Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, thanks in advance for the help. I am looking to upgrade my video card on my computer and have a 200.00 budget to work with. I am wondering if you all think my CPU will still be fine or if I should just go ahead and upgrade it instead?

My Specs:
Alienware Aurora R2 Chasis (I know, I know)
CPU – I3 540 (Clarksdale) OC’d @ a comfy 3.6Ghz
GPU – GTX 460 SE
RAM – 4gb (ADATA XPG Gaming Series)
PSU – 575 (I believe)
I can play the game at max settings with reflections turned off @ 40-60 FPS, depending on the zone i’m in and whats going on.

WvW and Large Event farming, I sometimes struggle to keep more than 15 FPS and this of course makes me want to make an upgrade. The only reason I think I need the GPU upgrade is b/c my CPU is hardly taxed during large events or WvW.

Thanks again for the help fella’s!

For this specific game I would reccommend upgrading your CPU. GuildWars 2 doesn’t utilize your Graphics Card much, as it is badly optimized and therefore relying heavily on the CPU.

That said upgrading with your current setup is a bit of a luxury problem

Go for i5-2500K.
Or i5-3570K – it’s younger brother of 2500k with ivy brige – tho heard it’s heating a lot so you’d need a good cooling.

I not, just play for now on rig you got and wait till jan of 2013 when intel releases thiers new baby :p

Depends on your budget, but I’d also prioritize your CPU first (i5 2500k OC’d to 5ghz) and GPU close second (660 or better).

When analyzing your CPU loads keep an mind that GW2 priotizes 1 core and at a lesser priority uses the remaining core(s). So check the load on both of your cores, I would expect the primary one used by GW2 is closer to 100%.

Thanks for the tips, I will def look into a better processor!

Swedemon, I’ll take a look at my loads – it’s possible I overlooked the core usage.

Mrowqa, lol yeah good old goodies in January :P buuut the ivy bridges might drop significantly in price? in which case I might just upgrade my GPU now and tough it out till Xmas time Difficult

Thanks again!:)

I’ll be honest with you, if you are getting the level of power out of your current system you really do not need an upgrade. Although upgrades are always nice, your system is still very powerful for what it is.

If You want rig for this game and want also to upgrade GPU You got 2 options:
1) Get ONLY GTX 560 Ti ( Not 600 + series – they seem to have problems with gw2 )/ Or any Ati card from 7850 upwards.
2) wait for GTX 700 series.

Mrowqa – I just went to pick up the GTX 560 Ti and am running it right now hehe

Thats good.
But You have to seriously consider a CPU options and how much cash you want to spend.
If You want to exchange whole rig, or just CPU – and for serious Oc You’d need fine mobo like this :
ASROCK Z77 Extreme3 ( there are 2 versions, 1 for 1155 second for AM3+)

For Cpu, depends on amount of $ you want to spend:
i5-2500k
i5-3570k
or
i7-3770K – which is faster then i5 in single threaded and ! got 4 cores / 8 threads which is really important as both i5’s got only 4 cores/ 4 threads

You could also try cheaper version :
AMD fx-8350 which was prooven to be if oc’d close to i5’s in multi treaded operations and around 15% behind in single threaded and it’s stright 8 cores

Apologies for being absent for a bit – I decided to return the GTX 560 Ti, as the performance increase wasn’t noticeable. I’m sure because of the CPU.

Mrowwa, i’d like to spend as little as possible since i basically have $250 max to spend on a mobo/cpu combo (assuming I go with a LGA 1155 over my 1156) If you know of any good combo deals that you’d recommend, i’m open ears