Guild Wars 2

Long story short: I upgraded. I went from an AMD X6 1055T, to an Intel i5 3570k. The X6 was overclocked to 4ghz, so that’s what I overclocked the 3570k to for the purposes of this test. All other components remained the same (except motherboard, obviously), GTX680 and 8GB DDR3 1600. I did not reinstall windows, or the game.

I picked these two locations randomly because they were indicative of the biggest problems. Tons of people, and looking into a deep horizon. I recreated the spots as best I could, but didn’t go crazy. The forge spot is essentially my minimum FPS.

The first two screenshots are AMD, the second are Intel. FPS is in the top left hand corner, along with dynamic GPU clock information so you can see just how much the AMD processor held back a GTX680 in this game. It downclocked itself a fair deal because the X6 couldn’t push it hard enough.

I intend this as an informational post for those curious. I wouldn’t expect anything to come of this, AMD does not have the support/corroboration team that Intel/nVidia has and for good reason. You get what you pay for. And while their CPU isn’t this much slower on the hardware level, these things tend to happen from time to time when your third party support team is non-existent.

Thanks for posting this. Maybe people will get it now when I say it’s CPU dependent in quite a few scenarios.

first screenshot →21fps vs 50fps / 41% vs 73% GPU Utilization
second screenshot → 48fps vs 102fps / 48% vs 90% GPU Utilization

Bleras.5871:

first screenshot ->21fps vs 50fps / 41% vs 73% GPU Utilization
second screenshot -> 48fps vs 102fps / 48% vs 90% GPU Utilization

Those percentages are actually the GPU power draw. The first percentage is GPU usage, second is fan speed.

It’s still quite a difference, but not as pronounced.

AMD has always had crappy IPC,. that is no secret. But it doesn’t mean they are bad CPU’s.

What version of Windows and it didn’t make you reinstall going from AMD to Intel?

First shots I almost just dismissed because it was more people in the shot so that drop is expected at least a little. However, nice job on the second one as it was basically identical to dismiss what would have been my first claim.

But wasn’t the i5 2500k the chip out around the time of the 1055t? The 2500k still beats it in benchmarks but just adding this.

Probably has two different computers, one AMD build and the other Intel.

@Phaze – If their IPC is crappy how can you not say their CPUs are bad? Crappy performance is bad, good performance is good… logic’ed.

With an high enough OC, having a crappy IPC wont matter much.

Thats mindblowing! I really hope Ncsoft patch some amd cpu optimizations soon. Keep this Thread alive so they get aware of this!

AMD Phenom II 965 @ 3,7 Ghz

i have this issue .. FX8120, 8 Cores at 3.9ghz and i can barely get between 30 and 50 fps .. in lion’s arch is like 25 fps. .
GTX560
16GB Ram 1600mhz

You can’t compare an i5 to a phenom 2 at the same Ghz. The i5 is a full generation later and works a completely different, better way. If you want an apt comparison, get a Core 2 Duo and OC it to 4Ghz, then compare it to your old CPU. Those two were in the same generation. The Mhz myth is LONG busted.

woooot, intel is better than amd? new findings :P

In-depth Intel ownage. http://techreport.com/review/23246/inside-the-second-gaming-performance-with-today-cpus

Do not know about in your country but here the i5 3570k is like twice the price of a fx-6100 for example, the motherboard to support the i5 is like twice or more the price of a motherboard for a fx-6100 too. lol
For me is kinda logical that the higher the price, the better. As you said, “You get what you pay for”.

xyzzy.8970:

In-depth Intel ownage. http://techreport.com/review/23246/inside-the-second-gaming-performance-with-today-cpus

Yeah, pretty much everyone knows Intel “owns” AMD at the moment. The bulldozer (FX) architecture was supposed to make it a contender again, but it ended up making it compete with i3’s and sometimes i5’s. AMD just screwed up in a big way with the bulldozer architecture.

The biggest benefit behind buying AMD right now is performance per dollar. Hopefully the next generation of AMD CPU’s finally get it right. They make a decent CPU for the mid-range market, but they can’t touch the high-end intels at the moment. To be fair, you’re literally going to pay 3-5x as much for the high end intel stuff…

(I run an FX-4100 OC’d to 4.0Ghz at the moment)

stormstrike.9147:

What version of Windows and it didn’t make you reinstall going from AMD to Intel?

Windows 7.

You people make me cringe…

Good comparison. Now maybe people will understand that all “4Ghz” CPUs are not equal, at least not in this game.

For the extra $100 or so it costs to go Intel, you get roughly double FPS in GW2.

Hickeroar.9734:

You can’t compare an i5 to a phenom 2 at the same Ghz. The i5 is a full generation later and works a completely different, better way. If you want an apt comparison, get a Core 2 Duo and OC it to 4Ghz, then compare it to your old CPU. Those two were in the same generation. The Mhz myth is LONG busted.

Actually it was 1 generation between Phenom II and iX XXX (and the advantage for Intel was almost non-existent back then), but the TS has a iX 3XXX which is not only one, but actually 3 generations (over three years) newer.

But the issue is a different one, even the “old” Phenom II processors have a vast amount of computing power, and yet the GW2 engine manages to to hit the limit on the main thread. That piece of kitten is just poorly optimized and wastes your CPU power, no matter how much you have.

marnick.4305:

The only thing AMD is good for, is office. Anything more is asking for problems. Serious software doesn’t work on a my fisher price first computer and it doesn’t run on AMD either.

Stop spreading lies. Every modern software runs AMD hardware as well as on Intel hardware. They are fully compatible. You only have slight differences in performance and power consumption, but the advantage for Intel is only significant in very few disciples and even non existent in some use cases.

There is only one reason why GW2 runs so badly on AMD CPUs: It has only one very heavy thread and two light threads so it is not capable of making use of “real” multicore-systems. Thats right, GW2 is incapable of using more than 3 CPU cores. Modern games which are properly threaded scale much better on AMD CPUs, especially on the Bulldozer/Piledriver generation with its effective 8 usable CPU cores. (It’s two real cores per module, not to be mistaken for Intel Hyperthreading which has very little effect on highly optimized software since it relies on the assumption that poorly optimized software won’t be able to utilize a core to the full.)

Phaze Delta One.2834:

AMD has always had crappy IPC,. that is no secret. But it doesn’t mean they are bad CPU’s.

huh……always……guess you missed when the p4 was slower then a first generation athlon(or p3) even with a clock over 2x as high…

Zcoks.3659:

Thats mindblowing! I really hope Ncsoft patch some amd cpu optimizations soon. Keep this Thread alive so they get aware of this!

AMD Phenom II 965 @ 3,7 Ghz

no need, words come down via infractions to a few of us, the game runs perfectly if your having problems its due to user error.

not the game being buggy or unoptimized.

Saulot.6820:

i have this issue .. FX8120, 8 Cores at 3.9ghz and i can barely get between 30 and 50 fps .. in lion’s arch is like 25 fps. .
GTX560
16GB Ram 1600mhz

on a 1/2 decent air cooler you should have no problem getting 4.2-4.4 out of that chip, on a decent air cooler, 4.6.

I say this as the owner of an 8120 and 8350(2 seperate systems) i have an old sunbeam core contact freezer on the 8120 now rather then my aergir, and it is quite easy to get 4.4 out of it at 1 bump above stock volts.

but again guys, remember, this game has now performance issues, its all user error, or its amd/intels/nvidias fault, so say the great gods of this land.