Guild Wars 2

I’m looking to upgrade some hardware parts to be able to get stable FPS in big zergs in WvW.

My specs right now:
-GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-S2 AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
-AMD FX 4100 Quad Core (3.6ghz~)
-MSI Gaming N760 TF 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 760 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Video Card
8GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM
550W PSU with +6 and +8 connectors for video card
1TB Seagate HDD 7200rpm

By default my video card pretty much has max settings on, but I’m sure my Motherboard and CPU are bottle-necking it considering my video card is meant for 3.0 not 2.0.

So I guess I’m looking for ideas on a good processor and perhaps motherboard. I’m currently looking at AMD FX 8350 and the i5 3570k, should I look elsewhere? or will it fit my needs?

your GPU is not ‘meant’ for PCIe 3.0. It’s just supported. In real world performance testing, there’s only a couple frames of difference. As for your CPU question, you’d want an i5 3570K. Or just an overclockable i5, period. 2500K, 2550K, 3570K, or 4670K. Then youd probably want to try and push it to 4.4 GHz to get the most out of it for guild wars 2 (keep in mind that even then you’d still see like uh, 20-30 fps.) AMD FX-8350 is horrible for wvw. I have one and ran around a lot with it. You can maybe gain a bit more performance if you jump to an i7 3770K or 4770K (can go with 2600K or 2700K too if you want. I hear there’s a bit more overclocking headroom but that’s two generations old)

But yes i5 3570K will fit your needs. If you’d be willing to you could get the 3770K for that additional 20 or 30% boost I hear people saying about. That’s if budget is nothing to worry about but eh it’s like 100 bucks more for it.

Ah, well the thing that’s bothering me about the I5 3570k is that it’s LGA 1155 and I heard that’s a dead “chipset” or something or will be if it’s not already, which means if I wanted to upgrade my CPU in the future I’d need a totally new MOBO?

Only two generations of processors were made for the LGA 1155 chipset which include certain Intel Xeon products as well as Sandybridge and Ivybridge. Intel core is on Haswell now which is LGA 1150. It’s not necessarily a dead chipset just there’s no more CPUs being made for it. No more new ones anyway. You can still use it but you’d be better off getting the LGA 1150 socket.

Now, I’m not an expert on the subject but I can tell you what I’ve learned based on my research. please correct me if I’m wrong.

Broadwell (aka. the 5th gen i-series processors) that’s probably coming out next year will introduce a new chipset, the 9-series, instead of the 8-series Haswell brought. What this means is that although they both are 1150 Socket, those new Broadwell CPUs most likely won’t work on current motherboards. This means that a 1155 Socket mobo+CPU combo is just as dead as an upgrade to Haswell.

for GW2 performance you need per core performance in a CPU more than the overall performance. AMD’s are known to lose in this category on current processors. Makes sense if you think about it, an 8-core AMD has an overall performance equal to a quad core i5, which theoretically means Intels’ cores are twice more powerful (this is rough speaking of course).

I’ve heard that while 2500k is a little slower than 3570k which again is slower than 4670k, it runs a bit cooler and overclocks a tad better than a 3570k, and the same goes for 3570k vs 4670k. That means that once overclocked these babies will all perform nearly equally. If you don’t want to overclock or want to do it just a little bit, 4670k would probably be your best bet. Again, the difference is minimal, so whichever you find the easiest and cheapest would be a big upgrade over your current CPU.

Hope this helps and good luck in game!

first, don’t build for WvW. It’s a fruitless endeavor.

If you do build for WvW, expect a max of 25FPS with the bleeding edge range of hardware (i7 Extreme on the 2011 Socket – 1k + just for the CPU).

Now that’s out of the way, on my i5-4670K I get 20-25FPS in WvW (Depending on how many players and how many effects are on the screen). My Max Low is 18FPS with a 60vs60vs60 on High details. So that is the best you can get really, IMHO.

If you cant put 400~ into a new MB+CPU+Cooler for an Intel swap, I would just look into upgrading to a FX8350 and OC that to about 4.1Ghz (you can push more, but heat becomes an issue). That would be the most cost effective route.

sirsquishy.8531:

If you cant put 400~ into a new MB+CPU+Cooler for an Intel swap, I would just look into upgrading to a FX8350 and OC that to about 4.1Ghz (you can push more, but heat becomes an issue). That would be the most cost effective route.

FX-8350 runs at 4.1 full load turbo. OC-ing to even 5 GHz would get maybe 4 more frames. I hardly had any noticeable difference when I hit 4.7 GHz. Not worth wasting money for this CPU for this game specifically. Any game that actually uses it as well as software outside of this game, sure. But for Guild Wars 2? That’d be like shooting yourself in the leg and then entering a marathon.

On air cooling it should take 4.5 easily though. Heat’s not an issue for me granted I use an H100 on it.

locx.6412:

Broadwell (aka. the 5th gen i-series processors) that’s probably coming out next year will introduce a new chipset, the 9-series, instead of the 8-series Haswell brought. What this means is that although they both are 1150 Socket, those new Broadwell CPUs most likely won’t work on current motherboards. This means that a 1155 Socket mobo+CPU combo is just as dead as an upgrade to Haswell.

I personally disbelieve that it’s a waste to upgrade to Haswell unless it’s a couple months (2-3) until the new generation Broadwell comes out. It’s a long ways off anyway.

Avelos.6798:

I personally disbelieve that it’s a waste to upgrade to Haswell unless it’s a couple months (2-3) until the new generation Broadwell comes out. It’s a long ways off anyway.

I agree with that, my point was neither of them is a dead upgrade (especially from GW2 point of view) hence both is just as dead. If he thinks it’s wiser move to go Haswell for more futureproofing while looking at Broadwell, I was trying to point out that you need just the same amount of upgrading when going Broawell from Haswell than from IB/SB, meaning both mobo and CPU. I personally went with 4670K because I got it for 185€ and I’m probably not going for Broadwell (upgraded from Q6600, big jump anyway :p)

Thanks for the responses, ultimately I upgraded to an intel i5 3570k with a new motherboard, I get 20-30 fps in wvw on max settings and sometimes dip to 15 in huge fights, its way better than my fx 4100 though, by far.

Throw a cooler on there and OC it, you should be able to get to 4.5-4.7 GHz easily, which will provide another nice framerate boost.

The game is to poorly optimized to get any decent FPS in a large zerg like that

Lol well I doubt you get 20-30 in a zerg I get 20-25 with maxed settings in a zerg on my I7 4770k. I guess 3 year old console fps is good now, I am confused lol. Did we lower the expectations of pc gaming to accommodate the poor optimization in Guild
Wars 2. Please post a screen shot of two 50 man zergs colliding at smc with 30fps.

You did see he wrote 15 fps in big zerg fights, right?

I actually get over 60 fps normally now in small scale fights in WvW and dip to 30 in medium sized fights~ then in large fights I get 20+fps, I’ve started using razer game booster and got a nice increase in FPS (all on max settings) so it’s pretty legit. If you guys don’t use it already you should to gain some FPS

Sounds very acceptable. May I ask what clock speed you run at?

Shift Focus may be running a rather high clock in wvw on a lower server that doesn’t have as big of fights as Black Gate / Jade Quarry / Sanctum of Rall. Always keep that in mind.

Avelos.6798:

Shift Focus may be running a rather high clock in wvw on a lower server that doesn’t have as big of fights as Black Gate / Jade Quarry / Sanctum of Rall. Always keep that in mind.

Probably the case. On IoJ the biggest we see are usually 30vs60vs40’s. And my FPS will drop from 60-80 down to 25-30. Though MOST of the time when I check my FPS its at 28.

Avelos.6798:

Shift Focus may be running a rather high clock in wvw on a lower server that doesn’t have as big of fights as Black Gate / Jade Quarry / Sanctum of Rall. Always keep that in mind.

Could be, definition of huge zerg varies from people to people. That’s one thing you could also tell us what your estimation of the player number is when getting those framerates, better yet screenshot or video clip it.