Guild Wars 2

Hi I’m looking for some advice on how to increase my current computer set up, I’ll start off the bat by saying my knowledge is very very basic!

I’ve used a website to collect my PC spec, is this enough for you to recommend anything?

Also Guild Wars is the game I solely play, however if you can suggest things that will last a while in terms of computer quality, it would be much appreciated!
I just want my experience in game to be the best it can be!

Thank you for any help from anyone!

Minimum: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon 64 X2 or better
You Have: Intel® Core™ i7-2700K CPU @ 3.50GHz
CPU Click here for the latest CPU drivers.
Intel® Core™ i7-2700K CPU @ 3.50GHz
96th percentile
CPU Speed CPU SPEED
Minimum: Info
You Have: 3.5 GHz

Video Card VIDEO CARD
Minimum: NVIDIA GeForce 7800, ATI Radeon X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
You Have: GeForce GTX 550 Ti
Video Card Click here for the latest Video Card drivers.
GeForce GTX 550 Ti
77th percentile
Features: Minimum attributes of your Video Card
Required You Have
Icon Pixel Shader version 3.0 5.0
Icon Vertex Shader version 3.0 5.0

Icon Dedicated Video RAM 256 MB 1.0 GB
RAM RAM
Minimum: 2 GB
You Have: 8.2 GB
8.2 GB
94th percentile
OS OS

Minimum: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or better
You Have: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit
Windows Click here for the latest Windows drivers.

Free Disk Space FREE DISK SPACE
Minimum: 25 GB
You Have: 165.8 GB
Free Disk Space Click here for the latest Free Disk Space drivers.

Sound Card SOUND CARD
Minimum: Yes
You Have: NVIDIA High Definition Audio
Sound Card Click here for the latest Sound Card drivers.

well your system is not bad at all. You can stand to overclock that 2700K though, do your research on that bit before you actually do.

What performance are you getting right now? depending on what you want to fix, there are varying options/suggestions.

Hi sirsquishy, thanks for the reply!

The main thing i want to improve is the graphics, a friend built the computer for me and said the graphics card is the only thing that lets my computer down!

So i guess my real question is, which card is recommended, for guild wars and for longevity!

Thank you in advance!

If you can spot about 200~, then I Suggest either a GTX770 or R9 280x, and I say second Hand cause you can find them for under 200 often with a decent warranty from amazon.

Youll need to make sure your PSU has enough wattage though. And I would still invest in over clocking your 2700K to 4.6ghz-5.0ghz (depending on what your CPU is capable of, again lots of research needs to be done)

GTX 770

http://www.hwcompare.com/14654/geforce-gtx-550-ti-vs-geforce-gtx-770/

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_0?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A541966%2Ck%3Agtx770&keywords=gtx770&ie=UTF8&qid=1416586512&rnid=2941120011

R9 280x

http://www.hwcompare.com/15872/geforce-gtx-550-ti-vs-radeon-r9-280x/

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywords=280x&rh=n%3A541966%2Ck%3A280x

a gtx 970 is an excellent value and will probably last until your next rebuild with skylake (or cannonlake).

Couple questions….

Do you have kitten or a hdd? If you have a hdd….kitten would be a nice upgrade.

How much are you looking to spend?

Do you have an aftermarket cpu cooler? If you are rocking the intel box cooler that came with the cpu, I would recommend an aftermarket one. Something like a 212+ or an evo would be effective yet not cost much.

That said I would OC your cpu more……hence the cooler. If GW2 is th only game you play I don’t think I can echo the others. The 970 is way too much of a card for this game and would be sort of wasted on it. The 280x and the 770 are sorta in this boat as well as a card half the price will give you 90% of the performance in this game. If this is really all you play then a $100 2gb 750ti would be plenty imo. You could use the price difference to upgrade to an ssd and aftermarket cooler for the same price of the 770 or 280×.

dodgycookies.4562:

a gtx 970 is an excellent value and will probably last until your next rebuild with skylake (or cannonlake).

While a GTX970 is an excellent investment, the OP’s system is 2 generations behind already. And he is running a 2600K at stock clock speeds. He would be far better off buying a 280x or 770 and investing the difference in buying a cooler to OC his 2600K to 4.6ghz.

Right now you can get a GTX770 or R9 280x for about 139-179 used on amazon with the amazon buyers warranty of 90days. If you happen to get a bad GPU you will know with in a few hours to a couple days of playing GW2 while doing world bosses. And the Amazon RMA program is not all that painless, IMHO.

He can then invest in a Hyper 212Evo or something higher end like a Noctura DH-15 or Prolimatech GNSS (what I use) + Required CPU fans. In all that would put him at the cost of a single GTX970 going the OC+GPU replacement via my advice.

If the OP has no intentions on OCing then a GTX970 makes more sense for the gen 6 CPUs when they become available (by then his 2600K will be 45-55% behind the latest Intel i7’s IPC), as that is when I would expect the OP to ‘need’ to upgrade his CPU. I just dont see any good in upgrading to Haswell(even E) since Sandy is only 25%~ behind in IPC.

Upgrading the GPU would likely be a disappointment.

I had a GTX 570 for example. It was dying so I upgraded to a 770. I gained around 5 FPS.

I had a 2600K @ 3.4 GHz. I overclocked it to 4.7 and gained around 20 FPS.