Guild Wars 2

No, the huge delay you are seeing is the time it takes the packets to get from your phone to ArenaNet’s servers. Having a ‘Broadband Internet Connection’ is listed as one of the minimum requirements to be play the game. I know some people on these forums have tried using services that reduce the amount of ping, you can always try those since I know some have free trials that last a certain amount of time.

Gotchaz.7865:

would increasing ram from 6 gigs 1333 to 16 gigs 1600 help at all? or would the difference be hardly noticeable?

It really depends how many other applications you use at the same time. If you have Steam, Chrome, Guild Wars 2, Mumble, and other programs that you use and have them all running at the same time they will require more RAM to stay responsive. In normal operation, my computer never sees more than 6GB of RAM in use so 16GB would be overkill for me. If you’re maxing out or near maxing out (90% or greater usage) the 6GB you have right now, then sure, upgrade to that if its a good deal.

For the average user I don’t see more than 8GB ever being used at one time.

Give us the specifications of the machine you are trying to run Guild Wars 2 on. Mainly the amount of RAM you have installed, the CPU, and the GPU.

Legacy.9571:

Hello guys,

My first post and I am looking to upgrade my computer, for better performance and it is due I mainly play Guild Wars 2 but other CPU heavy games such as Shogun2 I would like to know with the below upgrade will I notice a big difference in Guild Wars 2? Performance, Graphics and fps wise? Also if you recommend any changes to my build that could make it better for similar price?

I currently have:
Windows 8 on SSD
CPU: Q9400
Graphics: Nvidia 560GTX
Memory: 4GB DDR2

Upgrading to:
CPU: i5-4670 Haswell, 3.40GHz(Turbo 3.8GHz
MB: Gigabyte (GA-H87M-D3H) Intel H87 Micro-ATX Motherboard, Haswell, Socket LGA1150
Memory: Kingston (KHX1600C10D3B1/8G) 1x 8GB Hyper X 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL10 DIMM

With that upgrade you’ll notice quite a bit of performance increase in crowded areas of Guild Wars 2, like WvW battles and dynamic events. This is due to the increased IPC between the age old C2Q you have and the snappy new Haswell processor. In other words, the processor bottleneck will be lessened in some areas allowing for higher FPS. Assuming your older C2Q wasn’t overclocked you’ll also be getting a very nice boost in frequency which affects your single thread performance which is what Guild Wars 2 relies on to run better.

As far as better graphics, you won’t see much difference since your graphics card isn’t being upgraded or changed.

I’m going to assume you’ll be running a 64 bit operating system on this new machine to take advantage of the 8GB of RAM.

Edser.3064:

Hello everyone could someone please help me the game keeps crashing after about 5-15 mins into the game i have included the log file it says something about
Assertion: A file was corrupted in the archive. Please run once with ‘-repair’!
File: ..\..\..\Game\Main\MainCli.cpp(589)
How do i fix this and how do i run -repair? will this solve it thanks any advice would help…

Reading this might help:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

Nitro.4732:

tota.4893:

Have you tried running FurMark or some other GPU stress tester for a few minutes? If it glitches or crashes the system you either have a graphics driver problem or faulty hardware.

Oh, and if your GPU is already near dead, stress testing can kill it for good. But it sounds like you may need a new one anyways.

It could also point to an under powered GPU or an overheating issue — not necessarily a faulty component that requires replacing.

I’m on this boat, what is your power supply and temperatures when the graphics card is under load in Guild Wars 2.

Ankai.4872:

Same problem, never had any problems, just since yesterdays patch…

Altough im not using the Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2, I have the same crash.

Do you have a similar sound card? It might be related to certain hardware now not functioning correctly with the game’s audio system. Kinda like how there is the Netgear router that kinda screws up Guild Wars 2 as well.

I have a Sound Blaster as well, but mine is from 2004…I have no problems with mine though and I can get its exact model name when I have access to it. It’s like ‘Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit’ or something.

Bizarre, this deserves a bump in case others have the same problem. I doubt there are many links to older clients out there.

BaconPriest.1785:

i have an i5 3570 @ 3.4 , 16 gigs of dd3 , 480g mushkin ssd, and recently upgraded to an asus gtx 780. decided to test out wvw lastnight. with everything, and i mean everything … ultra shadows, supersampling, wvw detail and character limit on highest etc in 1080p during huge fights it was dropping down to 10 – 15fps. so to say youre getting 60 – 100fps is bullkitten unless you have everything on the lowest settings in a low resolution, and even then im not convinced

Hence why he never came back with vids, because everyone knows its not true.

maliqi.6512:

Also happened to me . Help me please.

Throw us a bone here, you contribute nothing to help besides that you have the problem as well. Let us know what you have tried, if anything, and if not, instead read the thread and try the suggestions in said thread. Then, come back, let us know your findings (whether it worked or not) and maybe we’ll have some other ideas or something if that didn’t work.

Kyllaa.1385:

The graphics card is very important, we need to know. You should see flags in the top right corner of the installer window, please post a screen shot of what your installer looks like.

It is important but judging from that it is a laptop CPU and Ivy Bridge, it can be assumed that it is at least a Intel HD 3000 or some discrete card, which will pass the minimum spec.

If I were him, I would be going through the port forwarding settings to his router and making sure no firewall is getting in the way. There are like 4 main ports, if you search around this sub-forum it should be pretty easy to find.

First lets establish they have hardware that can play the game. Some people don’t meet the minimum requirements to play Guild Wars 2.

What is your CPU, GPU, and how much RAM do you have?

Eethy.6421:

Hi all. I’m shopping for a headset. I’ve done a lot of Googling and searching on Amazon, but there are so many options it’s just getting confusing.

I could use some help narrowing it down.

• If you have a recommendation for a specific headset, I’d love to hear it.

But even just general background info on gaming headsets would be helpful.

Some of the stuff I’m trying to figure out:

(I understand what these things are, I just don’t know whether they make a gaming headset better or worse.)

• USB or not.

• 7.1 surround or stereo.

• Open back or closed.

My price range is up to about $160, maybe $180.

I’d really like one that’s Mac-compatible. Even if I play GW2 on Windows, it’s very possible that I’ll play on a Mac some time, so a headset that could work with either Mac or PC would be ideal.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

(BTW, the ones I’ve looked at online include the Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 5 , Razer Kraken Pro, Turtle Beach Ear Force DPX21, and a bunch of others. So many options!)

Do you care about mobility with the headset on, like cord length or forgetting the cord altogether and going wireless?

I’m not too big into audio, but a few years back Logitech released the H760 which I have now that I use for everything. I love being wireless and have the ability to run around my apartment while talking on Skype or other means of voice communication. They’re alright for music if you toy with the settings a bit, no surround sound or anything. The range of the headset was enough for all the apartments I have lived in since I got it. Some were two bedroom and while my computer was on one side of the apartment, my bedroom was on the other and was able to go through 4 pretty solid walls.

I don’t recommend getting this if you live in a 3-4 bedroom house. I tried this at my parent’s house and some of the extremes when my laptop was on the main floor caused static and loss of connection until I moved back within range.

BlazingBeast.3104:

Rampage.7145:

Get 4GB ram and a radeon HD 7750. It will make u run the game with eye candy turned on untill u get enough money to buy a whole new system.

Thanx for reply,just one question,what is eye candy?

Kyllaa.1385:

Make sure catalyst is running 3d graphics and such as application controlled.

Also, you’ll want to make sure that your CPU and/or GPU aren’t overheating. You’ll need a temp monitoring software for this, there are a couple free ones you could download. Please test your temps (both components) after your pc has been idle for about 10-15 minutes, then post your temps after running gw2 for 10-15 minutes.

You can try to delete the local.dat file under my documents/guild wars 2 and see if it helps.

You’re fairly limited by your processor and ram, considering they are near bare minimum. More ram and/or a 64 bit operating system couldn’t hurt.

Just a couple thoughts, I’m sure others could think of much better suggestions or possible solutions for you.

P.s. you should consider renaming your topic to something a little more descriptive of your problem.

Ok i will post ny temps after testing!Thanks for help!

Eye candy is more of an American idiom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-eye-candy.htm
in this case we’re not talking about physical candy for the eye, we’re talking about turning on the features that make the game visually appealing.

O/T
I hated English, but at the same time you get words like ‘googling’ which turned a company’s name into an action, which back like 8 years ago just sound silly, but now everyone knows what it is and what you are doing. Maybe its just me, but English seems like one of the easier languages to manipulate and evolve.

simt.6403:

I´ve been playing guild wars 2 since the headstart, and a while after release the game was running fine. Now the game began to stutter alot, like every 10 seconds or so the game drops to 5 fps for about 3 seconds and it’s really annoying. My computer is pretty much above average and exceeds the recommended requirements to play the game and this only started happening a while ago

My specs are:
AMD FX-8120 OCed @ 4.4GHz
ASUS M5A99XEVO Motherboard
XFX HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 OCed
8 GB DDR3 1866MHz RAM
750W PSU from SILENCER

There are no recommended requirements for this game, only minimum requirements…and those only tell you if the game launches. I will agree though, you are getting much worse frames than you should.

First thing is first, lets step back down to stock clocks on everything and make sure your overclock isn’t messing something up.

Nalier.4921:

Thanks for words of courage, guys I’m still at work, so I can’t post anything specific just yet, but in case it will turn out dark and grim and I will be forced to buy a new machine, I have one more question at this moment.

I could apparently afford something better than what I posted above. Unfortunately, I’m limited to laptops atm. So, I’d like to ask: if it won’t be possible to repair that PC, would something like this be any good? :

HP Pavillion DV6 GT
AMD Athlon II P320 Dual-Core Processor 2,1 GHz
6 GB RAM
And two graphic cards (is it even possible? apparently one is supposed to work for basic things, the other one for games): Intel® HD Graphics and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200

Nope, what frame rate did you want to play at and what graphical settings did you want to play with? Some people prefer to play it at highest settings no matter the cost while others just simply want to be able to play the game at whatever settings they can.

This laptop will be much much closer to having all settings set to low. The processor barely meets the minimum specification which is only there to let you know the machine will launch the game, not that it would be playable in any sense of the word.

It’s a power saving option that laptops come with two graphics cards, the worse one draws less power thus giving you battery life when doing menial computer tasks. When you require the horsepower of the gaming card, it takes over and consumes more power thus eating your battery faster.

That said though, the ATI 4200 series isn’t exactly something that would be able to push the settings beyond low and still get what most people consider the minimum playable FPS (30). It ranks under the minimum specification for the ATI/AMD graphics section. That laptop is using fairly old hardware to today’s standards, will it launch the game, nope.

KillerSpred.1238:

This is bugged for me, i can’t get the weeping cache.

http://i.imgur.com/IyP6ecy.jpg <— explains it closely
http://i.imgur.com/vl45Xfm.jpg <— is the area

Please fix this, it’s not funny!

You should post this in the bugs sub-forum…since you know, you said it was a bug.

iPrevail.1268:

Thx guys, i have indeed reconsidered building my own pc. The second handed one just doesn’t fit my wishes. Your build looks sorta what I had in mind. Remember that your build costs 650£ and not euros.

In reviews of the new k-processors i can make out that overclocking isn’t going as smooth as it was before. And since i’m not familiar with it I tend not go with a k cpu, unless u say that would really improve the performance.

I was thinking about getting this:
Processor: i5 4430
Mobo: ASRock B85M-HDS
GPU: MSI N660 TF 2GD5/OC
HDD: 1tb from seagate
Case: Cooler Master K280
Memory: 8gb 1600 from crucial
PSU: seasonic 520w
SSD: Samsung 840 series 120GB

I can get this all for around 690 euros

Other games i play are LoL and some mmo’s that switch around very frequently.

Yeah, overclocking looks likes its been slowly going downhill…you can’t get an additional 1.3Ghz like I did anymore. That doesn’t mean its not worth it though. You can still get over half a Ghz out of an overclock which by no means is bad. In the case of your Haswell processor, the 4670K can still hit 4.5Ghz while your 4430 will only see about 3.5Ghz on an overclock.

1Ghz is huge in Guild Wars 2, but building a PC around one game isn’t smart, especially when its kitten poor optimized so that even the best CPUs struggle (or aren’t really used effectively).

I still think that the 50 dollar difference between the 4430 and the 4670 is worth the .6Ghz if you aren’t going to overclock. Then, the additional 20 is worth the potential extra .7Ghz you can get with the unlocked version. That is my only gripe with your build.

Behellagh.1468:

Other than a marketing term, what’s the difference between AMD’s APUs and what Intel offers? I find it odd that you defined Intel’s offerings as “CPU+iGPU” when that’s exactly what AMD’s been offering under their APU banner.

AMD’s sin was designing a CPU family under the assumption that in the future all software will be written to be multithreaded, CPUs will be under a lot of thread load and that if heavy math was needed then that code would be running on the GPU under OpenCL or some equivalent. Sadly for AMD the future they saw isn’t here yet and may not be for some time to come. Oops, toss it in with personal robot man servants and flying cars.

Jesus call it whatever, there is no argument here between Intel and AMD and never was…

Avelos.6798:

Put that proc at like 3.2 GHz. It should do a lot better.

D= Please read the thread first, overclocking was already discussed.

Gregorius.2375:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

I’m very cautious around second hand stuff just because you don’t know what has happened to it. I’d make him run through stress tests, Prime95 and some GPU benchmarks and make sure everything is within spec. I don’t think I would ever recommend getting something older than the previous generation (Ivy bridge at this point) simply because it’ll be out of date that much sooner.

Especially that the 2500k is like 5 bucks cheaper than the 3570k.

Another important factor is whether the OP plays any other games besides GW2. If not, there is no reason to have such a strong GPU. And 650 euros could easily buy a decent new 3570k-based PC.

Yeah, I mean what we could do is piece together a new machine.
I kinda started one with a Haswell backbone, but its already creeping on the 650 euro limit.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/1bfvy

Obvious changes would be to slash the hard drive and grab a slightly cheaper but much less capacity drive. You can drop the 920 AiO water cooler for a cheaper something. You can likely find a cheaper case, I just have dreams of one day using a Xigmatek case for someone.

The GTX 760 was based on your alternate build list. I chose the cheapest motherboard ASUS made for the 1150 socket.

Most of the build was put together without much thought, it was mainly to get across that you’ll likely spend over 650 euros. Please take it and tweak to your needs.

Avelos.6798:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

You would be able to play on highest settings with that graphics card at 30-40 FPS assuming you’ll be playing on a 1080p display.

40-50 in cities like lion’s arch. Or more. Buddy of mine has an i5 3570K and a Radeon HD 7770. 40+ fps in lion’s arch and 60 FPS everywhere else (v/sync yes) and the usual drops in zerg vs. zerg. he plays 1080p.

the i5 2500K and 7970 will bring in like the same.

Except that the 7970 will allow all settings at maximum and maybe even supersampling while still getting a decent framerate like you mentioned.

Gildedaxe.4759:

Everything is as low as possible except rendering. I really dont want have to switch to sub sample. Much rather keep it on native

Yeah, I think you probably should be getting better results as well…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6P5Uv3F1PE
lets start investigating. Forget the fact that the movie is from last year and the game was a vastly different monster back then. Also disregard the processor difference.

A solid place to test would be in less crowded areas for now. This eliminates the CPU being the culprit of the problem. If you’re doing dynamic events and WvW battles and getting 25-30 FPS, you’re doing better than everyone else.

As always, first thing to check is drivers, make sure they’re up-to-date for your GPU.

Another thing to check is heating issues, lets make sure your CPU and GPU aren’t overheating while playing games. If you don’t already have software that monitors your GPU and CPU, then I recommend getting HWMonitor, which can be found here:
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.23-setup.exe

Make sure to check your temperatures after a few minutes of playing the game.

Gildedaxe.4759:

Old computer i3 2310m 2.1ghz
geforece gt 525m
1600×900
4GB ram
windows 7

So on this 635M, what settings are you running on (low/med/high/mixed).

The 525M is only a hop and a skip worse than the 635M, neither being gaming graphics cards. I’m sure the i5 helps quite a bit in the CPU bound scenarios, a half a gigahertz at the low frequencies laptops run at is nice and the addition of the two pseudo cores should for sure help. I fear you’re running the laptop at too high graphical settings than the 635M can handle. This is a laptop after all, not gaming grade either (if you consider such unicorns exist).

iPrevail.1268:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Whether the price is fair, that is debatable.

What would you consider a fair price?

I’m not used to playing in euros, but it really comes down to how the system was handled. For me it seems kinda sketchy considering the age of the GPU. Now he wants to get rid of it just 2 months after replacing the GPU…

I’m very cautious around second hand stuff just because you don’t know what has happened to it. I’d make him run through stress tests, Prime95 and some GPU benchmarks and make sure everything is within spec. I don’t think I would ever recommend getting something older than the previous generation (Ivy bridge at this point) simply because it’ll be out of date that much sooner.

Gildedaxe.4759:

my previous computer was significantly worse but ran gw2 much better

I’d list your old specifications and maybe we can get a better idea. I’m going to assume your older system ran at a significantly worse resolution as well, thus making the better hardware seem worse.

I couldn’t toss the blame on ArenaNet for this one, blame mother nature, blame the power company, or blame yourself for not having a backup. At least now that you’ve gotten burned maybe you’ll have a backup in case this happens in the future.

You would be able to play on highest settings with that graphics card at 30-40 FPS assuming you’ll be playing on a 1080p display. The exceptions being WvW and large dynamic events where you’ll see sub 30 FPS. It does come with a water cooler, so you can overclock that 2500K and see how far you can push it to get close to breaking that 30 FPS barrier in WvW battles.

Whether the price is fair, that is debatable.

Dominus.8120:

As said in the title I want to build a low budget pc, but im wondering if these parts are even compatible and if they are what type of settings could i get at 60fps. Thank you and all suggestions are appreciated.

WD 1tb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339

Corsair vengeance 8gb ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233144

Rosewill Xtreme 750W power supply
http://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Xtrem...er+supply+750w

Cooler Master Mid tower case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119256

Nvidia Gtx 550 1gb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121630

Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-GA-97...YTE+GA-970A-D3

AMD Phenom II x4 965 3.0GHz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103727

What resolution do you plan on playing at? If its 1080p like everyone else is assuming, follow what they say, but if its less then you’ll be looking at higher settings. Even so though, I wouldn’t recommend getting older hardware like that, spending 75 bucks more gets you a better processor and the motherboard will cost the same as the one you already have chosen.

Spend slightly more to get a GTX 650Ti like someone else said.

Save money on the power supply by shooting for something a little less than the moon. A 650W comes to mind.

Chrisbox.3845:

So today I was in WvW, 60 fps like usual. I normally dip 10-15 frames in fights which is normal, but a fight started and i shot down to 10 fps. Anyone else get this?

Im running all max settings except for reflections at none. Vsync was turned on because for whatever reason i have screen tearing in this game, I tried turning it off mid fight too but the frames were still like 10.

My specs:
Video card- GeForce® GTX 660 Ti Sonic (1024MB GDDR5)
Processor Intel® Core™ i7-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
RAM- 8GB DDR3/ 1600MHZ
Motherboard- GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Windows 64 Bit operating system
Case- In-Win Dragon Rider Full Tower Case w/ 1×120mm Front Fan, 1×220mm LED Side Fan, Front USB 3.0
Optical Drive- 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive
HD on board 7.1 audio
Monitor- Acer – 24" Widescreen Flat-Panel LED HD Monitor – Black —-> Model: S242HL BID
PSU-Corsair CMPSU-650TXV2 Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 Power Supply – 650 Watts, ATX, 140mm Fan, 80 Plus Bronze, SLI Ready, Active PFC

Maybe you should turn the WvW character detail down to the absolute minimum and maybe see how the different culling options affects your fps in battles.

Behellagh.1468:

APUs can game a kitten sight better than Intel’s and when push comes to shove and you are on a really tight budget.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7032/amds-richland-vs-intels-haswell-gpu-on-the-desktop-radeon-hd-8670d-hd-4600/2

So where is all that CPU horsepower gets you in games while using your integrated GPU Haswell?

Yes, it’s relative. How many people try to run a game on an Intel HD 2000/2500/3000 and come to the conclusion that PC gaming sucks. APUs changed that by putting a “real” GPU on chip and for the last few Intel generations stomped Intel.

Sure we are talking around HD 5550 performance levels but for someone on a very tight budget who can’t build their own rig, it’s not a bad compromise. I think of it as a way to get a PC that can play games OK under your parent’s nose if they are getting you a new PC to start college.

Yes, AMD’s APUs do beat out Intel’s CPU+iGPU, but that isn’t what I was getting at… His budget allows him to go up to 700 dollars if its worth it. Newegg has the FX 8320 for 145 right now, so swapping the processor out for double the cores for an extra 20 bucks is worth it. However, since nothing is set in stone since its going to be a buy-over-time thing, you might be able to find something better; just a thought is all.

Since you’re going to be on a slow build schedule, you can definitely do better than a 6670. I stand by my previous post about graphics cards. The performance difference between the 6670 and a graphics card around 150 like the GTX 650Ti Boost or a HD 7790 is worth it.

Zumi.6384:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

kokocabana.8153:

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miha.2109:

What do you mean with “unparking”? and yes, i tried myself with overclocking, but my system just isn’t stable afterwards.. my cpu struggles already at 3.0 GHz and i can’t stabilize it no matter how much i’m tweaking the voltages (that’s atleast what prime95 and IBT are saying).. I guess i dont have the motherboard and RAM to do it ( ASUS P5QL-E & 4 GB Kingston DDR2 667 MHz).

turning down reflections (which i love btw) and best texture filtering doesn’t really improve the case that much. as i said, i’m not even getting steady 60 fps outside cities with everything turned down.

I don’t intend to be mean, but there is so much information out there by simply just searching:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=unparking+your+CPU+cores

Perhaps your CPU is overheating? Maybe its throttling itself down due to heat, though since you know how to overclock you probably have already checked the temperatures :/

Perhaps there are some other processes that are using most of your CPU while try to play Guild Wars 2, thus Guild Wars 2 does not have all the resources it needs to run well.

Have you tried unparking your CPU’s cores?
Have you overclocked that sucker yet?

You should be getting better frames when no one else is around, like close to 60 constantly with normal settings (not ultra low).

I like the idea of dual graphics, I’m just not sure its there for every game.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1639491/amd-a10-5800k-hd6670-dual-graphic-hd7790.html

Personally, I only see gaming processors on the AM3+ line for AMD, APUs I don’t think were really meant to game. I wouldn’t expect this PC to run games well now, let alone the next couple years you have it. Do yourself a favor and grab at least an FX 4300 and an AM3+ socket motherboard. Then, your upgrade paths are decent, either upgrading to more cores and slightly higher speeds this generation, waiting around for the FX 9350 monster CPU, or waiting until the next generation AM3+ processors come out. With FM2 you’ll likely see an upgrade path to a marginally better APU like the 7800K, which isn’t very exciting.

Then instead of dual-graphics with a 6670 (gross), you can grab at least a GTX 650Ti or HD 7790. Those are the minimum I would recommend playing Guild Wars 2 on, the cards to get to really play Guild Wars 2 would be the GTX 660 or GTX 760 or HD 7870XT if you have money. Those cards are at least future proof for a few years.

I’m assuming your budget is at a limit that Intel isn’t worth noting.

kokocabana.8153:

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

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

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

Jaron.1820:

Hello there.
Long story short: How does stacking the burning condition on mobs effect the “final” damage output?

according to the gw2 wiki:
“Burning is a condition that inflicts damage over time and stacks in duration”
“(0.25 * Condition Damage) + (4 * Level) + 8 damage per second”

Example:
2 people (both 80) are in a group, fighting a mob, namely a Guardian WITHOUT any condition damage and a Ranger WITH say 1000 condition damage.

The Guardian now applies 3 seconds of burning.
Damage in 3 seconds = 984
Damage per second = 328
After 1 second the ranger applies burning with a duration of 10 seconds.
Damage in 10 seconds = 5780
Damage per second = 578
This means there is a total of 13 seconds of burning on the creature. The damage calculation could be one of the 3 possibilites:

A) The burning damage gets overwritten by the rangers burning effect, dealing 1 second of the guardians damage and 12 seconds of the rangers damage.
(the damage would be: 328+12*578 = 7264)

B) The burning damage of the ranger gets overwritten by the guardians burning effect who applies first, which is why his burning effect is the one dealing damage. Effectivly this means that the Guardian deals 13 seconds of burning damage.
(the damage would be: 328*13 = 4264)

C) The creature continues to burn, dealing 3 seconds of the Guardians burning damage and 10 seconds of the rangers damage.
(the damage would be: 328*3+578*10 = 6764)

@A): This would mean that it’s a benefit for the character with high condition damage to have some others in the group who deal the same condition resulting in a minor increase of damage.

@B): This would mean that having a Guardian in the group as a character who is focused on condition damage is a huge loss in damage output.

@C): This would mean that it sucks for the ranger if the maximal condition duration of the burning effect has been reached – this would effectivly kill ALL the damage the ranger would do with his burning condition.

PS: The wiki lacks detailed information about this, making it very hard to determine the effectiveness of “duration-stacking-conditions”.

Give it a few years and the wiki will likely have all the juicy details that the Guild Wars 1 wiki has for all the mechanics in that game.

For this I know its not A or B and is indeed something like C, see kokocabana’s post. As for the maximum time a creature can have burning for, I’m not sure. Can an elementalist use a burning skill over and over that collectively can stack infinite burning time if the enemy has infinite health to survive the burning… Or does the burning stack to a some max duration no matter how much burning is applied.

chris.9142:

here it is again it is showing in the editor but not in the thread on my last messege

edit/ now its there

So when you talk to people, can you delete it prior to hitting enter to send your message? Does it appear as anything in the chat window if you send it out with your message? Can other people see it if it is sent out with your message?

I’ve never seen this before, I wonder if you now have some magical admin powers. I would try some adminish emotes like /kill (character name).

Wait for it…

overclock. WvW zerg battles will drop your FPS to dumb frame rates just because of how the game’s engine is coded. I expect even with an overclock to 4.5Ghz you’ll get at most 20-25FPS. Oh also, drop your WvW settings down to the lowest character detail and lowest culling setting (seeing the most people) or the notch above that so it hides the people farthest away. I seriously wonder if people even use anything higher than the lowest character detail in WvW…

chris.9142:

i noticed it last week no body ive asked has got in there just me so whakittens there for and is there a way to remove it
its the letter a icon thing

Fix your attachment bro, no one has a clue as to what you are talking about.

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

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

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

Gotchaz.7865:

So I picked up the GTX 770 and my fps went from max 90 to max 154 which is pretty sweet. On average it’s around 80 in busy areas. WVW I’m at around 60, big zerg fights still drops down to around 18 which is an improvement. I do have an I7 950 you would think this would be enough lol Win 7, 64 8 gig ram 1600 DDR3, game is on an SSD. I’m not upgrading anymore to get this stupid game to work in pvp. It’s turning into a high end machine.

As SolarNova said, its your CPU giving you issues in WvW battles. I have the same processor basically, just overclocked higher and I run into similar issues. Everyone thinks it would be enough if the game’s engine would be redone to more efficiently use your processor’s cores. Your CPU usage will never see 100% with just Guild Wars 2 running because it can’t utilize all that multiple core power.

As everyone else has said, your PC isn’t exactly new. Your graphics card, while it will work, is very low end now since the 7XXX series is out for AMD making your card 3 generations old. Graphics cards seem to age faster than processors, but even so, your processor is every bit of 5 years old and not exactly the top of the line from 5 years ago. The minimum requirements are there to say what hardware will launch the game, not what hardware that makes the game playable. If you’re interested, many people here will help you piece together a machine that suits your needs and is able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want it to play.

Danno.5269:

As the title says i am looking to build an affordable destkop gaming pc that can get 60-80fps normal play and possibly a good 30-40 in wvw.

Not expecting miracles here, but you all know far more than i do.

Graphics card/motherboard/RAM/SSD/Processor. That works.

Thanks in advance. Links to sites welcome.

I’ve read the thread and here is what I think…you won’t be able to get the 40FPS @ lowest WvW detail, and lowest culling (seeing the most amount of people) in WvW zerg battles. Try as you might, even beastly processors like the i7 3930K simply can’t push the game fast enough. You can see 30FPS though if you overclock. You said you were an enthusiast back in the good old days, its time to get back into the ring :p

Since overclocking is necessary to meet your requirements, I would recommend an i5 4670K and get a nicer cooler for it. We’re talking something like a Noctua DH-14 or an AiO water cooling unit, like Corsair’s H60.

After that you’ll want to grab some RAM, 8GB is standard for gaming now a days. Speed, get 1600Mhz+ with timings like 9-X-X-X.

You’ll need a nice power supply to power everything, for that I would recommend a Corsair power supply as I used to buy cheapo units that never seemed to last beyond a year. I’ve been running this same supply for 5 years now, no issues. 650W should be plenty.

Case, grab whatever for now. I was never big into choosing cases.

Graphics card, At least a GTX 650Ti boost for Nvidia. If you have the money, grab a GTX 760 or HD 7870XT.

Grab a motherboard that suits your needs, Gigabyte and ASUS are the reliable players today IMO. All my current and previous boards have been from them, and I have had zero issues with them. Even with some mal-use and sending the boards through electrical surges resulting in some leaking capacitor juice. My first ASUS board still worked till my P4 just wasn’t enough and ditched the LGA 478 club for the LGA 775 club.

Likely an SSD is out of budget at this point, keep it in the back of your head for a future upgrade. For now, stick with hard drives, anything will really do now a days.

After all that you’re likely beyond budget if you don’t find some slick deals. Since you’re building over time, you can wait for some nice deals.

It debuted its release with the GTX 760. Likewise, the driver may have helped a little, if anything. No adverse effects yet.

FredSavage.2583:

Well, I managed to OC to 4.0GHZ, and am seeing some pleasant results…however the town is still pretty awful for me. I’m going to go grab a new video card tonight I believe and give it a shot…the thing needs upgrading anyway.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX41583 Does this seem like a reasonable replacement?

Nice overclock. Lions Arch will always be pretty bad, it’s less bad with a newer architecture processor since we’re running on 3 generation old hardware now that Haswell is out. WvW zergs and massive PvE dynamic events are bad for everyone, less bad with a newer processor, but the 10fps upgrade isn’t worth the cost of getting a Haswell processor and motherboard.

That card is the one I initially looked at when checking out that site (it was the first time I had heard of memoryexpress). Since you’re in Canada, I’m not sure of your situation with Newegg, but Newegg has a GTX 660 for ten dollars less after rebate (as of yesterday). I’m not sure if your buddy discount will make buying a GTX 660 cheaper, but its not a bad deal.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to try some of the suggestions from other people, drivers can be finicky from what I have heard on the AMD side. With Nvidia, I just stick to the latest (beta or release) and nothing adverse happens.

@Contiguous
As for flogging a dead horse, Nehalem is old, but the amount that performance has improved from Nehalem to Haswell just isn’t enough to justify an upgrade (for me) just yet. For me, I’ve had one processor per generation of RAM (DDR, 2, and 3). I’m going to try and wait for DDR4 but the earliest that is likely going to come is in Haswell-E next year sometime.

FredSavage.2583:

Thanks a bunch. I live in Canada so I’ll try to hunt for something similar. I actually just remembered that I have a $250 cheque from my insurance for glasses, so I am probably looking to spend that plus another $100-200ish on upgrades. If I can get away with just the video card that would be great.

I didn’t have all that much difficulty building my computer but in the grand scheme of things I don’t really consider myself a guru. Have been looking for decent instructions to give overclocking a try.

Do you think this guide http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy8D7bbxHXg would also work with my motherboard?

I will probably purchase my card from http://www.memoryexpress.com/ since I have a friend there that can get me a discount.

At least you built your computer, most people don’t have the courage to, so props for that. As for the guide, I don’t know since I have no idea what motherboard you have. Different manufacturers use different BIOS which have different settings available in different locations of the BIOS. For the most part you should be able to follow any guide as the guide will likely have you modify the CPU multiplier and Base Clock. You’ll just have to find where these settings are in your BIOS. This is what got me started into overclocking my CPU:
http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz
the terms are the same and for the most part you can follow the same methodology found there. Your YouTube video, if the BIOS screens look the same, you can probably just follow that guide directly. I preferred to just wing it my first time after reading the link I posted above. My first result was pretty bad, I couldn’t get close to 4.0Ghz, I got maybe 3.5Ghz. Then, I gave up for a while and went to overclock my GPU which is probably 1000 times simpler since there is so much less you can change. Once I settled that in at a stable clock, I gave my CPU another go and got it to where it stands today.

The key is to expect nothing since technically what you bought is what you paid for, anything beyond stock clocks is icing on the cake, so to speak.

As for kokocabana (love the name) his hardware is one step up on the CPU and GPU. From his specs and frame rates it looks like its your GPU that is causing you issues (though he never mentions his resolution).

I never mentioned what I get, but I would consider the GTX 660 a better card than my GTX 560Ti and I can muster a solid 60fps in most PvE areas of the game at highest settings (besides super-sampling) at 1080p. Swamps give me troubles because of the water reflections, so turning that down one notch alleviates my issues in swamps. Everything kokocabana said about the situations with lower frame rates is due to your CPU being the bottleneck. Everyone sees this problem, even with a beefy i7 3930K, its a single thread that holds back the entire game thus lowering the frame rate. This is why if you search around these forums, single thread performance is a hot topic and also why everyone recommends overclocking their CPUs. Raw frequency (overclocking) helps your single thread performance since each core is running faster to process that thread’s needs faster. This is also why people are recommending Intel over AMD in non-budget restricted situations since Intel’s architecture has better single thread performance.

Anyways, good luck with your overclock and new GPU. If you need anything we’re here to help!

FredSavage.2583:

Thank you so much for the response. In answer to your questions:

Resolution – 1680×1050

Quality – Medium to High would be nice. I’m not a person that needs it to be maxed out, I prefer smoothness to aesthetics.

FPS – I would like to stay as close to 60 as possible, or whatever will make the game still seem “smooth”.

Budget – I could probably spend around $400-500 on the entire setup, MAYBE a bit more but unfortunately I am saving to go back to school so would prefer to be on the cheaper side of things. (If the extra few hundred makes THAT much of a difference I would be willing to part with the $500.)

As far as CPU coolers, not sure if I even have one? I installed everything myself (3-4 years ago), and it just has the standard fan above the chip. I’m actually going to take it all apart and clean it in a few hours if you need me to check anything on the inside.

Again, your help is very much appreciated.

Alright, well what I would suggest getting as far as a graphics card goes is a GTX 660. If you’re in the US this wouldn’t be a bad choice:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162122
At 175 after rebate its a solid card, 75 bucks under the cheapest GTX 760, which is the next leap forward in terms of performance for the Nvidia line, places this at the top end of the entry level gaming cards. This card kinda lies between AMD’s HD 7850 and HD 7870 (non XT version) in terms of performance and price.

Then, try that graphics card and see what you think of your FPS. If you’re still unsatisfied even with the overclocked CPU, it’s time to update to Haswell (Intel’s latest generation of processors) if you’re interested in an upgrade mainly for Guild Wars 2.

It might also be a wise choice to get a non stock CPU cooler if you plan on overclocking. It wouldn’t be too much to get a decent air cooling one that should allow you to push to higher clocks without hitting the thermal wall. Something like the:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099
or if you want to spend a little more you can get a AiO water cooling system like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181030
which is a better version of what I run right now. The upside of using an AiO water cooler is not having to worry about it getting in the way of components on the motherboard, the downside is worrying about where to attach the radiator.

You’re running the same generation CPU I am just an i5 instead of an i7 and at a much lower clock rate.

What I would suggest you do is buy a new graphics card since yours is a low end card in addition to being 2 generations old. I can help give suggestions if you answer the following questions:
What resolution do you play at?
What settings would you like to play at (low/med/high/mix of med&high/etc)?
What FPS would you desire from the settings you want to play at?
What is your budget?

Then, overclock that processor. Lots of resources out there:
https://www.google.com/search?q=overclock+i5+750&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Crank that sucker up as far as thermals allows with whatever CPU cooler you have. Make sure that you don’t overdo it, start slow and ramp up the frequency in 100Mhz chunks and see how it handles Guild Wars 2. If you’re lucky, eventually you might have something like my processor where it could go from 2.8Ghz to 4.1Ghz.

Overclocking could possibly damage your hardware if you aren’t careful, patience is the key to a successful overclock. So take it slow and learn what you are doing. It’s a huge payoff though, it’ll extend the ‘useable’ lifespan of a processor. Just think about how much extra speed you are getting for ‘free’. Back in the hayday of our processors, overclocking gave me more performance than a processor that costs double what the price was back then.

That exception code (c0000005) has been gotten by many people, search around on the forums for answers and try those solutions.