Guild Wars 2

First off, I’m not techy at all, so try to explain things in a similar way you would to your grand dad…

I would like to be able to play on max graphics and potentially stream live while zerging in WvW. I’d like to build a custom tower and get a decent display (24"-30") and my budget is around $1,000.

Before diving into details and specifics, can anyone explain to me the big picture of what makes a computer a good gaming comp? What part of the comp affects which parts of game play, etc?

Obviously, high FPS, fast load screens, max graphics while running mumble and twitch are all great.

Thanks!

EDIT:

Thanks for all the feedback. This is what I anticipate getting: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Hhic

My buddy tells me if I build my own, these are the components I would need:

- case
- power supply
- motherboard
- CPU
- (optional) non-standard CPU cooler
- RAM (recommend 8 GB min)
- Harddrive
- (optioonal) SSD (solid state disk — very fast hard drive, but also more expensive / GB)
- graphics card
- DVD drive (or Blu-Ray)
- (optional) sound card (almost all mobo’s have adequate sound so unless you’re a real audiophile, it’ll be good enough)

1. NOTHING – no system that currently exists, can play WvW in a full zerg on max settings and get high FPS (the current max FPS is 30, and thats with dives down into the teens -13-18).

2. If WvW is your only goal, stop. Its really not worth it.

Your buddy is spot-on with those components, with one exception. I didn’t see an operating system mentioned.

Having just built a rig, I would highly recommend working in the solid state drive.

- case antec make good cases, I perfer cheap lightweight cases myself. newegg.com has a good selection of 19.99-29.99 cases to choose from
- power supply You want 650+Watts to start, coolermaster make good Power Supplies, I would easily put 80-100 bucks into a GOOD power supply, as this is the heart of any good build. A weak power supply will make the entire system suffer
- motherboard Get with the CPU manufacturers Chipset – IE Intel CPU = Intel Chipset on the motherboard, AMD=AMD…ect
- CPU has to match the Motherboard, You cannot fit an Intel CPU on an AMD motherboard
- (optional) non-standard CPU cooler Only valid if you plan to over clock
- RAM (recommend 8 GB min) Important – Buy them in pairs and make sure they are specced for Dual Mode and not single mode. So for 8G you would buy two 4GB DDR3 Modules
- Harddrive
- (optioonal) SSD (solid state disk — very fast hard drive, but also more expensive / GB)I would do 2 HDDs, One being kitten (128G MIN) and the other being a 2TB Hard disk drive for loading Media files
- graphics card
- DVD drive (or Blu-Ray) This depends on movies, Most software is downloaded now or loaded from USB thumbdrives
- (optional) sound card (almost all mobo’s have adequate sound so unless you’re a real audiophile, it’ll be good enough) – the Onboard Audio is perfect on most any Motherboard now

If you dont have a good gaming PC, then by all means build one. But dont do it cause GW2 sucks on your current system. News flash GW2 sucks on every system right now. Even if you put 2500 into a top of the line i7 build, your FPS is still going to suck on WvW.

sirsquishy.8531:

1. NOTHING – no system that currently exists, can play WvW in a full zerg on max settings and get high FPS (the current max FPS is 30, and thats with dives down into the teens -13-18).

2. If WvW is your only goal, stop. Its really not worth it.

I actually only play wvw about 20% of the time, but when I do, I’d like to be able to stream and have decent graphics/FPS.

sirsquishy.8531:

If you dont have a good gaming PC, then by all means build one. But dont do it cause GW2 sucks on your current system. News flash GW2 sucks on every system right now. Even if you put 2500 into a top of the line i7 build, your FPS is still going to suck on WvW.

I don’t have a gaming PC at all right now. I’m using a mac and it literally crashed 2-5 times an hour.

you can play WvW with “decent” graphic (decent compare to what other mmo offer but nothing compare to the actual highest graphic in gw2). While streaming, i don’t really know if it gonna be a problem but probably not that much.
For 1000$ you gonna have a hard time in WvW…

To give you some perspective, my 2 gpu’s cost over $1000. They are great for pve at max settings unless your at the new teq event. But full zerg WvW I need to turn all my kitten down and have crap frames when Blobs collide. Just get the best you can with what you have, and that should stop your crashing issue. Just don’t expect to much from w v w at any price you pay for hardware. This game was built for technology that was out-dated 3-4 years ago. It simply doesn’t have the capability to use the power we have today with cpu’s and gpu’s that’s are available. Anet needs to stop living in the past and take on some outside vendors help to optimize the game further for mass WvW.

Beorn Saxon.4762:

sirsquishy.8531:

1. NOTHING – no system that currently exists, can play WvW in a full zerg on max settings and get high FPS (the current max FPS is 30, and thats with dives down into the teens -13-18).

2. If WvW is your only goal, stop. Its really not worth it.

I actually only play wvw about 20% of the time, but when I do, I’d like to be able to stream and have decent graphics/FPS.

Streaming while doing WvW and having expectations at good performance is going to be an issue where GW2 is concerned. Its just not possible, at all.

Well, that’s disappointing. I guess I’m after best graphics and FPS for $1,000. And I’ll just see if i can stream on lowest settings in wvw.

i5-3500 series, 8g DDR3 PC1600 Memory, ATI 7890HD OR Nvidia 670TX, 1x 128G-SSD, 1x 2TB HDD – The Rest would be up to you. Make sure you get an intel motherboard that supports the 1156 Socket (Or whatever socket the i5 gen3 is on now). That will be the best you can do for about 1k.

sirsquishy.8531:

ATI 7890HD OR Nvidia 670TX

Epic wat

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1GWC6

Posted this a couple weeks ago, but it went down in price so I upped the PSU a bit. Bump it up to 4.2-4.4 GHz and it should run the game quite nicely.

Another option.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1H6uu

If you need an OS you could drop the solid state, although I don’t recommend it (nothing like hitting the power button and being in game in about 30 seconds).

moorindal.2635:

Another option.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1H6uu

If you need an OS you could drop the solid state, although I don’t recommend it (nothing like hitting the power button and being in game in about 30 seconds).

Drop the 760 for a 3 GB 7950. It’s faster and $60 cheaper. Also, CM isn’t usually too great a brand to go to for PSUs, which may be something to consider.

I didn’t notice that the TC needed a monitor, so a slight adjustment to my build:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1H6XF

If an OS is unnecessary:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1H6ZM

Fermi.2409:

Drop the 760 for a 3 GB 7950. It’s faster and $60 cheaper. Also, CM isn’t usually too great a brand to go to for PSUs, which may be something to consider.

I didn’t notice that the TC needed a monitor, so a slight adjustment to my build:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1H6XF

If an OS is unnecessary:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1H6ZM

and the 3 free games you get with that particular video card is a nice added benefit.

Fermi.2409:

moorindal.2635:

Another option.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1H6uu

If you need an OS you could drop the solid state, although I don’t recommend it (nothing like hitting the power button and being in game in about 30 seconds).

Drop the 760 for a 3 GB 7950. It’s faster and $60 cheaper. Also, CM isn’t usually too great a brand to go to for PSUs, which may be something to consider.

In what flippin universe is an HD 7950 faster than a GTX 760 because it’s not the one I’m living in.

As for price the cheapest HD 7950s are $200-$220 after rebate while the cheapest GTX 760 is $250 (prices at NewEgg, not counting shipping). And sorry if I don’t consider PowerColor a quality manufacturer. So it’s more like saving $30-50 for a card 10% slower. Maybe that is a good trade off. But you certainly aren’t getting a faster card.

Behellagh.1468:

In what flippin universe is an HD 7950 faster than a GTX 760 because it’s not the one I’m living in.

As for price the cheapest HD 7950s are $200-$220 after rebate while the cheapest GTX 760 is $250 (prices at NewEgg, not counting shipping). And sorry if I don’t consider PowerColor a quality manufacturer. So it’s more like saving $30-50 for a card 10% slower. Maybe that is a good trade off. But you certainly aren’t getting a faster card.

You can get Sapphire or Gigabyte 7950s for $200 easily. They’ve been selling for that much for weeks.

As for which is faster, they trade blows at stock, but a 7950 will blow past a 760 when OC’d. 7950s can go past 680 levels once you get them overclocked. That depends on the binning of the card, of course, but a 7950 is most certainly a better card then a GTX 760.

Ah yes, the old but when you overclock the snot out of it it’s faster. Except the less expensive models aren’t as robust when it comes to overclocking or dissipating the excess heat it causes.

Now if you were talking the HIS 7950 IceQ X^2 Boost that’s $265, but it’s out of stock, sure that’ll take will slightly beat most factory OC GTX 760 out of the box but it also costs a bit more.

Also not everyone in the world is comfortable to crank up the clock on a $200-250 piece of hardware with the hope it doesn’t go POP just to squeeze a few more FPS. Which is why we have factory OC cards with warranties that cover our backside if it goes POP as long as we don’t try to push it harder. But manufacturers charge more for those, ever occasionally even use better quality components to justify it.

As I said in my previous post, it’s a little slower but a lot cheaper so may that’s a good solution to get it with the budget.

Boosting the clock of a GPU is as simple as moving a slider. I can see people being worried about it, although you’ll be fine, especially if you don’t change from stock voltage, although you won’t get nearly as high. Actually, I somewhat wonder where the card would compare just topping out on stock voltage, although this would really depend on the individual cards. Overall, though you can do fairly decently, even without getting a card with an excessive cooler, like MSI’s Twin Frozr IIIs. Overclocking the snot out of the card will put it ahead of 770s. A 760 is a relative walk in the park.

That being said, the 7950 is still the better card, because OCing is easy. Sure, if you absolutely don’t want to OC at all, don’t do it, but it’s pretty simple to do safely, and you’re losing out on free performance. Going for a 760 would be a better option in that case.

Just be wary of motherboards and gfx cards. As was stated above, no high end system can max this game out in the toughest situations, so the way to do this is future proof.

If your going Intel, make sure you get the most common high end socket for their most modern line. The disadvantage to an intel system is they love to change sockets nearly every revision. The goal here is to have something that won’t be dropped in two years so if you ever get the chance to upgrade you can just drop a new CPU in and go.

Since the rumor is AMD is abandoning normal CPUs in favor of high end APUs, the only way to go if you choose the red team at the moment is with their new high end FM2+ Motherboards, so you can use their Kaveri ( Steamroller) and Excavator APUs when they drop.

GPUs don’t need to be world breakers, but need to be considered carefully simply because you want this fairly future proofed as well. Normally I’d say go Nvidia mid range to high end, but Guild Wars 2 is a curious case. The only MMO I’ve played that seems to favor AMD cards over Nvidia ones. The GTX lines just seem to have massive problems in( especially with boosting) in this game. Keep in mind though that may be fixed with future drivers and game patches so it might wind up as mute concern. If you want the latest and greatest though, AMD is about to roll out their new cards, and all leaks point to Nvidia Titan level performance on the highest end one, for hundreds less.

No matter what you choose though the better news winds up being price cuts for all previous generation cards are likely right around the corner.

Personally I’m curious to see how an HSA enabled APU will perform in this game down the road, so I’d go FM2+ simply because the architecture is so similar to PS4 and Xbox One and all future ports have a really good chance of being properly optimized when coming to the PC.

But whatever you do, future proof as much as you can.

Didn’t say OCing was hard, just “a cheat” where a user can shoot themselves in the foot if they blindly try to match some other card in a review or “extreme OC” instructions on some other forum somewhere.

Hey guys, thanks for all of the help and feedback. Here is the rig that I think I’m going to end up going with

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Hhic

See if you can squeeze in a 4 GB card instead. It’ll last longer. Games are going to be chewing up more Vram as we go into the future, so 2 GB may not be quite enough in a year or two.

Behellagh.1468:

Didn’t say OCing was hard, just “a cheat” where a user can shoot themselves in the foot if they blindly try to match some other card in a review or “extreme OC” instructions on some other forum somewhere.

It’s not a cheat, it’s entirely legitimate. I suppose that someone can shoot themselves in the foot, but just be smart about it and it should be fine.

Beorn Saxon.4762:

Hey guys, thanks for all of the help and feedback. Here is the rig that I think I’m going to end up going with

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Hhic

It looks pretty solid. The only thing I’m questioning is the power supply with that video card. The one you selected can probably handle it, but the manufacturer recommendation is a 600W supply. Can someone confirm this will be ok?

Beorn Saxon.4762:

Hey guys, thanks for all of the help and feedback. Here is the rig that I think I’m going to end up going with

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Hhic

Oh what a cute widdle PC. :p

And that 500W PSU isn’t going to cut it. Not with a GTX 770. Shoot for a Corsair 600 or 650 watt PSU. They aren’t that much more expensive. Also note that the PSU cage in the case can’t really take deep/long PSUs (160mm/6.3" max). CX600 would fit nicely with room to spare.

Behellagh.1468:

Beorn Saxon.4762:

Hey guys, thanks for all of the help and feedback. Here is the rig that I think I’m going to end up going with

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Hhic

Oh what a cute widdle PC. :p

And that 500W PSU isn’t going to cut it. Not with a GTX 770. Shoot for a Corsair 600 or 650 watt PSU. They aren’t that much more expensive. Also note that the PSU cage in the case can’t really take deep/long PSUs (160mm/6.3" max). CX600 would fit nicely with room to spare.

Yeah, that was a mistake, I will be getting something between 600-750W. I won’t be purchasing for a few weeks so I’ll have to finalize then. I may upgrade to a 4G graphics card as well. Still undecided.

I would stay away from the Corsair CX series power supplies and buy a good power supply. The CX series are made by Channel Well not by Seasonic that Corsair got their good rep selling. It only has a 3 year warranty for a reason, the ones that were made by seasonic had a 5 year warranty.
Use a power caluclator then pick the power supply the PC you listed will pull less that 400 Watts during a full system stress test. 550 to 600 Watts is pleanty of power.
http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine
Before I spent the extra money on the 4GB video card I would upgrade the processor to the 3570 or change the board and get the 4670 unless your going to be running a very high resolution monitor.