Guild Wars 2

OP

Option 3 is the only viable one tbh. You current rig is to old to use any meaningfull parts for option 2 ..and option 1 would be useless.

For $800 u can build a respectable gaming rig. The only things u will re-use will be things like ur Optical Drive and possibly ur HDD if its atleast a 7200RPM Sata 3 drive. If its a 5k RPM slow one then u would probably want to spend some money on a new HDD aswell. Oh and ofc ur OS can be transfered across/reinstalled.

Anyway i would recommend the following.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Hmem

If u wanna stretch ur budget and be a tad more future proof then a LGA 2011 Intel rig would do well. U can upgrade in the future to a 6core 3930k or more likely a Intel IvyBridge-E CPU if/when they released, by just switching CPU’s.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HmlO

nvm u miss the point lol.

Theres ‘the gamer’ …theres ’ the enthusiast’ …then theres ‘the rich guy’.

The 2011 chipset of CPU’s was aimed for enthusiasts, and yet many people who use said CPU even admitt that the Titan is to expensive for what it is. I have no doubt Nvidia intended to aim at the people who have more money than sense, but i question whether it was a wise decision ..i doubt they will get the sales they expect.

As it stands the Titan is only worth getitng if ur getting 2 or more, infact technicaly its only worth getting if ur geting 3 or 4, as 1 or 2 can be beat by cheaper setups.
Even still, if u include 2, 3 and 4 way SLI Titan setups, thats still waaay more than even the average enthusiast is willing to spend on GPU’s.

4 Way 4gb 680
4 Way 4gb 670
4 way 3gb 660ti
4 way 6gb 7970
4 way 3gb 7950

All are considered enthusiats level setups and all are cheaper than 2 way Titan setups, and faster or atleast as fast.

I know there r those who will buy the Titan ..but they r not ‘enthusiasts’ ..atleast not normal ones.. they simply have more money than sense, otherwise they wouldnt let Nvidia rip them off so badly.

Yes Plasma TV’s r great simply becouse they have absolutly 0 ghosting/shadowing/halo’ing. Unlike TV’s/Monitors bassed of LCD tech.
And as u said they have unbeaten black levels and incredible constrast.

The only downside is the burn in, however even that isnt as bad as it sounds. I was playing a old 4:3 res game this week and after a couple hours play i came of and went to this website.. you could clearly see the pure white borders down the left and right side whilst the center of the screen was less pure ..due to the game i was playing..however i could actually see it, in real time, changing color as the burnin faded. The majority of burn in is temporary and only the initial first 50 or so hours of use from new can experiance perminant burn in..so long as ur carefull during that stage ..ur fine.

Oh and ofc the heat ….its like a friggin radiator ..since iv had mine i have had the radiator in my room off all through the year. .even in winter…for 4 years :P

The GTX Titan is a great card performance wise, and tbh i was planing on buying maybe 2 of them for my current rig. That was till Nvidia release the expect retail price.

Taking the price into account the Titan is a POS. Your paying 100% more(double) for a ‘up to’ 60% (max) performance increase over a 680. Total ripoff. In the UK it costs around £950, a good top end 4gb 680 costs around £450.
450/100 * 160 = £720. So the absolute max the Titan ‘should’ cost is £720.

Untill the Titan comes down in price i wouldnt recommend it to any1 becouse there are cheaper ways of getting the same performance.

Aye what Clexor said is true. The bit about the motherboard frying is only true when ur OC’ing VERY high. A standard 4.5ghz wont dmg ur motherboard …well maybe it might if its a MSi board. .they have a bad rep of having sub standard/weak capacitors that tend to pop. But yea get the tuning plan if u r worried and if u would need a replacment CPU immediatly.
Or u can do what i am, buy the tuning plan after ur cpu pops..then wait the required 1 month before ur able to claim on the plan (so ur without a CPU for 1 month) ..but atleast u dont waste the money… u buy it when u need it (if/when ur cpu pops) wait a month then get ur new one.

IIRC the plan lasts 1 year ..hence why i say its probably best to only get it once ur CPU actually lets go(if it lets go) ..becouse u may get it ..then 1 year down the road ur CPU is still fine ..the plan runs out ..u cant refresh the plan ..then 3 months later. .pop..ur screwed.

Well the monitor isnt 1080p which is a shame but it is 75hz ..which is good. Means u wont be capepd at 60 fps wiht vysnc on

IMO currently available monitor tech doesnt warrent a upgrade for any1 unless they have money to burn. Becouse ,agian imo, current monitors all suck :P They r ether Super HD or 120hz…not both. So even if u get a new one and go for ether one of them, u will want to upgrade again in a handfull of years when they finaly start releasing Super HD with higher hz.
For example i havnt upgraded…..I personaly run a now 5 year old Panasonic Plasma TV as my main ‘monitor’, nowerdays its nothing special its only 1080p and only 60hz, and its size means that unless u have high AA active on games, even at max resolution they will look blocky…but having been used to 42" for so long i cant go back down to a 30" or lower PC monitor..and nothing that is currently available that is bigger has anything better available that what i already have.

If ur PC doesnt come with one and u need it ..get a PCI to VGA adaptor and keep using ur current monitor till its actually worth upgrading.

short answer.

Everything.

Low FPS has nothing to do with server lag.

Check ur GPU usuage.If its maxing out, ur settings are to high. If its not, then its ether ur CPU getting in the way in the particular area ur in ingame. or a driver issue.

If u want to try a different driver i sugest 306.97

Check ur with ur freind make sure u have the EXACT same ingame settings and r in the same area ingame for FPS comaparisons. Also check what driver he is using, and at what clock speed he has his CPU running at.

If ur 3770 is a non K version then ur OC will be limited. But u can still easily hit 400mhz extra ontop of ur current max clock. I beleve u can get to 4.3ghz OC on just the multiplier. U can then tweek the Base clock to get a little higher if u wish. (make sure to correctly adjust LLC and Vcore settings)

WvW benefits from OCing ur CPU ..infact u cant get a stable 30+fps in big WvW battles wihtout a 2nd or 3rd gen Intel i5 or i7 OC to 4.5ghz. The AM FX 8XXX series can get close also, but will likely garuntee 25+ fps instead at the same clocks.

Anyway short asnwere : Ur CPU is bottleneckign due to GW2’s crappy game engine only using a few threads.

Oh and core parking will have 0 effect on ur CPU’s life span. Its a power saving feature ..and like all power saving features ..there is always a performance price u have to pay.

@OP

Set all ur ingame settings to max, including SS if u have it on already, then simply turn reflections to terrain and sky, that should give a noticable increase when ur GPU is able to stretch its legs. As u said ur GPU hit 99% occasionaly it likely just means that its hitting a wall with SS on along with max setting on everything else.
GW2 may not look like the best game in the world visualy, but there is ALOT of stuff to render, more so than smaller games such as FPS titles.

As for ur CPU. Stock it indeed is not the best gaming CPU, the ivybridge 3570k and 3770k will do better ..but. The 3930k is a K series ..its also known to be VERY good at OC’ing. Without poping of the IHS on ivy cpu’s u’ll be lucky to get 4.4 or 4.5ghz on a air cooler.
My first ‘proper’ OC was with my current rig. Thats right.. i went in with little experiance(b4 hand it was minor multiplier or base clock tweeks) with OC and tried it out on a £500 CPU lol. But i made sure i done my research, and nothing went wrong. I now sit at 4.6ghz 24/7 stable on air cooling at a modest voltage of 1.36v using a offset OC ..meaning the voltage can drop really low when its not in use..like 0.8v. My temps barely break 75c, and usualy hover ,at max 100% load, around 72c. Which actually means i could possibly get 4.7ghz b4 having to swtich to water cooling so long as the voltage jump doesnt requir anything above 1.38v..i havnt bothered trying though tbh.

My advice to u is to get some good cooling and OC that CPU, its a wolf in sheeps clothing when its sitting at stock. U want that wolf out all the time ..trust me

Anyway a OC will help allow ur GPU to stay fully utilized. However for SuperSampling AND full reflections and max settings. .u will likely need SLI/Xfire.

Depending on where he is that FPS could be caused by CPU bottlenecking, specialy if its at stock clocks.

Also if he is running at 1440p or 1600p and has supersampling enabled that could also cause a single gpu card like the 7970 to buckle under the strain.

This be why we need more info

What clock on the CPU.

Where in game exactly ? Are all the settings on max every 1 of them ? What resolution ?

Whats ur GPU usuage when ur at 45 fps ?

All looks good except 2 things. Heatsink/fan and the SSD

Click the advanced options next to the cooling options. From the drop downs choose LGA 1156/1155, and Under vendor click coolermaster, then hit search. Select Coolermaster 212 Evo $35

The do the same on the SSD but choose samsung. Select the 840 Pro Series 128gb.

These 2 changes wil ladd about $100 to ur total cost but will be good changes. The samsung SSD is the best out atm and the Cooler is a very good bang for buck air cooler that wil lallow mid level OC’s.

IMO leave it on, u got a 2600k, use all of it. if u didnt want/need HT then u coulda got a 2500k instead. Same goes for 3570k vs 3770k.

In theory depending on the usuage u could actually harm performance. Say ur game uses 4 threads, with HT off , the rest of ur system has no other threads to use for background tasks like general OS processes. With HT on u have another 4 threads left to run background tasks. Ofc as above, HT can also imporve performance.

I run a 3930k with 6 physical cores, more than enough for GW2 to run on without HT, but i keep HT on.. would GW2 run better with HT off ..maybe ..but the difference would likely be so small that its not worth the hassle of turning HT back on when i want to use those extra threads.

Oh if u havnt already, unpark ur core’s. it has been said to slightly increase performance in GW2 and can reduce stutter in other games.
Turning off HT sort of does this for u as u bassicaly never have parked cores as ur using them all. With HT on however ur not using them all specialy in GW2, Windows then parks them, when they get used they have to unpark which can cause stutter / drop in performance. If u simply turn of core parking u can then keep HT on.

EDIT: also btw from what i know, HT on 2nd and 3rd gen i7’s is dynamic for programs that use less than the max number of available threads. So for Gw2 that ‘mainly’ uses 3 it will use 3 physical cores 1st before using virtual ones. Bassicaly from what i know it will only use a virtual core when the physical ones r all in use. This means u r unlikely to see any significant difference outside of expected variation when testing ingame performance between HT on vs Off. The max iv ever seen my processor hit in overall usuage in GW2 is 50% and that was at a peak loading period during the wintersday event. 50% of 12 availabe threads that 6, my CPu has 6 physical cores so even then i was likely only using maybe 1 ..or 2 vitual ones if uisng 5 or 4 physical ones. It also means that if my 6 core CPU can hit 50% usuage in the those extreme examples, ur gunna want to keep HT on, on a 4 core CPU otherwise ull max out the usuage with HT off.

Indeed… Jaz has on hand experiance with the FX 8350. From my knowledge on it u can expect 4.5ghz on the Evo though it could easily be 100mhz higher if u get a good chip. Stock settings it wont fair to well in WvW but even the 4.5ghz OC should net a significant performance increase and keep FPS above 25 in the kind of battle sizes u mentioned considering a 4.6ghz OC will manage the same 25+ with larger sized battles.

HDD/SSD wont affect performance much if at all. All the storage media affects is loading times of things.

In the case of a SSD the loading times that matter performance wise are those of texture access times. This can improve performance by reduce stutter but its only a slight improvment.

Storage size has nothign to do with performance so get what ever size u need.

I would advice getting a 120gb SSD for ur OS and 1 or 2 games, leaving 25% of the storage space free for performance reasons. Then have a 500gb to 1TB HDD for storage.

A fast large 10k RPM cached HDD wil lcost as much if nt more than a good 120gb SSD imo i would choose the SSD over it as u will get better performance, then by a standard 7200rpm hdd for like $60 for storage.

Or finaly u could buy a cheap storage HDD and by more RAM and use a cache program.

For GW2 they r both relativly overkill.

You might want to look at the 7870 Tahiti LE cards.
Examples:
Sapphire 7870 XT
Club3D 7870 Joker XT

This is a new version of the original 7870. Check product details to ensure ur looking at the correct one. it should have 1536 shader cores.(the old one having 1280).

It is as good if not better than a 7950/660ti but slighly cheaper.

Ayhlonpv u missunderstand the reasoning.

a FX 8350 is better for a rig designed for gaming and computing, and its cheap.
a 3570k is great for gaming. In GW2 its slightly better than a FX 8350, but its not as good at computing as it only has 4core 4 threads.
a 3930k is better at both but is significantly more expensive.

Doesnt mater how many threads GW2 uses since it will use as many as it needs of what the cpu has available, the rest of the threads will be usfull for the computing side of things. hence the ‘and’.

For GW2 get a FX 8350 only if ur current motherboard can take it as that makes it a really cheap upgrade.

If u need a new motherboard for that however, it would be bettrer performance wise to go Intel 3570k or 3770k.

If ur upgrading to do other things other than gaming and want to stay on a tight budget then get the FX 8350.

If u got loads of money and want somthing that beats a FX 8350 in GW2 and can still hammer away at non gaming computational tasks ..then get a 3930k (6 physical cores 12 threads)

Depends on what u call playable. U still wont get good performance wiht that CPU.

Did u look at the link i posted. The 5600k is still a ways down the list and even the top consumer intel chips (not Xeon) and the top FX amd’s have to OC to stay above 30 fps in big wvw battles :P

78% of all figures online are pulled out from peoples a*ses :P

sry i couldnt help myself.

In all honesty all those CPU’s r rather slow and GW2 is incredibly CPU intensive. They will allow u to ‘run’ the game ..but playability will be..difficult. AMD CPU’s u should look at the FX6xxx and FX 8xxx series, preferably the later. Intel wise ur looking at ether a 2500k 2550k or 3570k for the i5’s.

GPU wise a AMD 7770 or Nvidia 650ti r good choices for medium settings.
The linked card would be really bad for Gw2. its old and wasnt even a proper gaming card back when it was new.

I see. Yes a dedicated low end card will be better than ur onboard one.
The 7750, 7770, and 650ti are al lgodo cards that should handle medium settings ..above those however ur gunan need a new rig as eve nwiht those card ur likely to hit ur CPU bottleneck in places.

BTW: Forum isnt dead, u just cant expect replies instantly, this isnt MSN or some such lol.

its likely that what ever dual core cpu u have will bottleneck any gpu upgrade. What gpu do u have atm ?

Non k versions have a limited mjultiplier but u should still be able to get a 400mhz OC . I think maybe 43x ..i cant recall of hand what the 3770 limits the multi to. But u can still OC it..just not as far as a K version.

What ever ur max turbo frequency is ..i think its 3.9ghz ..u can get an additional 4 on the multipler on all sandybridge and ivybridge non k cpu’s ..so 4.3ghz in the OP’s case. If u increase the BCLK aswell to somthing like 105 u can get 4.515ghz (105 × 43 = 4515).

Bassicaly do what ur doing.

The hearts are the quests. The personal storyline r the ‘main’ quests.

As i said. GW2 isnt ur typical MMO. It doesnt have endless quests from npcs telling u to go here kill this ..give x to y person. Then y person gives u another quest and so on moving u across maps and eventually the enitre game.
Instead there are a bunch of heart’s across each map. Each heart has a single objective. once its complete the npc gives u access to vendor items, u can then chose to move on in any direction u like ..go to any map or location u like within ur abilities.

As you reach certian levels, 5 man dungeons become available, u can try find groups for these (which atm is hard as there is no lfg tool). These dungeons can be completed in story mode, for the story ..and then over and over again in explore mode to collect tokens which can be handed into vendors in LionArch for armor and weapons.

You also can join WvWvW (world vs world vs world) which is one big map to pvp in. There r no quests in WvWvW really ..its just one big battleground. You get temporarily leveled to 80 and can gain experiance from participation which can level ur ‘proper level’ up. But pve is still the best way to lvl.

Well a ‘comon jack’ with little computer knowledge would likely buy a prebuilt and preconfigured PC and wouldnt notice/care if there was a performance differences.

If they noticeed/cared about the differences then they r enough of a gamer to warrant learning about enough computer related topics to fix it themselves or avoid buying prebuilt rigs in the future.

I understand how those features will seem silly to power users .. But for those who just want a rig to use for general purpose ..which may include a few games those features will help save power and thus money..somthing those types of users are always looking at.

Yes and no Toejam.

You wouldnt drive a car without bassic knowledge of how to change a tire ..or a fan belt ..or what to do if it starts smoking when driving along a motorway or some such. Infact in some countries ..its a requirment for passing ur driving test.

Online gaming and computers may not have legal requirments ..but some general knowledge is most deffiantly handy and in some casses expected.

Every1 has to start somewhere, but …nowerdays atleast.. its so easy to just google stuff, read and learn. When i first started gaming ,on a PC atleast, i had to learn the hard way. Me dad sat me on his lap and went “here u go ..lvl 1 of Command & Conquer ..go play.” My first gaming consol was a Atari 2600Jr ..those games were incredibly hard by todays standards ..they were my first games .i got no help..just started playing lol.

So saying the product provider must provide a foolproof as possible product is rediculus ..that kinda thinking is why we have the EZmode games of today already -.-

Look up said acronyms.

Know that GW2 isnt ur average MMO.

There are no ‘raids’, there is no ‘gear/stat grinding’ at end game, their is little in the way of character skill customization.

Bassicaly its a simplified version of a MMO, its actually been done to try and be different not to be simpler though. So there is no ‘holy trinity’ ..this means ..no dedicated ‘tank’ class ..or ‘DD/DPS’ class ..or ‘healer’ class.
DD = damage dealer or direct damage
DPS = damage per second.

Also there is no glabal chat channel, or LFG tool.
LFG = looking for group
So u may feel lonely or that there aint many people playing somtimes. Know that there r loads ..its just a PITA to communicate with people outside of a guild atm.

PITA= pain in the A*S
ATM = at the moment.

Best to contact ur ISP ..packet loss can be checked by them and they will let u know what the problem is and hopefully how to fix it.

Your best bet would be to join a large guild wihtout saying anything about this. Get to know the types of people in the guild. Then start asking random people in the guild via PM’s.

Problem with doing what u just done and asking for people to come forward is that u will inevitably get the very loud and expresive people only which dont represent the average playerbase. Not to mention only a very very small portion of the GW2 playerbase use these forums…like in most game forums :P

Updated my post a bit late but anyway ill post again.

I found these relativly new benchmarks. The methodology is better imo. I mean its not perfect but perfection is almost impossible in a gaming environment ..specialy a mmo ..things always change.

2 comps same rigs different CPU’s ..same settings stock. played together at the same time by 2 people. Difference is shown much better here BUT its still nto perfect imo.

This next one is a different game but since they play together they get in a truck so both computers have to render identical screens for a portion of the vid..they mention the FPS difference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPb4-3dNee0&list=PLlJ6UsG2zqgGU9VLB6jDNOAvTrcKLjwXw&index=5

So far i have to say i have yet to find a good video of som1 testing AMD vs Intel on GW2 without kittening up their methodology.

The one linked above is ok but like others i have seen the guy doesnt use the same paths to test fps.

The best and most demanding place in LA i find is the north way point zoomed out looking towards the mystic forge. If he had simple loaded up with the exact same view and compared FPS that would have said it all really.
But instead he runs around heading out of LA for one CPU.. then loads up heading in for the other ..thats 2 different paths with different loads to render.. which cannot be used as a accurate comparison.
Not to mention it wasnt clock for clock, granted it was a stock test but both CPU’s can reach the same clocks. A better coparison would have been a 4ghz OC on the Intel with the 4ghz clock on the AMD ..or a 4.3ghz clock on both ..somthing easy to do.

This is a good one i just found.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_tbR-eKlrQ

2 comps same rigs different CPU’s ..same settings stock. played together at the same time by 2 people. Difference is shown much better here BUT its still nto perfect imo.

As Kirito has mentioned.

This isnt do with with GW2 not be optimized for AMD specificaly.

Its simply down to GW2 being unoptimized in general and running of single thread performance. As such CPU’s with strong single thread performance will do better than those with weak single thread performance. Hence Intel over AMD.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

AMD do great CPU’s ..but there is ALWAYS a price to pay for going for the cheaper option…always.

You wanna try get a i5 2500k,2550k,3570k or a i7 2600k,2700k,3770k, 3820, 3930k if going Intel.

For AMD u wanna try get a FX 8350.

With any of those u can also OC , for GW2 u should aim for 4.5ghz as thats an easy to obtain OC and also happens to usualy keep GW2 WvW battles from droping below 30 fps, except on the FX 8350..u still may see sub 30 fps.

Stock settings on any of those CPU’s, or any other CPU, will give u sub 25 fps in WvW and can affect Citie fps and pve/Dungeon fps.

Remake or move this thread to Tech support, u will get more advised responses.

Ill keep this short,sweet and easy to understand …

For $600 u wont find a laptop good enough for GW2. Minimum u need is $1000.

A desktop on the other hand ..if u build it urself ..can be made for around $700-$800 and could play GW2 very well. I can put together a list using PCpartpicker and PM it to u if u desire.

Probably not max. U couldnt have supler sampling ..or All reflections ..or ultra shadows ..but rest will be ok.

You will need to OC the CPU to roughly 4.5/4.6ghz to keep WvW from grinding to a crawl.

If ur going dual 680’s in a month ..u might wanna think again and hang on for nvidia 700 series which is expected somtimes around end of march begining of april. Apparently the 780 will be using the new GK110 chip and ‘could’ have around 85% the power of a 690, meaning 2 780’s would obliterate 2x 680’s.
If u dont wanna wait u could just buy a cheap single card for the time being.

I made my rig in my sig and re-used my old graphics card since im waiting on the 780 …i built it in Nov 2012 so i’ve been waiting a while but am perfectly happy with its perferomance whislt i wait.

This is what PC gaming is and always has been. Its not as simplistic as consol gaming. But the rewards are far greater.
A good example would be the latest DevilMayCry game, released and made for the PS3 and Xbox360 a PC port was also released. The Consol game was limited to 30fps and so it wasnt the smoothest of games even though the combat style is fast. The PC one however has unlimited Framerates and is much smoother, granted its still limited by the core design like the actual 3D models and the engine..but its still much better on the PC.

Take some time to study up on computer tech, join some forums and sling around ur understanding of the subject after u have studied, see if its correct.

Once u’ve done that u can pritty much build a rig with ur eyes closed..i know i can, and im by no means a qualified PC expert.

Anet wont be selling a prebuilt rig for GW2 lol, it just wouldnt be viable. A rig strong enough to play their game would requir OverClocking which takes time to do and is different for each individual CPU chip. not to mention the price would be over $1000 easy.

You want to play GW2 in big zergs smoothly 30fps+, u can build a rig for around $800 that can do it, u try getting that same rig prebuilt and ur looking at $1100 most likely.

As other have mentioned.. u can get a FX 8350 for good performance boost so long as it gets OC’d. The 3770k will give u more performance at the same OC, but probably only on average about 5 FPS when both get bogged down in WvW..so for example AMD 25-30, Intel 30-35 FPS, and it costs a ‘tad’ more :P

The 6950 wont manage max setting, its a tad under a 560ti.. and from my personaly experiance even a 560ti with a big OC maxes out frequently at near max settings (No SS, Reflections down, Shadows down). Nvidia’s 700 series GPU ‘should’ be releasing around march/april time so u can ether stay with what u got, or upgrade now but dont spend ot much ..say a AMD Sapphire 7870XT (make sure its the XT/tahiti LE with 1536 shader cores), as good as a 660ti/7950 but slightly cheaper.

Intel’s new haswell tech is due out, but its months away still so since ur fed up i sugest biting the bullet so to speak and upgrade now.

If i had to choose i would go Intel for the extra peformance.. ur obviosly looking at spending a good chunk of change so mightaswell go for the best performance and throw price:performance ratio’s out the window ..i know i did when i upgraded :P

Ur gunna need a new CPU cooler most likely, I sugest ether going top end air cooling, or top end closed water loop ..or going all out and building urself a custom water loop.

if u go high end air then i sugest the Noctua NH-D14, its the dady of air coolers, super quiet even on max RPM and cools brilliantly. However…. u will need to get different RAM, u cant use tall RAM like most the corsair range. Get a set of G.Skill ram, or mushkin they have a low enough profile. Also make sure to get a dual channel kit (2×4 or 2×8) as the 3770k is dual channel.

I would say even in a non competative pvp game like GW2, 10 fps just isnt enough..it will be affecting ur performance. 20-30 FPS is fine for GW2 and games similar (nearly all MMORPG’s) as higher fps will give next to 0 increase in ur personal performance. This type of game isnt accurate or fast paced enough to benefit from FPS above 30.
So i would say its both a L2P and a FPS issue, more likely a FPS issue if ur getting killed by invisible players.

60+ FPS isnt needed atall in this type of game, its only needed in competative pvp games .. those that can be considered e-sports.For example FPS games, RTS games, and Fighting games. Racing games also requir good smooth FPS at 60 or above for best performance.

clock for clock the 2630QM is better than the 920 on single thread performance beleve it or not. However with ur OC the desktop one should be faster. Btw the 2630WM Turbo clocks to 2.9ghz

Check ur GPU usuage when ur playing the game. Also check ur CPU and GPU temperatures.

Hmm i see. Well unfortunatly thats one of AMD’s lower end APU’s..they aint really designed for gaming at this level.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Take a look where it ranks and ull see the problem.

Sorry to say but it was a bad buy imo

2.5ghz quad core AMD processor.. hmm theres ur problem. You could try OC’ing…
But its likely a slower model AMD.

If ur a AMD person the one u want for GW2 is a FX 8 series chip with a 4.5ghz OC. Then u can play WvW in >>big<< battles with in the region of 20-30 FPS.

If u dont mind going Intel then u can get a 3570k or 3770k or 2700k or 3930k and OC to 4.5ghz and play the same >>big<< battles wthin the region of 30-35fps.

As the others have said. Its likely ur CPU. Xeon chips r intended for server units. Since ur’s is only a dual core i suspect its old..which is worse.

The performance for single thread on CPU puts the new Xeons at the top of the list BUT they cant be OC’d very high, if at all as alot of the newer ones are hard locked..meaning next to 0 OC’ing can be done, and so lose those top positions as soon as u get a mild OC on the more user bassed chips like the Intel Sandybridge and Ivybridge K processors (i.e 3570k,2550k)

Never buy a Xeon chip for a general user computer… they r only for server bassed machines, or very very highly multithread optimised tatsks where 10 cores/20 threads, or even dual CPU rigs running up to 40 threads, can be usefull….Like folding.

If u can ..get a refund and build a desktop. …or save up more money and get a gaming laptop ($1000 +). Honestly laptops for gaming r really expensive and if u dont spend that money ..ull get the performance ur getting now im afraid

Well the CPU u have was released in Q3 of 2007 ..that means its roughly 5 years old, even top of the line gaming rigs that are built from parts that have litteraly just released will usualy only last 4 years before a major overhaul is needed, and within the 1st 3 years u can usualy expect to upgrade the graphics card(s). Those numbers get smaller when the computer in question is a mid or low end rig to begin with.. in those casses the number of years b4 a overhaul is needed could be as low as 2 years.

So i think u have held on for a very good amount of time if u have had that rig since 2007/8 or even 2009. All rigs eventually reach an age where upgrading 1 part simply isnt efficient or viable.

$600 wont get u much in the way of a gaming laptop ..infact im pritty sure it would be impossible,barring secondhand, to find one that can handle GW2.

It would even be hard to get a desktop for that price, however not impossible. You would have to build it urself but it could be done.

Doe it HAVE to be a laptop?