Guild Wars 2

Hi, i’m about to get a new computer and I understand CPU is the most important thing but if i’m going to play at a really high resolution with high settings how far should I go with a video card? Is 3gb of vram enough? Which cpu is going to work out the best? Not too worried about costs but don’t want to get top of the line super expensive

In the big scheme of things, all the various frame buffers and what not is relatively tiny even at 2560×1600, maybe 100MB in total. A problem back in the day of 1/2 GB cards but with 2 and 3 GB cards, not really.

Right now the GTX 770 gives you slightly better GTX 680 performance at slightly less cost around $400-425 at NewEgg. I consider that the borderline of super expensive.

CPU wise an OC-able i7-x770K model with a well liked third party heat sink. You don’t need to go nuts with a hex core or anything like that. If you are press for cash because of the video card, an i5-3570K or i5-4670K can save you $100 over their i7 big brother to be used toward something else.

At that resolution if i were u i would go for a 3gb or 4gb card, one with a powerfull core or 2 cores for SLI. With that u can run native resolution and AA, at which point u will wantthat extra VRAM.

IMO if ur going that high in res u hould have the budget for a monster rig. In which case i recommend the GTX 780(which is 3gb VRAM). If u go for a 770 or 680 or 670, u may need 2 for SLI to performa at max settings at that resolution and u can also opt for 4GB verisons. 2x 670’s will be more expensive than a Single 780, so i would advice the 780 route.

As for CPU, if ur coming from a pre sandybridge CPU (i.e before 2500k and 2600k) then go for a haswell CPU. Like the 4770k. If your on sandybridge now or even ivybridge, stay with it. if u like online gaming i advise a i7, games like GW2 will show a slight advanatge with the extra threads. People on GW2 have noticed 4 thread CPU (i5’s) maxing out on utilisation at times.

Honestly a GTX 780 doesn’t give a lot for that $200+ premium over the GTX 770, maybe 20% which is not much for a 60% increase in price.

SLi requires more power and produces more heat that you then will have to get rid off. Problem is even with SLi there isn’t a solution that’ll cost less than a GTX 780 and give anything but marginally better performance.

A pair of 3GB GTX 660Ti’s cost about the same as a GTX 780 and might have 5% better performance.

A pair of GTX 670’s will run you $750 but at least added performance beats the added cost to the GTX 780. But at that point you should just buy a pair of GTX 770s for $800.

It’s a slippery slope but by choosing a 4MP display for gaming, you sort of have to pay the piper for gaming performance at that resolution, and it’s not cheap.

Well. You could always wait for Asus’s 39" 4khd monitor to release
Apparently it uses a S-MVA panel, makeing it substantialy cheaper to build than its 4khd 31" IGZO panel. Meaning it could potentialy cost <$1000 comapred to its current 31" price tag of ~$3800
(only suspected prices released have been in $’s)
Anyway at those resolutions u can then rationalize getting a GTX 780 ..hell even a GTX Titan.. infact u would need atleast 2 of which ever u get to run games that those resolutions.

Food for thought :

I will personaly jump on the 39" model if its <£1000 in the UK..i cant wait for 4kHD. Though atm im tight for cash since i just bought a GTX 780 and bunch of other stuff lol. I would need neough money to ge ta second 780 + the monitor ….still 4khd ..nomnomnom.

Just putting my two cents in it. 770 should suffice for that resolution for MMORPGs and should still be quite competitive for the other gpu hog game such as Crysis 3 BF3 and even BF4 which is around the corner. People have been using a single 680 for surround setups which means 50% more pixels than 2560×1600 with acceptable frame rates, which again might depend from person to person. I’d check reviews before I make a decision tho because its a significant amount of money to invest

I’d say get a single gtx780. The reason I say that is the 780 is built off the gk110 that the titan uses. The titan gets about 80% of the performance as two gtx680s and the 780 gets about 10% less performance than the titan so its a great GPU for close to sli performance without the screen tearing associated with sli setups.

I’ll just add a few things to what’s already been said.
If you want to run games on max settings at that resolution at 60fps (I’m assuming you don’t have a 120Hz monitor), SLI is most probably the way to go just because you get more performance for your money. However, remember that some games do not play nice with SLI and people have had problems with it and GW2, it may be fixed now though. 4GB VRAM should easily be enough.
In regards to the CPU, you want something that can feed the GPUs with some overhead (i.e. not bottleneck the GPUs and also not be running flat out while gaming). i7s are great for multi-threaded and multi-core processes due to the hyper-threading and slightly larger cache compared to the i5s. Unfortunately games do not take advantage of these differences. Will you really notice the difference gaming? Only if the i5 bottlenecks the cards which is unlikely on a 3570k as long as you don’t get something stupid like 2 Titans. i7s usually come clocked slightly higher, but if you don’t mind overclocking, an i5 3570k, for example, is awesome at ~4.5GHz.

Swordbreaker.2581:

I’d say get a single gtx780. The reason I say that is the 780 is built off the gk110 that the titan uses. The titan gets about 80% of the performance as two gtx680s and the 780 gets about 10% less performance than the titan so its a great GPU for close to sli performance without the screen tearing associated with sli setups.

But is the extra 20-30% performance worth the extra 60% in price? That’s a personal call and for me would be no, even if that 20% is the difference between sub 30fps or not.

The OP asked for not super expensive but didn’t define that for us. Obviously Titan is at $1000 and compared to that the GTX 780 is a bargain at $650, costing only 10% of your fps in games like WoW or Bioshock Infinite at this 4MP resolution.

GTX 780 is a better solution because even a 780 won’t be able to max everything out for all/future games. So he will have the ability to add another 780 later.