Guild Wars 2

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

Not really … Guild wars uses 4 cores…. so FX will beat i3…

I highly doubt that. Buddy has a hugely overclocked i3 at around 4.3 GHz, third generation and it slams my FX-8350. I bet at stock clocks it does better.

Oh. Well that works then.

Entry level gaming computers use APU? Funny since I see these very high spec boards being made for them now. Such as Gigabyte G1 Sniper. I feel like FX is a dying trend since I saw them. They’re just processors with onboard graphics like Intel i5 to be honest. Nothing wrong with them. From 4500M to 5800K I would imagine you’d see a sizeable increase in performance if you supplied it with a dedicated GPU card as well. And, assuming you’re talking about a desktop because A8 4500M makes me think laptop.

Oh I remember the Nvidia 650SE now. All of the computers at my high school had those on AMD motherboards… and an AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (1.9 GHz) Bad chip for gaming.

Shame on whoever decides to say “just get a new computer” and anyone who says anything that translates to that.

But I’d imagine since the game’s more cpu bound, you’ll see a bit of a boost to start with on fps. I’m not sure what the 650se nvidia is, google search got me as close to like a gtx 650. Maybe a junker version of one of those? Or something really old…?

but if the 6670 is better, maybe you can get away with medium at the 1280×768 res. maybe some more tweaked settings. Auto detect is your friend for this game.

I don’t have any slow downs in any games when I update my catalyst. I don’t use beta drivers either just to clarify.

there wouldn’t be a difference between the ‘7930’ (7870 XT) and the 7870 GHz Edition (weirdly enough the chip on the 7870 is a Pitcairn XT chip so why did they call the Tahiti LE card the 7870 XT ???) in Guild Wars 2.

Any of the two will be fine. However Windows 7 support ends in 2014 or so so you’d probably be better off with Windows 8. And no there’s nothing wrong with windows 8 just in case you’re wondering.

Enabling unlocking and disabling unlocking should be like a switch yes. If it doesn’t work, the worst I can imagine to happen would be that it would not POST, IE get past simply turning on. In which case you’d need to reset CMOS which would be pulling the two pin connector tab from pins 1 & 2 and placing them on 2 & 3. This tab can be found by a small nickel sized battery. Pulling out the battery and waiting about a minute can do the same thing. Some boards come with a reset button designed for this purpose, a sort of convenience.

That battery is near the bottom right corner of the board you linked, and if is yours. Below an unmarked gray grid-like heatsink.

Joriel.1530:

u need to upgrade the whole PC.

Incorrect. GTX 465 get’s decent FPS in this game and the RAM is absolutely fine and so is the hard drive. The processor is lackluster when you bring GW2 into the conversation.

Symbolite.8673:

While I did build this computer myself I haven’t the slightest clue about how overclock/unlock things, my luck I’ll just screw it up hahah!

Lucky for you unlocking a CPU core is usually just an off/on switch. Although the likelihood of it actually working is not too high. If it does work, you are then getting premium performance for very low cost.

That mainboard is a bit back in the day however so I wouldn’t expect anything truly amazing out of it anymore aside from a possible third or two more useable CPU cores.

Processor. If your board is able to overclock and has an unlocking ability, you may be able to unlock a third core or two more cores to make your dual core go as far as to turn into a quad core, thus maybe doubling your performance. Everything on your machine is fine, and if you had an intel i3 for example, you’d probably get wicked performance.

Playable and enjoyable to me would be around 30 FPS. You’d be looking at around 600 or 750 for a basic laptop that can meet these requirements, sporting a third generation intel i3 or i5 processor with the Intel HD 4000 chip. If you can find the same thing with a Haswell i3 or i5 which is a fourth generation, you might get a little better graphics performance.

WVW will be for the most part unplayable on all but low settings I think. In open world with medium settings I wouldn’t doubt that it could get up to 60 FPS in some places but in cities, it’ll tank a bit like every other machine.

Nope you just move the Guild Wars 2 directory. You might need to change shortcut target but that’s literally it. No more needed to do.

There is no laptop that will handle Guild Wars 2 for 500 dollars or less with even playable frame rates. You’d have a much better chance with a desktop for the same price featuring an Intel Pentium and a Nvidia GT 640 graphics chip (which would be a very basic entry level gaming computer if you want it to be)

CPU and processors are the same thing. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. For Guild Wars 2, this game prefers the Intel brand over the AMD brand. AMD and Intel are the two hugely known CPU vendors. There’s a few other smaller companies but none of which are in the high tier desktop and laptop area like the two.

To make a long story short, a really expensive AMD processor can’t keep up with a less expensive Intel counterpart in Guild Wars 2. In other applications, maybe it’s the opposite.

But anyway I’m sorry but there’s no laptop I know of personally that can play GW2 ‘decently’ for $500 or less. You could maybe get away with an Intel i3 based laptop that has the Intel HD 4000 chip on it and play it at medium native resolution of 1366×768 but you won’t get any better than that I’m afraid.

Can save a little money by going from DDR3 1866 to DDR3 1600. Not noticeable performance change but likely less expensive than 1866.

On my laptop that is armed with a GTX 670MX, the frame rate likes to take a huge hit whenever particle effects come into play when I use super sampling and hit the ground with warrior’s Death From Above trait. The particles generated lag me out so I switched to native sampling and it made it a bit better. I’d check to see if you have a similar issue like that.

It could be windows 8.1 itself. Buddy at the computer store says he can hardly game on his windows 8.1 MSI gaming laptop with GTX770M right now aside from a few games. I would imagine these issues will be sorted soon enough though.

moonstarmac.4603:

I’d say your CPU is bottlenecking with that 2.2GHz clock.

It’s not. That i7 2.2 GHz likely runs at 3.1 GHz turbo on all four cores. Whatever the software is running on fullscreen, the i7 will always run at it’s set turbo which in this case will be above 3 GHz. Still not as high as desktop power but it’s still really good.

Also just to clarify with Parted Magic if you try that, it will delete everything off of the solid state so be sure to back everything up. I clone my SSD to a spare hard drive, secure erase, and clone it back. Works no problem.

Rather than get a new case, just get a new set of silent fans. You can just overclock the i7 950 if you have the cooler and the board supports it and if you’re willing to learn how. Your RAM is absolutely fine. Seriously. Spend 2,000 dollars on RAM and spend 30 dollars on RAM the only difference you’ll see is what it looks like. Almost no performance difference in that regard.

If your SSD is failing well we both know the answer to that. GTX 470 is fine enough for this game most settings on high.

You could grab a Corshair H60 or H80i since those fit great in 120mm fan slots and then look up overclocking your CPU and board combo. I think it’s worth it.

The least money spent to get better performance in my opinion would be cleaning the computer regularly of dust and crap, defragging, minimizing process task use, optimizing. All of this being free.
For money spent, an H60 cooler or H80/H80i whichever you want for the CPU to overclock and if you wanted to go a bit further, an extra 200 to 250 on something like a GTX 660TI. Some people will say GTX 760 but a 660TI is just about as good.

Same advice for the fans. Or buy a fan controller and tune it to your acceptable levels.

Heck, even after simply buying a GTX 660TI I doubt you’d get anything less than fairly enjoyable performance if you’re not getting so already.

[Edit]
Your SSDs might not be failing, they might just be slowing down, something that happens over time with the reading and writing to them. I refresh them with PArted Magic using Secure Erase to get ‘fresh-out-of-box’ performance and it works literally instantly on SSD and it’s top speed once again. I wouldn’t doubt that your SSDs might have a little bit of life left in them.

Stock fans are meant to run the processor at stock speeds. They do their jobs as intended.
just my 2 cents there

this is probably my favorite forum post now

I never had this problem. Granted, I moved it off of my C: drive and onto one of my other hard drives.

My only gripe with screenshot folder is I wish I could select the location where it saves but it’s not too big of a problem. I can just move them anyway.

Before any of this Mantle or Direct X 11 is considered for guild wars 2, the game’s current renderer and platform needs a bit of TLC.

Your answer lies at the processor. Simply put, AMD gets swamped with Guild Wars 2. I also recommend you pick up a second stick of 4 GB RAM to make it 8 GB. a 4 GB computer with a 7950 and a processor like that is just a clusterblah

doesn’t need mantle or dx11 in my opinion.

There won’t be an increase in performance and since the data is sent to the second card via the crossfire bridge, it would not matter anyway if the slot was at 4, 8, or 16.

That is worth the two hundred if OP cannot afford a new board, Fermi.
Hitting that Phenom II up to around 3.8 or 4.1 GHz would maybe grant better FPS than my FX-8350.

Long story short: Guild Wars 2 can be played on laptop. Just I strongly recommend you go the extra distance to obtain a laptop with the proper cooling hardware such as an Asus G series. And for that matter, my Asus G75VX plays this game with little to no problem with what I normally do, which is PVE. World bosses included.

The laptop I’ve seen with the best cooling hardware though would have to be Alienware’s new Alienware 18 with intel i7 4930XM and GTX 780M SLI. One fan per GPU and one fan for CPU. Three fans. You can hear them quite clearly but they get the job done.

The one with the i7 3632QM will play guild wars 2 maybe a little better. I’m unsure mostly.

^ I’ve had the worst results doing that with the Black Gate Lion’s Arch all the time.

I forgot to disable crossfire on this scene I uploaded a screenshot of. I did just now and got a whopping TWO whole frames more. Yay me.

zerk.9701:

Cooler Master low quality PSU

Cooler Master’s PSUs are made by SeaSonic, which generally makes high grade PSU.
SeaSonic is also the first company to produce 80 Plus Gold PSU.
And all of their PSUs are rated at least 80 Plus.

Switch the processor to an intel i5 and it’ll play this game far better than that FX-8320 will. Take my word on that. I have an FX-8350. I’m soon to be switching to an i7 4770K.

Hey as long as you’re happy with it, what is ever a problem?

Yes, please bring back dragon ball. I loved unequipping all my armor and being a glowy white charr target that still no one could hit

There is no expansion pack right now. There’s been word of one in 2014, but that’s all it is. Small talks. Until then, we have the Gem Store which more than makes up for extra sales. Possibly more than what an expansion pack is doing. Besides; ANet makes more profict from Gem Store, and players get more content via living story. Ergo, Expansion not needed.

Since you’re getting a Z77 mainboard, I’d say that it would likely be more beneficial to obtain the i5 3570K since it would be easier to overclock if you ever did decide you wanted to. However, you’ll be able to overclock an i5 3350P as well, but it will not be as easy. Of course, if you don’t want to overclock you don’t have to. I just personally like having the best chipset, so I’d buy a Z77/Z87 as well

juno.1840:

Avelos.6798:

VidGhost.3215:

$30 to convert to gold ( 800Gems = 2.5g ) in the first few months of the game

WASTE OF MONEY!! now that $10 (800 Gems ) gets you 55g

That has turned me off buying gems and i will never again until they either fix this stupid inflation or release an expansion with good looking ARMOR! that this game is severely lacking.. just look at Dragon Age gameplay to see some awesome armor

There is no inflation. Gold is easier to make now. Every single price has gone up as well as how easy it is to make gold. It’s not broken so there’s no need for a fix.

Ummm I think that’s called “inflation”

Nope. It only is if prices go up while the ability to make gold goes down. Or stays the same.

Aza.2105:

The problem isn’t on your end, the issue is that gw2 is optimized poorly. Your fps is typical. The game tends to be cpu limited since its essentially a single threaded game. For modern cpus this is a issue since they all have multi cores. Something which gw2 doesn’t really take advantage of.

So I wouldn’t worry about doing a fresh install, updates etc. Because its not your pc causing the issue.

Did you even read his post? His FPS went DOWN since he cut his resolution in half from 5760×1080.

I’m going to upload a screenshot at Queensdale from the boar with people waiting at the same settings. Will post specs too.

[EDIT]

Okay so I took two screenshots, one at 1600×900 and the other at 1920×1080. No difference in FPS on my system specs.

Even without vertical sync, I still had much lower FPS.

My specs are,
AMD FX-8350 running 4.1 turboing
16 GB DDR3 1600 CL9
Radeon HD 7970 crossfire (CFX disabled for GW2)
Biostar TA990FXE

Makes me really curious how you get such fps like that.

[Off topic, darn; I forgot to have my genesis in screenie because I like it a lot more than my gs :P]

Actually no that laptop will not lag. Well, not under regular play but in WVW and huge events it’ll see trouble. It won’t perform as well as a quad core i7 or a full i5 mobile but it’ll still do good for how far it can turbo.
Keep in mind that i5 and i7 have turbo boost, and this applies to all i5 and i7 processors.
That i7 will run at a maximum of 3 GHz (maybe 2.8 on some core configuration or something) but the point is it’ll always run at turbo speeds under a load, or higher than the rated speed which in this case is 1.8 GHz. (best run in High Performance mode)

The GT740M/GT640M will let you play between medium and high settings fairly well if the machine is at a 1366×768 resolution.

Personally I’d look for something other than an HP brand laptop. Perhaps an Asus or an MSI of the same caliber.

yeah buddy of mine is gaming on a slightly older Dell laptop with an i7 2720QM with a GT525M. Guild Wars 2 plays pretty decent on it at the resolution of 1366×768 which is the laptop’s native. At 1080P I wouldn’t expect anything more than 15 fps out of it though.

Settings auto detect of course.

I won’t be surprised if someone comes in here and says “That will play Guild Wars 2 OKAY but not GREAT” because their idea of playable is 50 FPS or more (playable FPS is really personal preference. It could be 22 FPS, it could be 75 FPS). No, it’ll play it great with high settings with much more intense settings turned down a bit.

Anyway, I’d go for the 1600×900 res version. It’s got a higher resolution along with a superior GPU to the one that Fermi is suggesting, the 510P with the GT 750M. When you go into 1080P for Guild Wars 2, suddenly the system demand goes up with it and it hits hard at 1080P so I have read. You’d be better off sticking with the 410P 1366×768 or 1600×900 version with a GT755M in my opinion, where you have that extra power, and still decent resolution to get enjoyable frame rates and playability out of the game.

The Intel i7-4700MQ will make short work of the game and with shadows / reflections turned off, I’d say that it will handle things like Zerg Vs. Zerg fairly well. My i7 3630QM does so I don’t see why the i7-4700MQ wouldn’t.

My 2900XT has a backplate too so I have to basically take off everything.

I should check out that old Radeon HD 2900 XT I have and see if I can separate the heatsink from the PCB. So many screws…

I don’t think it would run on a 300 watt system containing that Athlon quad core. Chances are it’s very much an older generation and could use more power unless that 300 watt power supply was actually of good quality because a GT 240 did not run within the computer that we had for a couple weeks. It was bottom of the barrel board and everything except the RAM, CPU, and hard drive. It refused to boot on a GT 240.

You have to keep in mind what the other components are like the hard drive, disk drive, RAM, everything.

It’ll get good performance on medium. A few of my friends play on the same settings with same graphics chip but both of them have an i3 and i5.

My recommendation is to set it to best performance and then tweak the minor performance impacting settings the way you like it.

I would have brought up the Radeon HD 7750 if I believed it could run with already a nearly full system on a 300 watt power supply. We had a basic i7 4770 desktop for a week or two here and nothing could be added to it that would still allow it to boot. a Radeon HD 7750 draws more power than a 640 I’d reckon but Sirsquishy’s input here looks the best.

You’ll be able to use any AMD AM3/AM3+ motherboard for that but since the PSU is only 300 watt you might be able to get away with up to a GT640 Nvidia GeForce.