Guild Wars 2

Building a new computer specifically to play guild wars 2 better. The one I have at home is great, and runs it on max settings with out a problem at all. However it cost me 5k to build.

The one at work is a q6600, 4gigs, gtx285. its in dire need of an upgrade.

Currently going for an i5 3570, 16 gigs of ram, 128 gig sata III ssd , and an nvidia 660ti 3gb.

What Im trying to do is drop the cost from around 1200 to around 1k.

What I would like to know is where I can make a cut back without suffering, or creating a bottle neck in my performance.

Ideas?

swap from a 660ti to a 7870 1536 shader version, that will save money and give you a gain in perf to boot.

your going to need to oc whatever cpy you get to run this game smooth, if you wana save some money go AMD, get a 6300 or 8300 range chip and overclock it to 4.4-4.6 range(easy on air with a half decent board.

one of the best clocking boards for amd is
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0057XQMHA/?tag=pcpapi-20
will easily push any 4300/6300/8300 series chip to 4.6 or higher(if you get an h80 or h100 class water cooler, you got a good chace of getting an 8350 to 5ghz or higher)

saving around 45bucks you could get
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0058HUQJ0/?tag=pcpapi-20
still a good clocking board.

I really suggest the first board if you decide to do this to save a few bucks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131484&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

that videocard or one similar will be faster then the 660ti and cheaper.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1651/pg7/sapphire-hd-7870-xt-with-boost-tahiti-le-graphics-card-review-hitman-absolution.html

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1651/pg8/sapphire-hd-7870-xt-with-boost-tahiti-le-graphics-card-review-f1-2012.html

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1651/pg10/sapphire-hd-7870-xt-with-boost-tahiti-le-graphics-card-review-skyrim-5760x1080.html

over at tpu they got a summery
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/VTX3D/Radeon_HD_7870_XT_Black/images/perfrel_2560.gif

it ties with the 660ti at 1080p but falls a bit behind overall at higher res(and I for one want one of those 1440p korean monitors!!!)

also note you really cant use their price comparison as they dont do a good job shopping around and checking prices in my exp many times they just go by the MSRP/List price rather then actual price.

its all up to you, dropping the ssd would save money, and wouldnt really effect this game much honestly……

you could resell that q6600 stuff on ebay pretty easy(its in high demmand funny enough)

from my own testing a 3570k vs a *300 range amd chip, once both are at 4.5 or higher, your not really gonna see much dif in this game, there are other games that will show more of a dif, skyrim will run better on the intel(but not so as you would notice without an fps counter going), BF3 would favor the 8350, arma2/DayZ would favor the amd as well. Civ5 would favor the intel at times and amd at others (very odd, sometimes amd configs show better perf now then intel…..among my friends we are trying to figure out why, with the same settings and even videocards/drivers….well enough of that, its a mystery)

really its all up to you.

now I will tell you, 32gb of ram and fancycache will be a bigger help to gw2 and other games then that ssd.

I give my games drive a 24gb cache (leaves 8 for os and games themselves) fancycache(free) sees what files im using and caches them, once its learned what im doing, this helps load times like you wouldnt believe, and helps armaII and similar games that steam from hdd run alot smoother.

either way, make sure you get a cpu you can overclock, the way gw2 is at this point, the idea cpu for it would be a chip from amd or intels current designs but tricore with 6-8ghz on the clock…and even then I question if that would be bottleneck free…..

Methal.9045:

Building a new computer specifically to play guild wars 2 better. The one I have at home is great, and runs it on max settings with out a problem at all. However it cost me 5k to build.

The one at work is a q6600, 4gigs, gtx285. its in dire need of an upgrade.

Currently going for an i5 3570, 16 gigs of ram, 128 gig sata III ssd , and an nvidia 660ti 3gb.

What Im trying to do is drop the cost from around 1200 to around 1k.

What I would like to know is where I can make a cut back without suffering, or creating a bottle neck in my performance.

Ideas?

1. thing CPU
2. thing GPU
   everything else you can cut back, but the things you listed is already well below 1k completely built.

Ignore the AMD fanboy above, going with an AMD CPU is the best way to nerf your FPS.

An AMD GPU however, is very much advised here. The 7870 2GB is about $100 cheaper than the 660Ti 3GB and offers very similar performance in most games, but most importantly, much better performance in GW2. AMD have really focussed on Guild Wars 2 on their drivers, and their new 13.2 Beta 3 driver contains optimisations specifically for Guild Wars 2 which dramatically boost FPS, unlike Nvidia’s drivers, which are firmly focussed on the FPS crowd with BF3 and Crysis 3 optimisations.

Keep the motherboard you already have and drop a faster CPU in there like a Q9550 or something, the performance difference between the Q9550 and i5 3570 is not very much, but this will save you significant dollar. With a decent cooler, you can overclock to 4GHz without any problems.

Consider dropping down to a Sata II SSD, they are only very slightly slower than the SATA III ones. You will still get your 10 second load times and zero asset loading lag, but quite a bit cheaper.

16GB is probably slightly overkill for GW2, you won’t see any difference at all in performance dropping back fom 16GB to 8GB, especially loading the game from SSD.

Thanks for the input =D going to take some of your suggestions into effect.

The motherboard I’m going to be building it on is a mini ITX. The computer is going at work, and has to be really small. I’m going with the LIAN LI PC-Q08B.

I’ll have to spend some time today looking over the AMD side of Mini ITX board. Its been a long time since i’ve used AMD. (since the release of the Q6600 actually)

ignore the intel fanboi above, the q6600 and q9550 are slower then an fx 4300……but thats objective fact rather then fanboi fact.

please note some of these are “lower is beter” others are “higher is better”

4300v9550
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/700?vs=50

4300 vs q6600
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/700?vs=53

q6600 vs q9550
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/50?vs=53

8350 vs q9550
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=50
note the 8300’s DESTROY the intel…..despite what the intel fanboi above would have you believe…and an 8300(95watt), 8320 or 8350 will all reach at least 4.5ghz on air….and dont suffer the FSB saturation the 775 platform suffers.

oh yeah 8150 vs q9550
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=50

funny, despite what the Intel FanBoi says, intel isnt always the better choice.

theres also the option of FM2 as a platoform.

http://www.shopblt.com/item/msi-computer-fm2-a75ia-e53-a75-max-32gb/mstar_fm2a75iae53.html
dont normally suggest msi products, but this has a decent rep.

asrock option http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009WNF5RY/?tag=pcpapi-20

if you can move up to matx this boards got a GREAT rep
http://www.costcaptain.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=C&Product_Code=TDX_10051915&gclid=CM2grLejnbUCFWlxQgodh1cARQ

just some ideas, its up to you what you can and will do, intels got some good options, they just cost more for the same perf, and run hotter even with the same cooler as amd

http://www.legitreviews.com/news/14087/

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/ivy-bridge-chips-run-hot-due-to-intels-thermal-paste-choice-20120514/

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/14/intel-ivy-bridge-thermal-paste/

so yeah, this is why a shy away from ivy bridge cpu’s, stock clocks stock cooler, 70c is quite common…thats just not acceptable to me.

read this thread…very funny
http://www.overclock.net/t/1275127/verified-intel-does-not-use-cheap-thermal-paste-inside-the-22nm-ivy-bridge-desktop-processors

20-25c just by replacing the TIM under the cap(voiding your warr in the process)
http://www.overclock.net/t/1260540/i7-3770k-intel-tim-as5-mx4-pk1-lqp-ix

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/5388/tempsw.png

so yeah…..

Get a 3570K and have it OC’d. A cheap aftermarket cooler like the coolermaster Evo 212 would do ok.

Dont use a SSD, thats a good chunk of change and tbh as nice as they r, they r a money sink and not a good idea if ur on a tight budget.

get a AMD 7870 tahiti card (thats the 1536 core version), Sapphire XT or the Club3d Joker r both good cards and are cheaper than a 660ti and give as good performance.

In all honesty i have to wonder what else ur buying to make it cost $1200. A normal 3570k rig should only cost around $800.

FYI Intel do run hotter but they are designed to run hotter, up to 90c if u really wanna push the limits..usualy people cap it at 80 or 85c.
AMD run ALOT cooler but also means they shut down at lower temps.
Instead of going from a stock speed at 40c and OCing to 60c with a AMD, ur going from 60c stock to 80c OC on Intel. In all honesty its not really worth worrying about as they r both designed to handle those temps.

actually SN, the newer amd chips can run in excess of 80c stable, I have done so myself just seeing how far you can push them.

the reason ivy bridge runs so hot is they used VERY cheap white thermal goop under the IHS, many people who have delided their chips have found it totally dried out, like chalk replacing said goop with decent stuff leads to a 20-25c drop in temps….thats INSANE….and makes me wonder how hot these chips will run in a year or 2 when the goop on all of them has dried out….

could be part of intels plan tho, along with socket changes use cheap goop so that you have to replace your board and cpu when the one you have gets to the point its degrading from temps…..

alas, it really dosnt matter, I doubt anything he can build in mitx will be able to keep this game at 30+fps….matx is possible but mitx is just to small to deal with the heat and power load of a highly overclocked ivybridge from what i have seen with reports of board frying/cooking/smoking…..(seen alot of people I know run into this in attempts to make tiny powerhouse systems)

funny how people have this impression that the fx line run hot…..but many dont realise/admit that the ivy’s run HOT AS HELL…. :P

http://www.techpowerup.com/165882/TIM-is-Behind-Ivy-Bridge-Temperatures-After-All.html?cp=1#comments

Aye, when i heared about the thermal paste they used with the IHS on ivy’s i immediatly went in search to find out about my CPU. Thankfulyl it turned out that the 3930k’s are soldered i cant actually recall if i found this out after or b4 i bought it … lol
Deliding is risky unless u’ve done it b4 but most deffinatly worth it if ur into top end OC’ing for the reasons u say. Its actually amazing to see the size of the CPU itself, most people asume what u see when u take one out of the box IS the cpu chip, when infact it is not :P

I understand that the AMD cpu’s can run higher temps but i do try to stay safe tbh, they were never desgined to go that high so u have to wonder about degridation ..but at anyrate they can usualy OC high enough without getting that hot anyway.
And to people who think AMD’s run hot .. HA! …Ivy’s r the king of running hot atm. They can OC just as high as sandy’s but u need a beastly water cooling system to do it, and thats down to the IHS TIM and smaller size/surface area for the heat to disipate.

I think OP u should go M-ATX if u want a good rig, as above ITX although small have their limitations, if u get a really good one i supose it would be ok for mild OCing but in the end i think u could probably make a small enough rig with a m-ATX if u find the right case.

so wait….The i5 3570 that I am thinking of getting could use TIM INSIDE between the die and the outer plate?

yah thats not cool at all.

it will have CHEAP white TIM between the IHS and core, not could, but WILL, they all do.

to fix that problem you need to delid them, and, as SN says, thats a risk, its not hard if your use to doing this kinda thing, but it is a risk.

i really dont think any of these chips where designed to work at these temps, I think they all degrade from high temps over time, how bad this will be with ivybridge has yet to be seen, but, I have this bad feeling its gonna be bad…the last chip intel actually designed to operate at 90c on a regular basis was the p4 line, and they did that because the server side would idle at that(as would SFF systems from dell/hp without user forcing the fan to very loud speeds)

honestly, I think the reason for the cheap TIM was mainly to save a few cents per chip….the fact it may force more people to buy haswell when their ivy’s degrade is just a bonus…..

intel dosnt change sockets because they need to, but because it keeps their sales of chipsets high.

my buddy could feel the head coming off the back of his 3770k’s case when he clocked it to 4.5 (followed a quick and dirty guide to get there) even tho his is a lucky low volt oc, with a decent heatpipe cooler…..he was shocked to find that when doing simple flac to ogg encoding with dbpoweramp it was hitting 87c……he went back and re-applied paste and such same results, when he found out about the TIM issue, he popped the cap and put liquid metal under it(the same stuff the review I have linked used) then use pk-1 under the sinks, dropped his temps 28c under load…..(just asked him what he ended up with temp drop wise….)

so he had to void his warr to get decent temps at a pretty easy oc..(not extreme by any means) hes even strongly considering trying for 4.8 or 5ghz…

but yeah Methal, the 3770k and below are cheap white TIM under the IHS not fluxless solder……

Aye but tbh, this is like the ‘horror stories’ for all products. its by no means a good thing that they used cheap TIM.. BUT that still doesnt detract from their CPU’s performance. You can Still do mild to mid level OC’s rather easily. I wouldnt worry about the TIM between the Chip and IHS unless ur considering high level OC’s.

Keep the OC u do go for ‘reasonable’ with a good cooler and u will be fine.

Ofc u could, if u really are put of by this, simply get a Sandy bridge chip instead as they have soldered IHS’s. A 2550k has the same base clock as a 3570k, a 2700k has the same base clocks as a 3770k, the sandy bridge chips can OC higher ,when compared with the same cooler, to compensate for their every so slightly less performance per clock vs the newer ivy bridge.
i.e
3770k @ 4.5ghz = 2700k@4.6ghz

sandy are getting harder to find sadly, and the real thing that puts me off about the TIM issue is longevity issues, I dont tend to replace boards/chips that are still worth using, I may shift them down to a system other then my primary sometimes but….

I wonder how many years these chips even at a 4.5-4.6oc will last before they start getting to hot to function even at stock clocks…..

cheap TIM is one of the banes of the pc tech world, funny enough the stuff amd and intel use on their cpu coolers is better then whats under the IHS in this case, its not great by any means but, thermal pads/wax(well we call it wax here, because its got a waxy texture), at least dont dry out and turn to powder most of the time…..

I do hope im wrong in my worries about those chips having a shorter life at full speed, but i got this feeling with all the people who have delidded who found chalk under their lid….that in a couple years your gonna see alot of stock ivy’s that are thermal throttling on people due to the tim under the hsf being dead….how much more would it have cost them to at least use quality tim?

I mean, shinetsu makes some good stuff and im sure bought in bulk it would be less then a penny a cpu……

even arctic silver ceramiq is better then what they used, at least I have never seen it turn to chalk…i have seen it get hard after years between an sff hsf and p4/pd that ran at 90+c…..but never chalk……

they could have even used those liquid metal pads that melt when they get hot and solidify when cooled off, those would have been ALOT better then the cheap white TIM they used(because that stuff NEVER WARES OUT!!!!)

oh well, i guess i will be delidding alot of cpu’s for people to replace the tim in OEM computers in the next couple years :P

that kind of thing just pisses me off.

I just wish amd had a mini ITX that could compete. Not seeing anything.

the problem is, even intels mini-itx stuff cant clock like you need to for this game and not have a high risk of burn out.

you really gotta bite the bullet and go matx at the very least.

theres also the option of a full atx desktop style case where you could stick the monitor on top of it OR stick it under something else(printer or the like)

part of why mitx arent as common on am3+ is its pretty hard to build an mitx board that can overclock well without burning up……at least at a price people will spend for a board it is.

cant tell you how many boards a buddy of mine has gone thru on his i7 and i5 builds trying to find one that can sustain a 4.8 clock on his chips…..without burning up under load…..even hes decided to give up and just sell the case+board and go matx/flex atx or even full atx with a nice compact case.

I would like to point out that mid-range priced hardware can easily handle this game at a moderate resolution without any need for overclocking. EDIT although I definitely would look into a hyper-threading enabled CPU.

Suggesting overclocking to a potential novice could just lead to problems down the road. Although these days it is easier, all it takes is someone who is ignorant about a setting in their BIOS to lead to stability/POST issues, and just cause more problems than getting a minimal performance boost is worth. Especially if they have a motherboard which isn’t made for ‘easy mode’ overclocking.

Those exorbitant clock rates will not benefit a game very much. You will get more by improving memory bandwidth. Note that you are probably running a higher clock with a fixed divider and tighter timings, improving your FPS performance.

Note that chip developers have abandoned the push for high clock rates since there is a minimal performance gain per watt. For load times the overall sustained throughput between disk and memory is more important for managing texture buffers and ushering data into memory as the game swaps out needed resources.

@methal: Don’t listen to the OC enthusiasts; unless you enjoy overclocking and stress testing your box to find stability issues when you play with timings and cross your fingers that you landed a component from a lucky bin.

You can cut back on memory. I am not sure what DIMMs you are looking at, but there are some cheap memory vendors that are binned from the same chips as OCZ and other OC enthusiast brands, they just won’t be as well tested. Also make sure your SSD isn’t an Intel SSD, those are a tad overpriced for the performance you get (albeit the MTBF is rated higher than some other vendors)

Don’t go cheap on the video card though, but a current mid-range should be fine.

so far im going to go with
i5 3570k
ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe
SAPPHIRE 100354XTL Radeon HD 7870 XT (the only one with 1536 stream procs)
8gb of Crucial 1600mhz low profile gaming ram,
OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G 128GB SATA III SSD.
and
LIAN LI PC-Q08B Mini-ITX tower case.

The PSU is still under investigation. Though I will probably be going with something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171068

I wont be OCing this thing. In a M-itx build heat is giong to be an issue. Even though i’ll be using an H80 or similar to cool it.

thats a nice psu but, honestly a bit over priced I dont get anything below silent pro gold from CM, but they do have some decent units now(in the past it was very hit and miss)

here are some options I can recommend

Kingwin 650watt, this is a superflower build and is a GREAT VALUE, in my 20+ years doing computer repair, kingwin has only failed me 2x, both where due to external current being REALLY BAD. (other psu’s failed in the same location, we had to install device to clean and stabilize the voltage)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121084

for 10 bucks more the 750watt version of the above
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121085

again these are great quality units made by a top OEM no worries about build quality.

20bucks more is an FSP model(FSP is another top oem themselves)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104165

any of the above units are better bang for your buck then the one you linked, and can attest to both companies quality, I have used superflower and fsp built psu’s for decades now and had very few fail…never had one that did take anything with it either…..unlike antec….but dont get me started there……i will rant for 4-5 pages….

if you can swing 16gb ram(shouldnt cost much more) you could use fancycache for an 8gb cache on your games drive/main drive to boost app and game load perf.

Methal.9045:

Building a new computer specifically to play guild wars 2 better. The one I have at home is great, and runs it on max settings with out a problem at all. However it cost me 5k to build.

The one at work is a q6600, 4gigs, gtx285. its in dire need of an upgrade.

Currently going for an i5 3570, 16 gigs of ram, 128 gig sata III ssd , and an nvidia 660ti 3gb.

What Im trying to do is drop the cost from around 1200 to around 1k.

What I would like to know is where I can make a cut back without suffering, or creating a bottle neck in my performance.

Ideas?

Drop the RAM to 8GB. Unless you’re doing a ton of video editing or having tons of programs open at once in your daily use, you simply don’t need more RAM.

Maybe a different brand of SSD with similiar performance that’s cheaper?

Personally I like SSD drives – they are very fast but you might wanna consider a 7200 RPM drive. It’ll be slower in load times but for actual game performance, it won’t make much or any difference.

SSD i would not go with OZD, unless they have changed in the lats year …they have/had poor reliability. try a Plextor M5.

RAM wise i recommend Corsair, Mushkin, or G Skill. Not saying Crucial are bad, its just i know these 3 makes r really good performance,price, and looks wise. For a small case u would likely want low profile RAM also which the the GSkill and Mushkin do as standard, corsair do a low profile range but i think they are a tad more expensive.

many reviews say the AData SX900’s are the best choice they are enterprise class, next down is samsungs 840’s they are a bit slower but not so as you would notice.

the best flow profile are samsungs their 1333 kits are known to do 1866 or higher.(very good memory chips) duno if you really need low profile so much as to just avoid using ram thats got tall sinks.