You don’t really need an i7 if you’re only gaming, an i5 is plenty, get an i5 3470 or 3570 Ivy Bridge. That should get you under $1500.
I’m personally not a fan of ASRock boards, funny though I’ve been surprised by ECS boards lately, I’ve built a few PCs using them and one of my PC uses one, but I like MSI and Gigabyte boards better.
Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.6GHz, 4GB DDR2 (used to have 8GB but one stick died), GTX560Ti (285.62 driver) and the game runs @ windowed 1920×1080 with max except post-processing and reflection turned off.
I set Windows swap to 4096/4096 (so it doesn’t scale in size which slows the system down), I disable desktop themes in compatability in .exe (not sure if it works with gw2.exe). I get 60-80 fps in pve, ~45 in Lions Arch, 35-40 fps in WvWvW.
Dosent have Phenom II or Intels old Core2’s in there either but if it did odds are they would both be scoreing higher FPS than the Bulldozer CPU’s aswell
Kind of baffling to why they left out the more common CPU’s from the benchmarks.
I’m using a Phenom II X6 1090T and I don’t have framerate or crash issues.
You will get better performance from a newer driver. Running with such a dated driver is not recommended by anyone. They’re potentially unstable when running with newer software, lack features and aren’t optimised for modern games.
Potentially unstable for newer software? That’s a first, and the driver I’m using is only a year old, things hasn’t changed that much. Also the last time I used the latest driver was back in SWTOR a few months ago and it gave me a bad time so I reverted back to my old driver and left it alone.
From what I’ve been hearing and reading, the latest driver is the one giving potential unstable behavior.
AMD’s are not particularly garbage, but like the above poster said, the FX line is, the Phenom II (X2/4/6) line is *cough*phenominal, I’ve built PC’s since the mid 90’s and I’ve done a handful with Phenom II’s and they’ve all behaved well (as well as the revised Athlon x64’s), the original Phenom (not II) were pretty bad, so I bet AMD will release an FX II or something like that. I remember almost 10 years ago AMD released MP chips which were god awful, I threw away the MP mobo with the dual MP CPU’s a month after getting it.
I have considered getting an i5 for my next system.
Yes, it’ll play but you’ll need to turn down graphics settings. My laptop isn’t even close to being as good as your’s and it runs GW2 (with all settings to low/none) and has an ATI 4200 GPU.
For the amount you’re willing to spend, look for a better one as others suggested.
Honestly you’re going to get the same results with that AMD FX CPU. And the FX line is a flop anyways.
I run on an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T with 4GB ram and a 560Ti and I don’t have FPS issues like you do but I’m using older Nvidia drivers, I also have a second PC that also runs a X4 945 with a HD5770 and FPS isn’t as bad as your’s although I had to tone down the settings. It seems to vary between users.
Hi, i have a phenom II 940 Cpu OC’ed to 3.5 ghz. Checked the CPU usage with Hwinfo and it seems game uses %50 %40 of the cpu at most. Since it is a cpu intensive game ( is it ? ) is there a way to increase the cpu usage?
Already tried setting the power profile to high performance and changed the priority of gw2 to high at task manager.
Thanks..
same problem here, with a x6 1090t, only one core work at 100% and the other 5 at 10-20%, but my gpu a gtx460 (i have a sli but still low fps) work at 80-100%
I’m using a X6 1090T as well and using a GTX560Ti, all 6 cores are being used.
Since the OP focuses on structured and tournament pvp, I don’t particularly think it’s an issue with necromancer for him (don’t get me wrong, necro does have some buggy skills and traits), but I’ve noticed guardian, warrior, thief and engineer seem to excel more in those pvp than casters do- my mesmer isn’t all that great in spvp, I can barely evey get enough clones/illusions out to use mind wrack half the time.
This damage is actually pretty poor compared to the upfront damage most of the other professions has access to. Plus it’s entirely cooldown based (mirror images is a 40second cd?).
As if that’s the only way to create clones/illusions, half the attacks creates one so why rely on mirror images solely? When properly setup with traits and gear, mind wrack hits hard but you need 3 clones/illusions out to be effective.
I have no trouble in solo pve, find the rotation you think is effective and stick to it, mobs don’t live for long, even +2 levels above me.
I recall SWG having a massive issue if you had an Nvidia 4800 and a Soundblaster live causing bluescreens if you had 2 drivers matching up, one was an old sound driver number.
Back when SWG first came out I was on an AMD Duron 900 (yes it was a very poopy CPU) with 512MB ram and a Nvidia 4400Ti (and also had an SBLive), Moenia and Coronet were the only laggy spots for me, everywhere else was good. When the Corellian corvette came out and I went in there for the first time, the walls and ceilings were missing (regardless of what version drivers I tried) so I couldn’t tell where the hell I was so I went and got an ATI X700Pro and all was good after that.
GTX 560 with 304.79 driver
the game runs perfectly
^ I’ll try that version, I’m happy with the old 285.62 at the moment, back a few months ago in SWTOR one of the drivers I updated (I forget the version) kitten on me and I reverted back to 285.62 and didn’t even bother to look for updates since then.
I used to be a system administrator for large unix servers, and worked for Sun Microsystems for years. I also was part of a project group some years ago that went around residential blocks with laptops to scan open networks and so forth, the results were incredibly shocking- waaaaaaaay too many insecure networks, and same goes for the email/login/password method on the internet… there’s way too many of those that uses simple or uses the same ones across different sites/games.
Putting blame on the general public aslide, Anet still should’ve added a layer of security, nearly every single game that requires an account to login has security of a sort.
I have only played WoW for 4 months back in 2005-2006 (time of TBC release) and back in 2009 my account was hijacked without me knowing and I received an email from Blizzard about “gold selling” (I’m assuming players has been reporting my characters for gold selling spam), I checked the email to see if it had any suspicious links and it was all to Blizzard’s official sites so I logged in and realized my WoW account was active (remember, I only played 4 months and this is 3 years later) so I logged in and noticed I had 6 or so more characters created across different servers (I only had 2 at the start) and one had that dumb Mr. T head.
I changed the password to something I can’t even remember and got Blizzard to permanently lock the account because I have no interest in playing WoW, but to know that my accounts that remains in games over the years can still get compromised. I was also told by active WoW players that Blizzard had some inside job guys giving out information to gold sellers at one point.
That and SOE’s breach last year were the only time time I’ve ever had an account issues, and now that email linked to that game back in 2006 gets flooded with emails about Diablo 3, AION, Runescape, WoW and some other games of which I’ve only ever used that email address in WoW and no other games (and I only have played 2 of those listed games). So this kind of stuff bothers me, I hardly purchase anything online nowadays as well, I don’t even go to ebay, I do all my purchasing at my local stores.
A confirmation step is what I’ve been complaining about, also adding security secret question would help a great deal as well. This is something GW2 needs, since it’s standard in every other online game.
Dunno what to tell you, sounds like you’re all set on hardware but run dxdiag from the Start menu run window and it’ll tell you what CPU (labeled Processor) and other hardware you have.
I’m using an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T, a 560Ti video card, 4GB ram and a USB Steelseries audio on Windows 7 64bit and I get above 30fps in WvW, 60-80 in pve. One thing though I’m betting is the video drivers, which version do you have? I’m using an old version from last fall (285.62) and I don’t have the problems most of the people in here has with the latest Nvidia/ATI drivers.
Yes I notice a 3-4 second delay between actions on my server, but not when I’m in overflow. I think servers are hitting max network capacity because nearly every zone are overflowed now on my server (and Gandarran Fields just opened and is already full).
I’m surprised you’re still using 2GB, you need 4GB minimal for most things these days, I’m on 4GB and have no problems (well I had 8GB but one stick failed on me). And your CPU definitely needs an upgrade, 2 cores don’t cut it anymore.
However GW2 runs on my laptop which has a 2core 2.5GHz but 4GB ram as well.
I’m still using 285.62 drivers (dated Oct or Nov 2011), last time I used the latest driver was back in SWTOR which gave me some hiccup problems and I reverted back to the old driver and left it alone since then. If it ain’t broke, why fix it. Guess that’s why GW2 runs good for me.
I’ve built PCs since the mid 90’s and I’m a strong believer in only needing 2 case fans (or 2 front/1rear) hence the pull/push setup. No need for those 8 fan cases and energy hungry gaming PCs, those make airflow way too inefficient, loud and eats more energy than it should. And these days, I see no reason to overclock anymore, I used to overclock Celerons and older AMD’s but nowadays a 3.2-3.4GHz CPU is more than sufficient to run most things and so are most of the modern GPUs.
Also if you have a fairly tall case (or even mid-tower), put your hard drives as far down as you can to the bottom that way air gets its way to the GPU.
I’m using an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T with 4GB ram (other 4GB stick burnt for some reason), 2x 1TB drive and a 120GB SSD and a GeForce 560Ti, and this game runs no problems 50-60fps in most places, 35-40 in world vs world. I don’t understand those “if you have an nVidia, this game will suck” and “AMD CPUs can’t run this game” threads in the other section.
Doesn’t email require you to know the person’s username to send an email? Don’t think character names works, if so then why are you able to add people to your friends list without consent? They need to change that.
How many points into illusionary trait do you have? That makes a world of a difference, I do pretty good in world vs world and I often use a staff with +condition mods to most of my gear.
lol — I dunno if I would call SWTOR a successful launch…
Yes SWTOR’s launch was successful, the game itself isn’t. The launch was successful because of the popular IP and the hype, the game itself isn’t successful because of the garbage pvp and lack of multiplayer content (it’s an ok single player game).
In other games I avoided low level zones as a high level because there was no challenge, unless I wanted to go back to an old zone to find points of interests or harvest materials. Otherwise, this downscaling is great especially when grouping with guildmates that are playing various levels, we can all roll together like we did in older level-less games like UO and SWG.
I have absolutely no problems running GW2 on my Phenom II X6 1090T even in crowded pvp I don’t dip below 30fps and I’m using a GeForce 560Ti, same goes for my other PC running an X4 945 (with an ATI HD5770), and my laptop with P350 @ 2.5GHz.
The FX series was a flop, I was going to buy one but didn’t, gonna wait for the next gen of that architecture.
Yes I think that’s what you’re seeing, the longer you stay int he same spot, the worse the drop rate becomes. Sit at a spot and loot 30 for a couple hours and then the next few hours you’ll only get 12-15. It’s to prevent camping.
Make a daily payment with some silver you make while leveling to convert to gem and you’ll eventually have your character slot and bank expansion without spending a single $. Most games I have played costed $50-60 in the past decade, most expensive one was Return to Castle Wolfenstein which was $80 (standard edition, mind you) back in 2001.
A guildmate of mine plays a necro and loves it, he’s actually pretty good with it too and his gear looks sick (midnight fire & red). Right now the minions are garbage and weak (some say bugged), perhaps when Anet gets around to fixing them, necro might be a little better, and I may give the class a shot but for now I’m loving my mesmer which is a beast when properly played.
Elementalists are fairly weak in pvp but the best way to play it is as a support role, equip your staff and flip to ice and keep people alive and buffed.
DO NOT do chargeback unless you absolutely have a reason to, such as that guy above with his classic car’s engine getting trashed. Banks take it seriously when you do a chargeback. SOE’s firewall was outdated which was easy for “Anonymous” to take it out, and he proceeded to do the same for other SOE’s services around the globe after that, my CC information was compromised and my CC company halted my card and notified me before I knew what was happening.
I’ve only ever done 1 chargeback and that was when I was being charged twice for buying one thing.
Honestly, of all the online games I’ve played in the past 15 years, GW2 has probably the weakest security I’ve seen. At least add a security question on the account for when you want to change email and password, then you wouldn’t have this many compromised accounts to begin with.
Change your email address, they obviously have your email address on the list to try and hack, create a new Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail/whatever email and use that (don’t use any english dictionary words in the email address). I use one that was on my old cell phone, never used on any websites and so far so good.
I just logged in to ask the same question,
I am at level 34 and starting to struggle in groups. If there is an event with a lot of players my loot drops to virtually zero as i cant get any hits in to tag the mobs. On a single boss event i often end up as bronze even if i have been hammering on it from the beginning.
I am sure i must be missing something, i am not expecting to be top dps, but it would be nice to feel like I am contributing.
Use a staff and sword/pistol for group events, drop all the AOEs and clones you can.
Only time I have had an account hacked was when SOE had their database servers compromised a year ago by an outdated firewall compromising thousands of credit card holders (my credit card company disabled my card and notified me of it), and my WoW account that was inactive for 3+ years (I only played 4 months in 2006 and it was compromised in 2009 before the battle.net merge when I wasn’t even playing it). I rarely ever use the same login/password for each online game I play, I don’t even use the same password for my email and banking accounts, I have tons of different passwords to remember. And I don’t visit unfamiliar websites, I only surf on some forums and certain news sites.
Using simple passwords are the hackers’ wet dream, my sister uses “hawaii” for her email password, we didn’t even have to try to figure out what her password was, we just figured out what her obsession was and tried it- it was that stupidly simple.
I’m just afraid that it might happen to my GW2 account one day as well, I rather they added a security question to make it more difficult to hijack and change email/password under your nose.
