Guild Wars 2

Im not sure i 100% understand what ur trying to say …but maybe iv just had 1 to many glasses of rum at this moment in time :P
Ether way i ‘think’ i get the jist of what ur saying.

When i say ‘catastrophic performance’ ..its all relative. With a rig like my own im used to ether super high FPS 100+ without vsync, or solid 60 24/7, and/or absolute max fidelity settings + downsampling with 50+ fps (with the exception of Crysis 3 which runs at 1080p max settings 4x AA with 45+ fps in campaign). So when i get low 20’s in a 100man+ WvWvW zergs, and those in EB, i consider that catastrophic

If the OP wants to do large dynamic eventsl ike the dragons or WvW, then he/she is screwed. but for PvE, yes u can get ‘tolerable’ fps with cheap laptops like above.

However as i always consider the game as a whole, including WvW, and not just limited to PvE, i still stick to my comments in my 1st reply.

^^^ what he said :P

‘Cheap + Good for GW2’ do not go together.

‘laptop + ood for GW2’ also do not go together… UNLESS u have many many “moneys” to throw at it. :P

Bloom ..its love or hate. And its particularly important the art style that is being used.

I still remember Rift bloom in one of the dungeons which had ,in effect, a whiteout blizzard part to it. With bloom on, atleast with my plasma TV, it almost burns out ur eyes when ur looking at it lol, total white, couldnt see jack kitten . Turn bloom off however, and it looked so much better, u could see the blizzard, and just about see 2 foot in front of u. Atleats that game had the option to JUST turn off bloom.

I cant say i have a problem with GW2’s bloom tbh, but then again, iv got more conserning issue with GW2 other than its use of visual fidelity options. That being , its catastrophic performance anywhere where there are groups of other players.

Find out ur budget and get back to us.

Be prepared though, look at my sig, that is my rig, i get as low as 25 FPS in WvW.

Ganking ur ether running ‘lowest’ on the culling settings and/or u just have not been in a truely large eough zerg to see how bad performance gets.

Hell some battles that could be considered zergs, i can easily sit around all day at 45+ FPS. But in comparison to the zergs that net 20-25 FPS, those other zergs are tiny.
Yes i could increase those figures by 10 fps or so if i run ‘lowest’ on the culling settings, but by that point u have effectivly turned a large zerg into a small one by culling out over half the people on the screen, and those left are all green and it looks like crap.
Instead i run highest on the culling character limit so i can see every single one of the people in the zrg, and medium/low on the Culling Texture limit so atleast those people near me are fully textures and those further away are green. That plus my system nets FPS figures as low as 20-25 in MASSIVE EB zergs.

AMD’s mantle API would , if what we have been told by AMD is to be beleved, do wonders for GW2, problem is that ALOT of work on Anet side to move GW2 from DX9 to Mantle.

Yea i know :P

Becouse W7 is what i recommend

Its a laptop, so no.

Seriosly…to get a laptop that can handle WvW the same as a desktop (that being, not very well but atleast its playable), u need a laptop with a desktop CPU, or the BEST mobile laptop CPU out. both of which cost alot more than what u seem to have availbe if ur looking at laptops such as the one above that doesnt even have a gaming GPU in it.

Sorry i know this sounds harsh, but laptops were never created to be gaming machines, they were made to be portable ‘light work stations’. Even the so called ‘gaming laptops’ are only ‘gaming laptops’ for certain types of games.
You can fit some good powerfull GPU’s in laptops and be fine in GPU intense games, but there is no mobile/laptop CPU that is strong enough to keep up with desktop versions.
Laptop CPU’s throttle back the more they are in use, they are also weaker in general than desktop CPU’s.
So when looking at the CPU u need to not only find on thats a notch above the desktop equivalanet, u also need to take into account that the stated clock speed is not what it will run at when its fully loaded.

So ..CPU’s:
Mobile: 4800MQ, 4900MQ. (or any other 3.7ghz or higher)
Desktop: 3820, 3930k. (these are the only desktop CPU’s i have seen in laptops)

Most laptop with good GPU that have these CPU’s are around the $2000 mark.

I dont know what ur total max budget is, but u may want to look into a LAN gaming desktop, portable enough to take to Uni, but obviosly u cant take them into lessons, so if all u need is a PC to work on in ur dorm/accomodation, then a LAN gaming rig would be betetr than a laptop.
And to top it of, depending on ur current desktop specs, all u may need to buy is a Mini ITX motherboard + Mini ITX compoatable Case, saving u loads of money.

Yes Z type for OC’ing. And a K version CPU.

The performance difference between a OC 2500k sandybridge and a OC 4670k haswell is precisely 0. becouse the haswell wont reach the same clocks as the sandy due to heat, and so the small performance difference clock for clock between the newer haswell and the Older Sandy is lost once OC’ed.
But becouse of ur motherboard situation, if u get a new motherboard there really is no reason to make ur life difficult by trying to find a 2500k/2550k, not only that.. Haswell(4670k) has its benifits with power consumption and the motherboards that support it have newer technologies onboard.

Its totaly up to u which way u go, im fond of getting the extra ‘free’ performance of OCing so i would , if i were in ur position, buy a new motherboard and get a 4670k or 4770k and then give it a modest OC. Just remember that Haswell is a hot generation of CPU’s and so you will NEED an aftermarket cooler if ur gunna OC.

Worry not about ‘deadend sockets’. Intel has, once ur OC, produced 0 performance gains since Sandybridge, even Boradwell will only be 30% more power efficent than haswell ‘at the same performance’. By the time Intel comes out with a CPU that is worth upgrading to performance wise, u would expect any socket currently out to be unusable by said new CPU anyway.

What performance u will gain ?
Well just going on stock settings u will bassicaly be gaining 1ghz (1000mhz) of CPU speed going from stock 2.8ghz to stock 3.8ghz. add on a OC to maybe 4.2ghz and ur then gaining 1.4ghz over what ur current CPU can do + if u get a haswell ull gain that extra ~15% clock performance advanatage (Sandy to Ivy was ~7% performance increase, Ivy to haswell was again ~7%. So Sandy to haswell is roughly 15%)
Effectivly giving u a ~1.8ghz clock increase over ur current CPU.
What FPS icnrease that results in ingame is hard to say, but it will be noticable.

And u wont need a new OS for the motherboard. The talk about the OS was regarding your RAM. A 32bit OS can only use roughly 3.8gb(4gb) of RAM, a 64bit OS, depending on the package (home, premium, enterprise, etc) can handle up to 192Gb.
Windows 64bit:
Basic is 8gb,
Premium is 16gb
Professional is 192gb
Enterprise is 192gb
Ultimate is 192gb

If u do get a cooling pad make sure ur laptop has botton intakes, otherwise its a complete waste. Some laptops have front intakes and rear exhaust with nothing on the bottom, meaning a cooling pad will do next to nothing.

Zerk, i know u know more the average person when it comes to PC’s, but, i have to point out that the FPS figures ur comparing are ‘minimums’, which are HIGHLEY likely to be caused by the GPU maxing out in those super intense situations and/or are the result of loading spikes.
Yes minimums are VERY important when comparing performance, but as i said, they are usualy caused by 2 things, GPU and/or Loading spikes, its vary rare that they are affected by CPU unless ur in a CPU bound game like GW2.
Ether way if u look at the AVERAGE fps, there is a huge difference, 10-15 FPS, roughly 25%.

Simply put, any 2nd generation intel i series or newer + a middle of the range motherboard and u will be sorted. Get a K version if possible with the appropriat motherboard for overclocking.You’ll also want to look into aftermarket CPU coolers.

So a 2550k (100mhz faster than 2500k and no onboard GPU, harder to find but they should be more or less the same price), a 3570k, or a 4670k. These are the i5 options.

‘Stupid price’ is all relative tbh. If ur used to buying AMD, then Intel and Nvidia are stupid price to u most likely, but, specialy for CPU, you pay for the better performance. For me stupid price is a 3970x or 4960X, but a 3930k is fine. thats ~$500 vs $1000 just for the CPU, so u really need to state a price range.

OP, since u cant OC u ether want a 2500, or 3570 i5. If u decide u want to OC and/or want the latest intel generation, then a 4670k + Z87 motherboard is ur best option.

Fermi, unless ur getting a H100 or equivalent AIO, a top of the range air cooler will perform just as well and cost less than a lesser AIO water cooler, with the only downside being their massive size.
For example:
The H60 cost the same as a NH-D14 but the D14 performas better.
The H80 costs £10 more than the D14, performs about the same.
The H100 costs £20 more than D14 and performs better.

Zerk, games DO use HT, they dont use it well, but they do use it. And also consider that the new generation of consols will NEED games to be properly optimised for 8 cores, otherwise they simple wont work/perform good enough. (each single core in the consols is only runing at like 1.6-1.75 ghz). Meaning all the consol ports (and lets face it many games nowerdays are consol ports) will be better optimised for PC’s with 8 or more CPU threads/cores.
Ofc this doesnt help GW2, but as we all know, u dont build a rig for 1 game. And GW2 does use HT in some situations. An i5 can be maxed out by GW2, at this point an i7 has an advantage.

As for RAM, its so cheap nowerdays to get 8 or 16gb that there is no reason not to get it. It will ensure that u never run out of RAM.

Alot of ‘cheap’ gaming laptops also have poor desgin for the chassis meaning they just get very hot anyway and cant be used to extended periods. Be carefull when buying a laptop, make sure u alocate enough money for a true gaming laptop and dont just look at specs, check the laptop chassis is designed with good airflow.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Hw4b

Tweeked Fermi’s one.

2×8 GB RAM , ur using a dual channel CPU, so no need for 4 sticks.
Swapped the H80 for a H100i, if its not a H100 or equiv AIO cooler then u should just get a top end aircooler.
Changed the mothered board to somthing more gamer orientated, and better looking to boot
Change Windows 8 for Windows 7, just becouse i prefer W7 :P

As the above poster said however, AMD’s new GPU are coming soon, u may want to hold of for a bit if ur at all interested in staying up to date.

By ‘culling fix’ they likely mean they are changing the level of culling for each of the settings u can choose from (very low to highest). That isnt a fix :P

3770 K or 4770 K .. ether is fine. But Intel is the way to go. Nothing against AMD, but they have not been in the high performance game for a while now.

One thing i will point out though is this.

Since 2nd gen i series, CPU performance has increase by precisely ..zip, when u take OC’ing into account.

The 2500k to 2700k
The 3820 to 3970x
The 3570k & 3770K
The 4670k & 4770k
The 4820k & 4960X

All of them, when OC’d to their thermal limit on identical coolers, will average roughly the same performance per core. The only difference is between i5’s, i7’s, and i7e’s..that being the number of cores/threads.

So bassicaly u could buy a 2550k, a 3570k, a 4670k (they all have the same 3.8ghz clock at stock) and OC them all, and due to their individual heat limits, the end result is they all perform the same. The 2550k will clock higher than the 3570k and the 3570k will clock higher than 4670k, thus negating the small clock for clock performance increase each one has over the former.
Even the up coming broadwell CPU’s will only have icnreased power efficiency of around 30% over haswell (4670k//4770k) whislt mainting the same performance.
So dont worry about dead end sockets, by the time intel is presured by AMD to release a more powerfull performaning CPU, u would expect what ever socket ur on to be old anyway.

Deliding does indeed help. But its a risky proposition.
There are two methods to do it, both can cause u to break the CPU.
One requirs a hammer, a vice grip, and a block of wood. (yea i know right :P ) .
Its quiker to do..but yea ..hammer .. :P lol
The other uses a razor blade.
Takes alot longer as u need to cut throug the black glue that holds the IHS to the PCB, and u have to be carfull, if u push the blade to far thourgh u can damage the core.

Anyway i wouldnt recommend it unless u had the money to buy another CPU straight away ..just in case. Or unless u have very steady hands for the razor blade method.

The 3770k even without delidding can OC well enough, the 4770k though, that thing is just too kitten hot when OC’ed without delidding. I mean i have a 4770k in another rig in the house, so its not like i hate them and dont think they are good, but i wouldnt expect to get more than 4.4ghz out of it, unless i was lucky.

The only true CPU’s that are perfect for OCing out of the box are Sandybridge/2nd gen i series CPU. Those being the 2500k, 2550k,2600k,2700k, 3820, 3930k 3960X, 3970X. As they all have soldered IHS’s.

i7 3770k + Corsair H100i. OC to 4.5ghz or higher.
GTX 780 GPU.
128gb/256gb SSD

Build around that and u will be able to run GW2 as good as is currently possible. BUT it wont be ‘perfect’ as the GW2 engine is just unable to run ‘perfectly’ no matter how much hardware u throw at it.

*I recommend the 3770k over the 4770k becouse its easier to OC heat wise. Also note an i5 can max out in some situations hence the i7 sugestion, here are other reasons for the i7 over the i5 but thats a discussion for a later date :P

Tis why i said ‘if u can’

And tbh with the latest information about broadwell (30% less power usuage at the same performance level as Haswell), u might as well think in the long run.

A i7 will last a while. Broadwell isnt going to give any worth while performance boost, so its not like we are getting more single core performance, meaning multicores are gunna mean more, and ofc u have the new consols coming which run on 8 cores CPU, requirng games to be properly optimised for 8 threads, so buying cheap now and thinking of upgrading in the future will just end up being more expensive.

Might aswell just a get a good top end CPU now and see how long it lasts.
Those who bought a 2nd gen Sandy i7 are laughing right now as they are going to get ALOT out of them time wise.
Think about it. If u got a 2600k back in Q1 of 2011, ur still using it now, and u will still be using it when broadwell comes out. So ur gunna get atleast 3-4 years of usuage before u even think about changing to a new CPU with more single core grunt(maybe Skylake or CannonLake in 2015/16).

And while i say all this i still udnerstand that the Op is thinking of GW2, and GW2 is unlikely to be properly optimised ot use a i7 in any performance increasing meaningfull way ..BUT ..u never build or upgradea rig with just 1 game in mind ..thats crazy :P

Get a 650ti or 650ti Boost if u can.
Get a k version of the CPU.

If u can, get a i7, they do show a performance increase over the i5’s in some rare casses in Gw2. An i5 can become fully utilised in extreme events in GW2 at which point the FPS is limited, where as if the same user was using an i7 they would have the extra CPU threads availble and the FPS wouldnt drop as far. The differnece in FPS in these situations however would be single digits.

I have a rig in my house that runs a 4770k, in most WvW zergs it can stay above 25FPS.

In the truly monsterous zergs it will drop lower. BUT the big thing to know is that this 4770k(4th gen) is still running at stock settings despite having a NH-D14 cooler on it. So it could easily handle a OC to around 4.4ghz, and gain some FPS imporvments in WvW.

My own CPU is a 3930k which is a 2nd generation i7e on the LGA 2011 socket. it runs at 4.6ghz OC and can stay above 25 FPS in WvW in 95% of situations.

The WvW culling settings have to be set according to the zerg size. All zergs excluding those really massive ones in EB can handle the below settings.
Charatcer limit : Highest
Texture Limit : Medium.

When u get to the biggest zergs u need to set Texture Limit to Low.

So what im saying is, get a i5 or i7 ether 2nd, 3rd or 4th gen.
Buy a top end air cooler like a NH-D14 or Silver Arrow,
Then OC as high as u can whilst keeping under 80c at full load with the cooler of ur choice.
2nd gen will OC further than 3rd gen and 3rd gen will OC higher than 4th gen.
4th Gen is faster clock for clock vs 3rd gen and 3rd is faster clock for clock vs 2nd gen.
The difference in ur end OC will negate any difference between the clock for clock performance so dont worry about that.

If u dont want to OC then buy a 4th Gen as they are the fastest at their stock clocks.

You WILL notice a performance difference going form a AMD cpu to a Intel one with ur rig.

Yea that 31.5 inch screen is nice and all, but it being a IGZO display really ramped up the price. Thankfully the 39" will be a more normal VA type panel that doesnt cost nearly as much to manufacture. IIRC bulk orders of the VA panel used in the 39" 4k Monitor costs around $250 each(and this cost is widely known and confirmed)
Seiki has the exact same VA 39" 4khd panel in their 30hzTV and that cost around $700. Add in the extra cost of Asus’s extra features like a 60 hz controller and variose options, most people expect it to cost around $1000.

Squishy, correct me if im wrong but iirc those XEON chips run at around 2.8ghz in boost mode …ur likely bottlenecked via ur per thread performance.

I was commenting in a more general sense to encompas all games.
You dont build a rig around one game.

Depends on the game settings u want to run. if ur like me and u would want max settings then nothing less than a Single 780/Titan or SLI 770’s/680’s would do.

Xfire is ..well…suposedly since the Xfire driver fix its much better but its still not on par with SLI in terms of ACTUAL visual FPS. You will have to read up on Xfire framedrops/runt frames and how the indicated FPS is not the same as the percieved FPS.

I stil lsay if ur thinking of a double GPU system then go NVidia.
Since ur thinking of going multi monitor, then ur ether gunan need SLI or a 780/Titan or maybe one of AMD’s upcoming top end single GPU cards.

Honestly at this point in time, i would not advise multi monitor setups if ur currently runnign a single monitor. Simply becouse 4kHD is right around the corner.
3840×2160 vs 5760×1200/1080, i would go with a 4kHD monitor.
Infact i am, im getting the Asus 39" 4kHD monitor as soon as it arrive which should be early next year, and ‘should’ cost under $1000/£1000 if the panel cost is anything to go by. The picture quality u will get, the desktop space, and the screen size will be hands down better than any triple monitor setup imo, the best bit ..no bezels

Anyway dont underestimate the GPU requirments for multimonitor / high resolution + high setitngs gaming.

1)Becouse ur running settings higher than u did with ur old card.
Set the settings ot the same and asuming u have no software issues u will have vastly better FPS than with a 9600GT
2)Becouse ur running supersampling. This option is VERY GPU intensive and requirs ether SLI or a GTX 780/Titan ro be usable with high FPS.

Also, make sure ur GPU is running PCI 2.0 or 3.0 when ur in game. if it stays at PCI 1.1 that could be ur problem. However its likely that the PCi controller is effectivly ‘downclocking’ when its not in use and u just so happen to take the sceenshot when that was in effect.

My own rig can barely stay above 25fps in Large WvW zergs and its cost me over £2000 so far :P
Granted u can get simalar performance for much less for GW2 BUT not $650. Infact u would be hard pushed to build a proper intel i5 gaming rig for $650, most start at the $800 range and thats self built, u can likely add another $100 or more on for a prebuilt one.

Bassicaly your asking for to much for to little money.

Since the price was at the limit of the $1000 i didnt bother argueing over the PSU. However they are correct when they say its deffinatly the minimum u would want.

I normaly recommend a 650W, you dont really want to be runing ur PSU at close to max limits all the time.

OCing on laptops is all fine if the BIOS/software allows it, just dont try uping any voltages as it will absolutly hammer ur cooling.

And when OC’ing a GPU make sure to run a whole bunch of test programs to fully make sure ur not getting artifacts or crashes.
I.E 3dMark, 3dmark 11, Unigine Valley, Unigine Heaven, and some game benchmarks like Metro LL, and a handfull of random games, i personaly used Crysis 3 and Tera Online (suprising this picked up some artificts that other programs didint), and FFXIV ARR benchmark.

Also note that memory OC’s tend to affect benchmak scores much more than actual ingame performance. So prioritize GPU core clocks. If you do OC the VRAM dont go crazy balls to the walls OCing as memory is far more sensative than the GPU and will be the most comon failing/breaking point of a graphics card.

Fermi.2409:

You really should build it yourself. You’ll do much, much better. It doesn’t really take that long and it’s not even hard at all. Watch newegg’s guides on Youtube and you should be good to go.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1CkSr

Its not often i see som1 build a rig on PCpartpicker that i have nothing to question over

I concure with Fermi’s build, it would do well and is right at your budget.

re-use what u can from your old rig. HDD’s, optical drives, OS, case, PSU. if u can save enough u can then get maybe a i7 4770k, or an SSD.

$1000 if a good price even for a complty new rig. its an even better budget if u can re-use old hardware, so dont worry about thakittens
when we get people asking for the same kind of performance the rig above gives, but for $600 ..thats when things get very hard, becouse most the time its not possible.

GW2, as has been stated already above, uses just over 40 individual threads.
However only, roughly, 3 of those are the main threads, and they are the big ones. of those 3 you have the ‘main’ thread.
When the ‘extreme’ situations i mentioned previosly occure, the main thread maxes out performance wise ,like it usualy does, and thus FPS drops, BUT at the same time due to these intense situation the other 2 threads also max and the other 30 odd smaller threads also increase in their work load.
What u end up with is the main thread using one whole cpu thread, the other 2 big threads ocupy a cpu thread each along with a handfull of smaller threads, then the 4th and final i5 cpu thread gets full with the other smaller threads. Once this happens ur at 100% i5 total utilisation.
In an i7 however all those smaller threads get laid of onto the extra 4 CPU threads and thus overall utilisation isnt maxed out. With that you gain a few FPS.

however as i said, these situations are few and far between.

As for a Xeon CPUs, at stock the new Xeons have great single thread performance and with the extra cores/threads they do well vs normal consumer grade i5’s and i7’s. HOWEVER when said consumer i5’s and i7’s are OverClocked, they surpase the Xeons single thread performance and become much better for gaming, and atm a normal i7 with its 4 cores and 8 threads is more than neough for any game, a 8 core 16 thread Xeon would show 0 performance gains due to the number of CPu threads availabe. Any performance gain that is shown would be completly down to stock for stock clocks/performance, and as i have already said, the non Xeon CPU’s can OC, even the non K editions have roughly 300 or 400 mhz of OC in them.

Have you got a good gaming desktop at home already ?

800w is way overkill for a i5 and a single GPU. 650w is enough, infact even 650w is overkill, but its a good middleground.

I never hit below 40FPS in LA when its busy atm.
That said though im runnign a £500 CPU thats OC’d, GW2 shouldnt requir that kind of hardware.
GPU wise GW2 is relativly tame if u have an uptodate GPU.
I run GW2 with every settings maxed EXCEPT reflections due to the underground rendering issue. So i have it on Terrain & Sky. I have SuperSampling ON, and i even downsample at a resolution of 3200×1800 which is the highest my single HDMI cable allows.
With that caped at 60 FPS my GPU is usualy between 50% and 75% usuage in LA (when it isnt CPU bound – so not by the MF)

Cullign settings are at
Character Limit: Highest
texture Limit: Medium.

WvW FPs can still dip down to 25 FPS though only in very very large zergs.

GW2 is incredibly CPu bound, BUT its bound by the single thread performance aswell as the number of threads available. there are some situations where GW2 wil lrequir more than 4 threads, so an i7 can and will show better performance in those situations.

Its prebuilt so they will have cut some corners.
The PSU for example, and the Micro ATX B75 motherboard. and the slower 1333mhz RAM.
The CPU however is ‘ok’.
The GPU though isnt gaming class. You want a 650ti atleast.

In all honesty u can build a rig urself with a MUCH better GPU for $800. Stretch to $1000 and aself built rig will be a much more on the level gaming computer.

So in response. it will’run; GW2, how it ‘plays’ will totaly depend on how low ur willing to go on the settings.

Intel rigs usualy start around the $800 area unless u really skimp on things that you really shouldn’t, like the motherboard, PSU and GPU. In otherwords ….stick with the AMD build unless u can save up to $800+ or can find some REALLY good deals

I didnt mean to imply i used RTSS on high with GW2 in the past. i just so happen to have been fiddling wiht it whilst i was of GW2, and i didnt set it back to medium b4 going back to GW2 and thus the issue arrised :P

I havnt used mumble for ages, infact i never used a VOIP in my time playing GW2 lol. But i can understand if it caused issues, GW2 is very …touchy :P

Word of warning for those that dont know.

Dont run programs like EVGA Precision’s RivaTunerSS Overlay, or MSI’s overlay on the ‘high’ application detection setting. GW2 hates it and will try to tell your your hardware is borked :P

I had my RivaTunerSS set to that for like a day or 2 for other reasons, after being of GW2 for about a couple weeks i decded to log on check on the state of things(as i frequently do) and wham…GW2 wouldnt load in to the character selection screen and would close instead and load up a webpage telling my hardware is at failt and a load of other crap about OC’s , temps and such.
Thankfully me knowing how GW2 just LOVES blaiming hardware for its issues…(more likely just my own knowledge that i know my hardware is perfectly fine :P ) it took me about 5-10 minutes to work out the issue lol.

So anyway yea….. RTSS + high detection = broken Gw2 :P

I got a 780.. Its EVGA Classified, so its not using the reference design. but still.
I run GW2 on max setitngs with SuperSampling AND DownSampling from 3200×1800 resolution. And the GPU doesnt break a swett. usualy between 50% and 75% usuage with FPS capped at what ever the game engine allows at the time.
I.e Busy LA ~35FPS, WvW Zergs 25 FPS or above. And PvE 60FPS (Vysnc).
A 780 is TOTALLY overkilll for GW2, specialy with its current, and likely only, crappy game engine.
To be honest if ur thinking of dumping that much money on a GPU for Gw2, ur better of buying a more mid range card like a 760 and spending the rest on ether a better CPU, like a 4770k, or a 3770k, aswell as suficient cooling for a OC.

Nothing abnormal. This is just GW2.
Doesnt matter what rig u have, LA and other busy cities, WvW zergs, large Dynamic events, will have low fps.

If ur CPU is overheaitng at just 35% usuage theres somthing VERY wrong with ur cooling.
If i were you i would pull apart the laptop(or find a ‘professional’ to do it), find the CPU cooler and reseat it with new TIM whilst cleaning it if need be.
Then if that doesnt stop it, i would go into the BIOS and tone down any ‘overclocks’ that has been done. Though isuspect by overclock u simple mean ‘turbo boost’ which isnt an Overclock, and in all likely hood the CPU wont be running akittens full 3.33ghz when playign GW2 as GW2 tends to use all 4 cores and thus the CPU ont allow full 3.33ghz across all cores.

Since the air intake as in the front from what i can see, there is no helping it with a laptop cooling pad unfortunatly, so if u cant fix this issue using the stock hardware on the laptop, ur pritty much stuffed.

EDIT:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3acQWgtiwFE
If ur heatsinks are clogged like this, and ur ‘professional’ did not pull the laptop apart completly to clean it, then this is likely ur issue. This vid shows the heatsinks on this laptop completly clogged by a lay of dust. Same laptop as urs.

As good as the AMD APU’s are, and they really are in a league of their own, they are not true gaming rig material.

Well theres a reason there are more expenive higher performing GPU’s above the 7950 :P

The settings u wont be able to max out will only be 2 things.
1 of them becouse its bugged. The other becouse its a GPU hog.

Reflections: All< This is the one thats bugged. Set it to Terrain and Sky.
Sampling: SuperSampling < This requirs alot of GPU power. Set to Native.

The rest of the setitngs can be maxed.
With the eception of Cullign settings. These can not both be maxed becouse they are CPU bassed.
CharacterLimit: High/Highest
texture Limit: Medium/Low

TBH its not even a ‘cracked’ copy of windows you download.
Its simply a normal Windows installation that you install, that u then use program to remove the Authentication promt.

And the simple reason people do it is usualy 1 or 3 things.
1)They are just straight up pirating it for the sake of doing so.
2)They allready have 1 copy of windows bought for 1 rig in the house and dont feel they should have to buy another 2 or 3 copies for their other rigs.
3)They feel the Tax microsoft put on other parts of a system hardware and software side is mroe than enough without spending X amount more on the OS.

People who come under (1) i have a problem with, doing just for the sake of doing it is damaging.
People who do it for reason (2) i can understand completly. They have a legit copy, they use that legit copy for installation on all rigs , register one legit, and crack the others.
People who do it for reason (3) again i can undertsand, though its more of a grey area imo.

Anyway its NEVER a good idea to openly say one does this, or openly recommened it. Large corporations are sneaky buggers and you never know what will happen.
That said, using a web bassed proxy(if in the UK or using a ISP with torrent sites locked) and searching a torrent site is just as ‘informative’ as using google.

EDIT: The argument people form group (3) use is. Microsoft will get more money from som1 building a low budget rig if they get a non legit copy of windows becouse MS get money from other software and hardware tax’s etc that will be used on said rig. More than they would if said person cant afford to build said rig in the first place due to the price of an OS, in which case MS get zip.

That will ‘run’ GW2 yes.

Low/medium – More likely low if u want sustainable high FPS.

The CPU , like al lLaptops, will not holdo ut very well in LA/ WvW/ Large Dynamic Events.

But for PvE it should do fine.

Any proper gaming laptop with good design should not overheat if the vents are not blocked. Thus the CPU should not throttle back, therefor a cooling pad will not increase performance.
However, many laptops do indeed overheat due to bad design and thats where laptop cooling pads help.

That said a cooling pad will not stop the CPU’s from downclocking when more cores are in use, thats locked in the Bios settings, BIOS settings that are usualy unable to be adjusted by the user, unlike in Desktops.

EDIT: I know I sound like i got a downer on laptops, its not that though. They have there place, and are very usefull. But gaming systems on a budget they are not.

As you just mentioned. Powerline/Homeplug tech is great for getitng around signal loss issues.
My house has these plugs installed throughout for our laptops and other wireless devices, my main rig is wired (cable goes through the floor downstairs and into the moden/router) So if ur not willing to route a wire cable through ur house then going wireless is the only option and if u have signal issue, homeplugs are a great work around.

They have their limits though, i beleve the highest bandwidth u can expect is around 500mb/sec with Homeplug v2. V1 i beleve is 100-200mb/sec and thats in a perfect situation, which ofc almost never happens.

Highley unlikely.