Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’m enjoying GW2 but one thing I’d really like to do is get it to the point where I can keep my graphics on High while doing events/WvW with TONS of players/spell effects. I first noticed it with the recent Lost Shores event; despite being able to run max settings with 60 fps when going solo or running 5-man dungeons, I needed to turn my settings down to low to get acceptable (30+) framerates.

So, I’d like to upgrade my system this weekend while I can find some crazy deals on Newegg. Here are my specs:

Phenom II X4 955(3.2GHz)
8GB DDR3 1TB HDD Capacity
AMD Radeon HD 6870 (1 GB)

What component should I upgrade? Should I just get a new Video Card, or will something else yield better results?

U won’t get a noticeable enough boost over ur current setup to justify a upgrade. U will need a faster CPU but also a new high end mobo to overclock that CPU in order to achieve close to 30 frames in WvW (not to mention the cooling system) even highlly OCed i7s drop to 20s sometimes in heavy fights. So my recomendation would be wait for the new CPU gen, OC ur current CPU that phenom can do 4ghz easy, and wait for the next generation or a game fix, whatever comes first.
Most likelly even the Haswell CPUs will struggle in WvW unless the OC like beasts 5+ghz, no way to tell since they havn’t been released yet :P
Ur videocard can max out this game, so a 500$ card will not increse a single Frame on WvW battles, because the problem is the CPU performance, but again there is no CPU up to date capable to keep up with really heavy WvW battles at constant 30+FPS I have an i7 2600k OCed to 4.5gzh, even tryed 5Ghz one day for testing and i saw it as low as 20FPS on a battle inside SM castle hehe.
An i5/i7 at the same clock speeds will give u about a 35/40% more FPS over u current CPU, do the math, if u get 15FPS right now on a battle u will get 21FPS using a i5/i7 CPU at the exact same situation.

Hmm okay, thanks for the advice.

So short of waiting a new CPU to be released there’s not much I can do to get better performance?

OC ur current CPU, u will see a nice boost 12-15% FPS boost if u take it to 4ghz. Buy a Cooler master hyper 212EVO for 30$ it will give u pretty much the same performance as an entry lvl watercooling system (which is awesome). Ur CPU at 4ghz@1.5v won’t go hotter than 40c using that cooler, which is pretty kitten cool if u ask me.

Overall I have very similar specs, the only big diff is my Phenom II 945 @ 3GHz. I also have 8GB DDR2 800 OCZ and a Sapphire 6870. I get 25-30 FPS standard, and that is standing in the middle of a crowded LA, no event. The only time I’ve seen less than 20 FPS was 1) the halloween event 2) the one time Karka attack on LA 3) the Ancient Karka event. All three had hundreds of players in one place, so its understandable.

With that I’ll share my setup on my CCC – AA, AF, Vert Sync – all App Control — Morphological Filtering off – Tesselation AMD optimized – AI Standard – Mipmap High Quality – Tri Filtering High Performance. If anything this may help some out there with FPS issues on AMD rigs. Also I will point out my overall system stays extremely cool with 4x 120mm intakes, 2x 120mm exhaust, 2x 140mm exhaust. My CPU full load stays around 35-40*C, my GPU around 50*C. So cooling may also be what helps me out.

You could spend some money on a new GPU so that you dont need to turn settings down. This wont stop FPS from droping due to your CPU though. it will however allow you to keep your settings and achieve maybe slightly better fps.

My 560ti was maxing out in those events due to the masses of people and spell effects ot render. But i was able to leave my settings on max @1920x1080.

So at mininum i sugest getitng a factory OC 560ti or better.

If you want more performance after that you would need to change ur system over to a Intel i5 K and OC to about 4.3 or 4.5ghz depending on which cpu size u go for..ivybridge(22nm) or sandybridge(32nm). That would requir you to get a new MB and Cooler though, ontop of the CPU.

After that there is nothing more yo can really do. Even my OC’d i7 3930k is caping out on the single thread performance due to GW2’s crapy DX9 thread optimisation.

Upgrading to a 560ti is not a good idea. Your going to buy a new card for about a 10% performance increase.

zerk.9701:

Upgrading to a 560ti is not a good idea. Your going to buy a new card for about a 10% performance increase.

Amen, terrible idea indeed. It will give u 10% FPS in other games in GW2 u will see 0 improvments since ur CPU is the bottleneck not the GPU.
New CPU is also a bad idea since sandy bridge is allready 1+year old, Ivys are not good overclockers , and new architecture is coming very soon with a new socket and chipsets.

Note he stated that he had to reduce his graphics settings to sustain his original fps during the event. meaning his gpu was bottlenecking it the most.

A new gpu would remove that bottleneck and allow him to play at roughly the same fps with better graphics settings.

Now yes its obviose his cpu is currently a bottleneck aswell, which is lowing his fps even on low settings. BUT a new gpu will allow him to up those settings and is cheaper than switching to a OC’d intel setup at the moment.

In terms of raw performance it will likely only give a 10% increase BUT it will be 10% performance + eyecandy (grpahics settings).

SolarNova.1052:

Note he stated that he had to reduce his graphics settings to sustain his original fps during the event. meaning his gpu was bottlenecking it the most.

A new gpu would remove that bottleneck and allow him to play at roughly the same fps with better graphics settings.

Now yes its obviose his cpu is currently a bottleneck aswell, which is lowing his fps even on low settings. BUT a new gpu will allow him to up those settings and is cheaper than switching to a OC’d intel setup at the moment.

In terms of raw performance it will likely only give a 10% increase BUT it will be 10% performance + eyecandy (grpahics settings).

That is not true some graphics settings like shadows/reflections are CPU intensive. a 560ti or even a 660ti will do absolute nothing in this case. If u don’t believe me go WvW get into a zerg using full settings, then drop shadows and reflections and see ur FPS going up. Also check u GPU load u will see at 30 FPS battle ur GPU will be sitting below 40%