Guild Wars 2

I have an AMD Phenom II X3 720 CPU (triple-core). It can be unlocked to a X4 (quad-core) easily from BIOS.

With triple-core, I’m able to get 3.5GHz stable (3.7GHz with voltage increase), but with quad-core, I’m only able to get 3.3GHz stable (3.4GHz with voltage increase).

Most games usually only are optimized for use of dual-core, and would benefit from the X3 setup, since there are higher clock speeds on 2 cores. Games that benefit from more cores would most likely benefit from the X4 setup.

What would Guild Wars 2 perform better with?

You’d probably have to test it and see. Lots of people are saying that GW2 is heavilly dependent on CPU speed, though, so trying the 3-core solution might be the best since it gives you the fastest chip.

Of course, I haven’t tried this and am only guessing, so…

I highly doubt that you can unlock your CPU to more cores without taking a hit in speed. Unless the CPU has four physical cores, which the X3 720 doesn’t, you aren’t going to make a 4th core pop up by changing BIOS settings, which is why it’s slower.

I use an Athlon II X4 645 and I rarely get the framerates I should be getting with my card. GW2 depends heavily on performance per core, not number of cores. So really, not many AMD processors are going to offer great performance.

It seem to like high clock speed.

Enforcer.5782:

I highly doubt that you can unlock your CPU to more cores without taking a hit in speed. Unless the CPU has four physical cores, which the X3 720 doesn’t, you aren’t going to make a 4th core pop up by changing BIOS settings, which is why it’s slower.

I use an Athlon II X4 645 and I rarely get the framerates I should be getting with my card. GW2 depends heavily on performance per core, not number of cores. So really, not many AMD processors are going to offer great performance.

X3’s have 4 physical cores with 1 of them locked. Similar to how some of AMD’s graphics cards have cores locked and marketed as a 6950 vs 6970. While it’s by no means a guarantee it will unlock, it is possible.

OT: As stated more mHz would probably be the better option, but GW2 is multithread aware so it is worth a test.

Go for the 3core overclock. You wont see much of an increase with GW2 with that old cpu ..but its better than nothing.