Guild Wars 2

I put this build together recently with the intent of a minimum build that should play WvW smoothly (25+fps in zergs). The parts are chosen with the intent to overclock which is important for WvW:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/nsDy

In short, it has a i5 2500k and a GTX 560 Ti.

psirca.9452:

I put a ballista on an area next to me with a treb, I’m sure that I didn’t refresh it every 30m. It’s hard anyway to refresh those because you need a target.

I may be wrong about this, buy my understanding was to reset a despawn timer all you need to do is type F to occupy the weapon. But this is part of the original question.

The important thing in any match-up isn’t who wins or loses it is the individual battles that are won at the time you are playing. If you live by the scoreboard then sooner or later you will fail at wvw…. that or bandwagon. That said, there is nothing wrong with wanting to win, but just don’t stop there if you know what I mean.

The other point which I believe most of us know is that what is said on these forums does not represent a server as a whole. Try not to label the entire server as having the same point of view. It’s sorta like the whole hacking ordeal, the server doesn’t go around recruiting hackers… lol

psirca.9452:

I put a ballista on an area next to me with a treb, I’m sure that I didn’t refresh it every 30m. It’s hard anyway to refresh those because you need a target. Anyway I returned to the same battleground after sleep and that ballista was still there. It was on a cliff so it’s not likely that it was in a running view of other players to play with it.

Thanks psirca.

Clearly there remains a bit more to this puzzle to be uncovered despite the definition on the wiki. And it is possible that there is a mechanic in the mix that is more complicated than we expected, and it may depend on the type of siege.

Any other observations will be helpful of course…

In an adjacent thread it was mentioned that arrow carts never despawn but rams do. And I’ve observed large numbers of arrow carts for extended periods where I doubt someone was “touching” them periodically.

Has anyone else observed that some siege does not despawn after 30 minutes of inactivity?

It appears that there is still some lack of clarity on this subject.

What are some of your observations?

One of my HD 5770 cards was running in the mid 90’s. So I unscrewed the bottom to remove the heatsink, used Isopropyl Alcohol to clean the surface of the CPU and heatsink, applied some thermal paste, reattached and my temperatures dropped to max 65-70c.

It was an ASUS card and whoever installed it originally put WAY too much thermal paste that was actually preventing proper cooling.

Other things to help is to try to reduce clutter within your case and ensure there are 2 or 3 good fans feeding in and out air properly… in the front and out the back of the case.

GTX 260 is comparable to a modern day Radeon 7750 based on Toms. So it’s still no slouch… although it is a power hog for it’s relative performance.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

That said, it is a few years old it could be losing it’s touch. Or your power supply could be short changing what the card needs.

A 7670M benches equivalent to a GeForce 8800 which was launched in 2006.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+7670M&id=320

Otherwise the system is great.

You might try a lower res. If the FPS does rise that would indicate a Graphics card bottleneck.

Where’s the liquid nitrogen?!? I’m gonna post that on my guild site and ask for upgrade recommendations… >.>

Thats a bummer… my cooler is snug but it does rotate against the CPU slightly, I believe that’s okay. My temperatures at 4.4ghz stay under 70c during an extended IntelBurnTest so it’s good to go.

Step #1: Purchase a good air cooler http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

Step #2: Install and Overclock it http://www.overclock.net/t/1198504/complete-overclocking-guide-sandy-bridge-ivy-bridge-asrock-edition

Step #3: GTX 660 Ti or better

$432: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/n48y (if you’re less concerned with game performance then drop down to an i3 cpu)

I was also going to suggest an AMD cpu setup which would save you up to $100 but if you read these forums you’ll understand why. If you didn’t already have a video card then the new Trinity AMD cpu’s which include video would be worth a look.

With Catalyst 12.8 and CAP 2 12.8 my HD 5770 CF is as you’d expect. About the equivalent as the HD 5870 my wife is using. Single card in city 30fps, turn on CF and it jumps to about 48fps. This matches Tomshardware benchmarks for other games using the same cards.

I recently crossfired my HD 5770 cards and see a substantial change in FPS (i.e. 35 to 55fps in a quieter section of the LA). Initially it did nothing but found info that I need to run in fullscreen mode (not windowed).

I am using the 12.8 CAP 2 files, and read some users have issues with later CAP versions in GW2. I had to google around to find those btw.

Thank you ST Babaganosh. I also suspect that this could be a reason some users are having unexpected FPS performance issues. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to confirm this is a factor outside of temporarily replacing the PSU. Even a top quality PSU can be a dud or become a dud with time. PSU’s naturally degrade with time…

Does anyone know of an easier way to verify whether a PSU is providing the required volts/amps to a GPU/CPU?

i5 quad core is a great start. The 6700 (6750 or 6770?) is a decent gaming card.

For smoother game play you’ll probably want to disable Anti-Aliasing and set your resolution a notch below 1920×1080. Refer to the sticky in this forum for helpful FPS/performance tweaks.

If you’re heavy into WvW then you’ll probably want to look into a better video card and CPU overclocking.

You’re getting at least 25 fps in WvW with a dual core? Am I reading that correctly? Seems hard to believe given that zergs are CPU heavy.

Also, follow the sticky from support team:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-and-Performance-based-issues-1

Another possibility is you’re overheating but if CPU/GPU are running near 100% then it doesn’t seem that it is related; overheating will typically clock down. Turn shadows to none to relieve the CPU. Reduce hidden programs running in the background.

I had a similar issue with my previous i5 760. The stock fan/thermal paste was not cutting it. Installed a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus and it was a world of difference, from 70-80c to 45-55c at load before overclocking. The Evo model is a little better it seems and costs about the same. GL

Catuk.4329:

Nope its all relative I live in a very small house, been there T shirt etc with huge noisy gaming rig. So for some folk who maybe have a very good reason for wanting to game on a laptop it makes perfect sence.
My laptop is for all the family but lets me play mmos i couldn’t otherwise play.
We all know you can only upgrade so far anyway before a new scratch build is needed, so get a good spec and you can play for a good couple of years.
Point is laptops are slowly but surely becoming a more viable option for pc gaming

That’s why I said “almost makes no sense.” But still in your situation I’d recommend buying a $3-400 laptop for the family (non-gaming). And save a little bit more for a $7-800 desktop. In a couple years just upgrade the GPU or CPU or add RAM or whatever to keep it rockin. Unless you absolutely need to be very mobile it’ll save ya.

A gaming laptop makes almost no sense. No upgrade options, so in a couple years when its time to upgrade you will need to start from scratch. Plus to get the same performance you’ll pay about 50-100% more to play on a smaller screen. Huge money sink for a less enjoyable experience. The list goes on…

On the SSD is a no brainer. Faster loading zones and textures. You didn’t mention what type of connection the external hard drive uses. But it probably doesn’t matter when comparing an HDD to an SSD.

32-bit Windows7 is really going to cut it close on filling up your memory with GW2. Any chance of upgrading to 64-bit? 4GB is what i use with Windows 7 without issues, but you can’t go crazy with extras running programs at the same time.

WvW zergfests, not sure the best laptop can do it… folks typically overclock the top new i5/i7’s on desktops to maintain smooth fps.

Wvw zergs/sieges are very heavy on the CPU, quad core is a must, i5/i7 is a must. Likely, in that situation you’re capped on both GPU and CPU. If you want more you’ll have to upgrade to an i5 and for GPU, go with at least a Radeon 7850 or GTX 660.

Hardware Spec:
-Core i5 760 @ 3.8 oc
-Radeon 5870 1GB (v12.8) @ 1300/900 oc
-Gigabyte H55M-S2
-4GB 1333 @ 1448 oc
-Win7 64bit sp1
-500gb WD Caviar Blue

Game setting:
1920×1200 Window
High Settings (Frame Limiter=60, Vsync=On, Shadows=Medium, Reflections=Terrain&Sky)

FPS Value:
PVE=40-60
Cities=25-60 (25-30 halloween event)
PVP=40-60
WvWvW=17-60 (17-23 in zergs)
GW2 build#=15,880

• AMD settings applied as suggested in Sticky Thread

i5 3320 has a base clock of 2.6ghz. Ignore Turbo and Hyper-threading for GW2 and gaming in general.

Turbo primarily applies when a single core is being used heavily. Since GW2 uses three cores Turbo is not used based on what i see on my i5 760.
Hyper-threading is not utilized while gaming.

You want a quad core so the 3320 is not ideal.

Are you certain your laptop supports CPU upgrades? That typically is not an option on most laptops. Unfortunately, laptops in general are known for their lack of upgrade options. Yet another reason to go Desktop PC. GL sir.

Make sure to upgrade to the 64bit version of Win8. A 32bit OS will not seeing more than 4GB (realistically 3GB) of your total memory.

A friend of mine has been running Win8 64bit perfectly fine with GW2.

A friend of mine at work has been using the early release version of Windows 8 for a couple months with GW2 installed. He is very picky about game quality and told me the game has been playing just fine.

Daish.6139:

and there is no way Daish is going to spend another 100g Daish would rather quit the game

Swedemon will quit the game unless… thinks of ridiculous demand

You give me 1 hundred billion dollars! pinkie to mouth

It’s not a subscription game, you can’t wave your “I’m quitting” flag like other games and expect ANet to jump.

Fel, Oakblade and Odinzu on TC are my favs but we have several others that are in the conversation from MF/TSL/TV/PiNK. Haven’t seen Odinzu in a couple weeks, not sure if he’s just been in a different map or different hours.

IMO the underwater downed state needs a fix. It takes far too much time to fully kill a player underwater vs. on land. You should be able to finish underwater.

What is the motherboard?

If you’re going with a new i7 CPU get a top notch air cooler (Noctua NH-D14) and overclocking is a must. Otherwise, you’re wasting a lot of FPS.

I’m using an HD 5870 1MB and have High settings except for Shadows=low (cpu), FXAA=off and Reflections=middle setting.

Low FPS is only encountered in extreme WvW (18-20fps) and I’m at 1920×1200. As others have concluded those situations of mass players are more CPU dependent. So, I’m playing perfectly fine with my AMD card.

I used to have an HD 5770 and that was on Medium settings with mostly 30+fps and 10-15fps in extreme WvW with an i5 760 at stock.

No, there are four WvW zones and progress does not reset by matchup.

These are commonly referred to as the East/North/West Borderlands and the Eternal Battlegrounds. I’ve seen the developers refer to the borderlands by color Red, Green and Blue.

Enter one of the zones and open up the Map and zoom way out – you will see all four unique zones.

Have you considering overclocking the GPU? This article concludes a potential 10% increase. But 10% of 12fps is only 13.2 fps Perhaps a new video card…

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1377/nvidia_geforce_9800_gtx_overclocked/index1.html

Defrag. http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

Buy a different keyboard, generally gaming keyboards will handle several keys at the same time fine.

I just use a cheap one and I think sometimes it will just ignore certain key presses – I also am interested in getting a gaming kb.

Which translates to Radeon HD 77xx-79xx cards.

Well I’m pretty sure the “FPS Problems” mentioned on these forums is a wide array of underlying issues, be it software or hardware. I just wouldn’t want to get everyone’s hopes too high when their issue may or may not be driver related.

That said, I’m very interested in folks’ experiences before and after! It does sound promising…

Sounds like a keyboard issue probably triggered when attempting to push down several keys at the same time it is not communicating with the OS properly.

Gibbel.5734:

insane though that you need a high end cpu AND oc it to get normal performance in wvw lol

WvW is full of extreme situations where you have more than one hundred players converging in intense battles. Quite different from PvE.

Of course, GW2 has Culling to try to limit this impact but even so you can see why we need a much more powerful system to handle WvW.

x4 vs x16 depends heavily on the game. It may be that GW2 is heavily dependent on maximum bus speeds. PCI Express version 1.0 vs 2.0 also has a large impact on whether x4 will be acceptable.

Read the third post here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/260880-33-express

x4 numbers shows variation by games x4 v1.0:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-scaling-analysis,1572-8.html

Also, I agree in that even though the CPU is not under heavy load it will limit the game. You might try underclocking your CPU just to confirm the impact, and then try overclocking (several guides out there) while monitoring temperatures and load testing as necessary.

Downloading the game should not be impacted by your computer specs. That is assuming you have 25GB of available hard drive space.

The CPU is slightly below the minimum requirements and the memory is at the minimum but arguably below since it is Vista 32 bit.

Do you have flexibility to upgrade?

Also, check the sticky in this forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-and-Performance-based-issues-1

A quad core cpu is a must for mass player rendering. i5 is a quad core, BIG difference from any dual core (ignore hyper-threading) such as the i3.

The HD5770 i briefly used on the release weekend in wvw, and it was playable with my i5 760 stock. But i upgraded to an HD5870 from a friend and enjoyed much more flexibility.

You’ll want to play around with your graphics settings, shadows=none, shaders=low, generally low to medium settings. Oh, and side tip is to regularly defrag your drive if you are using a standard hard drive. That helps with rendering mass players noticeably vs. ghosting.

You can find his graphics specs, go to the “fifth generation” and “Core i3-3×0M”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Intel_graphics_processing_units

OP – Although this will help the star would still be a disadvantage. You can see the star on an enemy that is standing behind a nearby structure. A huge disadvantage in many scenarios as you can no longer hide safely.

They also need to fix that.