Guild Wars 2

Hi.
I’d like to say that my overall fps in gw2 isn’t bad.
WvW is playable at 20-22 fps in massive battles ( sometimes spiking to 18) tho it’s normal and i don’t play WvW a lot.
I prefer pve & spvp. in both im getting steady 60 fps.
But.
Thanks to my old gtx 260 216 core edition Im playing mostly on low settings with:
Medium for animation
shader max
native sampling and medium textures
+ filtering this fxaa set on.

don’t get me wrong but game looks kinda bad.

I was wondering about newer GPU as i can’t afford a 560ti or 660.
Both in Poland ( add tax to us prices ) goes from 250-350$ per card which is a lot for me.

So I took in consideration a bit older GPU’s.

like :
gtx 460 1gb edition super oc
gtx 465 1gb
gtx 470 ( kinda hard to find low priced but duable )
HD5850 Twin Frozr II 1GB
HD 6850 1gb vertex3d / gigabyte

But. After reading a lot of reviews etc. most ppl claim that a GTX 460 ( as most of these cards which are close or a lil better then 460 ) are really small/not noticable upgrade from gtx 260 ( 216 cores ) and seriously I don’t know what to think.

While looking for benchmarks a gtx 460 gets almost 3x score of 260.
while on legit reviews overall fps gain from 260-460 is around 5-10%…

Im kinda confused now after reading some crap web sites.
My overall knowledge about Pc’s tell me that 460 woul be and upgrade from 260 and would allow me to get this game to medium/high from low…

FYI: If a person is running low-medium setitngs becouse the fps drop when he/she sets them to High, then a GPU upgrade will help. IN the case of GW2 is might mean the FPS ends up staying the same, but the quality will be better.

Well after the 200 series the 400 eries was next (for gaming cards) ..so the jump form a 260 to a 460 in some games may well be only 15%, though in most it should be more.

Your probably better of going for a AMD when ur on a budget. U sacrifice PhysX and possibly some ‘smoothness’ in FPS figures, but will be able to get a card which produces high fps.

I would recommend any GPU above a score 2500 for High settings.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/index.php
Navigate to ‘high end video card chart’

You should be able to get ahold of a 650ti for less than the cost of a 460. And it ‘should’ play the game better. The AMD 7850 costs a bit more but again would be great sicne its slightly betetr than a 560ti but for less cost.

Fun part about that chart is that gtx 460 produces 2600+ points vs my gtx 260 ( which stand for 11xx).

So according to that I would be able to put this game to medium/high with gtx 460 from low and theoretically keep my fps.

Also about that 650 Ti. problem is that for 100$ I can get a gtx 460.
According to most of my sotres which add 23% value to US prices ( due to tax ) a 650TI costs around 179$. and is only 60$ cheaper then 660/560ti.
If i had that 170++ $ i’d rather save up and get 660/560ti or get 7850for 9$ more then 650ti. Seriously i sometimes hate living in country when you earn 400$ a month and can’t do kitten with it >.>
problem is that I don’t have and daubt ill get them in close future so gtx 460 ( and possibly gtx 470 which im biding on ( hope price won’t get over 100$ ) would be a dream for me now :P

Aye the GTX 460 should be fine. My old computer uses a 460 but since the CPU holds it back considerably, its hard to gauge how high it can go on the settings. That said it runs on a mixture of medium and high settings atm and even with the CPU holding it back at 60% usuage in in PvE it still manages over 30 fps without trouble.

Still .. if u can find a 650ti it would likely do as good/better for a lesser price (new not used) and a AMD 7850 would most deffiantly do better.

I know.
but woulnd’t a SLI 460 be better then 7850/650ti ?
Coulnd’t find any comparsion, but it seems that SLI 460 ~~ gtx 480.
They would cost the same and I could buy now 1, and in few months another :O

If ur bidding on a 470 and its used ..u would likely be able to find used 560ti or 660ti cards within ur price range also.

if the 470 new however and u can get it cheap ..then that would be a wicked deal.

GW2 and SLI dont mix well tbh.. its always better to get 1 stronger card over 2 weaker SLI.

the 470 im biding is :
gtx 470 OC 1280MB gigabyte 3xFan – with original box and all stuff and still aorund 2 years of varanty.
Guy claims that it was used only for few months and never oc’d past standard factory oc.

As for 560ti. there are few tho mostly over 150$, there is 1 ZOTAC GeFORCE GTX 560TI 1GB, for less then 100$ ( auction is now on 23$ price and 3 days left ) tho guy claims that he got it for x-mass and can’t check it ( is it working cause he doesn’t have proper pci-e in his pc… which is kinda bullkitten if u ask me… ) so he sells it as damaged…

The only time u should buy damaged GPU’s is if they look good for ‘cooking’ AND are really cheap.
Cooking can somtimes bring them back to life and last for a good couple months possibly a year before breaking again.
Usualy such gpu’s have constant artifacting problems caused by cracked solder joins on the components, this is where cooking helps fix it. But its a risky move and should only be attempted on ur own gpu’s if/when they start going down, or on very cheap deals.

Anyway, fingers crossed u get the 470.

yea, thanks.
it’s still few days so we will see
Thanks for help

Depends on the CPU. A GTX 260 216 core when OC’d is almost the same speed as a stock gtx 460 in a Direct X 9 game.

A GTX 460 that overclocks really well (MSI made a really good one if you can still find it, 460 Hawk) will see a big improvement over the GTX 260 IF your CPU is not bottle necking it. This is why you see such a large discrepancy in benchmarks. The OC’s are far apart, and people are probably referring to a STOCK GTX 460.

About the CPU. If you are running a 3 ghz older chip or slower? You may not see much improvement at all as you will be bottlenecked. If you have a Sandy Bridge or an older quad that you can oc to mid 3 ghz or higher? You may see a big improvement.

As far as video cards, the rule of thumb is the second number means the most. The GTX 260 is not a bad direct x card at all at a 1600x res. It will be faster in games then later series (first number) even a couple generations apart. The 460 has the same value (the 6). It overclocks much higher though and is direct x 10/11, which should see a performance increase in many games. GW2 currently is Direct X 9, but may add support for 10/11 at a later time, in which case the 460 will pull farther ahead.

hah. when I picked new cpu few months ago i had to chose from i3-3220 vs fx 4100. Obvious choice was i3-3220.

I cannot complain on it because it handles the game at 60 fps constant apart from WvW and LA. untill I put all graphic options on best apperance and then my fps goes down.

ok.

basically what I did now was OC’ing my gigabyte gtx 260 core 216 ( never done that before ) and now game runs smoothly ( all high except Lod/reflections/shadows) and I keep same fps ( in some placec even better ) which is kinda hard to belive

Hi Mrowqa,

Why don’t you try running the game with high textures and lower shaders. shaders is all gpu based and will have a severe performance hit on any gpu. The game will look sharper with the high textures rather than medium.

I have a 6850 from sapphire and it runs gw2 just fine, even on max settings bar reflections off. The only problem is reflections from full to off give me a 15~fps difference and oclusion culling goes apekitten with reflections on and causes frame lag when turning the camera. But that could also not be attributed to just the gpu.

EDIT: also what Nitro said about shaders, an older card from the 2xx gen will have a harder time keeping up shaders.