Guild Wars 2

As the title suggest I am buying a new PC and need some advice on how well will this one do on the highest-ish settings, my current monitor is 1280by1024 but looking to upgrade it to a 1920by1080, mostly concerned about zerg play in WvW, since to my understanding that is the highest fps dropping activity.

PC specs
Intel Core i7 3770
GeForce GTX 660
RAM 8 GB
HDD 500 GB
Asus/Gigabyte/Msi socket 1155
2.1/7.1-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC

All feedback is greatly appreciated.

You’ve done your homework I see. You are correct in saying the WvW is the most stressful (computer wise) activity in the game. I’m not sure of your budget, but a 660 will likely get you very close to max settings if not max (minus supersampling) for most content running around 60FPS. Your processor is almost good, its missing a special little letter after it and its the wrong generation. If you want the game to really shine, get the unlocked ‘K’ version of the i7 4770. This allows you to overclock your CPU to the ‘sweet spot’ of 4.5Ghz and get about 30FPS in large WvW battles.

Overall a nice machine, but I would jump on the Haswell train if you are going to go with Intel. Then, I would dump some cash into a nice aftermarket cooler to overclock the 4770K to 4.5Ghz (ish) and get some decent gameplay in WvW. Note you will need to change your motherboard socket to 1150 for Haswell.

With my current budget that is all i can put aside for my gaming hobby, from your reply I am guessing that I might not get the highest fps but it will be playable and if need be I do not mind lowering the settings on some aspects.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Typeless.4928:

With my current budget that is all i can put aside for my gaming hobby, from your reply I am guessing that I might not get the highest fps but it will be playable and if need be I do not mind lowering the settings on some aspects.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Correct, with a non overclocked 3770, expect 20-25 FPS in WvW battles.

I very recently built a 4770k (no OC) 660ti rig for a family member. I tested GW2 in a zerg and with the right culling settings u can expect 20-25fps.
Culling settings were
Character limit : highest
Texture limit : Medium (low in extreme zergs)
With that said a 660 no ti is a tad slower and a 3770 is again a tad slower, but not enough to show any significan difference ,,maybe 1 or 2 fps. All in all u should be ok. Besidesu can still oc a 3770 non k, but only by about 300mhz or so, stil worth it.

Also just a FYI..the 4770k is a very hot chip ..4.5ghz on it is hard to get unless ur running a h100 or better..or get very lucky with low voltage and have a top end air cooler. So i wouldnt go around advising aiming for 4.5ghz on it ..besides its about 200mhz faster than a 3770k so 4.3ghz on a 4770k is the 3770k 4.5ghz equivalent.