Guild Wars 2

Of course Vayne has the most posts, everyone else is debating him.

It’s good to see the wayback machine post showing the clarification. Of course facts rarely matter to ideologues.

Craptrain.7203:

Behellagh.1468:

With it time gated everyone is annoyed over acquisition time. What they are not annoyed over are the few who can leap into the “stats” lead while it takes the rest weeks and months to catch up.

Here’s a major issue I have. People in favor of time-gating have been saying two mutually exclusive things:

1) Ascended gear is not necessary, therefore laurels are not necessary, therefore daily laurel handouts are fine.

2) Without time-gating hardcores get laurels too fast, get ascended gear too fast, and leave everyone else in the dust power-wise.

Both of these cannot be true.

It all depends if you believe they are significantly better or not.

If you don’t think the items are significantly better, you simply don’t care. Gate it, don’t gate it, it doesn’t affect me directly other than how it affects the general population in the game. This group doesn’t understand what the big deal is.

If you think they are significantly better, then you care about frequency of play time. If you can play frequently but not a lot of hours, then time gating favors you. If you can play a lot but not frequently you hate time gating (along with the WANT NOW crowd).

It’s my contention that the “can play frequently but not many hours” are the majority of players in an MMO. These players stay around for longer in a game than those who can play a lot of hours, “beat the game” in their mind and then move on to the next MMO, only coming back when new content is added for the day or two it takes them to finish and then they are gone again. Of those two groups, which group as a whole will spend more cash in the shop? Which group makes the world seem more alive? That ultimately determines who the devs believe should be catered to if a choice has to be made.

Are you confusing bytes with bits? Here in the US (since I don’t know where you are from) Internet service levels are in bits/seconds but most downloaders report in bytes per second. Then you have the whole kibi/mebi vs kilo/mega suffix issue and it’s easy to get confused.

Altogether it’s close to 10x the difference between megabits/sec Vs mebibytes/sec.

Balkanwarrior.5132:

I’ve sold numerous precursors and undercutting by 1 copper, 50s, a few gold can potentially screw you over and force you to relist. My worst experience was selling spark. I had to watch for 6 days as it kept getting undercut and once mine came close to being in the top 3 cheapest, 3-4 would pop out of nowhere and get listed for 10-15g cheaper at least. Ending up having to relist and eat another 30g listing fee.

My advice for anybody selling a precursor is to not be greedy and list somewhere in between the highest buy offer and lowest sell offer. If it’s a high demanded precursor like Dusk, you MIGHT be able to get away with listing it 5g cheaper then the next, but its up to you if you want to take that chance. If the highest buy offer is 500g and the cheapest sell offer is 580g, consider listing yours somewhere around 550-60g for the best possible chance at having it sell and still bringing you as much $ as possible. Otherwise, listing it at 579g 99s 99c could potentially screw you over

Or you could think selling it for 500g right away is better than waiting for that extra 50 or 60g. Especially if it took a large chunk of your money just to list it.

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

Someone will chime in “then don’t have total playtime that high”, but then that brings in the argument about vertical progression. By slowing down acquisition of these items by either having minimum number of days (time gating) or by a large amount total playtime of some activity (say new content tied to the items) it blunts the fear that players have that the game is going vertical.

It’s exactly opposite. One of the main problems with vertical progression (besides it being a hamster treadmill where you stay in place even when moving forward) is how hard is to get the next tier. If it’s easy and fast, then the progression is easy to ignore (because catching up is not a great problem) (*). Consequently, if getting equipment takes a long time, then the vertical progression becomes more punishing for the players.
The white to exotic progression that was present in the game at launch did not cause a lot of protests from the horizontal progression people, because exotics were relatively easy to acquire. Consequently, ascended gear introduction resulted in huge uproar not only because it was something new (and changed the game philosophy), but also because it was costly and heavily restricted. I’m pretty sure that if it wasn’t significantly harder to get than exotics now, much more people would have taken Anet’s insistence that it was meant to be here from the very beginning at face value.

(*) For the sake of simplicity let’s ignore here the added problem of reacquiring appearance of the gear.

With it time gated everyone is annoyed over acquisition time. What they are not annoyed over are the few who can leap into the “stats” lead while it takes the rest weeks and months to catch up.

Shockwave.1230:

Of course this entire situation stems from ANet choosing to time gate rewards that pretty much everyone feel compelled to obtain. I am personally disappointed in ANet for artificially limiting the rate at which people can get to maximum power. This is not what I was expecting when thier last game naturally brought people to maximum power midway through the main storyline.

Except I don’t feel compelled. That stat bonuses over slotted exotic accessories when compared to my current total. I don’t do fractals, I don’t do sPvP/tPvP and while I do WvW the extra stats will mean a hill of beans when I get ganked by a squad from another server or in the middle of a 50×50 clash of zergs.

Dog.1472:

And I disagree completely with your last sentence. Vertical progression is not how to drive attendance. Content is most definitely the way to go. I definitely think the popular opinion here is that people play for content, not getting better gear alone. So limiting the way people can obtain it and ignoring group 2 is just needlessly frustrating players.

I believe I said in my first post here that content is what needs to motivate players to log in every day, not daily limitations. As others have said, dailies make the game feel like a job and a grind. It isn’t fun.

I didn’t mean the last sentence to reflect vertical content, just content in general. I was restating your point on “shouldn’t a player want to play vs being forced to play” for a reward. We had dailies before they were tied to a vertical set of items.

As for the lollipop comment, I’m being practical from a Dev’s POV. It is easier to tie it to dailies (or RNG drop, like kite fortunes) than create some specific new content where they are only rewarded there (but you can run more than once daily). Of course I’m talking Laurels here.

I assume you’ve already tried minimal graphic settings as well as possibly playing at a lower than native resolution (despite the ugliness of it).

The HD 7520G is a rather low end GPU tied to system memory, think desktop HD 6450 performance. The CPU has only 2 cores so that’ll knock FPS down by a 1/3 even if you had a high end graphics processor.

It doesn’t surprise me that you’re getting 13fps. Just remember cities and places with lots of players are worse than the wilderness while boss events and WvW can be a slide show.

We have two very diametrically opposed groups here.

Group 1, those who think you should be rewarded for showing up everyday.

Group 2, those who think you should be rewarded for how much you play.

Now Group 1 are players who can set a little time aside everyday and would not like some BiS item that’s tied to playing time because they simply can’t play more. They like the idea of time gating because it means they won’t show up a week after an items introduction to find players with free time already having them.

Now Group 2 are players who feel playtime rather than attendance is more important and if some BiS item would require 50 hrs of playing time so be it. They can control how fast they can get the item, whether it’s 50 days or 5.

Actually there’s four groups split between total playtime (low/high) and frequency of playtime (daily/not daily). Either reward method, time gated or total playtime, will exclude two of these groups. The question is really how many are excluded by each reward method and by devs choosing time gated, does this mean fewer player are excluded than if the reward was based on total playtime?

Someone will chime in “then don’t have total playtime that high”, but then that brings in the argument about vertical progression. By slowing down acquisition of these items by either having minimum number of days (time gating) or by a large amount total playtime of some activity (say new content tied to the items) it blunts the fear that players have that the game is going vertical.

Also there’s daily population within the game. MMOs look better to players if there are other players always around, even if they aren’t looking to team. It’s an MMO we shouldn’t be the only “living soul” in the game. Time gating encourages attendance and attendance makes the game look better to new players. Plus the longer the player stays in the game, the greater the likelihood that a player will spend additional money on cash shop items.

Now the argument will be “but shouldn’t content drive attendance rather than a daily lollipop?” Sure but content, new content takes time. Lollipops are easy to do.

atheria.2837:

Not only that, the gems are more in REAL money than they are with in game silver.

We are being ripped off – to the tune of about 25% or so depending on the day – you can correct me if I am wrong, do the math.

The “currencies” in GW2 are myriad, confusing and ridiculous.

ONE can’t sell a single item for a decent “price” – ten thousand of them on the market just make the item useless to try to make gold – and the only reason ANY of us want GOLD is to get that DARNED LEGENDARY.

Seven days is an "old’ post?

If the issue isn’t old, the post shouldn’t need an override bump – when are these people at ANET going figure out that issues come up at different times for different people and searching for the answers LANDS us in OLD POSTS – old according to ANET but not to the user coming in here to find that the issue is still ongoing.

And what does this rant have to do with the price of tea in China? Or specifically the OPs suggestion about buying Gems with Gold by entering the amount of Gems you want and having the game calculate the price for you?

I admit you can get within the ballpark in a minute or so but to figure the absolute minimum gold cost for a fix number of gems is challenging due to fluctuations.

Also, NECROPOST atheria.

Sil.4560:

Sell in private.

And risk seeing no money.

So why don’t you submit a support ticket, it’s not like us players can help you.

80 Gems for $1 is the standard rate. There are no discounts for bulk purchases.

Installed it’s 17GB, I have no idea how small a compressed install package would be.

GPU-Z Performance graph is off the Sensors tab.

You can also check the bus interface to make sure that the PCIe slot is running x16 (Graphics Card tab, half way down, right column). If it doesn’t seem right run the built in render test. Click on the ? next to the Bus Interface box will bring up instructions and the launch button.

Alternately get Process Explorer, which is the Windows Task Manager on steroids. It includes GPU Usage tracking on the System Information window.

I see now you were merely spinning scenarios where growth in the money supply isn’t bad. It’s just that when it’s normally talked about as being a bad thing, it’s because the assumption is the supply of goods remains the same and the population is stable.

TP and any profits from it are not adding to the money supply, at all. It’s a gold sink, possibly the biggest in the game. It doesn’t destroy goods, merely transfers them. So if anything the TP is deflationary in nature.

No idea why this topic is even pertinent in this thread. Money supply was only brought up to illustrate that dungeon speed runs and farming are a gold source while TP is a gold sink.

JesseyFranz.8362:

So I came upon the chinese trailer for Guild Wars 2 and I really enjoyed watching this trailer even though I can’t understand a single word. The animations and machina filming is imo way better than the original Guild Wars 2 trailer we saw 1,5 year ago.

Here’s link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4tGMcKoh_8&feature=youtu.be&t=4m59s

Let me know what you think and discuss!

.. Echo ..

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/EPIC-trailer-for-china/first

.. echo ..

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/China-release-trailer/first

Craptrain.7203:

Behellagh.1468:

Dog.1472:

Do you understand the problem here?

Yes, you are annoyed that someone with loads of free time to play, and therefore is so much better than a more casual player, is forced to go at the pace of the casual player.

Being condescending and using hyperbole doesn’t help your argument. Try phrasing it like a mature adult: “You are annoyed that you are being forced to go at a pace which does not fit with your gaming habits.” See, was that so hard?

I’m not the one repeatedly stamping my feet declaring how unfair it is that a requirement for some slightly better gear was set up to allow all players to acquire them at around the same rate, assuming they play daily. So I choose to reply in the language he was using. I’m not the better man <stab> or a good one <stab> I’m just alright.

I am a Warrior

NOBODY expects the Order of Whispers!

Our weapons are surprise, fear and a POI that everyone overlooks.

So it’s not just impatience, apathy is a factor as well. Good to know.

Dog.1472:

Do you understand the problem here?

Yes, you are annoyed that someone with loads of free time to play, and therefore is so much better than a more casual player, is forced to go at the pace of the casual player.

Did I get that right?

Myself and others have suggested that they could fix the problem of being able to play daily by allowing 7 “dailies” to be done once a week, whether it’s all in a single day’s play session or spread out over the week.

But I’m expecting a new argument how that’s still unfair to you.

Avelos.6798:

Behellagh.1468:

Intel has been beating AMD in CPU dependent gaming since the Core 2 came out.

Phenom II.

Hahahaha! That’s a good one.

Phenom II came out in Jan 2009. Intel was already released the first generation if i7s and 2nd gen Core 2s were in their prime. Let’s see what was available then.

x4 940 Vs i7-965

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/80?vs=45

That’s OK, let’s compare it to the Core 2 series

x4 940 Vs Q9650

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/80?vs=49

I’m not trying to beat up AMD here. They ate Intel’s lunch for years as Intel hung onto the Pentium 4/D line but were caught napping when the Core 2 came out. They caught up with the 1st gen Core 2 performance with the Athlon II/Phenom II but the 2nd gen Core 2 was already out along with the 1st gen i3/i5/i7, which are now on their 4th generation. AMD now has the 2nd gen FX which can compete in multithreaded benchmarks with 2nd and 3rd gen i3/i7s, sometimes.

I’m simply being a realist. AMD is a step or two behind Intel in performance. What AMD has going for it is price. Also the FX-4300/4350 matches up well with the i3-3220/3240 in price and performance. It’s just top end is out of reach.

Frame pacing is useless because it’s not implemented yet for Dx9.

Oh yea, it’s going to be like night and day to you.

I wouldn’t bother experimenting with overclocking until you break in the system, get a sense of it’s stability, temperatures, general performance. From what I can see online you should be able to get a 20% (4.2GHz) overclock fairly easily.

Cymric.7368:

Turamarth.3248:

If the material vanishes but the gold not wouldn´t that lead to an inflation?

It is natural for more and more gold to enter the system for an mmo and that is neither an inflation nor necessary a bad thing.

Imagine a game that has 1000 account, each account have an average of 10 gold, 10,000 gold in the entire system. Sometime later, the game has grow to 10,000 account and if each has 10gold on average again, there are now 100,000 gold in the system. Its only nature for the MMO’s economy to grow as the game grows.

Yes but the increased population didn’t affect the per capita average.

Next is the assumption that more gold will lead to inflation. Again, wrong. Whether or not inflation happen is dependent on the ratio of gold to other materials/drop entering the economy. If ANet suddenly double the gold supply, but increase mob drops and harvesting nodes yield by 10x there will be no inflation, in fact, the cost of everything will drop and deflation will happen.

(note: By doubling gold supply I mean the gold that is left in the system after taking into account gold sinks)

No because you are describing a system that expanded naturally with population. The gold and drops per capita has remained the same.

Lastly, inflation is the economy’s way of finding an equilibrium, its the game’s way of telling the players “maybe you shouldn’t farm CoF path 1 so much and farm drops instead?”. Hyper inflation is bad, because it force the players to store their wealth in some other asset that is not as convenient as gold, but inflation itself isn’t.

And most definitely no. Inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. This happens when more gold is in the game and it’s not due to player growth. The average gold per player has increased but the supply of goods hasn’t. This means more gold chasing after the same supply of goods so prices will rise to a new equilibrium point. The change is due to inflation but inflation isn’t the method to get it there, that’s simple supply and demand.

We know but budget eliminates the i5.

So Ghastly from AC, Nightmare from TA or Kodan from HotW.

Legendaries are just exotic weapons with very pretty effects attached to them. You are doing all the work or spending all that money simply because it looks cool.

Goldselling is a reality in MMOs. Cash to Gems to Gold alleviate this a bit by providing a legal outlet for those who would like to buy gold without they fear of identity theft, account theft or malware.

The alternative to a cash shop is subscription. And if your playtime or income is variable month to month it can be a problem. A cash shop allows those willing to pay to pay and play while allowing those who can’t or won’t to play as well. Publishers and devs get money while more people are playing the game than if the game was subscription only. Player population IS content in the MMO world. The larger the population you have, the more likely they will be willing to stay.

tolunart.2095:

Essence Snow.3194:

I’ll get back to ya in the morning. Although I agree with you on a few things, I disagree on most.

He’s trying to explain the way this stuff works. You can disagree all you want, but reality does not change to match what you want it to be.

The way the TP works, there is an opportunity to do things that some people recognize and make use of. If you change the way the TP works, those same people will adapt their strategy to the new rules and continue doing what they are doing – making money. Nothing is going to change that short of eliminating the TP altogether, which simply will not happen.

The TP is a simplified simulation of real-world commerce, and so many of the things that happen there also happen here, including wholesale buying and distribution. Traders who buy and sell through the TP are doing essentially the same thing that stores from Target to Saks Fifth Ave. do, buying items in bulk and selling them at a markup.

Essence isn’t one of the ones who believe flipper are manipulating the marketplace making items more expensive. His complaint is they can make more money doing this than any other activity even before the expected speedrun nerf. And that frosts him and he wants it to be equally nerfed by some means. Problem is any suggestions that have been tossed about, from 7 day wait on resale, account bound all purchases, limit maximum change on daily income or a tax on the extremely wealthy ranges from hurting everyone to outright class warfare driven by jealousy.

So how awful those flippers are for paying more for an item and selling items for less while making money at it. They need to be punished.

Michael Fejervary.8576:

TBH.

The constant reference to patient vs. impatient buyer/seller starts to get a little offensive and insulting after awhile since some of you have this need to keep assuming that impatient people make up the total of those who do not use buy/sell orders and thus it is only the impatient people that empower flippers.

Then explain why you would sell an item immediately at a 50% discount to the lowest sale price or buy an item that is twice the price of the highest bid? Because you like to overpay for an item or receive significantly less ifor selling it? Of course not, it’s because of the immediacy that you are willing pay a markup or accept a discount. If the root of that isn’t impatience than what is it?

Only $50 retail for the game back last December. Spent nothing more since. And the game was on sale at the time.

:p

I like to show my work. Makes it a little more believable than tossing out a number.

Spidy’s Gem numbers have been junk for a while now. Broke sometime mid June.

GuildWarsTrade has the Gold to Gem price at 3.38G for 100 gems. The Gem to Gold price is 72.25% of that or roughly 2.44G per 100 gems. So 4000 gems are 40 × 2.44 or roughly 97.6 gold as of 8:57p EDT.

Essence Snow.3194:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Per John

John Smith.4610:

A dozen players with 10k gold wouldn’t even scrape one of those markets.

That was specific to certain markets within the economy quite some time ago. Ergo, it doesn’t necessarily apply to the over all context to which you quoted.

Ursan.7846:

In the end, flipping is a service. People spend money for convenience. This cannot be denied. As long as there is demand for this service, it will remain profitable. It’s the same as getting tipped for portal JPs or being paid to run people through dungeons in GW1.

I might have to debate on the validity of flipping here being a “service”. The demand is for the items, not the “service”. With or without the “service” the demand remains the same.

One problem we have in debates like this is we don’t have any information about volume. All we have are snapshots of current stock that are updated every couple of minutes. Without a good sense about the number of items traded in time between snapshots we may not have an actual grasp on the true volume of trades that are going on. Flippers have a better grasp of the true volume since they are acutely aware how fast an item is bought and sold by actually buying and selling the item in bulk.

Someone has to post bids and put items up for sale. Sure players can do it themselves but the majority of them are an impatient lot. They want coin or the item now, not in an hour/end of play session/day/week from now. That’s the service a flipper brings. They wait so you don’t have to. Yes it’s Pawn Stars of Tyria and Chumlee is a Charr.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Yeah, you’re right he didn’t ask about how the laptop compares to the current top end Intel desktop CPU, he asked what would meet or surpass his desktop in performance. Whether he meant performance in general or performance in Guild Wars 2, I can’t say.

If we are talking about performance in general, then you’re right.

If we are talking about Guild Wars 2 the 4700MQ has worse single thread performance though, depending on the benchmark its anywhere between 6-11% worse. I was wrong when I said any mobile processor would be worse, the 4800MQ, 4900MQ and 4930MX are better single thread performers than the 3570K and better suited for Guild Wars 2. This is at stock clocks.

And that’s why my initial post low-balled it by saying that laptop’s CPU is within 10% of his desktop. And also why I broke it up between CPU, close in performance, and GPU, no where near in performance. Both sides of the equation needs to be judged independently first before you can draw conclusions about the two halfs together. At least that’s how I would look at laptops. Personally the idea of a good gaming laptop, equivalent to a nice desktop rig but at an affordable price just makes me facepalm because I’m a realist.

The GTX 780M is a nice call but like the mobile CPUs you listed, laptops that include those and/or the 780M will cost more than his $1200 budget.

@Essence you are forgetting that in the EU there’s roughly a 20% VAT included on the price. So you can’t just do a currency conversion.

@woutterr I was going to guess Dutch or German. Your English is very good. Assuming the case (it’s not listed in the parts list anymore) is still included in that price I don’t see a problem.

As for a 3rd party CPU cooler, what is good and inexpensive in the US are the brands Xigmatek and Cooler Master tower style coolers. Seemingly always on sale and with rebates. No idea on their availability or price over there. I think you have Scythe still available in Europe, US distributor folded, they are also a very good brand but I don’t know the current prices anymore, they may not be as inexpensive.

Now AMD’s FX CPU takes a slightly different approach. Their goal is try and get the same performance as hyperthreading but using two simpler, less superscaled cores. Thus the “module” was born.

An AMD “module” consists of two smaller cores that use some shared front and back end portions of a normal core, to save on space. So lets start from the goal, two threads running on one module, that’s two cores, taking 9.8 seconds to run, the same time two threads take on an HT Intel core. But what happens when you only need to run one thread? Due to performance loss when running both cores at the same time within a module (sharing the front and back end has a penalty), a single thread runs about 25% faster so one thread only takes 7.85 seconds.

So on an AMD FX, one thread takes 7.85 seconds to run, two threads but on a single core 15.7 seconds and two threads running on both cores in the module 9.8 seconds. This means Intel runs one thread or two threads with traditional multitasking about 50% faster and only when using HT on the Intel does AMD catches up. That’s why the 2 module/4 core FX-4xxx targets the i3 dual core with HT and the 4 module/8 core FX-8xxx targets the i7 quad core with HT.

So while we get the FX-8350 neck and neck on Cinebench multithreaded with an i7-2600K (like I said in my first post, AMD is running a step or two behind), if you aren’t fully engaging both CPUs with 8 threads, then Intel takes the lead.

I forgot to note that single core performance between the FX and the older K10 Athlon II/Phenom II CPUs is pretty much the same. Where AMD gained on Intel is when all cores are busy.

So why does all this matter? All this superscalar, multithreaded, hyperthreaded, “module” stuff. Because in any program there is always one thread that has more work to do than the others. And obviously it can only run as fast as a single core will allow it to. So that’s where single core performance comes in. In many games this is the renderer, the code that takes the current game state and the direction you are looking in and converts it into DirectX 3D instructions that the graphics driver then converts into hardware commands for the video card you have in your rig. At some point the renderer has to wait on the graphics driver to get done (which is waiting on the video card to give it the go ahead on excepting more data and instructions) so it’s really the combination of the renderer and the graphics driver that can’t exceed the performance of a single core.

While Dx11 makes it a lot easier to break the renderer into multiple threads itself, to take advantage of more cores, it’s very difficult to do with Dx9 and 10 as they weren’t designed for it.

So this is how we end up with single core performance mattering and why AMD is currently at a major disadvantage.

TL;DR version

While AMD’s FX can keep up with a fully thread loaded i3 or i7 when number of Intel cores equals AMD FX modules, Intel easily pulls away when fewer and fewer threads are running at the same time. And since most games aren’t running lots of equally time consuming threads at the same time, performance boils down to the time it takes to run the slowest thread on a single core and in that case Intel wins.

I hope that is helpful and not to confusing.

Fermi.2409:

It’s not Anet’s fault in the slightest. AMD just can’t keep with Intel core for core atm, so when you use an AMD CPU in this game you’re hugely kitten.

It basically comes down to the fact that GW2 can’t take advantage of enough of the cores of the AMD CPUs to get performance on par with Intel stuff. For example:

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/677?vs=697

In the single threaded benchmarks, Intel’s lowest end i series CPU outperforms AMD’s highest offering. In the multithreaded benches, it’s the opposite. iirc GW2 only uses 2 cores, so AMD’s weaker performance per core holds them back massively.

Also, unlike Intel, AMD doesn’t show linear gains from overclocking, so even if you can get to 5 GHz you’re not getting the same boost as an equally overclocked Intel CPU would.

Equal in percentage overclock or equal in clock speed. Asking because if you are talking clockspeed then you are just resurrecting the “megahertz myth” that different CPUs can do the same amount of work in the same number of cycles and that’s never been true.

I’m going to get slightly technical here but I’ll try to simplify it if I can. Since the original Pentium, nearly all desktop CPUs are superscalar, meaning they can execute more than one instruction at a time. It can do this because there is duplicate internal functionality in the CPU. Multiple integer math units for instance. The CPU looks at the code it’s about to execute and determines which instructions could be executed at the same time without altering the purpose of the code. So for example if you have A+B=C and D*E=F, those can be done at the same time while A+B=C, C*D=F can’t be.

Now over the years since the Pentium, CPU designs have become even more superscalar. Now the problem is the more duplicate functionality you add to the core, the less likely that they will be used to their fullest. Intel’s “fix” for this is hyperthreading. By running two different threads at the same time, they can increase how often the duplicate functionality is used since the two threads shouldn’t be dependent on each other’s code at all.

Let me step back a moment and talk about multitasking for a moment. Multitasking at it’s simplest is allowing two programs/threads run on the same core while maintaining the illusion that they are running at the same time. They aren’t, they are simply time sharing the same core, one runs for say a millisecond, then the other one and then back to the first one, etc. If each of the two threads take 5 seconds to run alone, when multitasking they will both take 10 seconds, the sum of their run times.

Now hyperthreading (HT) can affect this. First the two threads are no longer time sharing the same core by alternating who’s running, they are running at the same time. They both think they have 100% of the core to themselves but because the core can use it’s superscalar nature more efficiently with two threads than just one, they now each run a little faster than if they were alternating so instead of taking 5 seconds each to run, they now take 4.9 seconds each or 9.8 seconds in total instead of 10 seconds.

This is an important point when dealing with Intel CPUs. One thread running takes 5 seconds, two threads running without HT 10 seconds, but two threads with HT take 9.8 seconds. Next post is about AMD FX CPUs.

All I know is the new framerate leveler for crossfire setups is Dx10/11 only right now, no Dx9 or OpenGL support. Since we’re Dx9 here …

I as a rule don’t bother with beta drivers unless they have a specific fix for a game I’m playing.

It is 70c but when it get close to that the cooler fan shoots up to maximum and that takes the edge off right quick. Don’t know when the last time I reset CoreTemp min/max values on my system but my range is 23c-64c with my current temp at 56/57c. That’s 3 of the 4 cores on my K10 based A8 and it’s integrated GPU running seti@home.

Sunfury may have inadvertently blocked the case’s vents or located the tower in an area that heat that’s being expelled can be ingested again. I once had a piece of clear plastic shrink wrap fragment from a new DVD case get sucked up against one of the vents in my case. Couldn’t tell it was there at a glance. Found it by passing my hand along the case and poof, when removed temps dropped 5c (happened to be the vent closest to the CPU).

I’m going to chime in where I’m not wanted for a moment.

It’s not just a problem with GW2. Intel has been beating AMD in CPU dependent gaming since the Core 2 came out. AMD almost catches up only to see Intel release the next iteration of CPU and pushing the lead out again.

Here is an example of what I’m getting at. When a game is GPU capped, it doesn’t really matter which brand are using. You can see this here showing Metro 2033 performance, a game that’s known to be GPU limited (even more so at 2560×1440). But when a game isn’t GPU bound as seen here showing Civ 5 performance, Intel is the clear favorite.

Just wanted to make it clear it’s not just a Guild Wars 2 thing.

Except Ilithis the CPU benchmark database at Notebook check shows the i7-4700MQ having nearly the same performance as his desktop i5-3570K which is what he asked. He didn’t ask about a laptop with similar performance to the current top end Intel desktop CPU, just to what he had.

Smith.1826:

If the endgoal is to make everyone equal, seems to me that it’d make more sense to get rid of the things that cause the inequality.

What supply poor players extra gold or busy players more hours in a day? Oh I know, give everybody a free set of “new items” that the gating mechanism was going to slow down the introduction of. Everyone is now equal with no effort on their part plus there’s no longer any long term goal.

LordByron.8369:

people farm cof for legendaries:

Both precursor, materials and stuff get CONSUMED! thus vanish.

If its true maybe if i buy t6 mats the gold doesn t vanish, the material itself VANISHES.

You know what is the only thing that remains polluting the market?

The flippers margin!

And the gold a flipper earns can’t be used for legendaries? He can’t use it to buy the materials and precursor he needs to craft his?

Players who run cof are putting time in doing speedruns to earn their gold. A flipper puts in time and a bank roll in to earn his. So why is earning it on the TP evil while earning it doing speedruns isn’t?

Smith.1826:

That still doesn’t answer my question. Why do timegates have to exist at all, in any way, shape or form? It doesn’t do anything to make tasks feel less ‘grindy’: Press a button each day for a year or press the button 365 times during a week, you’re still just pressing a button.

Is it so players simply don’t get the rewards instantly? If that’s the case, the game may have more to do with having players emphasize more on ‘rewards’ rather than ‘content’ then you’d think.

I don’t see any why there’s any need to dictate how someone wishes to spend their game time.

Because it levels the playing field between the wealthy and the poor, in both terms of game wealth and playing time. So we have a new currency or craft material that is account bound that take minimal effort to get. This way the wealthy can’t simply buy the items with this currency or craft the item any faster than a poor player and the same holds true with players who can play all day versus those who can play for an hour. Everyone is equal.

What I am for, because not everyone can play a minimal amount of time a day, is to be allowed to earn up to 7 days worth of time-gated items per 7 days. So someone could get all 7 whatevers in 2 hour in one day, but no more than 7 per week. This keeps the intention intact while being flexible enough for players who can’t log in every night.

Dog.1472:

Galen Grey.4709:

real value which is 7 days.

You need to stop posting and get it through your head that THIS IS WHAT TIME GATED CONTENT IS

I do not want gear that is worth 7 days. I want gear that is worth a certain amount of time, time that I can spend when I want to.

7 days is not the same amount of game time for everyone AT ALL.

YES WE GET THAT! THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT.

But you aren’t listening to Galen at all. The devs want players to earn gear no faster than 1 piece per 15 days, using Galen’s number. This way they can string along vertical progression people like you for years on this one tier while not upsetting the horizontal progression people as much because it takes such a long time.

It levels the playing field between those who want it and those who feel forced into getting it.

I can only answer in general terms about the video card. The HD 7770 is around 45% slower than an HD 7870. The HD 7790 is around 30% slower, the HD 7850 around 15% slower (note the pattern).

The GT 620 isn’t even considered a gaming card. The GT 640 is around 70% slower than the HD 7870 and I have one site reporting the GT 630 at 80% slower. The GTX 650 Ti, not Boost model, is close to an HD 7790 in performance while the GTX 650 is slower than the HD 7770, at half the performance of the HD 7870. The GTX 650Ti Boost is only 10% slower.

Again these video card performance numbers are average performance based charts from TechPowerUp where they test across 18 different games. Closest we have for this game is an old TomsHardware article on Guild Wars 2 performance when the game first came out.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-6.html

An SSD, solid-state drive, is just a really big flash drive but configured for high performance. Upside is major reductions in boot and load times, usually in half. Downside is cost per GB which referencing the parts in your list is about 7x higher. Yes, you can go without, you do have an actual hard drive on the parts list, the 500GB Toshiba. The OS can always go there for now.

But the gold flippers are gaining is already in the game world. They aren’t adding to it.

But adding to it is what item drops do, add gold to the world when sold to vendors. We also get direct coin drops. The TP, looking at it in general, moves existing coin between players for items while removing some of the coin from the world. It doesn’t create any new coin, ever.

Now since the vast majority of players are bonking critters on the head and taking their stuff, that’s a lot of potential wealth flowing in every day. How much of it is converted directly into new coin at vendors Vs old coin at the TP, which also destroys some old coin in the process?

The trick is to balance new coin creation with old coin destruction. This is just general game economics I’m talking about. Sources and sinks. And since using the TP doesn’t create any new coin, only sinks some old, traders, flippers and salvagers aren’t growing the money supply, they can’t.

So no, TP flipping isn’t making gold easier to get because it destroys it, but as an affect of using the TP, not the activity of flipping.

Stormclaw.5031:

Magitech armor on female humans has a big area cut out to show the thighs. I thought we moved past this sexism. Isn’t this the reddit-friendly, socially-aware MMO?

That is preparing to go into Asia where females in MMOs are frequently dressed in armor like this (from NCSOFT’s Blade & Soul). Linking because attachment may be NSFW.

http://bns.gameguyz.com/sites/default/files/pictures/1355902267_0.jpg