Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

So I built my machine back in 2009, and I’m hoping I can upgrade it without having to start from scratch. It runs GW2 reasonably well currently. The only issues I have are load times are ridiculous, and when I try to record my gameplay (something I really want to start doing) it becomes unplayable.

Here’s a full list of the specs of my current machine:

Rosewill R220-P-BK Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

EVGA 512-P3-N841-AR GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply

AMD Phenom 8650 Toliman 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Triple-Core Processor HD8650WCGHBOX

G.SKILL HK 4GB (2 × 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL4D-

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

SAMSUNG 22X DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223F – OEM

What would you suggest I upgrade first to get it up to par for recording?

Thanks in advance guys!

Or are these specs so bad that I should just start from scratch?

If you are serious about recording, there are dedicated Capture Cards that you can install into your PC. Some of the high-end ones are quite expensive. Do some research.

You can go the route and get a dedicated capture card (not what I would do at this point) that would take card of most of the resources needed for recording. Then record at whatever resolution you game on.

Or you can grab some software like Xsplit or whatever the other common one is (I forget the name). Then you will have your CPU do the heavy lifting required by recording. I doubt your CPU could handle both playing the game and recording at the same time and make it both enjoyable to play and enjoyable to watch. The better the processor, the higher the resolution you can record in. Your processor was a neat idea by AMD with the whole tri-core idea, but now its old and aging. I’m surprised your graphics card even plays Guild Wars 2 nicely. My siblings had trouble with a 9800GT on a processor worse than yours at 1600×900, so I would assume you are playing on a resolution closer to 720p, am I right?

Long story short, try recording with what you have now and see if it meets your expectations. If not you’ll either need to rebuild because the AM2+ socket is old hat, AM3+ is where its at on the AMD side of things. Or you can try a capture card that will plug into your motherboard, just make sure it will meet your needs before purchasing and make sure you have room on your motherboard.

Hi Ilithis Mithilander, thanks for the response!

I’ve tried recording using Bandicam already and it was practically unplayable. Any time I got into a fight with more than one person it looked like a slide show.

As for the general playability of GW2, I have everything on the lowest settings, and it seems to run OK. It gets very slow in larger WvW battles, but for the most party it’s decent. Load times are pretty awful though.

With that said it looks like my CPU and Motherboard will likely be the first things I’ll need to replace, which is exactly what I was looking for by posting this thread. I’d start from scratch but I really don’t want to buy another copy of Windows, so I’ll probably keep the tower intact and replace whatever I can, because I don’t think a Capture Card is the way to go for me.

Thanks again for the input! Time to start researching…

I think getting an SSD will help with slowdowns when recording. The regular mechanical hard drive has trouble keeping up with loading the game and recording at the same time.

kokocabana.8153:

I think getting an SSD will help with slowdowns when recording. The regular mechanical hard drive has trouble keeping up with loading the game and recording at the same time.

For sure, I would definitely use a different drive to toss your recordings onto. Having one drive run Windows, the game, and recording might max out the read/write times. I’m not sure how much it would help, I just know having everything separate is a good thing like kokocabana said. Whether an SSD is necessary is questionable.

As for upgrading, there are a ton of people on this sub-forum that would be glad to help and enjoy tossing theoretical computers together. The only things we really need to know are what your budget is, what resolution you plan on playing at, the graphical settings you want to play at (low/med/high/mix of them), and what FPS you expect to get at that resolution and settings. Also, in your case, listing what parts you plan on moving over to the new rig, like the case, power supply, hard drives, etc.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

kokocabana.8153:

I think getting an SSD will help with slowdowns when recording. The regular mechanical hard drive has trouble keeping up with loading the game and recording at the same time.

For sure, I would definitely use a different drive to toss your recordings onto. Having one drive run Windows, the game, and recording might max out the read/write times. I’m not sure how much it would help, I just know having everything separate is a good thing like kokocabana said. Whether an SSD is necessary is questionable.

As for upgrading, there are a ton of people on this sub-forum that would be glad to help and enjoy tossing theoretical computers together. The only things we really need to know are what your budget is, what resolution you plan on playing at, the graphical settings you want to play at (low/med/high/mix of them), and what FPS you expect to get at that resolution and settings. Also, in your case, listing what parts you plan on moving over to the new rig, like the case, power supply, hard drives, etc.

Awesome, thanks! I’m hoping to run the game on medium to high settings. As for resolution I actually play full screen on a 42" 1080p plasma TV. And it may sound noobish, but I’m not sure what to expect FPS wise. Really I just want it to be smooth for roaming in WvW. As long as it’s playable and not painful to watch

My budget is probably between $300-400, and I’m thinking I can probably keep my old case, optical drive, hard drive (although adding another is an option), and perhaps power supply? 400W probably isn’t enough though. I assume that the rest of it needs to go to see improvement.

Thanks again!

Zumi.6384:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

kokocabana.8153:

I think getting an SSD will help with slowdowns when recording. The regular mechanical hard drive has trouble keeping up with loading the game and recording at the same time.

For sure, I would definitely use a different drive to toss your recordings onto. Having one drive run Windows, the game, and recording might max out the read/write times. I’m not sure how much it would help, I just know having everything separate is a good thing like kokocabana said. Whether an SSD is necessary is questionable.

As for upgrading, there are a ton of people on this sub-forum that would be glad to help and enjoy tossing theoretical computers together. The only things we really need to know are what your budget is, what resolution you plan on playing at, the graphical settings you want to play at (low/med/high/mix of them), and what FPS you expect to get at that resolution and settings. Also, in your case, listing what parts you plan on moving over to the new rig, like the case, power supply, hard drives, etc.

Awesome, thanks! I’m hoping to run the game on medium to high settings. As for resolution I actually play full screen on a 42" 1080p plasma TV. And it may sound noobish, but I’m not sure what to expect FPS wise. Really I just want it to be smooth for roaming in WvW. As long as it’s playable and not painful to watch

My budget is probably between $300-400, and I’m thinking I can probably keep my old case, optical drive, hard drive (although adding another is an option), and perhaps power supply? 400W probably isn’t enough though. I assume that the rest of it needs to go to see improvement.

Thanks again!

Well with that budget you’ll be pushing the higher end for sure, 300 bucks simply won’t cut it. You’ll be looking at getting:
-FX 8320 (145 until the first of July)
-8GB of DDR3 RAM @ 1600Mhz+ (price varies but around 55)
-AM3+ motherboard compatible with whatever RAM you get (probably about 55 going in for low end motherboards)
-GTX 650Ti Boost (cheapest is 140 after rebate)

This will likely put you slightly over budget, but even, so many corners were cut to get there.

The 8GB is probably the only spec that actually meets what I would be happy to have in the system.

In reality the FX 8320 should be a FX 8350 for WvW because of the increase in frequency, you’ll need it to get 25FPS in WvW battles.

The GTX 650Ti Boost should be enough to get you running at a mix of medium and high settings, the normal GTX 650Ti got my siblings running a mix of medium to high settings at 30+ FPS IIRC but they were running at 1600×900, not full 1080p. So in reality, the GTX 650Ti should probably be a GTX 660, but the GTX 650Ti Boost can do SLI, so you can buy another in the future and pair them up (crisis semi averted).

The motherboard probably shouldn’t be bottom of the barrel, but I did see some ASUS boards in that price range so you might be alright with those.

Then of course we’ll need another power supply since 400W probably isn’t going to cut it for its age (loss of power) while powering a 125W processor and a discrete graphics card. I would recommend getting a 650W from Corsair. I used to buy whatever the cheapest power supply was at the time I needed one. Normally they would last me around a year before it kicked the bucket. Then I decided to give a real power supply a shot, my Corsair 750W has lasted me for around 5 years now, no hiccups or anything. It even came with a bag that I now use for my dice.

With the power supply it’ll likely put you under another 80 bucks. It’s really hard to budget 400 bucks for playing Guild Wars 2 while recording. It works best when you have a nice beefy processor like the FX 8300 series or an i7 from Intel. Even so, 145 bucks for an octa core processor is nothing to scoff at, compared to what I paid for my i7 3 years ago which is a psuedo octa core cost me 200 bucks. If you can squeeze the extra 80 or so for the power supply from your budget, you’ll be set, assuming everything fits inside your case.

This is great, thank you so much for the all the great info. I had a feeling it might be a bit too low, so I’ll probably save up a bit more so I can get a proper machine.

I’ll definitely be saving this post though so I can go back and reference it. Thanks again!