Guild Wars 2

As asked in the title, I am trying to figure out what specific specs have the most dramatic impact on frame rates during large WvW battles. I had read that memory bandwidth was the biggest factor but after digging a little more I am specifically curious what the impact of the Shader Clock is?

The first thing that made me try to find info about the importance of Shader Clock was comparing graphics card specs in a couple of my friends systems. One of them is using a Radeon HD 6950 and the other is using a Geforce GTX 560 Ti. They are both using quadcore processors at around 4 GHz and I can’t tell you a lot more detail about their systems.

The reason I am bringing their systems up is that the Radeon HD 6950 surpasses the Geforce GTX 560 Ti in most categories other than the Shader Clock. My friend with the Geforce GTX 560 Ti is getting much higher frame rates as well as having considerably less lag problems in large WvW battles than the Radeon HD 6950. I was trying to pick out why that is and the Shader Clock stuck out to me in the card comparisons.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=639&card2=641

I was trying to find more info on the forums about the Shader Clock and mostly all I found was a few people making the recommendation to purchase the “Radeon HD 7870 XT with the 1536 Shader Clock.”

Can anybody shed some light on this for me?

I know pretty much everybody’s systems are bottlenecking and that 4 GHz is not supposed to be enough cpu for large WvW situations. I get that if the cpu is bottlenecking a good graphics card isn’t going to fix that; but what I am trying to wrap my head around is why a mediocre (not overclocked) system with a Geforce GTX 560 Ti is claimed to be more playable than a lot of similar or superior gaming rigs.

On a side note I have not done any research yet about how RAM speed effects GW2. I do believe my friend that is getting better performance could well have faster memory than the other. I have a difficult time believing that would account for the difference between 100 fps and 60 fps during regular pve play though.

To reiterate, I am trying to figure out what specific specs have the most dramatic impact on frame rates during large WvW battles and I am specifically curious what the impact of the Shader Clock is?

the 7870xt is the best bang for the buck you can get for games in general.

saddly due to how poorly this games “optimized” you cant expect the kind of fps you would like out of it, an i7@4.6ghz will give you 25-30fps in large DE’s and WvWvW, same with an 8350@4.6, thats with a half decent videocard.

its not shader clock its shader cores or cuda cores, shader clock would be intel only and its where you can overclock part of the internal structure of the chips that amd gpu’s dont have.

currently the best card you can get price to perf is the 7870xt.

currently the best cpu for gw2 is an i7 3960x@5ghz, but even that wont get you 60fps min in WvWvW….even if you grabbed a titan from nvidia(card along costs 1000usd)

the game is VERY VERY cpu bound…..no cpu today is fast enough to remove that bottleneck sadly.

Thanks for the reply. So you think any card with a high benchmark will always get atleast 25-30 fps on a 4.5 GHz or faster system? Just out of curiosity about where is the cut off for a “half decent videocard” that will yield these results. Using this link as a guide… top 20,30,40, etc.?

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpukittenml

my friend with the Radeon HD 6950 only had a 3.2 GHz quadcore and recently clocked it up to 3.8 GHz but he hasn’t had much time to play since then so it has been hard to gauge how much difference it made. Should that card expect to get close to 30 fps in large WvW fights provided that the processor was clocked at 4.5 GHz or higher?

Personally I am using an older card (Radeon HD 4870) with a 4.2 GHz quadcore. I can clock it to 4.5 GHz no problem if upgrade the stock cooling in my case so I am not worried about that. My graphics card performance is currently too low to notice an increase in cpu power making a difference cuz the graphics is bottlenecked too much.

I know that I definitely need a new video card and it does sound like the 7870 XT is a wise purchase if I can swing the expense. But, my motherboard only has pci-e 2.0 support. Can anybody tell me how the 7870 XT would perform for me in GW2 since it is a pci-e 3.0 card and I only have 2.0 support?

It will run fine in PCI-E 2.0. The card won’t use the extra bandwidth given by 3.0 anyway.

basketcase.3894:

It will run fine in PCI-E 2.0. The card won’t use the extra bandwidth given by 3.0 anyway.

Thanks!