Guild Wars 2

i5-3570k 3.4ghz quad-core
8gb ram
nvidia gtx 460 1GB

at 1920×1080

does the speed of the RAM make any difference? (I can either get two 1333mhz 4 gig sticks or two 1600mhz ones) and how much difference would overclocking the processor make? will the gfx card be the bottlenec to my performance or is it fine?

Without any modifications (overclocking) to what you have posted, the processor is solid, however the GTX 460 is definitely your bottleneck. The 400 series is closing in on 3 generations old, while there is nothing particularly bad about the 400 series IMO, the GTX 460 is going to start to show its age at 1080p.

Now, if you overclock those parts, especially the processor to 4.5Ghz+, WvW will shine at a whole 30FPS (average) in the worst case scenario of 100+ man battles. Even processors like the i7 3930K can’t do too much better because the GW2 engine, for lack of a better phrase, could be improved.

With my experience, 1GB on the graphics card is plenty for all the GW2 textures and what not, however, you will notice some other games…cough BF3 cough will eat up all of that and then some. The GTX 460 might not be able to rock GW2 at highest settings, it should be able to rock a solid medium-high mix. So, if you plan on playing games at best/ultra settings, prepare to be disappointed.

Notes about overclocking, make sure you have adequate heat dissipation on your CPU and GPU if you plan on overclocking them. A solid place to learn how to overclock those parts is overclock.net.

If I had that gear, personally, I would toss a 24/7 overclock on the processor to 4.5Ghz and take everything that GPU will give you on a 24/7 overclock and run that GPU into the ground. Once it dies, upgrade to something newer in the current series, 7xxx for AMD and 6xx for Nvidia. To note though, the rumor is that Nvidia is set to launch the new 7xx series in the next couple of months.

To answer your question of the speed of RAM, go for the 1600, there isn’t too much of a noticeable difference, but its worth the extra buck or two for the increased speed.

The optimization in this game is terrible. For PvE playing by yourself you’ll run around 50 – 60 fps (Med – High settings). I have the a little better than you GTX 470 and that’s what I get. For Wv3 the fps is around 40 unless you’re in large scale fights which will be around 10 fps no matter what your settings are. Not really something that can be fixed by hardware, as people with amazing setups and overclocked get terrible FPS at times…

A GTX460 will (speaking from experience) keep up with GW2 at mostly high settings (I turn down reflections, shadows, supersampling) until the CPU bottleneck hits. That said, unless you’ve found some kind of deal picking up a used one from a friend or something, you can probably do far better for your money. You can get a 650Ti Boost for about the same as the cheapest 460 still available, and you’ll be much better off.