Guild Wars 2

Hello,
At the start area I had 35 FPS but I noticed this happen most of times and I’m afraid to have low FPS in WvW. So I wonder which hardware should I upgrade. Here is my PC hardwares ( I run it on 1440×900)
CPU: Pentium® Duel-Core CPU E5300 @ 2.60GHz
Video Card: GeForce 240 GT 1GB
Ram: 4GB

Preferably both; the 240GT isn’t a gaming graphics card, its a media graphics card. It’s also 3 generations old.

Your processor is also about 3 generations old, going to turn 4 in June. My siblings run a similar processor at those frames at 1600×900 with a GTX 650Ti.

If you’re on a budget, upgrading a graphics card now is going to be the cheaper of the two to upgrade. Upgrading the graphics card also allows you to use it when you upgrade your CPU/mobo/RAM to current generation technology.

If I might make a recommendation, a HD 7750/HD 7770/GTX 650Ti for absolute minimum for a graphics card. These will allow for a mix of medium high settings at 1080p.

As for a CPU, there are no CPUs that allow for 30+ fps in chaotic WvW battles of 100+ people at stock settings. In order to achieve 30+ fps in the worst case scenario, you must overclock your processor to get the extra performance required. Many CPUs can achieve this, but the notable ones are:
AMD’s FX 8320/8350
Intel’s i5 2500K/2550K/3570K
Intel’s i7 2600K/2700K/3770K

The ‘K’ on the Intel processors denotes that the processor has an unlocked multiplier making it easier to achieve higher overclocks.

The only reason to get an i7 over an i5 is if you’re going to effectively use the additional computational threads available. A good example of utilizing these would be for audio/video encoding.

Thank you for the info it was helpful
I didn’t know 240GT was for media. I’m going to upgrade both, can you tell me which CPU and graphic card would be good for medium setting. (I’m on a budget so if you can tell me the least ones that will be great)

Fire Bullet.9236:

Thank you for the info it was helpful
I didn’t know 240GT was for media. I’m going to upgrade both, can you tell me which CPU and graphic card would be good for medium setting. (I’m on a budget so if you can tell me the least ones that will be great)

It really depends on the dollar range and what you do besides play GW2. I’m going to assume you can cannibalize your old hard drive, optical drives, case, and power supply. If you don’t mind me asking, what make/model is your power supply? We need to make sure its up to par with newer components.

For the CPU I would grab a i5 3570K from a MicroCenter if one is close by else everywhere else has them for about 230:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

For the RAM, any sticks should do as long as they’re DDR3 at 1600Mhz or higher. Low profile sticks are a plus because you can get some nice air coolers for the CPU to dissipate the heat better than the stock CPU heatsink Intel provides. With higher profile sticks, the sticks get in the way of the heatsink for the CPU. I believe GSkill and Corsair make some smaller RAM sticks, just make sure there is no crazy tall heatsink on the RAM chips and you should be fine. Something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148661

Another note on RAM: get at least 8GB if you have a 64bit version of your operating system. If you don’t have a 64bit version of your operating system, I recommend getting one since 32bit has a limit of 4GB.

For the graphics card, I got my siblings a GTX 650Ti for Christmas for 110 after rebate. It works well for 1600×900 on a mix of medium and high settings.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133473

For a motherboard, some overclock better than others, I’m not up to snuff on the latest in this area. I however am a firm believer in ASUS and Gigabyte. ASUS makes some really durable boards in my experience, I’ve had one go through power surges, which made some of the capacitors leak fluid. That however did not stop the board from working at all, it just kept trucking until it was time to upgrade to new equipment. My Gigabyte boards haven’t had to go through the crazy stuff my ASUS board had to, but they still work great.

All in all, you’re looking at about 500-550 bucks if you go with Intel and can salvage stuff from your current setup.

IMHO, the cheapest path of upgrade, if money is a concern, is to upgrade your graphics card to something more powerful and recent. But this will only go so far because the graphics card will only be as fast as the data that is being pushed to it by the CPU.

If you decide to upgrade your CPU instead, make sure that your motherboard is compatible with it. Otherwise you will need a new motherboard and quite possibly new RAM to go along with it. All in all, the cost of which can be comparable to a new high end graphics card.

do not bother upgrading that system cpu/gpu, its really not gonna help much.

would help if you gave us a budget to work with

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/G58V

cheap option, if you can re-use your current case(if its worth reusing) this would be even cheaper, it gives you plenty of fast ram (thats a combo with the board) the built in video will do mid settings fine im sure, the cpu is unlocked so you should be able to clock the cores to 4.6 or possibly higher with the cooler on that list(best cheap cooler on the market)

the built in video should overclock nicely as well…

if you give me a budget to work with(if you can spend more then the above) i can come up with some other options.

I wouldnt buy anything cheaper then what I listed, this is the bare minimum I can suggest, its better then anything intel will have in a similar price bracket.