Guild Wars 2

So, I was told to get an i5 processor a long time ago for this game. I didn’t fully understand processors back then, and I don’t now, but I understand a lot more.

If an i3 processor has Hyperthreading, and an i5 doesn’t, then what advantage would an i5 Quad have over a Hyperthreaded i3 Dual core of the same core speed? Are 4 physical cores better than 2 threaded cores (Theoretically 4)?

Also, I was told this game wouldn’t run great on an AMD CPU due to this game optimising one core, and the AMD cores being generally worse 1 for 1 than the Intel CPU’s’ cores. Is this true? If so, wouldn’t a i3 run this better than an i5 if the core speed was better? Does this apply for everything else, too?

Can someone give me a brief explanation to how Hyperthreaded cores apply to others, and which CPU’s would best run the game, along with others?
Thanks so much for whoever’s got the patience.

An i5 beats an i3 clock for clock, as well as having two additional cores. HT won’t make it like you’ve got 4 cores; it’s usually more of a boost (I want to say 20-30% but I’m really not sure) when everything is taken advantage of. HT just takes advantage of processing ability that isn’t being used to run additional calculations on top of the primary ones being made so the CPU is more fully taken advantage of.

The best CPU for the game will be a highly clocked i5 or i7- they’ll do about the same.

HT works somthing like this.

1)If u have 2 cores + HT then u effectivly have 2 isle open in a superstore with each person at the till able to handle 2 items at once.

2)If u have 4 cores without HT, u have 4 isle open with each person at the till able to handle 1 item at once.

no.1 will not be ale to put through those 2 items as fast as 2 seperate people doing 1 at a time, BUT having HT is better than not having it at all.

So say for example. A single item takes 1 second and u have 4 items to deal with.
The 2 people (Cores) in no.1 are able to do 4 (2 each) items in 1.5 seconds. (slightly slower becouse they are handle 2 things at once)
The 4 people (cores) in no.2 are able to do 4 (1 each) items in 1 second.

IF no.1 did not have HT then it would take those 2 people 2 seconds to put through all 4 things.

This is totaly over simplified and exagerated but i hope it helps.

Now GW2 has 1 main thread, 2 smaller threads, and about 47ish really small threads. Meaning u need fast single thread performance to keep that1 main thread going, that said, u still need to keep those 2 smaller threads going aswell.
If u had an i3 with HT turned off GW2 would not do very well becouse the 2 cores would be overwhelmed by all the threads being packed into 2 cores, HT would ofc help this but as explained a HT Thread isnt as powerfull as a full on core. So long as the clock rates are simular, a i5 should do better than a HT’ed i3.

If u get silly and compare a i3 4330 vs a i5 4430S (3.5ghz vs 2.7-3.2) then yes the i3 could well be better.

Your asking alot of questions that have long explanations.

let me short hand it.

Hyper Threading is a ‘virtual’ thread tied to a physical core. It shares the resources of said physical core and is slower (30% at least) when compared to a logical (physical) additional core. That is the easy explanation of HT

i3 with HT, vs i5 with out HT – the i5 will outperform the i3 (if clocked the same, and of the same Generation), because the i3 only has 2 Logical(Physical Cores) and the i5 has 4 Logical (Physical) Cores. Even though the i3 has HT it will not touch the i5 of the same class, performance wise.

AMD FX vs Intel i-series. AMD does what Intel did with HT. The Big difference, the Additional Core On AMD is a Logical (Physical) core and not Virtual (unlike Intel with their HT). BUT those additional cores are shared with each other in groups of 2. So a Dualcore FX has 1 Pod that has 2 Cores and those 2 Cores share the L1,L2,L3 and I/O Path to the Buss. A quad core FX has 2 Pods (same as above) and a 8Core FX has 4 Pods….ect. That is how AMD stacks cores ATM. And why AMD cannot hold a candle to Intel when comparing Single threaded Performance.

It really has little to do with applications being ‘optimized’ for AMD or Intel at this point. It’s that this application (as many others) are SINGLE THREADED, and will favor hardware that works better with that technology.

Thanks to all 3 of you. Very detailed answers each explaining different points to me.
Special thanks to you, Nova. You answered my questions last time, too =) Thanks!