Guild Wars 2

I wouldnt worry about the TIM tbh, and the temps under stock cooler are irrelivant imo becouse the stock cooler suck. Not to mention Intel chips r rated to run up to 90c without issue, although most people make sure to keep temps under 85c when OC’ing, stock clocks would likely run 70c at max load.

70c at idle seems incredibly high tbh i would think somthing isnt right there.

I agree it was bad they used cheap TIM, but not somthing to worry about nor a reason not to get one. Granted if u can find a new 2550k or 2700k for a good price maybe go for one of those, but they r getting harder to find now.

Indeed ur FPS drops in WvW are due ot ur CPU. You will need a new CPU with strong single thread perofrmance. i.e 2500k,2550k,2600k,2700k,3570k,3770k all of which r Intel. CPU + Mothebroard + RAM + CPU cooler will likely cost in the region of $350-$400.
It would be my recommendation to OC the CPU also as GW2 does benefit form it.

As for the 32bit vs 64bit.

Well if u change to 64bit ur computer will be able to use all ur RAM properly and will likely get rid of ur ‘out of memory’ crashes so u can put the GW2 grpahics options back up. 32bit windows doesnt fully allow the use of all 4gb of RAM, thus the crashes.

You will have to OC that CPU to gain any extra performance.
Check ur GPU usuage in LA and see if its maxing out, if it is not maxing out then ur CPU is holding u back becouse ur on stock clocks.

WvW will also have the same issue.

I wouldnt get a MSI motherboard, they have high component failure rates. Stick with Asus or Gigaybyte.

Nearly all modern day Motherboards come with a built in onboard sound chip and they aint to shabby tbh. So no u wont need a dedicated sound card.

OP what CPU and GPU do u have ?

Whilst WvW will hammer CPU’s .. LA is also no slouch when it comes to CPU requirments. .however ..it also requirs a modern gaming 600 series nvidia card or 7000 series AMD card to play on high setitngs to stay at 60 FPS.

If ur friend can build the system for u, just put together a list.

the PC u linked has a few things i would not reccomend .. one being the tiny 32gb SSD which is just to small.

In all honesty i would give ur friend the list of parts in this link and see if he/she can build it for u…minus the monitor.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/C0AU

The updated BIOS likely had tweeked settings thus making the CPU stable. Glad to hear it worked.

Since ur getting the Noctua beasty i asume u will be OC’ing. Get the CPU to around 4.5ghz and the answere will be ‘yes’

Maybe get 16gb RAM just for a bit of future proofing. G.Skill, Corsair, and Mushkin are all great makes.

Also u may want to look into the AMD 7870 Tahiti XT graphics card .. its as good as a 7950 at 1080p resolutions and can be cheaper. Look for the Sapphire 7870 XT or Club3d 7870 Joker.

Lag (latency/ping issues caused by internet connection) or Low FPS ?

Sound harsh but a 220GT is crap tbh, it s a media card not a gaming card.
what i5 do u have exactly ? 1st Gen i5 655k/650 ?, 2nd Gen i5 2310 ? 3rd Gen i5 3330/3470 ? some other one ?

It’s a good laptop.

For Gw2 no laptop will be enough to stop WvW from droping below 30 fps, but the ones to look out for to get the best performance are ones wiht the following CPU.
3840QM
3820QM
3740QM
3720QM
3630QM
The 3630Qm is the slowest out of them but the most common found in gaming laptops, the others r usualy found in buisness/tech laptops which only usualy come with media graphics cards. You can find laptops with both a 3840Qm and a good graphcis card like a 7970m but they cost ALOT.

Anyway u will likely find the performance from ur laptop perfectly acceptable in most areas, just dont be surporsed when u enter WvW and get into a big battle ..ur fps will plumit as the CPU bottlenecks(as with all laptops, all stock desktops, and a good portion of OC’ed desktops aswell)

Dont hold ur breath.

They will obviosly be continualy ‘optimizing’ the game ..but not to the point where the FPS will be affected much.
The FPS issues r down to the game engine which can only have so much optimisations done to it, and its highly likely that they will never be able to do enough optimisations to get the FPS issues sorted..they need to bassicaly run a completly different game engine ..which isnt going to happen..thats bassicaly a new game.

Ok gimmy a few mins and ill see what can be put together for that price, asuming u build it urself that is.
EDIT:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/C2Zl

Its slightly above ur budget and requirs u to re-use ur old HDD and Optical drive. But tbh u really cant go much lower on the parts. The CPU is the most expensive thing there but is also hte most important for GW2, the Graphics card is also the lowest u want to go imo and isnt bad for the price considering its even got a OC on it.

What BSOD code is it ?

Your system shouldnt start BSOD’ing simply due to having more RAM, its ether a bad RAM stick or a problem with ur motherboard.

sub 10 fps isnt playable and its likely simply due to ur laptop not being a gaming laptop. Runescape is no GW2, GW2 has WAY higher requirments.

Your only option would be to build a PC or buy a new laptop, and it wont be cheap.

You say ur budget is low. What is that xactly becouse in gaming/computing terms low could mean 700$. Where as for a less avid PC user it could mean $200.

Etherway we would need a figure to help put a rig together for u.

SSD i would not go with OZD, unless they have changed in the lats year …they have/had poor reliability. try a Plextor M5.

RAM wise i recommend Corsair, Mushkin, or G Skill. Not saying Crucial are bad, its just i know these 3 makes r really good performance,price, and looks wise. For a small case u would likely want low profile RAM also which the the GSkill and Mushkin do as standard, corsair do a low profile range but i think they are a tad more expensive.

£1000 including the price for a monitor. perfectly doable if u put it todether urself.

Spend about $800 on the computer itself and $200 on the monitor and ur laughing.

This rig is a tad over $1000 but does have a 120hz monitor .if u want to save money u could easily spend less on the monitor and go down to a normal 60hz one.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/C0AU

OP if u have parts to salvage from an old rig, u can build a really good gaming unit for around $700-$800.

Hopefully u have a Sata HDD and Optical drive u can re-use as that will save some money for other parts.

Anyway here is a rig i put together with PCpartpicker. It will run GW2 the best that is currently possible. I’ve recommended this list to other people who have since bought it and they have had nothing bad to say about it.(via this forums PM)
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BDsk

If u need a HDD and Optical drive aswell then to keep it under $800 u can change the grpahics card down to a 650ti. Its not as good as the 7870XT but its still ok.

As for software like the Windows OS. You can transfer that over from ur old rig, even if its a 32bit windows u can transfer it over and download the 64bit version using the same code. This is asuming its windows 7.
If its not then u will have to ‘acquire’ Windows 7 yourself.

it wont be chanigng anytime soon. its to big a overhaul to change it.

Try out other games if u cant put up with poor performance. ‘Tera’ i FTP now and if u also like Action RPG’s (like ‘Diablo’) then ‘Path of Exile’ is now in open beta and is, imo and many others, ALOT better than ‘Diablo 3’. it will be FTP when it goes live.
Nether game is pay to win.

Extra RAm above 6gb wont make any difference in GW2 unles u want to USe RAM disks..in which case u then need to go to 32GB of RAM or higher.

As for what is holding ur rig back now in GW2. Thats ur CPU. It just is.

I understand ur desire to beleve otherwise, but the new Intel CPU’s have much stronger single thread performance.. which is what GW2 runs of mainly.

gen 2 i7’s has nothign to do with it ..nor is the app. You should not be having heat issues. its a hardware fault of some sort ..whether it be bad TIM application, faulty Heatsink.. or bad airflow. you should look into it.

I run a OC’d 6core gen 2 i7 ..the 3930k its at 4.6ghz at 1.36v. I keep it cool with a top end air cooler and even at max load (all 6 cores 12 threads at 100% load) i get around the 75c-80c mark. Your getting that with a 4core 8 thread non OC’d cpu without even being on max load…that shows a problem.

Those who come from First person Shooter backgrounds wont be happy with GW2 no matter the rig they have since its impossble to get a solid 60fps in WvW battles.
However most peopel agree that 30fps is the minimum u need for smooth gameplay in non competative games like MMORPG’s, simply due to the nature of the game controls and the way they play..super fast response and accuracy needed in FPS games is not need in MMO’s like GW2, so 30fps or above is fine.
Even so to get that in GW2 u need a OC’d i5 or i7 CPU, so the CPU and motherboard alone would chew up the money ur thinking of spending on a whole computer.

Aye but tbh, this is like the ‘horror stories’ for all products. its by no means a good thing that they used cheap TIM.. BUT that still doesnt detract from their CPU’s performance. You can Still do mild to mid level OC’s rather easily. I wouldnt worry about the TIM between the Chip and IHS unless ur considering high level OC’s.

Keep the OC u do go for ‘reasonable’ with a good cooler and u will be fine.

Ofc u could, if u really are put of by this, simply get a Sandy bridge chip instead as they have soldered IHS’s. A 2550k has the same base clock as a 3570k, a 2700k has the same base clocks as a 3770k, the sandy bridge chips can OC higher ,when compared with the same cooler, to compensate for their every so slightly less performance per clock vs the newer ivy bridge.
i.e
3770k @ 4.5ghz = 2700k@4.6ghz

Puting 2 standard HDD’s into Raid 0 also helps. Hell i run my storage drives in raid0 just for kicks lol.
So if u want 1 TB of space, get 2x 500gb ones and Raid0 them , u will get the 1TB space but with more speed, all u have to do is put up with loosing HDD space inside ur case.

but yea the main advnatage of SSD and RAM cacheing is access times. But if ur tight on money dont worry about it ..just get a standard HDD or 2 smaller ones and Raid0 them.

Aye, when i heared about the thermal paste they used with the IHS on ivy’s i immediatly went in search to find out about my CPU. Thankfulyl it turned out that the 3930k’s are soldered i cant actually recall if i found this out after or b4 i bought it … lol
Deliding is risky unless u’ve done it b4 but most deffinatly worth it if ur into top end OC’ing for the reasons u say. Its actually amazing to see the size of the CPU itself, most people asume what u see when u take one out of the box IS the cpu chip, when infact it is not :P

I understand that the AMD cpu’s can run higher temps but i do try to stay safe tbh, they were never desgined to go that high so u have to wonder about degridation ..but at anyrate they can usualy OC high enough without getting that hot anyway.
And to people who think AMD’s run hot .. HA! …Ivy’s r the king of running hot atm. They can OC just as high as sandy’s but u need a beastly water cooling system to do it, and thats down to the IHS TIM and smaller size/surface area for the heat to disipate.

I think OP u should go M-ATX if u want a good rig, as above ITX although small have their limitations, if u get a really good one i supose it would be ok for mild OCing but in the end i think u could probably make a small enough rig with a m-ATX if u find the right case.

‘well’ is relative. IMO, no, but depends on what u consider to be ‘well’.

the GPU is indeed to low. U need a discrete card like a 650ti.

The CPU would need OC;’ing at the minimum, replacing to a FX 8XXX with OC ..or at most changing to a Intel rig like the 3570k. I suspect ur ether buying or have already got a prebuilt computer though so a intel rig is/was likely to expensive.

~$800 will get u the following Desktop if u build it urself.

Intel 3570k
Coolermaster Evo 212 cooler
Asus P8Z77 motherboard
16gb 1600mhz CL9 RAM
AMD 7870 Sapphire XT / Club3D Joker
Coolermaster HAF 912/ Storm PC Case
600w Corsair/Seasonic PSU
500gb/1TB HDD
Optical Drive.

If u need a keyboard, mouse, monitor , and speakers add another $200 ontop.

A rig like that will play GW2 the best that is currently possible if u OC the CPU which the abvoe cooler is capable of handling. it wil also run any otherr ucrrent game really well, likely on ma /close to max settings ..except Sleeping Dogs and maybe a few other OTT titles like the up coming Crysis 3.
A laptop for the same price ..will not ..it just wont ..no where near the same performance in fact.

Yea it will run GW2, but as other have said it will be on low/medium settings and will only be relativly smooth in PvE. Cities and WvW will be a slide show.

Yea building a computer looks more complicated than it is.

your bassic check list from scratch is.

Case
PowerSupply (PSU)
Motherboard (has onboard sound)
CPU
CPU Cooler
RAM
GraphicsCard (GPU)
HDD &/or SSD
Optical Drive (CD/DVD-ROM)

Thats the actual computer done.
Then u need accessories.

Monitor
Speakers
Mouse
Keyboard

If ur just building whats inside the box u can build a really nice gaming rig capable of playing GW2 for around $/£800. Add on more if u need the accessories.

bassicaly.. yes u could.

So long as u OC that CPu to ‘around’ 4.5ghz which u can do using air cooling (not expensive) u can play GW2 pritty much as godo as can be atm.

As the others have said a SSD would be nice but if ur on a budget its not somthing that is neccesery. If u do want one i sugest a 120gb one at minimum for ur OS and main games leaving atleast 20% free space for performance.
The Plextor m5 comes to mind, its got good performance and reliability. I would NOT sugest a OCZ SSD, they have a higher failure rates due to the type of memory they uses(unless they finaly changed it).

Totaly normal. dont worry about it.

OP. For GW2 the below desktop processor in order from lowest performing in Gw2 to highest (but still being all top end)

AMD FX 6XXX / 8XXX
Intel i5 2500k / i7 2600k
Intel i5 2550k / i7 2700k
Intel i5 3570k / i7 3770k

If u want to go really expensive (but for no real gain for GW2)
Intel i7 3930K
Intel i7-E 3960X
Intel i7-E 3970X

i7’s have Hyperthreading for extra multitasking performance, not really relivant to GW2 but bassicaly they do just aswell as their i5 counter parts.

All listed CPU’s hsould be OverClocked to ‘around’ 4.5ghz using top end air cooling.

OP.

Your rig should be able to handle running ur CPu at max load for long period of time, thats what they r designed for. If ur not OC’ing then there is probably an issue with ur air circulation or a fault with ur stock cooler. Its ether dirty or the TIM hasnt been applied properly.

Ether way the coolemraster Evo 212 is a good cheap cooler to use. People use them to OC and u could easily get a 2600k (if urs is a ‘k’) to 4.5ghz on it. Ofc u dont have to OC, u could just use the cooler with CPU on stock and it wil ldo just fine. 90c is most deffinatly hot and not what u should be getting even when running full pelt.

Get a 3570K and have it OC’d. A cheap aftermarket cooler like the coolermaster Evo 212 would do ok.

Dont use a SSD, thats a good chunk of change and tbh as nice as they r, they r a money sink and not a good idea if ur on a tight budget.

get a AMD 7870 tahiti card (thats the 1536 core version), Sapphire XT or the Club3d Joker r both good cards and are cheaper than a 660ti and give as good performance.

In all honesty i have to wonder what else ur buying to make it cost $1200. A normal 3570k rig should only cost around $800.

FYI Intel do run hotter but they are designed to run hotter, up to 90c if u really wanna push the limits..usualy people cap it at 80 or 85c.
AMD run ALOT cooler but also means they shut down at lower temps.
Instead of going from a stock speed at 40c and OCing to 60c with a AMD, ur going from 60c stock to 80c OC on Intel. In all honesty its not really worth worrying about as they r both designed to handle those temps.

They r both really old and not that great but i think the 5450 is the better.

BUT as u can see form the link from the poster above.. both cards are not even in the ‘high end video card’ list, u have to go to the mid range list. ANY card in that mid range list and ANY card in the bottom half of the high performance list are totaly out of date and or waaay to slow for GW2.

OP that laptop wil lrun GW2 but dont expect great performance, specialy in WvW. if ur PvE’ing most the time u should be ok, but grpahcis settings will likely have to be on low since the 520m is a low end media card AND its a laptop version so very weak.

Well yea u could be right but the only way to find out is for the OP to set game settings to absolute minimum, then run a GPU monitoring program and see what its usuage goes to when he is getting said low fps. If GPU usuage is 100% then yes ur correct, if its not, then a new GPU wont do diddly expect increase grpahics quality whilst keeping the same low fps.

Well tbh my rig can guarantee 30+ all the time (iv never seen it drop below 30 even in massive WvW battles) , BUT thats still not good for what my rig is tbh. You would ‘expect’ 60+ all the time but …not so.

But yea ur point still stands lol

Your GPU is fine tbh.

if u want more performance ull need a new CPU.

Ether a top end AMD like the FX 8350, or for better performance get a Intel i5 3570k. Both will need a OC at or above 4.4ghz.

yes it will ‘run’ Gw2

In a word . No.

How far it goes is totaly dependant on heat/temperature. And Amd heat on CPU’s is caused by voltage so just OC,… stress test it ..if its still within acceptable temps ..OC more and so on.

Check ur temps.
Check ur powersupply/block
Check windows see if its picking up any issue with ur battery.

It will ‘run’ GW2.

WvW performance will likely be unaffected by going to a 7770 GPU as its HIGHLY likely ur CPU is to blame for performance in that particular area. Plenty of threadsi n the tech forum explaining why in mroe detail but bassicaly u needa top tear OC CPu to play WvW without droping below 30 fps.

Make sure u havnt got Reflections on All ..or supersampling on.

If ur already running with the correct grpahics setitngs then its just down to ur CPU.

The 6200 can OC rather well from what i know, so try getting it close to 4.5ghz.
If ur stil unhappy with the fps after that then the only thing better is a intel rig. Unfortunatly GW2 is so inefficient with its threads u need a monster cpu capable of handling single thread operations well. Even then a OC’ed 3570k at 4.5ghz will still only be able to keep fps above 30 in massive WvW battles, 45+ in normal sized battles. Pve usualy a solid 60+ same goes for LA..all asuming the GPU keeps up.

So yea. . tis likely highly likely to be ur CPU.

EDIT: check ur temps if ur getting sudden fps drops in other games to.

“points” oh look som1 else playing Path of Exile :P

4Gb is enough, its when u have 4gb ram and run 32bit windows is when u have an issue.

But the CPU is indeed the bottleneck. it may exceed what Anet states the min requirment are ..but they are for ‘running the game’ ..not ‘playing the game’. A old Core 2 Duo really isnt good enough.