Guild Wars 2

Hey.

Recently I replaced my e4600 core 2 duo with new CPU and new platform tho I left my old :
Gigabyte GTX 260 OC 216 cores which was one of best cards long time ago ;p

So now my rig looks like:
I3-3220 @ 3,3GHz Ivy brige
Memody Kingstone 2×4Gb dual channel 1600
Gigabyte B75-DV3 Motherboard
500W power supply
GTX 260 OC 216 cores.

My FPS from old rig at 16 total FPS jumped to ~20FPS at 30-40man WvW/ 30-45 in Cities to 60-100 FPs in places like solo farming/killing stuff etc.

So I though to myself that I could get this fps up only by getting new GPU for now.
So I looked trough offers and im considering one of these:
GTX 560 oc’d
GTX 460 oc’d
Ati HD card but totaly no idea what to get here…
HD 7770?
Some HD 6000 series ?

And input on this matter?

560OC is pretty solid option.

Use these two links at reference point to know what to get

http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/Post-your-FPS-System-spec-here/first#post558553

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

EVGA GTX 560 SC here – game runs great on it.

560’s are good, but go with a 7850, that’s about 2 steps above the 560 and doesn’t break the bank.

And the 12.11 drivers are showing massive improvements on the 7000 series cards.

The video card is not your problem. Your main problem is your new I3-3220 is still duel core and bottlenecking your system so you can not fully use your video card. This is why you saw a small performance increase. If you upgrade your CPU to a Quad core you should get at least 35 FPS all the time with that video card. If you upgrade your video card you most likely will not see any increase at all.

@Slark.1263
With all respect You have no idea what my CPU/GPU usage is and ur writing kitten as hell.

First of all it’s Ivy brige which gives 10-15% increase in performance from Sandy brige, second of all my CPU usage doesn’t go over 78% – this was max % i’ve saw during around 30 man WvW.

My GPU on the other way around Sits on 99-100% all the time, which means it’s bottlenecking.

And first of all consider that for some ppl spending a 250$ for CPU only it’s massive amount of cash. for that 250$ I had my CPU&MB&DDR3.

You are right that the Ivy is better over the sandy, but just because a CPU does not reach 99/100% usage does not mean it is not being bottlenecked by other factors, such as speed for one example. I am not saying speed is your problem, but I can almost guarantee that its your 2 core CPU holding you back, not your GPU at the moment.

Once you upgrade your Video Card and do not get the results you expected you will start to understand your problem better. Good Luck.

Both of Mrowqa.3861 CPU and GPU are bottleneck still. CPU likely maxing out it’s working core, and GPU is at 99%. I highly suggest overclocking.

Core i3 3220 scores 4346
C2D E4600 scores 1428

If your FPS significantly goes up when lowering the resolution & graphic settings to low, than upgrading that GTX 260 will let you run at that FPS, but higher resolution/setting. In this case the GPU is more bottlenecked than CPU.

I can say for sure that the Core i3 3220 is still not fast enough to run without bottleneck. People with Core i5 2500k OC to 4.5ghz still experience it, that cpu scores 6507 without OC.

However, I do think upgrading the GTX 260 would be a good idea. It only scores 1149 which is rather low for GW2, but that depends on what resolution/settings you like to play at.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Post-your-FPS-System-spec-here/first#post562496 post of someone using a GTX 280 SLI which is close to your GTX 260 performance but double, and he is getting 45-60 FPS in Lion Arch. So it gives you a rough idea of what is possible upgrading GPU.

Gw2 is not heavy on GPU anything higher than that will be bottleneck by ur i3. My suggestion is to get an i5 2500k, aa Cooler master 212 Hyper EVO CPU cooler and Overclock the CPU as high as u can (close to 5ghz). I dont think there is a good reasson to switch ur GPU for GW2 since it is not graphically heavy and also run on Dx9.

If u dont believe me, do something go WvW, turn all the graphical setting to lowest, go into a heavy battle and see how many FPS u get. That will be the max FPS u will get with ur CPU paired with the fastest card on earth on Quad SLI or Crossfire.

A GPU upgrade will increase your FPS ..no doubt. BUT as others have stated, the I3 processor you got will quikly be the next bottleneck. However since you only just got it, getting a new GPU is still a fine idea.

if you get a 560.. make sure its a 560ti ..the ti is much betetr than the standard 560. getting a factory OC’d 560ti is also a good idea. They are wicked cards and can handle GW2 perfectly fine ..up to a point. As you can see in my sig i use a 560ti, i wont be upgrading till the 700 series of Geforce cards come out next year.

I was looking at that same chip because the price on new egg was 130$ us and its a really good price but i was afraid it wouldnt be strong enough for gw2 so i opted for the i5 3570k but its more expensive for sure.

It cant hurt upgrading your gpu I agree the gtx 560ti it a good bang for your buck card.

That i3 is still better then any AMD chip out so its a great buy for a budget gaming rig.

Wvw zergs/sieges are very heavy on the CPU, quad core is a must, i5/i7 is a must. Likely, in that situation you’re capped on both GPU and CPU. If you want more you’ll have to upgrade to an i5 and for GPU, go with at least a Radeon 7850 or GTX 660.

I am aware of the fact that i5 2500k is much better tho it costs around 270$ wchich is a lot for me as i live in poland and as most ppl know when you cwlculate our monthy income for euro/$ it goes around 400eu/ 500$ and still got bills to pay etc. Thats why i took cheap option i3 + mb + ddr3 and then get gpu ; gtx 560 andd eventually after that getting i5 cause i dabut anyone will give me 250$ for cpu for free :p. Also i’ve done test with lowering graphic option to minimum to check fps increase, in LA statue from 33-34 fps crowded it raised to 44-45 fps

Mrowqa.3861:

@Slark.1263
With all respect You have no idea what my CPU/GPU usage is and ur writing kitten as hell.

First of all it’s Ivy brige which gives 10-15% increase in performance from Sandy brige, second of all my CPU usage doesn’t go over 78% – this was max % i’ve saw during around 30 man WvW.

My GPU on the other way around Sits on 99-100% all the time, which means it’s bottlenecking.

And first of all consider that for some ppl spending a 250$ for CPU only it’s massive amount of cash. for that 250$ I had my CPU&MB&DDR3.

Well I’m not sure what to take of what you’re saying, before the Oct 1 patch, in most places around the game including LA my GPU was 75-90% usage with excellent FPS and CPU sitting around 40-45% which can’t be bottlenecking but in WvW it goes the other way around resulting in annoying fps drops (more CPU than GPU). After the Oct patch my GPU never passes 60% and CPU hits 95-99% on 1 core and I get CRAP FPS. Nothing in my PC changed.

Teknobug.3782:

in most places around the game including LA my GPU was 75-90% usage with excellent FPS and CPU sitting around 40-45% which can’t be bottlenecking

Your CPU has 6 cores, GW2 uses about 2.5 core, so 40-45% is about right for total CPU usage. You were still bottleneck then too, but not as bad. (source, Q7 & 8)

Teknobug.3782:

but in WvW it goes the other way around resulting in annoying fps drops (more CPU than GPU). After the Oct patch my GPU never passes 60% and CPU hits 95-99% on 1 core and I get CRAP FPS. Nothing in my PC changed.

More stuff got added for halloween, so the strain on the CPU was greater. Creates bigger bottleneck than before and CPU was unable to tell the GPU to work. (source, Q4)

I was talking about right after the Oct 1 and 7 patches, not the halloween patches.

The picture below was taken early Sept, see how the GPU was being used (with ~300MB ram used) without any FPS issues, second pic taken after Oct 7 shows much lower GPU usage but higher ram usage and higher overall CPU usage resulting in less consistent FPS.

Oh and here’s a quote from someone on the Planetside 2 forums:

Don’t know what happened, but my GPU is suddenly ~90% utilized and I got ~60FPS now. Good Job!

The patch improved performance, I’ll be messing with it tonight.