Guild Wars 2

I was opening this topic to see how many poelple are using this combo on this game and what are the results . The reason being is i will have setup up and going very soon and would like to get a little heads up about issues and such before hand.

I also want to point out i run a ati hd6970 gpu. The cpu and gpu will be liquid cooled with insane overkill liquid cooling setup hd 6970 is overclocked to max allowed by bios within card 950mhz on core and 1450mhz on ram 100% stable and cpu will be overclocked to around 4.6ghz x8. I am trying to find out how well this setup will do ram will be 2400mhz kingston hyperX beast ram 16gb and hardrive will be ssd ocz vertex 4 128gb is there going to be any major issues with this game.

I play game now with the same hd6970 oc’ed now and amd phenom II 955be oc to 3.7ghz x4 and well everyone says i am bottlenecked by cpu so i am upgrading and upgrading bigtime dont chime in should have bought intel i despise intel fanboys intel is way over rated and amd if setup properly run very close to intel near same lvl of performance / price and amd is alot better bang for buck.

http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-vs-intel-3570k-vs-3770k-vs-3820-gaming-and-xsplit-streaming-benchmarks i posted this just to shut up the soon to chime in intel fanboys

much better job posting rick, and I use the older ver of that board(the ts guys are a bit off on the differances between the 2.0 and 1.0, but no biggie honestly)

but having used the asrock extreme4 in a few builds for people, I really prefer it to the sabertooth(and i have 2 sabertooths!!!)

if you havent already got the board, get the extreme4, its BEASTLY and cheaper then the sabertooth(very similar to overclock)

with good cooling, 4.8-5ghz range should be easy but make sure you put a fan blowing directly on the board OR you water cool the vrm’s and such(sabertooth, the extreme4 has a fan you put on the vrm’s that keeps them nice and cool even under heavy oc)

I wouldnt bother with 2400 ram personally, it shows very little real world gain on the 8350, what I would do however, is get a 32gb kit, and use fancycache to cache my games drive, this will SMOKE any ssd’s stand alone speed, hell, I got 3 friends with top end adata x900 ssd’s(some of the best you can get period) and my load times in every game we play is better then theirs because they dont use fancycache…well 2 of them only have 8gb of very fast ram so they dont got much to use for cache…lol

I do agree that for all around use, amd is the better value….my system out encodes all of my friends intel rigs when using the same software(we have tested with mediacoder that has the latest x264, as well as a few other software suits, avx and fma really help)

for audio I can pull over 1000x encode speed (see attachment because I know somebody is gonna say im a liar)

I have no issues with gw2 running at 30ish fps, I just find gw2 and anet very frustrating, they keep adding stuff and doing updates and events but the dont fix the massive performance issues the game has….its like they decided its “good enough” and that we can all just wait a few years till they decide to go dx11 and fix their threading for whatever cpu’s are out at the time…..

my videocards are massive overkill……but so where my dual 6870’s honestly…..

I will tell you, if you cant get gw2 to run smooth on an 8350@4.4+ then, your probably better off trying tera or some other mmo’s because, again, not even intels best can guarantee that your gonna get stable 30+fps in all situations…..and those chips alone cost more then I paid for my board+chip+ram+videocards…..its sad I would love to know what anet tested on that was able to run the game smooth.

all I can think is that they intended to port it to xbox360, that would help explain the 3 heavy threads and the dx9 since the 360 has 3 cores and dx9 level gfx…..

gah……i get annoyed just thinking about it……

4 x DIMM, Max. 32GB, DDR3 1866/1600/1333/1066 MHz ECC, Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel Memory Architecture

So why would you put 2400 MHz ram on it ? It will be downgraded anyway…

The reason i am running the 2400mhz ram is for the purpose of downgrading the frequency so i can massively tighten timings in the 1866mhz ram speed http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-2400MHz-PC3-19200-KHX24kitten3K2-8X/dp/B00A771ZWI/ref=sr_1_16?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1360723819&sr=1-16&keywords=2400mhz+ram and well price is right downing it to 1866mhz i have seen and heard people taking it to 8-9-8-25 timings which is insanely tight timings for that high of frequency every amd cpu in games i have ran love tight timings.

also able to keep voltage at 1866mhz with those timings at 1.55v is very nice alot get it stable at 1.5v period so that is the reasoning behind that ram.

I also wanted to say ty jazhara knightmage for the compliment i am trying to keep from doing the block walls of text lol.

I also want to point out the company that makes the ram for this model of kingston is same company corsair and many others use for theyre top end ram chips so this ram set should be awesome and has lifetime warranty covering it for oc’s to 2400mhz hince the xmp profiles auto overclock features so if i get crazy it is covered lol.

I got the corsaire dominator platinum for me, 2×8 Gb 1866mhz
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Dominator-Platinum-Desktop-CMD16GX3M2A1866C9/dp/B007Z1CVIQ
I know they are maybe high on prize, but they are pretty nice, and do the job well.
Those are my stuff :
ASUS Crosshair V Formula
Sapphire Vapor X HD 7970 GHz Edition 3 Go
AMD FX 8350 Black Edition (4.0 GHz)

Gw2 is running pretty fine without overclocking.

kool i thought about the corsair dominator gt platinums but all the reviews said they were exact hardware as the vengeance line so the price was not worthit to only get option for special liquid cooling topplate or ram fan which usualy the fan causes issues the vibration from fan messes up the ram dimm slots connectoins within slot.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/EK-Corsair-Dominator-Series-X4-Ram-Liquid-Cooling-Block-Acetal-Nickel-CSQ-/380576519025?pt=US_Water_Cooling&hash=item589c20d371 this is the waterblock for that ram i was talking about the fan issue is very common and ruins the mobos ram dimm slots.

the fan issue ( corsair dominator )i refer to an issue i personaly had 3 months after assembly it ruined the mobo ram dimm slots the asus company asked what ram i had and if i had the fan on the ram i said yes then they voided my warranty and pretty much told me to go f%^$ myself oh i wanted to point this out it was a asus crosshair IIV board.

Those baords were very expensive on release. I bought it day after release and 3 months after assembly the fan on ram ruined the board. I had rma’d the board it made it to them then they tested and told me what happened then asked what ram was in it and about the ram fan as soon as they heard oem factory to ram fan was on the ram voided warranty and sent me the old ruined board back. I still have it as a decoration hanging on the wall.

That was around $300 loss i keep around to remind me about the ram fan stuff you couldnt pay me to do it again that was biggest hassle and bs i have ever gone thru pc was out for like 3 months over it took 1 month for them to contact me then 2-3 weeks for me to get board back then i had to buy a new board which i had spent all my cash in that build and then some not to mention all the time and headache involved in my testing .

If memory serves me right the board only had 1 functional memory slot and it was the 3rd one the others were dead over the fan. So board still worked but playing any game at time with 1gb of ram was crazy and stupid lol .

Jazhara Knightmage that is a crazy amount of encoding performance there me i dont do much video stuff but plan to do a bit of uploading and such to youtube of gameplay and such .

I also wanted to say ty the info you gave me on the other issue realy helped me out typing in forrums and such and also helped me finalize my decision on amd fx 8350 cpu the mobo thing the asus sabertooth i like because military grade components and 5yr warranty and it is alot cheaper (by nearly $100)than the crosshair v (2yr warranty)with nearly all the functions of chv.

I have always loved the TUF series boards and well the sabertooth also goes with my scheme alot better the coolermaster HAF 932 towwer is a military style towwer so the mobo fits right in the scheme and well i love camo lol. I want to point out again warranty / price was main thing that helped me on the choice the fact TUF series and military styled is all plusses lol.

The overall performance of the sabertooth also helped the choice it is one of the top performing boards period in 990fx class and well overclocks like a monster. The added functions and supplied accesories also helped out everything i have found about r2.0 sabertooth says once bios is updated they run flawless and also are more stable than the original sabertooth 990fx and arent as quarky about ram.

I first wanted to go for intel with an Asrock extreme 11. With one of the latest i7. But i ended up with just those 2 parts almost twice the price of what i have now. It’s a pretty nice board, but pretty expensive :p
But you need a budget, and then see what you can get with it. Mine was 1700€ in total. So far totally worth the money. But again, i didn’t picked the cheapest stuff. Maybe people will say that i payed to much for that and that, but i don’t care. I know the PC will last for 4-5 years. Within that time i can still buy other pieces if i want.

I will say i prefer amd better bang for buck period and well amd board with nearly exact specs as intel board and almost exact layout / colors for amd are almost 1/2 the price of intel version add to it intel is way overpriced and well there are just to many intel fanboys. I used to be one of them if that isnt saying something and now i despise intel and intel fanboys no one should be a die hard fanboy of either side but pick what will work best for your budget and goals / needs .

Im probably wasting my time here considering u dont seem to see the obviose problem with that bench test on those cpu’s that were linked in the 2nd post….but.

CPU wise GW2 will run much better on a 2550k/3570k or 2700k/3770k or even a 3820 or 3930k.. over any AMD. However the FX 6XXX and FX 8XXX can give playable performance with GW2 so long as u dont intend on doing WvW to much. If ur a WvW player then the AMD cpu’s will drop below 30fps even when OC’d. If ur OK with 20-30 FPS in heavy WvW battles then a FX6 or FX8 will be fine so long as its OC’d.

Its all down to the single thread performance. Intel CPU’s r faster per thread, and as such GW2 performs better on them. Take a gander at this list to see where each cpu comes in hierachy for single thread performance. ignor those CPU’s that cant really be OC’d ..like Xeon chips, as all the scores would increase with a OC .. said Xeon chips dont OC well so will drop down the list when compared to the other OC’ed CPU’s.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Note: You shouldnt throw around the ‘fanboy’ term at the start of the thread, sends the wrong message, if i was a less logical person i would asume u were a fanboy straight of the bat with that kinda talk. Ether way facts and figures always speak louder than personal ‘opinions’

U see solar the thing is, 99% don’t build a PC thinking about a single game, if i had to build a PC for a specific game i just would not play it, other than that AMD offers much more bang for the buck than intel does, AMD mobos are awesome+ u can get the 8350+990fx mobo for the same price or even less than a 3770k CPU alone, u could say a i5 cost very similar to a FX8350 but that isn’t true either cuz intel mobo are much more expensive so u will end up wasting 100$+ dollars going the i5 way when tbh other than single thread performace the AMD chips offers a lot more raw processing power.
Yeah it is true Ivy processors are 30% faster in single thread performance but they offer 50% of the cores, so for general computing, mutithread apps, multitasking in general, workstation usage the 8 core chip will destroy any i5.
Tbh AMD is in general way better than intel in performance per dollar, i allways had AMD systems at home since early 2000s my last one was a phenomII 1090t i do still have it, it costed me 200$ back in the day arround the same price of a first gen i5, honestlly right now that CPU will smoke any first gen i5 arround on any kind of app, multi or single thread it is a great overclocker i think it is the best CPU i’ve ever owned.
Currently i have a newer i7 2600k it is a great CPU i love it, but it is expensive, i was hyped by the reviews and got it but honestly watching it run any game side by side with my old system and it is about the same (AMD 15FPS, intel 20FPS)… ppl just hype so much by reviews when honestly the diference in performance in terms of real world usage is just close to 0.
So in conclusion Intel is good in single thread, but does that justify paying a lot more? hell no, cuz if the performance gains were 100% then and only then it would justify a 100% higher price is as simple as that for many ppl.

well the issue about core usage had alot to do with the win7 lack of support for fx cpus you have to email microsoft to get the patches (they are not part of reg updates) for the amd fx series cpu so most of the benchmarks and tests you see are faulty. The patches and fixxes from microsoft fix the issue with the core efficiency alot by meens of coreparking disabled and the fact it doesn’t jump core usage all over the place like it does regular.

The reason it fixxes alot of issues on the fx cpu’s is because everytime it moves a function to another core / module it has to reload the cache on each module aka 2 cores of cpu get a lag and loss and fight over priority of the cache of previous task and it has to restart whole process again (core scheduler bugs ). The patch treats each module like a dual core seperate cpu aka the combined l3/l2 cache per module (each module is 2 cores with a shared 2mb of l2 and 2mb of l3 cache )is used far more efficient per module raising the core efficiency minimum of around 10% often it is found to be near 20%-%30 total efficiency increase on the fx 8350.

So the core efficiency of the fx module on win7 after the patches is night and day compared to before so on average almost all benchmarks and tests you see online are false.

http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-oc-vs-i5-3570k-oc-battle-continues below video is a link to the patches i am refering to microsoft does not supply them in reg updates only other way to get them is to email microsoft and request them then they email them to you.

the tek syndicat video i linked first http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-vs-intel-3570k-vs-3770k-vs-3820-gaming-and-xsplit-streaming-benchmarks gives a true showwing of the increase in performance after the patch almost all benchamrks you see are oem not patched out install of win7 and no optimizations period. I will say amd will take a few extra tweaks and a little time but after you do so they fly.

The fact to be told if you diasble amd cool in quiet / disable core parking / and also lock cpu to be permanently into turbo mode without patches i previously mentioned you will see a huge performance increase on nearly any amd cpu period. I will also say after the above mentioned patches you get on amd fx cpus upto 30% added core efficiency you do math the performance increase without overclocking is pretty high far higher than any benchmarks you see online about the amd fx period and by technicality that is still oem alot of people that do alot of encoding and such have to disable core parking and amd cnq period to keep data flow solid and quality solid.

I will say after those are done to the cpu settings and such before overclocking will run with the big dog intels ( for 1/2 the price ) without overclocking in nearly any aplications or benchmarks unless benchamark is optimized for intel which many were and got sued over it because it was proven in court.

There are patches out to make benchmarks think you have an intel cpu instead of amd that will cause benchamrk scores to go way higher than normaly would with amd cpu alone. I cant find any links to them at sec but i know many benchmarks there was a patch to do so.

I will also point out Jazhara Knight in a previous post mentioned in another forrum topic about process lasso and amd fx cpu to get better performance and better core usage per core / module

i agree with rickswarrior. Yes maybe intel does a better job for this game, but if you look on the same site SolarNova shared (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpukittenml), the fx-8530 is the only high end cpu under the 200$… So for what you pay i’m pretty sure it can follow any intel at that lvl who cost 2×. Some must understand that when you want to compare 2 cpu’s you need to take the same price too. You can’t just say that the I7 3930k is better than the fx-8530… well I hope for you the intel is better, you pay actually 3 times more for it. So please compare it to the same price categories. There is no better cpu at that price at the moment. The single thread is maybe not that good, but i don’t see any Intel with 8 physical cores. And besides a game who only uses 1 core, 8 cores are still better than 8 logical cores. Maybe not every one want to spend 700$ on a cpu, then again 700$ for the motherboard because yeah no low priced motherboards support that new socket of Intel.
I’m not telling that intel is not good. But you can get for the same price much better stuff with amd.

Rick, SN is correct in that, gw2 prefers intel at the moment, I dont agree that any intel is better then any amd in gw2 though, those that cant oc will most of the time be slower then my system.

the patch dosnt make a night and day dif, and you do not need to email ms for it, its up on their download servers and easy to find with google
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/01/11/early-results-achieved-with-amd-fx-processor-using-windows®-7-scheduler-update/

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2646060

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2645594

but these patches also have been shown to benefit intel as well they are not exclusive to amd chips.

Im not a fanboi, despite what some would accuse me of or assume, I just dont like the games intel plays, And honestly, I dont feel my system is slow in any way, despite what the benches would say….

I do agree, if the only game your going to play is gw2, then you want an intel, if thats all you plan to do with the system outside browsing facebook, looking at pr0n and email….if your going to build a system to encode or do any heavy work, the fx6300 and up are your best bang for the buck.

PS2 runs great here, and its said to be as bad as gw2 perf wise, if not worse…..firefall runs good(better before the last 2 major patches but, they know about it and are trying to fix it, its not just an amd thing), Tera runs good, 40+fps game wide(when there are 30+people in 1 spot messing around it will drop to 40+fps, other then that its normally pegged at my limit of 60(not vsync but a frame limiter)

I could list alot more games i have well over 200 on steam alone, none of them run poorly, gw2 on the other hand runs like warmed over donkey kitten….

yes i consider 30fps to be bad, but when it dips even for an instant into the 20’s or teens…thats bs……specially on this hardware no way should any game run this bad on modern high end hardware……it shouldnt run this bad on mid range hardware……

either way, your build will be great for other games, even if this one only shows you smoother fps rather then truly good perf.

Soon as you go with SLI or Crossfire AMD cpu bottlenecks your Gfx cards.
Link http://www.overclock.net/t/1352970/toms-hardware-fx-vs-core-i7-exploring-cpu-bottlenecks-and-amd-crossfire
There are more websites that shows the Intel sureriour compared to Amd on SLI/Crossfire. And no i am not a fanboy since my latest intel cpu was a pentium2 350mhz.

rickswarrior.3240:

I was opening this topic to see how many poelple are using this combo on this game and what are the results . The reason being is i will have setup up and going very soon and would like to get a little heads up about issues and such before hand.

I also want to point out i run a ati hd6970 gpu. The cpu and gpu will be liquid cooled with insane overkill liquid cooling setup hd 6970 is overclocked to max allowed by bios within card 950mhz on core and 1450mhz on ram 100% stable and cpu will be overclocked to around 4.6ghz x8. I am trying to find out how well this setup will do ram will be 2400mhz kingston hyperX beast ram 16gb and hardrive will be ssd ocz vertex 4 128gb is there going to be any major issues with this game.

I play game now with the same hd6970 oc’ed now and amd phenom II 955be oc to 3.7ghz x4 and well everyone says i am bottlenecked by cpu so i am upgrading and upgrading bigtime dont chime in should have bought intel i despise intel fanboys intel is way over rated and amd if setup properly run very close to intel near same lvl of performance / price and amd is alot better bang for buck.

per core amd performs better in theory but for cpu calculations per thread that is available amd cpu’s severally fall behind on intel due to it treating the logical cores as a physical core using hyper threading look at benchmarks on the game almost every amd cpu gets low fps compared to low end dual core intel cpu’s its how they handel the data being sent has nothing to do with fanboyism

the 30% was a genral idea of all the tweaks not just the patches hince disabling amd c n q / disable core parking manualy / and lock amd cpu at its turbo clock so it doesnt jump around on frequency then the patches. I also want to point out alot of more recent tests have shown on win 8 once fully updated the bottleneck for sli/crossfire is nearly non existent win8 got the patches automaticaly. Technicaly it isnt overclocking and is just cutting all the bs eco features out.

I want to point out and yes you have to request the patches and they send them to your email that was what i meant by have to contact microsoft to get the patches.

Yasin.3495:

Soon as you go with SLI or Crossfire AMD cpu bottlenecks your Gfx cards.
Link http://www.overclock.net/t/1352970/toms-hardware-fx-vs-core-i7-exploring-cpu-bottlenecks-and-amd-crossfire
There are more websites that shows the Intel sureriour compared to Amd on SLI/Crossfire. And no i am not a fanboy since my latest intel cpu was a pentium2 350mhz.

Most likelly if u run SLI/Crossfire on high en cards u play on triple monitors or 3D surround AMD CPU won’t bottleneck unless u are stupid enough to buy 1000$ videocards and play at 1080p. So as far as SLI/Crossfire AMD will hardly bottleneck u worst than single card confing unless u are kitten

Selene.6471:

per core amd performs better in theory but for cpu calculations per thread that is available amd cpu’s severally fall behind on intel due to it treating the logical cores as a physical core using hyper threading look at benchmarks on the game almost every amd cpu gets low fps compared to low end dual core intel cpu’s its how they handel the data being sent has nothing to do with fanboyism

Selene: not this kitten again….

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/fx-8350-8320-6300-4300_6.html#sect0

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_fx8350/10.htm

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_fx8350/8.htm

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_fx8350/9.htm

http://www.techspot.com/review/586-amd-fx-8350-fx-6300/page6.html

http://www.behardware.com/articles/880-13/amd-fx-8350-review-is-amd-back.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-13.html

also, AMD dont use hyperthreading, they have real int cores that share a 256bit FPU that can split into 2×128bit mode, the perf issues are less due to shared architecture then to the front end being sub optimal(what pile driver went a long way to fixing).

that said, where exactly is AMD falling behind intels low end chips?

what I see is it mostly keeps up with the 3470 and 3570k, in some cases being faster…

the 8350 costs the same amount as the 3470k, and at times is able to keep up with/be faster then the 3770k or in non-game tasks there are times its kickin intels top chip int he heals or even surpassing it in a few tasks…

for games, AMD dosnt suck, sure your not gonna win alot of benchmark contests against 3570k/3770k chips, but those chips also cost more……

honestly……you need to shut your kitten mouth and read before you speak and make a fool of yourself.

oh yeah, hyperthreading is as much a curse as a blessing, I regularly have friends whit high end i7’s tell me they need to reboot to disable it before starting some tasks because it slows them down(in a few cases to the order of 47%) because those logical cores(fake cores) overload the physical cores….think rush hour traffic to many cars to little road……in this case its to much data to process to little processing power/bandwidth.

Yasin.3495:

Soon as you go with SLI or Crossfire AMD cpu bottlenecks your Gfx cards.
Link http://www.overclock.net/t/1352970/toms-hardware-fx-vs-core-i7-exploring-cpu-bottlenecks-and-amd-crossfire
There are more websites that shows the Intel sureriour compared to Amd on SLI/Crossfire. And no i am not a fanboy since my latest intel cpu was a pentium2 350mhz.

i dont think you really read that thread….

$330 cpu vs sub $200 cpu for starters….in bf3 intel was no better…..in skyrim, ofcorse intel wins, its got a horrible old engine that just had a few new shaders added…(they have used the same engine for morrowind, oblivion and skyrim if you do a binary comparison of the engines, just repetitively minor updates to the engine….its not threaded….

my 2*6870’s and 2*7870’s dont choke and die due to my cpu…..

Well my sabertooth 990fx r2.0 came in today cpu will be here tommorow i got it installed and everything setup including got all my liquid cooling setup on new board and put my p2 955be in it either way it had to have bios updated lol. I can tell you this board has enough stuff in the bios to realy confuse you also i was hoping to get one last hoorah out of my 955be and overclock it to its limit hoping the 790fx i had was holding it back quess what it wasnt i just got a crap c2 revision 955be that wont overclock pat 3.7ghz but does 3.7 on oem stock volts.

I just cant wait to get the 8350 in tommorow and take it to around 4.6ghz maybe higher i got plenty cooling to do so lol. I also want to say dont tell asus but i removed all of the oem heatsinks and changed the thermal paste putty crap ( cleaned with acetone and a piece of small plastic to scrape old crap off )on them oem and swapped it out with good thermal paste on sb / nb and also the vrm’s arctic cooling mx-4 i had and the temps are very nice if i dont say so myself now temps on all areas dropped 5c-8c which is a huge drop in temps so the crap they use is total garbage. I also noticed the heatsinks were not making proper even contact before i did so.

rickswarrior.3240:

I also want to say dont tell asus but i removed all of the oem heatsinks and changed the thermal paste putty crap ( cleaned with acetone and a piece of small plastic to scrape old crap off )on them oem and swapped it out with good thermal paste on sb / nb and also the vrm’s arctic cooling mx-4 i had and the temps are very nice if i dont say so myself now temps on all areas dropped 5c-8c which is a huge drop in temps so the crap they use is total garbage. I also noticed the heatsinks were not making proper even contact before i did so.

That is the best thing u can posibbly do for a motherboard or Videocard, i recomend to do this oce per year to your mobo/CPU/GPU. Sometimes i tell ppl how cool my hardwere runs and nobody believe me, that is one of the main reassons for it hehehe.

First my system specs:
Asus Sabertooth 990FX
AMD FX-8320 @ 4.8Ghz 1.46v UltraHigh LLC (12 Hours Prime95 Stable/Watercooled)
Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133 9-10-10-27-1T 1.55v
2×6970OC Crossfire

Thoughts:
The Sabertooth is probably the best board for people that like to tweak and overclock their systems. It is as good a board as an Asus Crosshair V.
GW2 and every other game for that matter runs on max settings @ 1920×1200.
Frame rates are normally at or near 60FPS (VSync On). The only times is drops down to say 40-45FPS is during big battles in WvW or similar. Crossfire doesn’t really do much for this game, minimal performance increase. Great for many other games and benchmarking, just not GW2.

You have a great computer if you like to tweak and overclock. Have fun and good luck!

well with arctic cooling mx-4 it wont dry out or harden so once a year is a bit extreme maybe once every 2-3 years lol. I also want to point out i love this motherboard it is the sh&% lol and well cpu should come in today at sec i have the 955be in it c2 stepping doesnt overclock for crap but allowed me to get bios and everything setup and my raid0 and such setup and os and all stuff ready drop fx 8350 cpu in and let it rock lol. I think i got the cooling to run it at around 5.0ghz or so 5 core V8 brass copper car radiator 2 pumps 1 in cooling cabinet 1 in towwer.

The pump in cabinet i mainly use to prime system if i ever dissassemble anything in loop in towwer gravity takes effect fluid run down to radiator and reservior. I then fire pump up in cabinet reprime setup then turn main rig on and good to go never have to turn pump on in cooling cabinet again unless i break the loops seal (aka a t line with a cap on it ) i onyl do so if system and pumps are off once seal is broke everything goes to radiator/ reservior no leaks no spills no hassles filling / maintaning system.

http://s1203.beta.photobucket.com/user/rickcooperjr/library/ these are old picks only newwer one is the tripple monitor setup the others were rush setup me and fiance just moved in to our new home i was in a rush to get pc up and going. I used a new 5 core brass/copper radiator i bought for my 1973 gto (i put a aluminum racing radiator in ) the setup in those pics is uggly (still use same towwer rest has been changed ) those were prototype pics lol since then it is much refined and alot prettier. I also want to point out all internal radiators within pc are removed and not in system period.

I run 3/8 ID line in my setup and use a custom coolant blend i make myself 15% automotive universal green mixxed with distilled water then i add hyperlube (automotive coolant additive ) for extra anti corrosion protection and also helps coolant absorb heat. I also add 3-5 drops of dawn dish detergeant per gallon for anti microbeal and also the detergeant breaks the surface tension of the coolant allowing for better heat transfer from surface to surface. I also myself add automotive radiator UV coolant radiator dye if i want to use UV lighting lol.

This mix is one of the best mixxes i have ever came across for anti microbeal / anti corrosion / acetal plastic safe / and cheap as hell and lasts for a few years without coolant changes in past didnt change it for over 3yrs and it is perfectly fine no corrosion no issues with plastic or sludge or microbeal issues. I literaly took that rig apart and expected issues and inspected it with a fine tooth comb absolutely no issues no corrosion no sludge no issues with acetal plastic hell it didnt even fog my plexi reservior which i found crazy.

Sounds like a great setup. You will be able to likely hit 4.0 or 4.2 on stock voltages. After that, minor bumps each step up to 4.5 or 4.6. Going from 4.6 to 4.8 required a big bump from 1.41 to over 1.46 (1.48 under load using Ultra High LLC) for a stable OC and the temps are in the upper 50s under P95. You will want to stop when temps reach the upper 50s (58 or so). Things start to get unstable pretty quick when you cross 60 with these CPUs.

I also wanted to point out my pumps are rated for a continuos 500lph flow ( http://www.amazon.com/Koolance-Pump-PMP-500-BSP-Brushless/dp/B009U99X0A/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1360880104&sr=8-16&keywords=koolance+pump ) some have tested the type of pump i am running and they are more around 800lph at open flow and the warerblock i am using i bought for this build is the xspc raystorm one of the best performing waterblocks on market with low restriction and high flow. The thermal paste i use by choice is arctic cooling mx-4 one of best on market comparable to arctic silver 5 after burnin the mx-4 requires no burnin and gets optimal transfers / performance from moment of aplication on.

Rick http://www.overclock.net/t/1348623/amd-bulldozer-and-piledriver-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboard read that, use it, it will help you get the most out of your sabertooth.

in my case, the stuff used on my rev1 sabertooth(first one i got) was actually good quality, i say this because it was the same stuff we used at a place I worked, it wasnt goop, but a funky thermal pad made by shin etsu stuff gave the same temps as goop but was less messy to deal with (that is a good goop like shin etsu’s stuff thats been rated higher then mx4)

I didnt think to check the 2nd board, I really should, could be they changed what they where using.

Another note, you MUST put a fan blowing on the board socket area, the vrms will get a bit toasty, r1 and r2 boards do this and easiest fix is a fan blowing on that area of the board. (since replacing teh stock cooling with water is a pain in the kitten #8230;:P )

I use pk-3 its rated higher then mx4 and also dosnt dry out, good stuff.

this weekend I plan to strip my system down and swap in my swiftec apogee drive II that should let me get a bit more out of this chip.

Ty i just so happen to be a member of overclock.net and have done my fare share of overclocking in past lol with theyre help and in a few cases broke records like my old ati saphire atomic hd 4890’s ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102839 ) i had at 1250mhz on core and 1375mhz on ram 100% stable oem 4890s are like 850mhz core and 950mhz ram these cards are oem at 1000mhz core and 1050mhz ram all oem factory clocked from saphire so i would say that was some fine overclocking there took some finnes and tweaking and modifying lol by modifying refering to volt mods to card itself.

I am sorry i am not paying an extra $10-$15 to knock off 2-3c degrees celsius (till this stuff i have runs out ) so the mx-4 vs prolimatech pk-3 is like 2-3c degrees difference i bought a new arctic cooling mx-4 30g tube for $15 has lasted me thru 5-8 pcs ( a few years )and still have almost 1/2 tube left. I will maybe later step to another thermal compound / paste the mx-4 applies very well and evenly and realy performs well also it doesnt harden or dry up.

I am not to worried about minor temp issues i can chill my coolant some if i want to get extreme i have a aquarium water chiller ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Aqua-Euro-USA-1-13-th-HP-Chiller-FREE-Shipping-/280410745543?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4149c86ac7 ) ( thi is alot smaller than mine )setting here with 1/3rd hp compressor in it ( designed for a 150 gallon aquarium or smaller) and digital temp control so can drop coolant temp to whatever desired temp i want. I will point out if i drop it to low waterblocks will sweat so i am carefull 5-7 degrees below ambient is all i use it for if i want to get extreme. I also have a climate controlled room for my gaming room seperate from house so can drop temps to insanely low if i want then chill coolant also.

I want to point out my coolant mix is good to around -15 degrees fahrenheit before it will start to freeze lol so if i drop room temps then crank the chiller i can get some crazy low temps for insane benching and such if i so want. I just brought the good old automotive coolant tester out and well it is around -10 to -15 where it says it will freeze.

insolate the system if your gonna chill the coolant, if you dont, you will get condesation and that = death to a pc…

Yeah but if i keep the coolant only a few degrees below ambient the sweating doesnt happen.

I can drop temp to around 45 degrees fahrenheit in summer if i so choose which is kitten cold so add 5 degrees or so more cooling ( aka the chiller ) get 40 degrees coolant temp which is roughly 4.5 degrees celsius as my coolant temp and ambient of 7.25 degrees celsius = alot of ability to overclock for benching and such i know i have dropped room temp before in winter in my pc room to around 23 degrees fahrenheit or -5 degrees celsius by opening sliding glass door in my computer room my computer room has its own seperate climate control from rest of house.

I never said the fx8350 was bad in fact I said it was a GOOD CPU I never said it would give unplayable fps in GW2 either, all i said was the 3750k is faster you have to overclock the fx8350 to get roughly the same perfomance as a 3570k @stock which again you can overclock and get even more perfomance that was my point.

You linked this I had seen it befor and was one of the in game Arma 2 benchmarks I was refareing to the 3570k is 9fps faster, not much I know but at when fps is droping that low every little helps.
http://www.behardware.com/articles/880-13/amd-fx-8350-review-is-amd-back.html

Again more examples in CPU heavy situations the 3570k is a much better gaming CPU

http://www.behardware.com/articles/880-14/amd-fx-8350-review-is-amd-back.html

Again massive battle in Shogun 2 and a modded Skyrim
http://www.behardware.com/articles/880-15/amd-fx-8350-review-is-amd-back.html

And yet again a massive Starcraft battle ok this 1 tanks on both CPU’s but and Anno 2070
http://www.behardware.com/articles/880-16/amd-fx-8350-review-is-amd-back.html

And 1 more
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5

And yes i know it is getting 91fps in WoW but they allways do the WoW bench in one of the start zones for consitantcy but that bench was done @1680x1050 for some odd reason and in some of the new 25 man boss fights you wont get that and definetly nowhere near that on the new 40 man world boss fights. not with everything maxed out on Ultra inc shadows with x8 aa.

Just for the record my PC is as follows

3770k small overclock 4.2ghz stock volts.
8gig ram
Asus p877-V Pro motherboard
x2 WD 750gb sata 3 black eddition harddrive.
Creative FXI extream gamer soundcard

I went for that chip at the time beacuase I had the money and nothing else to spend it on at the time, otherwise it would have been the 3570k.

again the arma2 bench in that, was using the bench tool/mode, no AI was running, even the developers of arma2 admit their bench tool and mode sucks, because it dosnt properly test the system, no AI running really gives scewed results.

the WoW bench like many dont at 1680×1050 are done that way because if they dont do it that way, people insist its a gpu bottleneck, years ago it was 800×600(when everybody was at 1280×1024 or higher….) I did a test with WoW on a buddies server where they have a custom 30main raid(its sort of a spam fest/zerg setup, reminds you of doom or serious sam…. tons of enemy’s and a few strong ones here and there) i never dropped below 60fps(my cap using rp frame limiter) and there was more magic being spammed then i could believe.

also ran threw the major cities withlots of people, again 60fps constant.

what I have seen and what some of those reviews show dont line up, but, even the best review sites have issues being consistant or being logical.

http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-vs-intel-3570k-vs-3770k-vs-3820-gaming-and-xsplit-streaming-benchmarks

http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-oc-vs-i5-3570k-oc-battle-continues

main point is, they are both viable options, and very similar in perf is you normalize(each get some wins and some losses)

I just purchased this setup myself, however I cannot get the ram to run at 1866mhz. Whenever I select it to run at 1866mhz in the bio’s it will not boot up, I have to press the “MEMOK!” button on the mobo to reset the ram.

ASUS Sabertooth 990fx r2.0 TUF motherboard
AMD FX 8350 CPU
G-Skill 14900 1866mhz 16gb (2×8gb) ram

How is it that you guys can get it to run at 1866mhz? I would greatly appreciate the help/advice! I have already set up a replacement at newegg thinking it’s a faulty mobo or CPU…

Asus boards should have an XMP profile for RAM settings. Simply choose the correct preset that matches ur RAM and u should be good to go.
Double check the settings it sets though under RAM timings and such, as some RAM kits may come at 1866mhz but may be CL10 or CL11 if the XMP profile sets them at CL9 they may not work. Check the RAM Voltage also.