60fps with all graphics at highest.

Ansau.7326:

Since this is a dx9 game, single-thread performance matters a lot, so improving the cpu really means a fps increase. You have two ways:
- Get an after market cpu cooler and overclock your cpu as much as you can. This will need messing with the bios and spending time to learn how to OC and to get it stable.
- Get an intel i5, since they have around 80% more performance than yours. This will also require a new motherboard, so you’ll nearly spend all your budget.

If you want to upgrade the gpu, go for a $200 range one, like gtx 760, gtx 960, r9 280 or r9 285. They offer enough performance to play at +60fps with all graphics at highest.

So I can pick up an i5/ plus mobo for $300, that’s a relief?

Yes it will cost around that. Also pay attention to cpu support, not all motherboards support all the i5.

Since MMOs mainly relie on one core should I just look for a Dual Core set up to save money?

Gw2 has been optimized quite a lot, and nowadays 4 cores really have an advantage over 2 cores. I have the i5 4690k (4 cores) overclocked to 4.3GHz and normal behaviour of cores are: 2 around 65-80% and the other 2 around 45-60% loaded. In much heavier situations all cores are easily at +70%.

Going for a 2 cores cpu would only mean a slight improvement at most, even you could see worse performance, since yours is 4 cores. As you’re spending quite a lot of money, make the difference noticeable.

I found this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130731

MSI H81M-P33 LGA 1150 Intel H81 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel H81
4th Generation Intel Corei7/Corei5/Corei3/Pentium/Celeron (LGA 1150)
DDR3 1600/1333

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116895

Intel Core i5-4430 Haswell Quad-Core 3.0GHz LGA 1150 84W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I54430

22nm Haswell 84W
6MB L3 Cache
Intel HD Graphics

Not sure if my Ram would be compatible or not, worse case scenario I’ll have to buy more. Out of curiosity is there a way for me to find out with out opening my case and looking at the Ram?

According to my Mobo box under Memory it says
4 x DIMM, dual chanel, DDR3 2000OC/1333 1066 MHz, ECC and non-ECC, un-buffered memory.

Wonder if it’s a similar chipset?

For just slightly more you can get http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116991
as to RAM you can check on MSI page, although if you not found it there it doesn’t mean it wont work, but if you find it you will be sure it will
CPU-Z can show you brand of your RAM and timings

What about this? Costs 19 bucks more, but you get much newer motherboard and 10% more clocked cpu.
i5 4460: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117302&cm_re=i5_4460-_-19-117-302-_-Product

Asrock H97M anniversary: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157547&cm_re=h97m-_-13-157-547-_-Product

About ram, it should work since yours is ddr3. The only problem might be speed, you can see yours with CPU-Z (real speed is twice you see in that program).
If yours is lower than 1333MHz, you might look getting new one, since ram speed actually matters in this game. If yours is 1333 or 1600 don’t waste money, only z97 motherboards can put ram at higher speeds than 1600.

Ya’ll are forgetting that if the OP get a new mobo/cpu they will also need a new windows license. That would exceed their budget.

Op I’d stick with your am3+ socket You have several choices to upgrade your cpu alone while retaining your mobo and windows license.

Essence Snow.3194:

Ya’ll are forgetting that if the OP get a new mobo/cpu they will also need a new windows license. That would exceed their budget.

Op I’d stick with your am3+ socket You have several choices to upgrade your cpu alone while retaining your mobo and windows license.

Why? He can use the same hard disc… I used my ssd from my laptop with my new pc.

oem windows licenses are tied to mobos…while technically it can be done…it’s not something we can recommend here

Oldirtbeard.9834:

For what ever reason a CC company decided to give me a CC with $300, naturally I want to upgrade my PC.

These are my current specs.

GPU Geo Force GTX 650
CPU AMD FX™ 4130 QUAD CORE 3.8GHZ
MOBO Asus M5A78L-M/USB3
8G Ram

What can I get for the most bang for my budget?

Buy a new CPU and Motherboard. the FX4130 is holding your system back more then that GTX650. I would suggest the following – http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HJqvYJ

Its 330 (Including a newer GPU), and you would recycle the rest of your PC (Providing your PSU has enough wattage and your Case can take a micro ATX motherboard)

If your system is OEM (HP, Dell, Lenovo…ect) and running windows 7 then youll need a new OS. But if you are already on windows 8 or 8.1 you do not need to worry about it as you can transfer 8 and 8.1 between PCs.

ignore everything above.
with 300$ you would not get a better performance, since you would need a new motherboard AND a processor better than your current one. i don’t think that little increase (if there would be one) would be worth 300 bucks. a low i5 will not run the game notably faster or smoother.

If you want to upgrade, get a better graphics card, so it looks beautiful while cpu-lagging. Maybe you can find a gtx760 or something comparable for less than 200$. GTX960 (the newer generation) does not offer much improvement to its predecessor, has a lower memory-speed and throughput and it is like 40-50$ more expensive.

werdernator.6105:

ignore everything above.
with 300$ you would not get a better performance, since you would need a new motherboard AND a processor better than your current one. i don’t think that little increase (if there would be one) would be worth 300 bucks.
If you want to upgrade, get a better graphics card, so it looks beautiful while cpu-lagging. Maybe you can find a gtx760 or something comparable for less than 200$. GTX960 (the newer generation) does not offer much improvement to its predecessor, has a lower memory-speed and throughput and it is like 40-50$ more expensive.

Yea, you dont know what your talking about.

http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor/3

FX8350 cannot touch an i5 on single threaded performance, and that’s 40% faster then a FX4130.

GW2 = Single threaded limited.

GTX650 is not that great of a GPU, but the CPU is going to hold the OP back more then the GPU. He can get a R7 260x or a GTX750Ti for about 109~ which is why I suggested the parts that I did for 330.

Its the best bang for the buck here.

I agree with sirsquishy.8531.

His CPU is not capable of fully driving a GTX960 – it will be a bottleneck. It’s important to realize that you need a fast CPU to drive a fast GPU to its full potential.

Well I’m with werdernator

You would be wasting $300

And don’t be swayed too much by the single thread issue of DX 9, that’s just one aspect of the workload for rendering the pipeline. GW2 is fully multi-threaded. eg my octacore is currently using 48 threads for GW2.exe and utilising 37% cpu across those cores, I’m just idle in LA.

Save your $300 for now and upgrade later when you can do it properly, esp as you don’t even have $300 if it’s just a CC limit.

What about AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8 Core 4.0ghz?

Essence Snow.3194:

oem windows licenses are tied to mobos…while technically it can be done…it’s not something we can recommend here

I could just transfer my HD over, even if that fails I have a builders version of Win 7 which as far as I can see can be used multiple times.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

What about AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8 Core 4.0ghz?

I don’t recommend it. All those cores are only useful for rendering or heavy multitasking, but they are still weak cores.
At stock speed any i5 is better than the 8350, and in big bosses events, big zergs in WvW or very crowded places like Rata Sum or LA you will see huge fps drops, even below 15fps.
Also it’s quite expensive now, same price as the i5 4440, so you’re only saving the cost of the MB.

google GW2 benchmarks, to catch up i5 3,3Ghz you would need to run this FX at like 4,5Ghz+ also AMD FX for games are worse (clock to clock) than older Phenoms II.
Also this FX-8350 has 4 blocks of 2 cores, but each block has only 1 FPU (floating point unit) which is important for things like games

Bulldozer architecture isnt bad it just lack implementation. Devs writing games/programs wont bother (unless you pay them extra) to make program run better on like what 10% of overall CPUs. You write for majority and Intels are this majority.
I have high hopes for incoming expansion and counting that except all the content they add we will see some game engine upgrades (even WoW has DX11 now)

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Since MMOs mainly relie on one core should I just look for a Dual Core set up to save money?

Not quite as simple. It’s true that the single core performance is usally what limits FPS the most, but modern MMOs (including GW2) still run on more than one thread, so being able to spread those additional threads over more cores will be beneficial. It’s not a linear scaling, that’s for sure, but there still is a benefit in having more than 2 cores.
Having more than four might not see much of a return. At that point we’re into heavy parallelization, and hardly any game, MMO or not, does that.

TL;DR: A very fast dual core may be better than a slow quad core, but a fast quad is better than both

Change of plan my wife decided to claim $100 so now I’m down to $200

Looks like I’m looking at a GPU instead.

Does Radeon have a support feature like GeForce Experience that automatically configures to your games, if not I’ll just stick with GeForce then?

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Change of plan my wife decided to claim $100 so now I’m down to $200

Looks like I’m looking at a GPU instead.

Even with 200, I suggest a MB+CPU replacement. The FX Series is that bad for DX9 based games. Esp games that are tied to CPU performance, which GW2 is. You will see better performance by upgrading your CPU to an i5 (or i3 for that matter) then going with a newer GPU.

Just look at the single threaded benchmark here – http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor/3

And you can expect that to directly translate into performance for GW2.

i agree with sirsquishy. OP, you have the original bulldozer which is slower than the laster generation phenom II. I personally bash phenom II because I do not want people buying then complaining they get garbage fps later.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Since MMOs mainly relie on one core should I just look for a Dual Core set up to save money?

It doesn’t use one core, it’s limited by the performance of a single core. There’s a difference. It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of cores if each core is slow, your performance won’t be a good as someone with fewer cores but are twice as fast.

ignore all above saying to get a new mother board i have same motherboard as you and its slots can handle any gpu.. though you are limited to the cpus you can get this is the list http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-ASUS/M5A78L-M_USB3.html for that motherboard.. and iv run benchmarks for games this year some of top tear cpus that can handle will do you fine.. you wont reall need to upgrade your motherboard yet…

You can get a used 3570k+mobo for $175-200. Throw on a $25 212 Evo amd you should be good to go.

This thread is 8 month old. My guess OP already made the purchase. Do not now why someone necro thread to give advice to some person from 8 month ago.