Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I couldn’t find any better forum to post to so I went with tech support. Sorry if this turns out to be a large post, and hopefully not controversial.

The scoop, as the title suggests, I’m seeking (if it may be possible) an average 120 FPS in mid-large battles in WvW. I am about to upgrade to a 120hz monitor for health reasons. (Visual migraines which my optometrist is sure will be lessened by the higher hz. Argue or not, dont care not relevant. He thinks it may help, I’m swapping.) Whit this change comes the desire to actually achieve flowing frames above 120. I realize there will be dips, I’m looking for an average if it can be achieved.

Resolution aim – 120hz 1920×1080

Current build idea –
i5 – 3570k
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155
8 gb – 2×4 GB DDR3 1600
2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB – Factory OC’ed
ASUS Xonar – DX 7.1 (I have owned this for two years now, been the best soundcard I have ever purchased.)

Picking up the new NZXT Phantom 820 for air cooling on all my components. I can’t H2O cool because I have three little boys who would see an interesting pipe coming out the back of Daddy’s computer and ….well I’m avoiding that episode.

I have the power supply to push all this, 62A single rail 750w.

Also going to be putting twin SSD’s in raid 0 (I know the risks, Im looking at loading time specifically for GW2 and more specifically for Lions Arch – I am already running a single SSD and would like to see it faster, I know a guy in real life who has a set and his loading screen literally blinks then hes in LA running around.) And a backup 750G HDD.

If anyone out there has experience with a twin 670 setup I would be interested hear what you get in frames. Im also planning on building two of these in Feb or March 2013. One for me and one for my wife who has amazingly fallen in love with WvW.

Again, Im not even sure if an i5, or an i7 sandy bridge – e would push WvW to 120fps in most areas with 40-50 or more players on the screen but I am trying to make a solid attempt at getting there. Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated from other tech savvy people. In one other sidenote – I will be overclocking the CPU, I have no qualms about it, and buying some hefty aftermarket coolers just for that purpose.

No.

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You wont get 120fps in large WvW battles with the best cpu/gpu on the market. And WvW is cpu dependent so really the gpu is a non factor.

I am not sure what your FPS would be on low settings, but with all settings you would probably be able to get 50 FPS in WvW with that computer.

Hmm in light of these comments, maybe I should wait an extra month for Haswell….Intel claims its launching in April 2013.

Senadgar.9360:

Hmm in light of these comments, maybe I should wait an extra month for Haswell….Intel claims its launching in April 2013.

I am sure the Haswell would perform better then any stock CPU on the market. I am doubtful it would be better then the current overclocked CPU’s available. You could get lucky and you might be able to overclock a Haswell, but no one can say how far you will able to overclock it. The current CPU’s are reaching over 4.5 Ghz and thats a pretty high mark to beat from any stock chip.

120 fps in large WvWvW is impossible atm.

Your likely to get with a OC’d i7 45 fps + on average in large battles.

In reference to your comment Slark, I will still probably hold off for Haswell and buy everything else. Vid cards, case, etc. I know they are changing the mobo to 1150 socket and claim double performance than Ivy Bridge stock. Who knows what kind of performance well actually see, but in the mindset of future proofing, it would probably be the best purchase idea. They did say the -E version of haswell will swap to DDR4. But I cant wait that long I have to get something. My wife is trying to play WvW daily on a fx-4100 oc’ed to 4.6. She usually sits in the low teens in battle. She cant wait until aug-sept of 2013.

I think you will need to invest in some liquid nitrogen/helium cooling system and overclock like mad towards 8GHZ. Then maybe its possible.

alphacentari.7692:

You wont get 120fps in large WvW battles with the best cpu/gpu on the market. And WvW is cpu dependent so really the gpu is a non factor.

i wonder why people keep saying this…GW2 is in fact more CPU dependent than any other MMO I’ve played so far but any quad core @3GHz or higher will do it
OC’ed my i7 950 to over 4GHz without ANY performance boost
but OC’ing my GPU’s clock from 772MHz to 888MHz gave me 10 frames per second more

so the GPU is not less important than the CPU

@topic: in case you would like to run the game on optimal quality:
you will never have 120FPS in WvWvW, until GW2 is ready for hyperthreading/the usage of more than 3 cores…even then, it would proabably “just” be at around 70-80FPS imo

get an i7 and one or two (sli) gtx6XX with 1GHz clock speed, optimize you system, watch out for bottenecking/incompatible components, install GW2 on a SSD, get superspeed internet, triple channel ram @2GHz and you have done everything you actually can do
you probably will get around 55FPS most of the time during WvWvW with that until GW2 is optimized by the developers

I can hit 400 FPS in PVE world but impossible in WvWvW. Mid fight is around 40-60 FPS.

My spec is below. Oh by the way it maybe higher if I run 1080p instead on 1440p. My rig is pretty much top of the line level with overclock, unless you have 3970X which is $1300 CPU.

I would go all out on CPU and not worry about dual graphics cards. I also don’t know if a 750W supply would run that setup.

With my setup I get 75fps+ outside WvW and 30-60 in WvW depending on situation.
My rig:

i7 3280 OC’d to 4GHz
Nvidia GTX 670 4Gb
16Gb DDR3 2133
Asus P9X79 Pro mobo
Corsair 1050W Gold 80 plus cert

With that setup my CPU is still holding me back on GW2. Thus I’d recommend going for a nice CPU and sticking with 1 GPU for now with the option to upgrade. That being said, I’d go for at least a 1000w PSU and make sure it’s 80 plus cert. That will give you plenty of power when you decide to drop in a second card.

EDIT* I also believe that GW2 isn’t optimized for SLI yet (if it will be)

wauwi.9162:

alphacentari.7692:

You wont get 120fps in large WvW battles with the best cpu/gpu on the market. And WvW is cpu dependent so really the gpu is a non factor.

i wonder why people keep saying this…GW2 is in fact more CPU dependent than any other MMO I’ve played so far but any quad core @3GHz or higher will do it
OC’ed my i7 950 to over 4GHz without ANY performance boost
but OC’ing my GPU’s clock from 772MHz to 888MHz gave me 10 frames per second more

so the GPU is not less important than the CPU

alphacentari probably meant gpu as a non-factor for most people with high end system since the CPU is bottlenecking in WvWvW for even the best consumer CPU OC’ed. CPU & GPU are mutually inclusive in FPS performance, but in GW2 case the CPU is weighted very heavily.

wookalar.8952:

I would go all out on CPU and not worry about dual graphics cards. I also don’t know if a 750W supply would run that setup.

With my setup I get 75fps+ outside WvW and 30-60 in WvW depending on situation.
My rig:

i7 3280 OC’d to 4GHz
Nvidia GTX 670 4Gb
16Gb DDR3 2133
Asus P9X79 Pro mobo
Corsair 1050W Gold 80 plus cert

With that setup my CPU is still holding me back on GW2. Thus I’d recommend going for a nice CPU and sticking with 1 GPU for now with the option to upgrade. That being said, I’d go for at least a 1000w PSU and make sure it’s 80 plus cert. That will give you plenty of power when you decide to drop in a second card.

EDIT* I also believe that GW2 isn’t optimized for SLI yet (if it will be)

I have about pretty much the same answer as this guy. Our specs are close and also our results are.
2 things I want to mention: I’m running it all fine with a CM 850w silent pro M2.
And there are also factory watercoolings available like corsair H series or an antec set. These go inside your casing on the place where a fan would be, so that might be an option. Be sure to check compatibility though because the Corsair H80 didn’t fit on my Antec P1 by default.

I’m running on HX750 Watts PSU… You don’t need 1000 watts for SLI / CFX.

I know for fact, a 750w 62A is more than enough for SLI with 100% gpu load. Ive checked the numbers even with all the extra hardware I’m going to have running. So that’s not really my concern. Thank you though, to everyone who put input in. I think in any case I will still hold off for Haswell. Twin vid cards will be needed for almost every other game out there to hold 120fps. Thats why dual GPU is a must for me. Maybe well see huge performance gains from Haswell, maybe not. But waiting one extra month to play with it, at worst case scenario will equal an i5 or i7 currently….I just cant justify spending the money one month ahead of the intended “tock” cycle on intel CPU’s.

GTX 780 is coming in 2013… so that’s a least 1.5x over GTX680, single GTX 780 matching 85% near the performance of GTX 690.

your soundcard and ssd’s won’t affect your framerate so I’m not sure why you mention them. if someone told your case, hard drives or sound card have any affect on your fps then you were taken for a ride, do some research

Lol, Agent I know. Just giving out the full loadout, because I knew some smart alek person would start diving into it. I have built more than one computer in my lifetime, probably about sixty or more, and repaired/worked on many, many more. I’m absolutely no novice to building PC’s. Computer tech is what I went to school for, what I do now for a living. Was just hitting up the audience to see who has a rig near the specs the one I’m planning and seeing what the general consensus was. I was holding out hope of hitting more than 50fps. But it seems like that is about as close to where I want to be as possible.

Even overclocked to 4.7 Ghz on an Ivy bridge CPU with a dual GTX 670, I can get nowhere near 120 in WvW. Or large PvE battles. This on best appearance with 1080p rez.

Your goal might be unrealistic in the next year.

And cores won’t matter for this game in my experience. So no benefit from hexacore I suspect.

WvW is more using the CPU then the GPU you should atleast get a i7.. if you really want 120 FPS you should get a multi-processors motherboard and i dont even know if GW2 supports more then 1 processors

Agent White.7315:

your soundcard and ssd’s won’t affect your framerate so I’m not sure why you mention them. if someone told your case, hard drives or sound card have any affect on your fps then you were taken for a ride, do some research

soundcards affects the framerate? lol
but well…if the driver barely works and the soundcard is a broken pile of elecric garbage, than it might actually be possible, depending on the ingame sound settings

about SSD’s: your half correct
SSD’s can increase your framerates and highly decrease the loading times
flash-memory FTW – not even 10 seconds between double clicking GW2 and being ingame (depends on how fast i can type the password)
oh and around 5-10FPS more compared to my HDD
thanks to faster drive-to-ram buffering
just benchmark it…or compare SSD with HDD yourself

but if your HDD’s transfer rate is at 6GB/s, the FPS differences won’t be that high
it also depends on the manufacturer of the SSD

Senadgar.9360:

Hi guys, I couldn’t find any better forum to post to so I went with tech support. Sorry if this turns out to be a large post, and hopefully not controversial.

The scoop, as the title suggests, I’m seeking (if it may be possible) an average 120 FPS in mid-large battles in WvW. I am about to upgrade to a 120hz monitor for health reasons. (Visual migraines which my optometrist is sure will be lessened by the higher hz. Argue or not, dont care not relevant. He thinks it may help, I’m swapping.) Whit this change comes the desire to actually achieve flowing frames above 120. I realize there will be dips, I’m looking for an average if it can be achieved.
………………..

Just thought i’d ask,
Are you currently using a flat screen display?
Because if so, going 120hz will not help as flat screens do not flicker like old CRT displays do at low Hz and the advice of your optometrist is moot.

such FPS is only possible with Minecraft graphic add-on, LOL.

brianj.6289:

WvW is more using the CPU then the GPU you should atleast get a i7.. if you really want 120 FPS you should get a multi-processors motherboard and i dont even know if GW2 supports more then 1 processors

GW2 does not benefit from more then four cores based on the feedback in these forums. I have seen no evidence hexa-core would help, let alone dual CPUs

With regards to SSD, I just copied the game folder to my C: drive which is an SSD from a HD. Seems to be this reduces the stutter you see when turning quickly in a new area. I see no benefits to load times so far.

yes, loading time is same, the game itself dynamically reads map data from that big chunk of .dat file.

yea and that 15GB+ .dat file is also compressed so your CPU is going have to work loading it. Probably why you don’t see much difference.