Guild Wars 2

With that much on a budget you can probably get a card that will run the game on high. What I would buy with that budget from Nvidia is a GTX 660Ti or if you’re partial to AMD the 7950. Personally, I’m a fan of Nvidia and would grab a GTX 660Ti if I were looking to upgrade right now with that budget.

Have you upgraded your graphics driver lately? What graphics card are you running and I can point you in the right direction to install the latest graphics driver for your specific card.

Yeah, I would check to make sure the discrete graphics module is being used rather than the embedded graphics module from Intel. The Catalyst Control Center should be able to assist you with this methinks.

I have a feeling this belongs more in the bug thread than the technical support thread. I would create a support ticket for this issue and see what ArenaNet has to say on the matter.

I also have a similar card to the GTX 560 Ti and my temperatures are slightly under 80C under load as well. This is normal and you should really only worry if the temperature gets to 90C.

ubaid.8213:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

ubaid.8213:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

For both of you, I would suggest trying to update your graphics drivers.

@Sammule: I’m not sure what to do with an apple product for graphics drivers, I suggest posting in the Mac sub-forums to hopefully get a better response.

@ubaid: Give this one a whirl, do a clean installation when installing the new graphics driver:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/59642

Been there. Done that. Unfortunately, the problem still persists. I even used Driver Sweeper to ensure a clean install and… nothing.

Other support threads suggest changing settings in the “NVIDIA Control Panel,” which I don’t have.

Just kind of ready to uninstall and move on to another game at this point.

Well, that is a problem in itself. The Nvidia Control Panel should be showing up. Have you looked in the windows control panel yet for the Nvidia control panel? Another thing to check is to make sure that windows services didn’t disable the Nvidia Control Panel. I’ve seen that as a problem in the past as well, but that was with Windows 7 x64.

Yes, I’ve checked. Still no luck.

I’m going to guess that this is a change that took place with an update, and that there’s simply no help for it, and give up on GW2 altogether. I can use the drive space for Neverwinter, anyway.

Thanks for trying to help.

I guess a last resort idea would be to open a support ticket with ArenaNet to try and solve the problem. There is defiantly something wrong if you don’t have the Nvidia Control Panel.

Solicia.2861:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Solicia.2861:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

That RAM speed shouldn’t be an issue. My sibling’s build runs a dated system with DDR2 RAM @ 667MHz. Due to the ‘double data rate’ multiple your 333 by 2 and account for some round off errors and you come out with the same speed as my sibling’s build which runs the game. It doesn’t run the game well, but well enough at 25+ FPS.

I figured as much, but as I don’t know the rest of your siblings specs, hard to compare, but this particular build should NOT be getting 25+ fps, but should be MUCH closer to 60 fps (should honestly be higher than that I think, but I’m very content at 60).

This game is only a part of the reason I’m upgrading the processor, the other part is I just really wanted too.

My bad, they’re running a C2D E6320 overclocked slightly to 2.0Ghz, a GTX 650Ti, and 2GB of RAM.

Yea, if that’s your build, and you’re getting about 25 fps, there isn’t ANY reason I shouldn’t be doubling that, and to be getting around that on low settings at my build? Yea, shenanigans ensues.

Parts just came in for new computer, I’m starting building it up on saturday, watch my blood pressure soar if this game doesn’t break 60 fps >->

Well prepare to find ways to reduce your blood pressure. If you’re expecting 60FPS in all areas of the game you are in for a surprise because you won’t be able to in large dynamic events and chaotic WvW battles of 100+ people. No one can…unless you have a supercomputer handy from what I hear.

Godmoney.2048:

I just ran memtest86 for over and hour while walking the dog, just got home and it’s still running. How long should memtest86 run for?

Let’s assume I have a bad stick of RAM, is that going to corrupt files on my HD?

What’s interesting is that I have no problem with the other 200+ games on my steam account. This week alone I finished up Shank2, Darksouls, etc. I have never had any issue with any other game but Gw2.

This is at least my 7th computer I’ve built so I run a pretty tight ship. After years of building and owning pc gaming rigs I’m pretty sure the problem is something specific to Gw2.

I’ll run memtest86 again tonight while I sleep. I hope it’s just a bad stick cause replacing some RAM is easy and cheap. What I suspect though is that problem does lie in coding.

The duration of memtest depends on the speed of your RAM and how much RAM you have. The faster the RAM the less amount of time it takes to check it all. The more RAM you have the more time it takes. I think when I had 12GB of 1600Mhz it took me 30-45 minutes? I can’t remember but it was somewhere in there. It’s also recommended to let memtest do multiple passes just to make sure the RAM is good.

If you start from scratch by removing everything Guild Wars 2 from your computer, disconnect the internet, then toss in the disk. It should get data from the disk because the system shouldn’t know any better that there has been patches without an internet connection.

If that doesn’t work, I’m at a loss. I can’t replicate your situation because I have moved past CD/DVD ROM drives and just use the internet for everything. You can issue a support ticket to get an answer from ArenaNet themselves to see if they can’t help you.

Goloith.6349:

With your i7 920 you should be able to hit 4-4.2 ghz easily. That’s what I’m running and it helps getting that extra 0.60 ghz out.

I’m running with the following settings:
Tuning Mode: Extreme OC
Ai Overclock Tuner: Manual
BCLK Frequency: 199
PCIE Frequency: 100
DRAM Frequency: 1595 (I’m using 1600 atm).
(scroll down)
CPU Voltage: 1.30000
QPI/DRAM Core Voltage: 1.31250
(scroll down)
DRAM Bus Voltage: 1.51106
Everything else should be left on auto.

for your memory make sure it’s set to what’s on the memory sticks.

COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus and you’ll get the same results
http://tinyurl.com/bpw59rz

Sadly, not every processor is created equal. Some eat more voltage to get to higher clocks than others to remain stable. For instance, my processor I could only get to 4.1Ghz before I reached what I consider the safe voltage wall.

Well lets get a little more information here. When was the last time you played Guild Wars 2? The last major update was on April 30th, since then there has been a handful of smaller updates to fix the big update.

The game client IIRC is around 200k+ files, so if you’re seeing that amount you might be downloading the entire game again. Reasons this could be happening is that the gw2.dat file might have been corrupted for some unknown reason and the game needed to repair everything so it downloads the entire game again. If you have used the -repair switch on your Guild Wars 2 shortcut, take it out unless you need to repair the game’s files.

isthis.8916:

Kyllaa – but the discs are filled with data!?
Ilithis – updating is fine, but i don’t want it to download the files that’s already on the discs.

Seeing as this is already 2 days old, you could have already downloaded the entire game assuming your download speed on your internet connection is faster than 97kB/s. Even a 1Mbps connection can pull that.

If you pay for data then I can understand your issue and I recommend making sure to have enough for about 500MB-1GB per month for GW2 updates alone.

Turn off your internet access when you toss the CD into the machine and see what happens.

Solfan.7531:

Well if you have a Nvidea or Radeon card in your mobile, it disables the intel 4000 card, doesnt it?
Well if I go for Haswell, I have to wait atleast 1month and a half, and probably the laptops aint better than Ivy`s for the same price.

I`m so tempted to buy it right now, been waiting a month already cause I had to sell my desktop to move, now I that made enough money to buy it, I have to wait until june, so frustrating.

So sad there isnt enough date to compare all the stuff

Yeah, if there is a discrete graphics module inside the laptop the user can switch between the embedded graphics and discrete graphics. I guess the point that I was making was that with Intel beefing up its embedded graphics, you’ll be seeing less and less GT 610 – GT 645 from Nvidia.

Stormcrow.7513:

Any overclock you do should be tested for stability. Using utilities for overclocking is ok but generally you will get lower voltages doing a manual setup.
There are tons of great sites to help you out.
www.overclockers.net is a great resource to help you out.
My AMD system and my Intel system are/were both overclocked for GW2.
I would bet your issues stem from stability.

Haha, did you even read the post? He’s/She’s not looking to overclock nor has he/she. We’re trying to pin down what is going on, because ArenaNet is going to keep pointing that the system is overclocked and that is the problem. There might be some automatic overclocking going on which is what I suspect, but I’m not entirely sure.

Solfan.7531:

if only give us some stuff to check out, like prices and laptops…
I cant find anything on google about release of new cpus on laptops or price.
It`s to sad having to wait alteast a month to play again.

Haswell is 10-15% faster than Ivy, while GPU should still be the same, right?
I hope it`s worth the wait.

Haswell will be in the ballpark of 10% fast theoretically. In practice, no one really knows how much better it will perform. The benchmarks done on the processors are just that, benchmarks, and while you can estimate how much performance gain there is. No one will really know how much your code will compile faster or how much faster you can encode audio/video using your favorite encoding software until people get their hands on the hardware itself.

The embedded GPU is a different story. Intel was lagging behind everyone simply because everyone started their graphics division before Intel did. AMD is currently ahead in embedded graphics which is their main competitor in terms of consumer desktop CPU and embedded GPU designs. However, that might change once Broadwell, the iteration of Haswell, comes out in 2014.

It’s going to be a bit more convoluted to compare Intel’s Ivy Bridge graphics compared to Haswell’s graphics because Haswell has multiple offerings this time around. The HD 4600 which is the lowest tier, the HD 5100 Iris, the HD 5200 Iris Pro, and perhaps some ones between the HD 4600 and HD 5100 Iris that I am forgetting. The Iris Pro is supposed to be pretty decent, bordering on mobile entry discrete graphics like the GTX 650M from Nvidia. I still wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who wants to really play games, but it is a huge step forward for Intel in the race against AMD and gaining ground into having no need for lower end discrete mobile graphics solutions which will hamper sales for AMD and Nvidia from their low end mobile perspective. With that said, the HD 4600 is theoretically going to be about 25% better than Ivy Bridge’s HD 4000. Keep in mind that 25% of a low number is still a low number, so don’t expect anything groundbreaking here.

Intel seems more occupied playing catch up in other areas of the CPU, which should almost start being call a SoC in my opinion. Areas like graphics to catch AMD and Nvidia and low power consumption to start eying up with ARM designs from Qualcomm and others so that Intel can successfully enter the tablet and smartphone arena. Intel doesn’t really need to push the CPU architecture to make leaps and bounds in performance like they did in the past because they are top dog in that area right now. Hopefully they’ll start offering their CPUs with a more competitive price like AMD and bump i3’s to be dual core or quad core solutions, i5’s to quad core hyper threaded solutions, and i7’s to hex/octa core with and without hyper threading.

Solfan.7531:

Hmn, any release date for Haswell already? I mean, even if they are out by June, I guess it will take a while until they release laptops having new processors, right?

Dealers like Dell and HP have earlier access to the processors to prepare products that include the new hardware before the hardware’s actual release date. There should be some laptops out and about within a week of the announced release date, I would think.

However, the graphics Intel is bragging about is still lackluster compared to AMD’s embedded graphics solutions and discrete graphics cards by AMD and Nvidia. The absolute top end of Intel’s embedded graphics series, the 5200 Iris Pro, are expected to perform similar to the 650M by Nvidia. They are making leaps and bounds in progress, which is great, but they’re not quite there yet. I still wouldn’t rely on hardcore gaming for Intel, but they are for sure moving into the mid-end gaming sector in terms of graphics performance when compared to Nvidia’s discrete solutions.

Damash.1074:

I found the problem… i got a dual core and one is 105`C when the pc shuts down and the other 128`C…

So im going to clean that up to remove all the dust, and maybe the cooler is broke but i will replace that if it is broke.

Im glad to know that its a simple issue and easy fixable and i want to thank the ppl that helped me!!!
Hope to see you in-game, if you are in the same server :P Thanks Guys

Dear wow…enough to boil water… Anyways, I’m surprised your processor still works. Besides cleaning dust and checking to make sure the cooler is attached, you will probably want to replace the thermal paste between the CPU cooler and the CPU itself. There are a ton of videos you can watch online on how to properly apply thermal paste.

Joriel.1530:

I was searching on the web, theres tomshardware benchs but they are 7 months old and it was in PVE, we need this answer from Anet, wats the best CPU for gw2?
i7s? i5s? intel’s 6 cores perhaps?
will the game benefit from a 4.5+ghz overclock?

i want to know because i wonder if its worth to upgrade my i7 920 oc @ 3.6ghz for the upcoming i7-4770k.

I have experienced a few times 10~12 fps in the middle of massive zergs at 1080p res.
although the normal is like 15~20fps min.

I run the 930 clocked a little higher than your processor and I have to say that running the game on Intel’s newer architectures helps a lot, especially when you overclock them to 4.5Ghz. If you don’t mind upgrading your CPU for one game, then yes its worth it if you justify spending that amount of money for 30 FPS @ 1080p in WvW battles with 100+ people and better FPS all around in other parts of the game.

Does the Sabertooth 990FX have automatic overclocking capabilities? I know some motherboards have that, so I would double check and make sure your motherboard does not have such options in BIOS.

Perhaps the GTX 650Ti Boost’s boost clock is what they are considering overclocking even though its part of the normal specification for the graphics card. You can try and disable the boost frequency setting and have it run at one frequency all the time.

I live and die by wireless headsets because I am not very fond of wires anymore. A few years ago I grabbed the Logitech H760 and as long as you are careful with it, its a fine piece of hardware if you like getting up from your desk and wandering around your residence while on Team Speak, Ventrilo, Mumble, Skype, etc.

ubaid.8213:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

For both of you, I would suggest trying to update your graphics drivers.

@Sammule: I’m not sure what to do with an apple product for graphics drivers, I suggest posting in the Mac sub-forums to hopefully get a better response.

@ubaid: Give this one a whirl, do a clean installation when installing the new graphics driver:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/59642

Been there. Done that. Unfortunately, the problem still persists. I even used Driver Sweeper to ensure a clean install and… nothing.

Other support threads suggest changing settings in the “NVIDIA Control Panel,” which I don’t have.

Just kind of ready to uninstall and move on to another game at this point.

Well, that is a problem in itself. The Nvidia Control Panel should be showing up. Have you looked in the windows control panel yet for the Nvidia control panel? Another thing to check is to make sure that windows services didn’t disable the Nvidia Control Panel. I’ve seen that as a problem in the past as well, but that was with Windows 7 x64.

Solicia.2861:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

That RAM speed shouldn’t be an issue. My sibling’s build runs a dated system with DDR2 RAM @ 667MHz. Due to the ‘double data rate’ multiple your 333 by 2 and account for some round off errors and you come out with the same speed as my sibling’s build which runs the game. It doesn’t run the game well, but well enough at 25+ FPS.

I figured as much, but as I don’t know the rest of your siblings specs, hard to compare, but this particular build should NOT be getting 25+ fps, but should be MUCH closer to 60 fps (should honestly be higher than that I think, but I’m very content at 60).

This game is only a part of the reason I’m upgrading the processor, the other part is I just really wanted too.

My bad, they’re running a C2D E6320 overclocked slightly to 2.0Ghz, a GTX 650Ti, and 2GB of RAM.

Lone Gamer.4291:

Hey Guild Wars 2 People, I am brand new to the game (and asking for technical help) and i am only getting 4 FPS in Plains of Ashford, right after the Charr ‘tutorial’ area. I have

Operating System: Windows XP Professional

Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz

Memory: 1982MB RAM

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC

(Integrated into the Motherboard, 256MB)

So my question is, If i were to buy a 512MB Graphics Card, Would it make any increase in my FPS at all?

Based on personal experience with my sibling’s dated system, your current bottleneck in your system is your graphics card. However, realize that you are running close to, if not the exact bare minimum requirements to run the game (not play it efficiently necessarily). My sibling’s rig had a 9800GT 512MB and ran the game slightly below 10FPS…it was pretty bad. I felt bad for them and for Christmas last year, I got them a GTX 650Ti 1GB for close to 100 bucks. This is the card I recommend to buy AT A MINIMUM to play this game around 30FPS in normal PvE at a resolution of 1600×900.

If you plan on doing large dynamic events efficiently (dragon events) or large chaotic battles of 100+ people, then I recommend coming from circa 2006ish to 2013 and purchase a new CPU and everything required to update to the latest specifications of today’s computers. If you can hold off another month or so, Intel is releasing it’s latest rendition of its consumer desktop processors codenamed Haswell. If my Nehalem buckled anywhere else besides GW2 I might upgrade to Haswell, but for now I have no need for it.

That RAM speed shouldn’t be an issue. My sibling’s build runs a dated system with DDR2 RAM @ 667MHz. Due to the ‘double data rate’ multiple your 333 by 2 and account for some round off errors and you come out with the same speed as my sibling’s build which runs the game. It doesn’t run the game well, but well enough at 25+ FPS.

What resolution do you plan on playing at?

What do you expect frame rate wise. My older GTX 560Ti 448 edition can play the game at highest settings including super sampling. Would I play it on supersampling though? No, the frame rate I get is too low for my taste in some areas. In some areas it works great, but performance varies greatly in different parts of this game.

With that said, what do you plan on doing in GW2? Things that require much more horsepower are large dynamic events (ie: dragon events) and large chaotic battles in WvW (of around 100+ people). In these situations even Intel’s higher end consumer CPUs (i5 3570K and i7 3770K) which perform slightly better than the FX 8350 will chug along. This is because the CPUs can’t keep up with what is going on, however, if you overclock your processor, it helps quite a bit. The ‘sweet spot’ for people who have the latest Intel architecture is around 4.5Ghz which nets them 30+ FPS in scenarios listed above.

Just to add to this discussion, I had a very similar problem where I would need to do repairs, but I would also sometimes get a BSOD that led me to believe that one of my sticks of RAM was bad. Some things just go bad after a while unfortunately. The weird part is that the stick of RAM passed memtest multiple times. Now that the stick is out of my system I haven’t had any problems inside or outside the game.

I’m going to make an educated guess and ask you to start checking what your GPU temperatures are around the time that the textures have gone wild. A download link can be found here:
http://www.softsea.com/download/GPU-Temp.html

Jimbob.5264:

Ok. I got a heat monitoring system. nothing is out of the ordinary or for that matter nothing is running too hot. I un-installed and re-installed the game and it still has the same issue. Got new drivers, still no change.

I’m going to assume that you know the proper thermal limits of your hardware and that you have installed the latest and greatest graphics drivers from AMD.

Here is the next thing I would check, perhaps it’s got something to do with your power supply failing or simply not giving enough ‘juice’ to all of the parts of the computer like it used to in the past. I was hoping you could give us the specifications of some of the key parts of your system. At a minimum:

The power supply.
When you purchased your computer to get an estimated age of the power supply.
The CPU.
The GPU.
—less important from here on—
The motherboard.
Number of Fans.
Number of DvD/CD/Blu-ray players.
Number of hard drives.

Damash.1074:

Its the GPU which is 60`C

BTW: my CPU is not supported by RealTemp

That is a first, I don’t think I have ever seen something not supported by Real Temp. Try good old Core Temp. I used this on my sibling’s build to make sure things are in check with their old C2D 6320.
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

60C for a graphics card is fine, so we can disregard this when considering whether or not it is overheating.

If its not the CPU overheating it might be a limitation of your power supply like abomally suggested. They degrade over time and use giving a little less power over time. It might have started to cross that line when playing something hardware intense like GW2.

For both of you, I would suggest trying to update your graphics drivers.

@Sammule: I’m not sure what to do with an apple product for graphics drivers, I suggest posting in the Mac sub-forums to hopefully get a better response.

@ubaid: Give this one a whirl, do a clean installation when installing the new graphics driver:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/59642

The problem might have something to do with a graphics driver that needs updating. What graphics card do you have and what operating system are you on?

abomally.2694:

That’s strange. You can probably uninstall the Nvidia 3D vision in control panel to fix the problem.

Yeah, it sounds like something was set to automatically turn it on. If you’re running an Nvidia graphics card, installing the aforementioned product will hold the ability to disable this feature.

Jimbob.5264:

Now forgive me if I’m wrong but if my CPU/GPU is overheating wouldn’t my PC air coolant systems freak out? they don’t seem to respond to guild wars 2 anymore than any other game I play…

More than likely yes they would freak out, but I’m also running around with my head cut off because I’m not really sure what else to suggest D=

Perhaps it could be something funky when the game tries to access a certain part of the gw2.dat file on your hard drive, which means that something might be amiss with your hard drive. More than likely though the game would crash, but it doesn’t seem to be doing that.

It could be something with a bad sector of RAM, but normally that would give you a BSOD and restart your computer.

It could be a power supply issue not giving enough ‘juice’ to the GPU, making the screen black, but normally this also shuts down your computer due to lack of power in other areas as well.

Ultimately, your hardware could be all fine, and it is something amiss with the game itself where it has trouble running on your perfectly fine hardware.

Personally, I would try uninstalling the graphics driver, then reinstalling the graphics driver.

You don’t sound the type, but is anything overclocked in your system that might introduce some degree of instability? If so, toss the clocks back to their default values and try to see if the error reproduces itself at stock clocks.

mujtaba.8167:

My drivers are up to date
The temparature is by Gamebooster
CpU 78 C
HDD 43 C
My Inteld Hd graphics 3000 wasn’t detected in 3 programs

Duh, I feel a little stupid now. I wasn’t thinking when I made my previous post. Earlier in the day I was troubleshooting a similar problem with someone who has a discrete graphics module that would show up. The HD 3000 is on board with the CPU, so it won’t have its’ own reading.

If that CPU temperature is during gameplay, you sir have a well oiled machine. However, if that is idle/not doing anything intensive, then we might have a problem. That would be a little high for an idle temperature, in which case I would recommend tearing apart your laptop and give it a thorough cleaning. Sometimes youtube has detailed videos on how to disassemble a particular model of laptop, clean it and apply new/better thermal paste, and put it back together.

Here is a video of a total disassembly of a similar laptop model. Personally, the drill is a little excessive and all you should need is a screw driver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am6na_9HDww
or this one, it’s hard to say which is more similar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzwT21jcCLY

Solfan.7531:

I want a Laptop cause I`m traveling this summer and it`s not possible to bring a desktop around like that ( US > Italy > GB > US )
Both Laptops have an i7 3630QM Processor, Lenovo has the choice of GT 750M in SLI in Ultrabay, but I dont think it would give a sick perfomance vs GTX 670MX, dont even know if laptops SLI works on GW2.
I plan to get a Desktop in september – october, Haswell should be available in few months.

I plan to do PVE ( dungeons ) and SPvP, I dont really like WvW and when I do it, I go roaming.
There is a comparision of those 2 GPU, GTX 670MX is 40% stronger than a single GT 750M, but in SLI, the GT 750M is better, but the final question is, worth going SLI in GW2?

Yeah, so I would avoid SLI due to potential heat issues associated with having two graphics modules generating heat. I tossed my GTX 560Ti (non 448 edition back in the day) with my ancient 9800GT just to see what would happen. Turns out that when you have terrible case ventilation, the heat really builds up and the cards run much warmer than if there were only one inside. In a laptop I could see this being a problem when not properly cooled by propping it up, etc. etc.

However, if its a liquid cooled laptop (I can’t wait until these arrive on the market) then I don’t see an issue with the SLI setup. Even though they’re less powerful GPUs thus probably generating less heat than 2 GTX 670MX chips, I can still see that it might cause issues, especially when ‘on average’ or ‘less than average’ cleaning/maintenance is occurring.

For what you will be doing in GW2, the ASUS laptop is your better bet and if I was in a position similar to yours, it would be the one I would choose to go with. I hope this helps!

mujtaba.8167:

intel core dual core 2.5 ghz
intel hd graphics 3000
4 gb ram dual channel 1066mhz

in 40v40 zerg fights i get around 30 fps

You never mention what settings you are playing at, in particular your resolution.

Uhhh, eventually at some point in the process of installing the game it needs to download all the updates since the launch of the game. Might as well download from the internet since the stuff from the disk is mostly ancient news by now.

Just to clarify, you are running the latest versions of your graphics driver correct?

If not, update those.
If so, let’s check your temperatures just in case. I would suggest using these to check your CPU and GPU temperatures when running GW2:
http://www.gputemp.com/
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2089/real-temp-3-70/mirrors

Haha, I was actually thinking the same thing. A 40v40 in WvW would destroy my CPU. I’m assuming he isn’t playing at 1080p though, I can see 720p producing those results.

As Kyllaa said, check your CPU and GPU temperatures with these (or other tools if you use other things):
http://www.gputemp.com/
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2089/real-temp-3-70/mirrors

For your graphics drivers, you can find those here:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Graphics&ProductLine=Laptop+graphics+drivers&ProductProduct=2nd+Generation+Intel%C2%AE+Core%E2%84%A2+Processors+with+Intel%C2%AE+HD+Graphics+3000%2f2000

Now that you mention you have ‘one of those wireless internet connections’ and asked how big the download is, I’m going to assume you are on a 3G/4G connection. A 1Mbps connection is equivalent to ~125KBps download, so everything is normal here. Those ‘wireless connections’ are not going to provide fast speeds like cable internet or other forums of internet.

I’m going to go out on a stretch here for the home run and assume you live in the country where internet is not readily available. If so, hopefully it will soon because you can probably expect GW2 to download a couple hundred MB every month which probably does not look nice on a bill. However, its better than nothing!

I had some skill lag yesterday while in WvW. The WvW zones were very populated, so I would just avoid popular WvW times…which is redundant since the more people in WvW, the more fun it ends up being IMO. It’s on ArenaNet’s end somewhere, whether its their game improperly handling a non perfect internet connection which other games do with ease since I have never encountered skill lag in any other game I have played besides the original GW. I suspect since GW2 uses an overhauled GW1 engine, the problem is rooted deep within the engine itself perhaps.

Here’s to an eventual DX11 engine…

Well is there a need to have a laptop? If you’re constantly traveling and you absolutely can’t have a desktop, then I can see why you would want a laptop to ‘game’ on. However, if there is no real reason to have a laptop to game versus a desktop, then I can’t recommend either since a deskto kitten uperior in everything except portability to a laptop.

With that said, I see your budget varies quite a bit since the price between the laptops are pretty big. What do you plan on doing in GW2 on that laptop?

If you plan on PvP and PvE you should be alright. This is assuming the CPU in those laptops can handle large dynamic events in GW2 like the dragon fights. I recommend at least Intel’s 3630QM. Just don’t expect more than 25FPS in large dynamic events with a laptop of this caliber.

If you plan on WvW, the more powerful the CPU the better the performance since WvW is mostly driven by the CPU. The larger the fights, the more powerful the CPU should be.

If this ASUS computer you have specced out has at least a 3630QM, I would go with that laptop.

EDIT: Hooray, the filtered section in the first ‘paragraph’ says
desktop
is
superior
but since the ‘p’ ‘is’ ‘s’ makes a ‘bad’ word with spaces, its filtered out. Fail.

1. Sorry, I can’t tell you an exact number, but its going to be a lot.
2. Is your internet connect a 1Mb (1 megabit) or 1MB (megabyte). Most internet service providers use ‘clever’ marketing to show customers speeds in Mb since the numbers will be higher than if they were converted to MB which is what everyone uses in terms of computer storage. There are 8 bits in a byte, so if you have a 1Mb connection, you would only have about 125KB download. This is right in the range of what you are getting, so it might be normal.

For instance, I pay for a 30Mb download connection. I only ever see about 3.75 MB/s download at a max (30/8=3.75)

Also, you can check out what type of connection you have at speedtest.net This will test your downlink and uplink connections giving you numbers in Mb.

I really think the confusion here is megabits versus megabytes.

Can you record the temperatures you are getting before the shutdowns? I want to make sure that the processor or graphics card is not overheating due to the extreme use of both parts when playing the game. Like 15 minutes into playing, the temperatures should already have reached their highest level when playing, so its safe to record temperatures after 15 minutes and estimate that the temperatures would be close to the temperatures of the system just before shutting down.

I recommend using real temp to check your CPU’s temperatures, which can be found here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2089/real-temp-3-70/mirrors

then you can use gpu temp to find your GPU temperature here:
http://www.gputemp.com/

Sounds about right, the gw2.dat file probably got ultra corrupted. I have a back up file I keep on my media hard drive that I update every once in a while so that I never have to wait the entire download sequence again. It hogs 15.5 GB, but saves me time if I ever need it.

That is a good question, I haven’t personally experienced satellite internet access, but I imagine that it is extremly slow as in latency is going to be high. What would you call acceptable latency. Latency is the amount of time it takes for you to input a command, have it travel to the servers, then have the result bounce back to you. For me anything over 1/4 second (250ms) is far too much, sometimes even 150ms is excessive. For PvE you can probably relax these numbers a little since precision movement/timing isn’t always needed where in PvP it is in higher regard.

To be honest you might want to consider waiting a month until the latest Intel processors debut. Haswell is expected to perform about 10% better than Ivy Bridge clock for clock due to the new architecture. If you bought today and got an Ivy Bridge, there would be no upgrade path to the latest architecture because the CPU slot changes from Ivy Bridge to Haswell. If I were you that is what I would do, wait it out just a little bit longer.

However, if you have ants in your pants and need something now. I recommend the i5 3570K if you WvW with 100+ man battles or do large dynamic events like dragons often. The ‘K’ signifies that the processor can be overclocked much easier than its non-‘K’ bretheren. The common place people overclock to get 30 frames in WvW battles with 100+ people is 4.5Ghz which I have heard is not hard to reach on Ivy Bridge assuming you have decent cooling for the processor.

I prefer my enclosed water loop solutions like the Corsair H50 to cool my processor. It’s the cheap man’s water cooling.

As for RAM, grab at least 8GB of DDR3 at 1600Mhz or more.

The best performance per dollar for a graphics card is AMD’s 7870XT, however I am a superfan of Nvidia and would suggest a similar option that FourthVariety has suggested above. A GTX 660Ti is plenty to run GW2 at highest settings if you’re playing on a single monitor at 1080p or less. If you’re running a multiple monitor setup, step it up to at least a GTX 670. Also note that Nvidia is releasing their 700 series cards soon, but there is no definite date for that as far as I know so I wouldn’t wait around for them. However, Haswell is for sure launching early June.

As for a power supply, get at least a 650W as to have enough power to supply the system after overclocking, if you choose to ever do so, and have enough power after the power supply starts to degrade because of use. As for brands, I use to buy whatever brand was cheapest and it was always the weakest link in my computer and would have to replace it every year and a half to two years it seemed. Now I have a Corsair power supply and its never given me problems in the four years I have had it.

I was never good at choosing motherboards, so I would go ahead with the ASUS board above. ASUS and Gigabyte make great motherboards, ASUS in particular I have had an awesome experience with because the board for my ancient P4 went through computer ‘hell’ and still survived with leaking capacitors.

I’m assuming you can yank the hard drive(s) and other peripherals from your old computer to use for this new one.

Currently your best bet it to submit a bug report and continue trucking along. Other than that, I don’t think there is a solution. Perhaps we’re using the same mice? I have a Razer Naga.

Do I understand you correctly and that both your CPU and GPU are at 60C when the crash happens? If so, what graphics driver are you running? I recommend getting the latest and greatest at:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista32.aspx (32-bit)
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx (64-bit)

Hmmmm, I’m going to try and avoid blaming the latest patch here. I’m going to start by guessing its an over heating issue. Can you check the temperatures you’re getting and report them back. It will also help if you list your computer specifications.

As for determining the temperature of your CPU/GPU you can use HWMonitor which can be downloaded here:
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.22-setup.exe