Guild Wars 2

I have the following:
ASUS P5QC Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
Twin pairs (2 × 2GB) DDR3 666.6MHz
GTX 260 (896 MB, Core 576 MHz, Shaders 1242 MHz, Memory 1015 MHz)

And when I go near keeps my FPS drops to 9-12 FPS, which is unplayable for me. So it really limits what I can do in WvW and is driving me away from playing the game currently. What is the minimum requirements to play WvW with 30FPS?

30 fps with 60+ players on screen you looking at :

i5 2550k OC to 4.5ghz+
Nvidia 660ti or ATI equivalent.

GW2 thread optimisation isnt that good tbh, hence why you need a heafty CPU good at single thread operations.

EDIT: a 560ti would be ok but from experiance i can tell you that once there is more than 50 people on screen in WvW all shooting ..the cpu bottleneck quikly becomes GPU bottleneck(max settings) ..unless you lower graphics settings. .which i personal do not do :P Even still ..with a 560ti in WvW i have yet to see my FPS drop below 30 using max settings ..it gets close though.

I would say a OC`ed 2nd or 3rd gen i5/i7 and a 500 series nvidia card or equivalent amd card and min 8gigs ram.

I have a i5 3570k a 4ghz and min fps on the largest zergs in stonemist were 25fps but the average was in the low 30s.

U can actually keep ur card, get the CPU/mobo only it will give u a HUUUUGE boost in performance, then get the video card for a little eye candy details when u have more money, but card upgrade itself won’t give u any performance boost in WvW over ur GTX 260. Pretty much even the i5 overclocked at 5ghz will bottleneck the GTX 260 in WvW. The game uses Dx9 so the Dx11 card don’t even give u a visual enhancement, so u can wait until the new GPU gen comes out (Q1 2013).

Rampage.7145:

Pretty much even the i5 overclocked at 5ghz will bottleneck the GTX 260 in WvW.

If you run at low & medium graphics settings yes.

If you run on high/ultra the number of effects that increases as more and more people flood into a battle will quikly overwhelm the 260 ..its caps out a 560ti :P

Not disagreing btw. .just ..elaborating

good to know that ~30FPS in zergs is normal
gw2 runs awesome today in PvE/DE’s/torture-test-benchmark-cities
so i was curious about zergs…usually not into WvWvW…not yet

but had around 20~30FPS when we (~40 players) attacked a gate and the got steamrolled by another ~70 players

[optimism]then i died and had 60FPS again :P[/optimism]

i wonder how people can play on this horrible diashow…i can’t move my mouse properly and all skills are delayed…if the keys actually responds
in other mmo’s, you don’t need things like “reaction”…you stand completely still mostly while doing your skill-rotation

if SolarNova is correct, then it would have no effect upgrading my PC
wouldn’t do it anyways just for one single game, if everything else is running perfectly fine

got a little offtracked…sorry
anyways

the GPU in fact does affect the performance ingame way more than people might think
if OP don’t need super high end stuff and would like a nice balance between performance and price, go with a GTX 650 or GTX 650TI or something similiar in terms of price and performance
there are some cards of the GTX 400 series, simliar in performance and price you might want to check out

about the CPU: pretty much any i5/i7 quad core @3GHz+ would do it
keep in mind, you’ll most likely need a new mainboard too

about the RAM: if 666MHz is the labeled frequency, trade them in for ones with at least 1066MHz

what i recommend additionally to the suggestions on this forum/other internet sources: get some information about PC components and their performance, especially in combination at your trusted local computer store

FYI I only running on low/medium graphics settings at the moment, to try and always keep above 30. I personally am happy with 30FPS. Anything lower than about 22 and it starts looking like a slideshow to me.

So based on the answers here.. I am thinking of getting an unlocked Intel Core i7-3770K with new motherboard as starting point. And I can get 2000MHz ram for $40 so get that at same time.

Then later on upgrade the video card.

Sounds like a plan. Just make sure ifyou get a unlocked (K) cpu that you also get good enough cooling when you OC it.

FYI Wauwi. Do note that my post said to stay ABOVE 30fps you need said specs. meaning you can frequently get higher fps.

With the spec in my sig i get usualy between 35-60 fps in WvW depending on the size of the battle. When fps drops down near 30 it is usualy becouse of a combination of both cpu AND gpu nottlenecking since i run my graphics settings on max and do no turn them down. if i tuerned them down i would likely not drop below 40fps as my CPU is rather strong. that is untill i see a 100 man fight which tbh i rarely see :P

Already said above what is needed and to put minds at ease, 30 FPS can vary game to game. To me it’s how FPS mixes with the user input device. 30 FPS in GW2 the mouse is butter, you don’t feel friction/stutter. Say in GTA 30 FPS and it feels sluggish as all can be. 30 FPS in WvWvW feels really good with a huge mob. Get out of that and you’ll be pegging 60.

Overclocking and ram speed are optional, if you aren’t going to do it, don’t pay extra for it.

If you are not playing this game maxed settings and if you like + the injector, then you are missing out. This game max’d looks so much better then medium/low settings. In those arena’s the game actually looks a bit icky. To me this game has a wider range than most games in medium to max look variation.

Shees i would like to see a cpu clocked to 5ghz that have a bottleneck here….
Im running an i7-3770 turbo to 4.1 ghz and i never saw it go over 80% usage even at thoes kittenload huge karka events or wvw with around 200 ppl. My gpu on the other hand (7850 clocked) chokes at some points in pve (80-99% usage) as well as in thoes big wvw battles. I have around everything on max expect shadows on med or off in wv,w,reflections off ( this eats kittenload of gpu and it seems buged at max) and postprocesing off (i dont like that shiny stuff). My avarage fps in smaller wvw is around 40-50. The lowest i saw was in one of thoes huge keep fights that was around 22-28 but it was lt was like hell itself there (soooo many ppl and effects). Getting faster ram then 1600 mhz is a waste of cash (tested 1333 vs 1866 and got 0 fps diffrence). OH and dont get ati 7xxx series card. They have alot of issues like flashing terain, artifacts, flicerkign etc ( i have thoes as well same like kittenload of ppl in this and other games). Just dont get overpriced cpu as the game is still not optimalized ( i get around 5 fps more if i play on lowest settings vs max).

Megido ..look on forums for otherposts related to GW2 performance and you will see plenty of posts by me explaining why you wont see 100% usuage of the CPU when playing GW2.

Ill just copy and past what i said in another thread to somone here for ya :P

“You wont see a cpu max out in overall usuage becouse once GW2 maxes out one of its threads thats it, the game slows down. GW2 has like 50 odd threads it uses for various operations ..2 to 3 of them are the main ones used for performance. When 1 caps out thats when it bottlenecks…any other threads that are not capped out just add to the overal usuage your CPU indicates to you via task manager.

Bassicaly the math to work out at what overall CPU usuage will be when GW2 start to max out is this:

100/No. threads x 2= Lowest possible %
100/No. threads x 3 = Likely %
In your case your CPU has 6 threads.
So its
100/6 × 2 = 34 %
100/6 × 3 = 50 %
Meaning once your CPU reaches 34% usuage you can expect FPS to possibly start to drop. at 50% and up it is HIGHLY likely you fps will drop. When this happens you GPU usuage will also drop UNLESS there is alot of special effects going on to tax your GPU.

the way around this is simple but hard to swallow for some.

OC your current CPU
Buy a new beafier CPU & OC
Wait for a possible optimisation patch (dont hold ur breath) "

Wow i didnt know it works like this . It just means that gw2 engine is well …. you know what i want to say.

Most normal users wont cross the 4.5 ghz margin for OC (and why would they for 1 game?). I just wonder that some ppl claim to get stable 40+ fps in wvw with oc around 4.5ghz. I can go to 4.2 max with mine i7-3770 (partialy locked) an as far as i can see there is little to none fps gain from going over 4ghz (i got lik 1-3 fps more at best and im not sure). I just dont belive thoes extra 300 mhz would give me boost of over 10 + fps ( yeah i dip to 25-28 somtimes so it should be over 10+ to get me stable 30-40 ). I even tried going 8gb 1866 ram with tight timings (mine board just wont work with 16 gb of 1866mhz ram on current bios and the newest one is buged so i wont use it yet) and that gave 0 fps boost. Well a better card would probly give around 5 fps even at wvw (faster card memmory and stuff). They failed hard with the engine where the graphic is not that great and it needs stronger cpu then TERA online for example where the graphic is much better . . .

I do perfer Tera graphics tbh ..BUT Tera uses Unreal Engine ..which has its own flaws ….mainly being invisible walls due to the way hitboxes work for enviromental objects and such.
Also note that Tera also crumbles during Rifts ..the game engine cant handle the 100+ models (both npc and pc) in such a small location.. so it doesnt matter what rig you have ..it grinds to 15 fps or lower. Its PvP however is fine and can handle then umber of pepel involved ..mainly becouse there isnt as many people :P
In that respect GW2 is better becouse the lowets iv ever heared WvWvW go down to on a beasty computer is 20 fps with 100+ people on screen.
I personaly dont go below 30 ..but have yet to test this is a truly massive battle (100+ people)

As for your OC.

Depending on what cooling ur using people can usualy get between 4.3 and 4.5ghz on top end air cooling and mid/high end water cooling on a Ivybridge 3770k . So if ur on say a H50 water cooler or a mid range air cooler ..4.2 isnt bad.
As for not noticing any performance increase..you do need to make sure your GPU isnt choking when your trying to measure these increases.. also it is indeed hard to see diference when your looking at 100 or 200 mhz increase ..but if you went straight from 4ghz to 4.5ghz ..you would likely see a difference.

Also as for what normal users OC to. Well tbh 2nd and 3rd gen i5/7’s usualy get OC’d up to 4.5ghz(SB) 4.3ghz(IB) as its usualy considered the ‘reasonably attainable’ OC for begineers and for relativly cheap cooling. If you wanna go higher than that then you generaly need more knowledge on what to tweek in settings and also more money for better water cooling. And ofcourse the time it takes to fully test highly ‘tweeked’ OC’s which can be on the edge of be ing stable.
For example my OC is on Air cooling since i didnt wanna spend loads of money on a water cooling rig..i was already at the limits of my budget…but i did spend the time to highly tweek it to get as low a voltage 4.6ghz OC i could ..if i go down on the voltage even by 0.05v or change any other settings in bios ..my system become unstable ..it took me over a week to get right due ot the 12 hour long stability tests i had to run, but i done it not for just1 game ..but for an overall increase in performance for all aspects of PC usage.

Well i cant go higher then 4.2 only cuz mine i7-3770 is not the K version so i can only mess with the turbo rate and it goes as far as 42 for all cores. I could up the bus but that might mess up my rig so i dont see a point in this. And as for no noticable boost in performance i tested it from 3.9 to 4.2 ghz with lowest graphic so my card was not choking and the boost is marginal. Gw2 just sux in terms of optimalization and there is pretty much nothing we can do to change at this stage.And ye tera might not be the best example for mass pvp but planestide2 for example is and it works better then guild wars 2 as well.

“example for mass pvp but planestide2 for example” – I’ve read they have the same issues with a lot of people in a gun fight.

Planetside 2 runs pretty well on my laptop that has a core2 duo and a gtx260m even during big battles and its playable about15- 20fps min but guild wars 2 goes as low at 4fps in wvw and not playable and very choppy so It looks like planetside 2 is less demanding then gw2.