Guild Wars 2

Hi all, I need a new processor and video card and I’m torn on what to do.

I don’t need max settings (obviously by my choices below) but I want to play WvW. I recently gave my previous computer to my brother and I want this to be at least as good as that one which worked fine for me in WvW. It was a Q6700 and Nvidia 9800GT. It could play on medium settings fine.

My choices due to cost are either:

1. i3 3255 and an Nvidia 650Ti (or regular 650). $260 for both.

2. i5 3570K and an Nvidia 550Ti. $280 for both. (I do not plan to overclock).

Or if the i3 and Nvidia 550Ti would be just fine that would be even better because that would only cost $210.

Thanks.

P.S. I’m running with Vista 32-bit and 4G DDR3 Ram.

For WvW you need atleast an i5 processor atm, and that 3570k processor is the one you want to have.

For graphics card im not sure, i believe both will do the job fine.

I would definitely get the i5. If you like playing on medium, then the GTX 550Ti will work.

Option 2 deffinatly. However if u r so addamant about not OC’ing there is not point getting the K version of the CPU. So u can save a little on that.

Honestly though..OC’ing is so easy nowerdays that u should atleast put a mild OC on the CPU..atleast a 500ghz OC on the K versions, as a non K version can do a 400ghz OC.

If you want a cheaper version of the i5 3570k you can go for the i5 3350 P the only difference is you cannot overclock it and it has no build-in GPU and its just 200Mhz slower. But its around $ 80 cheaper.

32bit vista…..first install 64bit, and get 4more gb ram, then if you dont wana oc get the highest clocked locked chip you can afford….

650 or 7770 are the best choices for this game if you are needing to cheap out.

dont buy a K version if your so adverse to overclocking, its wasted money, K versions are designed to be clocked, thats why their multi is unlocked, same with the FX line from amd, they are sold and designed to be overclocked, thats why they leave the multi unlocked.

Thanks for the replies. Seems everyone is saying i5.

The i5 3570K is on sale at Microcenter right now for $190 and you get $40 off a MB with the purchase. I don’t see any cheaper i5s around than that.

That’s still more than I’d like to spend but I guess I’m going to have to do it.

I have Vista so I don’t want to pay $100 for Win 7. And from what I’ve read it doesn’t make that much difference with GW2. Will it?

you can install 64bit vista using the same key just download an ISO and burn it(or make usb flash drive installer) easy peasy.

microcenter….

if you want a cheaper viable option
http://www.microcenter.com/site/products/amd_bundles.aspx

the 6300 and extreme4 board, grab a coolermaster hyper212 evo(cheap on sale on microcenter now) you will be able to get it to at least 4.5ghz EASY this will give around the same perf as the 3570k@4.3 or 4.4, but will be cheaper.

if you can swing it the 8320 and 990fx extreme3 board are even better, and even with stock cooler you can hit 4.2 EASY

duno what your total budget is if you can give us that we can suggest MS bundles and what else you would need.

also note: superbiz and some other sites sometimes are cheaper for videocards, so look around, use froogle and pcpartpicker to price the cards your considering.

heres a build I put togather for somebody the other day, his budget was limited but he wanted something he could in place upgrade in 6-12 months(so that left intel out, since in 12 months they will be on a new socket)

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HxYw

3570k overclocked is the best bet, BUT also costs enough more that you could afford a better cooler and board with the AMD option and once overclocked they are very close(specially in this game thats only got 3 heavy threads)

Wow thanks for the 64bit advice. I didn’t know that.

As far as budget, I’m cheap. Originally I was going to get an i3 and 550Ti. With the free Gigabyte GA H61M-DS2 MB. And the Microcenter 4GB Ram. All for about $260.

I want to stay under $350 for processor, mb, ram and video card.

I’ve only used basic boards and never done any fancy tweaking or overclocking. So I would be more inclined to get a cheaper good brand mb and a more expensive processor.

Although I’ll have to look into the FX-6300, MSI 760GM-P34 mb, and Gigabyte GV-N65TOC GTX 650Ti. I can get that for under $350. What do you think of that board -it says it has overclocking ability and its cheap.

Dont get MSI, they got a bad rap for using cheap capacitors that tend to go pop when OC’ing.

For $350 i honestly dont see u getting a CPU/MB/RAM/GPU of any worth within budget.

Generaly speaking u should be looking to spend
~$100 on motherboard
~$150 on The Graphics card
~$120~$220 on the CPU
~$ 80 on the RAM

Bassicaly around $500.

dude stop being a cheap kitten spend a little extra to get a decent board, do not buy msi, the asrock board is the ticket for clocking and generally lasting longer.

think about it this way, if you get a decent board, you can just replace the chip later rather then needing to replace the board and chip(that is on amd, intel will EOL their current socket and move on to a new one by the time you wana upgrade your chip)

AMD will have new chips coming out for this socket for 2-3 more generations so if you get a decent board, you will be able to just upgrade the cpu without replacing the board, also, the board I listed supports 8x/8x crossfire, meaning if you get the videocard i suggested, you can toss a 2nd one in later for more perf, by that time, its quite possible they will be 1/2 the price they are now.

again, As I told my life long friend a couple years ago, “dont be a cheap kitten buy quality”, after years of this debate, he listened, since then, hes been able to cheaply upgrade his system 3 times, 1 cpu, a 2nd videocard and he also added more ram, this dosnt count him adding 2 more hdd’s for storage….

if you really wana go cheap and dont care about performance look for an old FM1 motherboard and APU combo….

or get the a10 combo with the biostar board(do not go any cheaper then that) just get a 16gb 1866 or 2133 ram kit(you will need it for the video to work decently)

http://www.microcenter.com/site/products/amd_bundles.aspx last apu bundle.

but seriously, just man up/nut up and get the 970 extreme4 and 6300 they will out last anything cheaper and have a nice upgrade path.

DO NOT get the a10 5800k if your not gonna get at least 16gb of 1866 or 2133 ram to go with it, and you still need the hyper 212 evo because it will need overclocked.

if you cheap out, please dont come back here and complain the game runs poorly, because then some of us will have to make sport of you and risk infractions :P

wtf? cheap kitten? who says that?

You’ve received a lot of complicated advice, most of it unnecessary. I’ll make it simple…

Have 4gb+ of memory, 550ti+, and any 4+ core 3ghz+ processor and you’re fine.

can always spot somebody who dosnt know kitten about this game or how it works…..

All I can say is don’t upgrade specifically for this game. Because the results may disturb you. If you’re upgrading for design, video editing, or other games…go for it.

well said mike, when a system that costs over 16.6k(16,600+) cant run this game and even with oc expect to get 60+fps game wide…….yeah good luck…(i specked up a system using the best parts for intel that should get your around 5ghz or so out of a 3960x, it still wouldnt give decent fps in this game….)

my systems overkill for every other game on the market, but, alas this game runs horribly…..its fine if im alone, or with 1-2 other people but as soon as you run into a zerg/crowd/exct…..bam huge perf hit………

heres to hoping ESO really lives up to the developers words…
http://ashentech.com/index.php/topic,3103.msg20588/topicseen.html#new

if it does, and its as fun as i hope it will become what gw2 was ment to be for me when i got it, my next primary mmo for the years to come……

gw2 runs so bad, i almost want to go back to UO……

Minimum 80FPS on max settings (although reflections are set to off, native sampling). This is at 1920×1080.

Intel Core i7-3770K (Overclocked to 4.8GHz at 1.280V)
Sapphire Vapor-X 3GB 7970 (Overclocked to 1185/1500)

My motherboard is an ASUS Sabertooth Z77 and I am using 16GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866MHz CL9. This is on a Windows 7 Home Premium x64 (Service Pack 1) machine.

God Of Fissures: theres no way in bloody hades that your getting a min of 80fps in DE’s, LA and WvWvW zergs, NOBODY gets that, even people with systems faster then yours dont get that.

i can believe 80fps when alone in pve or staring at the sky or a wall in LA….no way your getting that in a DE or WvWvW zerg……no-bloody-way

post a video showing you do, and I will take that back, till then, I will trust my own exp and that of everybody else who has posted about these issues.

My advice would be for now, get a i53570k with a z77 mobo, a decent air cooling system, and 8gb 2133mhz memory, keep ur 9800gt for now, then upgrade to a high en card. Honestly GW does not require a dencet graphics card so getting a powerfull mobo, CPU and memory combo is far more important, then u can get a decent card (550ti and 650ti are not really for gaming they will struggle on any real PC game).
If u don’t plan to ever overclock i5 3570k makes no sense since that is a overclocking made processor, get a 3550 or 3570 non K version and u will save 30$ u will get exact same performance.

I run a GTX 560 on max graphics and it keeps the game smooth at 40-60 fps depending on the area. Only times I see any lag are in massive zergs where it’ll drop to 20-30.

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

God Of Fissures: theres no way in bloody hades that your getting a min of 80fps in DE’s, LA and WvWvW zergs, NOBODY gets that, even people with systems faster then yours dont get that.

i can believe 80fps when alone in pve or staring at the sky or a wall in LA….no way your getting that in a DE or WvWvW zerg……no-bloody-way

post a video showing you do, and I will take that back, till then, I will trust my own exp and that of everybody else who has posted about these issues.

I don’t do WvWvW, I just do casual PvE. Just to humor you….

Staring at the sky in LA: http://imageshack.us/a/img713/7474/gw001tm.jpg

Staring at a wall in LA: http://imageshack.us/a/img802/5268/gw002fr.jpg

Also, when I was talking about the 80FPS minimum, that was in Caledon Forest just running around killing things, doing DE’s, and completing hearts for a couple of days. In more crowded places like LA, I get a minimum of 50 on those “near max” settings.

Here is the Fraps benchmark report of me running from the Gate Hub Plaza waypoint to the Trader’s Forum waypoint.

Frames: 2453
Time: 37206 ms
Min FPS: 51
Max FPS: 79
Avg FPS: 65.930

This was on those same graphics settings shown in the above screenshots.

lol, my and others who have mentioned it point is that if you stare at a wall or the sky, your not processing all the hidden geometry OR players thus the fps will be higher.

when you get me shots of a large DE, that will be far more telling.

also, I find the in game fps counter to be…..flawed, not sure why but sometimes it reports my fps a good bit higher or lower then they actually are….

thanks for the laugh at the images though…..lol

Am still using AMD 6850 video card and X4 955 processor. Setup works great for all my games cept Guild Wars 2.

Frankly <insert game here> would need to have great entertainment value for me to do an upgrade just for a single game and frankly GW2 aint’ it, haha.