Guild Wars 2

Yeah in my low bronze experience I would agree with the last post.

At the beginning of the season some peeps basically died to traps, not anymore.

Frankly I like the traps as a counter to macro-spamming-glass-cannon-builds. If peeps stop and think then the traps are nowhere near as lethal. They are also a much needed – imo – counter to the previous season’s pitch-tent-macro-spamming-necros.

In general the DH traps are counter to macro-enabled-high-dps zero-defence builds. You still get such builds but it’s obvious they have to be a bit more patience before hitting that button or wait at the side till 2 v 1.

Doubling up on DHs is extremely nasty however – but to my mind that is the same for any class.

Go for the cheapest AMD A8 (6 to 8GB of RAM) without a separate graphics card.

Then buy the cheapest RX 460.

That’s the cheapest setup that will give you a very conformable gameplay with both games.

The four cpu cores of the A8 are the same as those of the A10 and the RX 460 will handle both games very well for the cost. You can give the PC a go with just the APU – very playable imo but reduced graphics quality – to save money or for you to buy the RX-460 later with your own money for a very neat PC.

Cheapest is to buy a 2 to 3 old PC via eBay for about half the cost – however plan to replace whatever HDD comes with it within a year as they are often old and noisy. Smart buy – as you already have a PC – is to buy a ex-business intel i5 (4 gen) and make do with the intel graphics for now, and use the PC later as a general purpose PC. In my experience HP make very good business PCs but of course there are other brands. The business PC are of much higher quality than retail ones albeit with pretty harsh limitations on expansion capabilities.

If you what a laptop I would go with HP again – A8 or i3, nothing lower. However expect half the performance for your money although you do get convenience and no need for a monitor. Don’t buy a second hand laptop.

Sound cards are no longer need for PCs – usually there is motherboard sound chip combined with CPU/GPU audio enhancements – mostly for processing speed – that are fine for most peoples’ ears.

There does seem to be something not quite right about Bronze Ranking.

I have played 55 matches and started at 550 and the highest I have got to is 620, win/loss is around 45/55% – best/worst runs have been 4 wins and 4 losses. All players are trying – with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions – and the losing score rarely drops below 250. The matches have been pretty decent imo.

You would get this sort of variation if the game outcome for Bronze was close to random – I suspect with 10 random soloQers then skill/knowledge is of little consequence because the variation of NON-skill based selection is far far greater, i.e. you may get a duo or a OP class or someone doing dailies or someone trying a new build or class or weapons etc etc. Now at much higher levels one could guess that these NON-skill based variations are unlikely to be common – at which point skill may indeed be a significant factor for some individual outcomes.

But if in Bronze best ploy would be to team up with a friend and DuoQ, imo.

Anet need to increase the ‘noise’ at low levels to obtain better parameterisation (standard Control Theory) – i.e. points variation needs to be greater than at higher levels. Either that or some SoloQers in bronze – who are good – are going to have to play 100s of matches to make their increased skill actually statistically significant.

Frankly I am enjoying this season far far better than last – where premades farmed soloQers – so not too worried either way.

Bardly.2571:

As a long time GW player and first time Ranked Season player I wanted to put something up here about what I have seen and think so far about this matchmaking.

…

2.) Bad Sportsmanship from “Good” Players: I’m not ashamed to admit I’m in Bronze 3 right now. Through my fights I have found myself paired up with a lot of Dragon Finishers, many of which have a very negative attitude at their placement and seem determined to ruin things for everyone else trying to work their way up through bronze.

This has, in my opinion, been the worst part about the matchmaking. Having someone stop at 250-300 to type out angry comments to others about how we are all ‘Bads’ and ‘Noobs’ because we didn’t take mid fast enough or let ourselves be 3 capped is demoralizing and, takes away from time we need to be working to make up the point loss. I’ve come back from plenty of times being down because we put the work in and pushed through. I know the matchmaking can’t stop this, but I think by design as we climb the ranks the new players in bronze will constantly be paired with these ‘self saboteurs’.

I would be interested in getting some sort of ‘BAD SPORTSMANSHIP’ report. . .though I don’t know if it would be abused or help at all.

…

Will probably have more thoughts later, but thought it would be nice to drop something here not blaming the devs or the game from someone at the bottom.

Very much agree with this. If anything leaves a bad taste it’s a pointless comment during or at the end of a match.

Firstly, ubers get at least 1 minute at the start of a game to speak up and dispense their wisdom. In one pip bronze this is extremely rare, so why comment half way thru a game or log with a smart-* quip?

Secondly, ubers seem to forget if their comment doesn’t name a player all four feel the hate.

Thirdly, it usually comes over as self-centred as no person is going to see all the combat nor is everyone necessarily fluent in the same language as the uber.

All I ask of teammates is that they are trying to win and this is usually always the case except for 2 or 3 ubers who have gone in a huff and stopped playing at some point during the game.

BTW: At these low levels it’s now quite rare for the losing side to score less than 250 – based on my ranked 35 or so matches – there has been about 4 or 5 matches where the difference was under 10 points.

Regards “Unranked is where you learn”, I am afraid that is not so, there are far too many grievers in unranked who get their jollies from blowing out the other team. Unranked is now a very hostile place to play and certainly not for new players.

I play chess and assuming the ranking is based around the ELO chess system then there is not reason whatsoever why new players should not play ranked. Indeed if this season is as successful as I feel for lowbie players such as myself I see not reason for unranked games. Anet should consider removing them to avoid bad experiences for new player w.r.t. PvP gameplay.

Yeah big improvement for me compared to last season.

No 70+ losing steak.
No, I’m-only-playing-to-provide-fodder-for-other-peeps-enjoyment feeling.
Some truly exciting and close matches.
Blowouts – sub 100 scores – extremely rare.
Also rare afkers or I-give-up players, so suspect more peeps are more positive about PvP.

My experience is based on the 500 to 600 ranking range.

Kind of obvious now that there was a lot of farming by premade-teams in the last season or two – which of course drove peeps out of PvP – hopefully some will return, as it does feel that there are fewer players overall nowadays.

The only thing I would comment on is that despite quite a lot of effort my rating seems rather static – going no where. I do wonder on Euro servers whether language is killing any ranking sense at lowbie levels – i.e. multi-language solo/duo teams are at such a handicap that ranking is meaningless.

Clearly evident at these levels that tag-teams >> any variation in classes and that some very good solo players as opponents stand out far more.

Still far more enjoyment than last season so I guess it doesn’t matter if fun is your game!

Most likely components to edge towards failure in n old computer are the HDDs followed by the PSUs.

You can obtain very cheap ex-business PSUs – 7 GBP cost – which are highly likely to be better than your current PSU – business PSUs are rarely driven hard and in general are extremely reliable. This is actually worth doing anyway since if the PSU blows it can take other components with it – unlike a HDD!

The other thing that happens is that the thermal paste for the CPU dries out, just re-seat it – cost is very low.

If you are having problems running Guild Wars 2, the data archive may have become corrupted. Please follow these steps to verify and repair the archive:

Locate your Gw2.exe file.
Right-click on the file and select Create shortcut.
Rename this new shortcut to Guild Wars 2 Repair.
Right-click on Guild Wars 2 Repair and select Properties.
Locate the Target line and add –repair to the end. (Example: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\gw2.exe” -repair)
Click OK.

Double-clicking Guild Wars 2 Repair will begin the repairing your game client. The game will launch when it is complete.

Note: Keep in mind that the verification and repair process will run each time you double-click the Guild Wars 2 Repair shortcut. If you would like to play the game immediately without repairing the archive, double-click on Gw2.exe or another shortcut without the -repair command.

Source: Anet Support

This is your best bet imo.

Nah, with your spec there is something really lowering your fps – 3 screens would be my best guess.

Follow the story line – you’ll end up having to do this anyway when in HoT.

If something takes your interest break off then return.

Would also recommend doing a little PvP as it forces you to examine your character’s skills set and gearing.

Thing is, ANY class that is stacked and the players team up is inherently OP.

Run a DirectX9.0c 1080p benchmark and check the picture quality before you do anything – try 3DMark06 (it’s free). If the pics look good to you then it’s the game.

Can now say that you would have to spend a shocking amount of money on a CPU to bottleneck a RX-470 whilst playing GW2 at 1080p.

{Just got mine yesterday}

Would concur that a mITX sized motherboard is the minimum for gaming.

I have two gaming systems built around the following case:

Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Cube Case with Fan.

This has a 200mm fan in the front. Only things to watch out for is the length of the graphics card and that your cpu cooler doesn.t obstruct ram or first pcie slot – common considerations of almost all mITX cases. Other than that you’re free to easily construct a fine gaming PC.

Pcpartpickers is a good source of PC specs.

Assuming a £200 graphics card you can build a high spec gaming PC – with all new components – for under £600 – second hand your looking at £450.

Note, there is a upgraded version of the above case which adds some dust filters. Nor am I saying the case is the best available rather that you’ll have very few complaints about it and that its an easy case to do a build.

Use a timer per sessions.
Reduce the timer till problem reduces.
Avoid playing last thing at night.
Play short sessions with off-screen breaks inbetween*.

The problems are usually the worst the younger you are.

*A chapter of a book, try the Warhammer series they are very good – or even the three GW2 ones which explain quite a bit about the game lore (certainly makes some story lines more understandable and enjoyable).

Ragion.2831:

Behellagh.1468:

Ragion.2831:

the optimization on gw2 is ridiculous. Im not entirely sure if there is a single card set up that can maintain 60fps.

Since the game is CPU and not GPU bound, GPU performance beyond the point the game isn’t waiting on the GPU anymore, simply can’t affect performance.

Yea because of the number of objects the game is CPU intense, but i find it hard to believe that that is the reason why fps still drops below 30 on the lowest settings when running specs years better than gw2’s minimum. If its not the GPU and its not the CPU then it can only be one other thing

In a MMO there is a fair high limit on the number of toons you can have in a single zone.

All toons can interact with each other.

Clearly if the toons are all spread out the interaction is low, and correspondingly the loading is low. If the toons all stand on the same spot the interaction is huge and so is the loading. This characteristic is exponential. Hardware variation is linear.

You will always get frame drops in MMO type games because they have to be chiefly two threaded and maintaining inactions is more important than framerate.

In sandpit AAA games the number of toons possible per sandpit is kept very low and the minimum specs kept high to avoid any graphical compromises no matter the number of inactions possible with low cap pops.

Ragion.2831:

the optimization on gw2 is ridiculous. Im not entirely sure if there is a single card set up that can maintain 60fps.

Ridiculously Good.

Is there a processor GW2 can’t run on?

Sure graphic quality will vary but you’ll still get gameplay, compare this to here-today-gone-tomorrow sandpit AAA games.

For a MMO you want as many people as possible being able to join in, as other players are the key element of MMO games.

All MMO games are essentially two threaded – there is very little that can be done about this unless you allow peeps with superior PCs to gain advantages over other (lesser) peeps.

Felix Harper.9572:

Thank you both for the help so with an i5 and a 1050ti ill be golden.

Pretty much.

Note however that the reviews indicate that a 1050 (sans Ti) – due in a few weeks time – is likely to represent better value for money.

If your budget is pushed the cheapest method is to purchase second-hand – from an upgrader – 4th-Gen i5 and motherboard combo.

Go for beefy CPU over an expensive GPU IF your intent is GW2 only.

Flarey.9480:

Blipp.5206:

If you are aiming to play only Guild wars 2 such high end PC is a waste of money.
Otherwise the system in itself looks great, but again think of your priorities, before throwing so much money at tech.

I’m willing. I plan to play some of the upcoming titles and play a lot of race simulators. I just want something that will last me at least 2-3 years and will run my games on max settings without any hiccups.

Would go with Blipp here.

My advice would be to buy a second-hand i5 (4-Gen) with 8GB and drop a RX-470 into it – guessing the cost would be around 45 to 70% of your current budget – rest of the stuff is of minor importance but I do like a cool looking case.

This would perform fine over the next few years (1080p for sure) EXCEPT with a full flat out DirectX 12 VR Racing game (not sure there would be such a game as there maybe health issues).

DirectX 12 games have not really hit the market yet and with AMDs 6/8/12/16 or whatever core Zen processors due out early next year – and Intel’s response ofc – it’s going to be very difficult to predict whether 4 cores will be enough for such games over the next 2 to 3 years. I actually suspect game designers are waiting for the zen processors – at least cheap powerful >6 core processors – before there will be a flood of ultra graphical DirectX 12 1080p games. So slashing out a lot of money on a HQ 4-cores machine now is going to run the risk of being inherently self-limiting in the future.

The key thing is to purchase a RX-470or equivalent now as you will most certainly be able to redeploy it into another machine over the next few years and still retain it’s worth to you. Not so sure the same applies to current processors and motherboards so would go for cheapest-for-existing-needs on these.

Also note that just dropping a RX-460 into your current computer will almost certainly give a significant bump with regard to GW2. Giving the cost it maybe be worth an the experiment.

Nero,

The best thing you can do, at present, is to upgrade your OS to Windows 10 and wait a year. The OS upgrade will make full use of your new GPU and your 8 core processor – will not aid GW2 much if at all. Within the year AMD will have their ZEN processors out which should cause a significant shake-up of CPU prices or at least what you’d be getting for your money.

As you seem to be happy with GW2 performance now be aware that increased hardware performance pays poorly with GW2. What you have now isn’t going to change much even with the best currently available or in the future unless Anet make significant changes to the game.

The PC you have now is good enough for GW2 for the reminder of the game’s lifecycle, spending more money for GW2 only is not worth it, imo. A better bet is spending more on in-game stuff and seeing if Anet develop the game more such that new hardware is a significant improvement.

Would go for a RX-460. You should get >50fps on near max settings at considerably lower power costs. I cant see the worth of a RX-470 if your only playing GW2. You will see a significant bump in performance with the 460 over your current card.

A more powerful GPU will probably only shine with a more powerful CPU.

No idea on Nvida cards.

Ah but you have to understand what your looking at!

First off four logical cores are moreorless worthless to GW2. That’s not to say work is not being done, it is, but that work is not utilised with respect to GW2. At best HT Technolgy can only yield around 20 to 30% of the worth of having real physical cores. As such the images above presents an illusion of 8 cores when in fact in terms of efficiency you can only gain the equivalent of one additional physical core (and only under certain circumstances).

The second illusion is a bit subtle. Suppose a 4 physical core processor had only 1 thread composed of 100 links – which have to be executed in a fixed sequential order. The extremes of choice would be to execute the whole thread on one core, giving it 100% loading and the others 0%, or flick the links across the four cores – in sequence – to give all cores 25% loading – over the time frame of the execution of the whole thread. The core loadings may be different but each method would take the same time!

Designers do the latter to balance thermals across the whole processor die.

Looking at an image of this thermal load balancing would give the viewer the illusion that four threads were being executed whereas only one is deployed.

At an extreme your image could have been achieved by a single thread!

FWIW: I believe that in going from 2 to 4 physical cores you gain around 10 to 15% in processor performance with respect of GW2 with no GPU bottleneck. Essentially GW2 is single thread dominant but with sufficient additional asynchronous minor threads to more than double-up on the processor loading of the dominant thread – should there be provision available to do so.

True, but everything comes down to price, imo.

The better the iGPU – and hence more costly the CPU – the longer you get to wait for a cost/benefit efficient dGPU upgrade. Giving the big bump in performance that is coming our way with dGPU over the next year or so I would tend to ignore iGPU performance with a mid-price range PC purchase. Different ball-game on a low-budget PC. Just an opinion of course.

Does seem like a cooling problem, sometimes – rare – the CPU cooler is not correctly fitted (also transporting the PC unit around can dis-lodge the cooler enough to make a huge difference with nothing visibility awry). This sort of problem would only appear on high graphics loading on the CPU, otherwise you don’t notice it (with the i7 processor it is not at all easy to casually max the loading out!).

Monitoring the CPU temp and/or frequency will determine if this is the cause.

i5 6600 – think the 6700 is a i7 which is of no great benefit over the 6600 with GW2.

Best would be to buy without a graphics card and plan on adding a RX 860/850/840 later. The i5 6600 will run GW2 without the extra card, but obviously with much poorer graphics quality.

Go back to the EXACT same 2×4GB RAM set-up when you had no problems. At the very least this will allow you to dis-count memory stick problems (which are very difficult to work out). Note, GW2 will gain little if anything at all from having more than 8GB of RAM on a computer even with a 64-bit client.

If you still have crashes check to see if these ONLY occur with a particular character – this would point to a GW2 file corruption or gaming bug.

If no crashes with 2×4GB then you have a RAM stick problem.

To diagnose this type of problem you have to start from a known working base and move slowly forward from there. Anything else is just voodoo and best left in the classroom.

From this distance my best guess is you have a RAM stick problem, this may only show up with GW2 because of the high RAM throughput causing sufficient changes – usually due to heat – in the RAM chip characteristics to confuse the motherboard/CPU. Note, this does not mean the sticks are duff, they could easily work in another motherboard, possibly in a different combination.

It’s very easy and quick to swap RAM sticks in/out and around, so try to rule problems in this area out first.

The problem is you have swapped a newer laptop with poorer graphics for a older laptop with poorer CPU but better graphics.

I have an older desktop with a i3-550 + GF 9800 GT graphics card (it actually uses the mobile version of the 9800 on the PCIe card) and it well capable of running GW2 at >30fps – after all this was the peak of DirectX9.0c era. Your T9400 has roughly half the single core processing of the i3-550, hence why I think that is your problem.

Also note that at the time your ASUS laptop came out the big thing was HD graphics rather than fps throughput – kinda similar to 4K gaming nowadays. So a good gaming laptop was one capable of HD gaming!!! Performance and more powerful CPUs tended to come later.

The only possible solution – or improvement – is to check how much RAM you have. Check if you have the 32-bit version of the OS – if so you are limited to around 3GB which will under cap the graphics performance when running GW2. Consider moving from 4GB to 8GB RAM and/or 64-bit OS, I have seen the RAM increase once cause a graphics improvement jump with GW2 with a low powered CPU – not absolutely sure why (was quite a bump in performance, doesn’t seem to apply to more powerful CPUs). Absolutely no promises that this will be a sufficient improvement to justify the cost.

Frankly there are basic £250-350 laptops nowadays that would out perform your gaming ASUS laptop – the AMD APU ones are the best choice in this price range if you want a bit of gaming, imo. I have a two-year old A8-6410 (R5) laptop which runs GW2 at around 20 to 30 fps on low/med settings – it’s not used for gaming but saves time and hassle booting up another machine if the session is going to be short. But for a 15Watts CPU it’s pretty impressive. An Athlon 5350 ‘desktop’ system will deliver slightly less performance but can be put into a very small base unit.

Note, I’m not talking 60fps here, but you do get a lag free playable GW2 game with >20 fps.

The performance the OP is getting is akin to a Athlon 5350 with no external GPU!

So the problem is not an under performing CPU it’s that the 3D abilities of the GPU are not being fully utilised – for example, might be running on 4 PCIe lanes rather than 16!

a) I would check that the motherboard you have uses all 16 lanes on it’s GPU PCIe 16 lane socket. Some don’t. Your other games mentioned may be happy with only 4 lanes.

b) Check if another Direct 9.0c game shows similar under-performance. If so, you have a driver problem, roll it back. The other games you mentioned are not Direct 9.0c.

c) Swap out your GPU for another.

d) Check the temperature of your GPU when the PC is idle – should be not far off the temp the motherboard reports.

If you go to the PvP Lobby you will have the default PvP build for your class, which you can change as much as you like, as you’re PvE build is unaffected.

I am afraid this is not at all obvious, nor is equipping the PvP amulets etc. Look very closely at the PvP icons and the options thereof.

The build switching is automatic.

I am not so sure.

I currently run GW2 with these processors and common R7 260x GPUs. The old DirectX9.0c benchmark I ran has the i5 and Athlon systems at 24K and 19K respectively, BUT there is little subjective difference whilst playing. I have no problem switching between the systems, which I do depending on the day of the week.

Both processors are clearly bottlenecking with the 260x playing GW2 (setting are as defaulted by the game, but I think I turned shadows off on the Athlon, char limit is medium, fps are 30 to 50, a variation that is not noticeable). But the un-utilised capacity on the 260x is of the order of 15 to 20% so the bottlenecking is of no concern – it’s just not worth to me to go for more powerful processors, I’m very happy for the game quality.

So I don’t think changing to RX 460/470 GPUs is going to do much more than increase the spare capacity with GW2. BUT I will be keeping an eye out for any Direct12 GW2-like game that comes along something I wouldn’t consider possible at present.

Interestingly I have just spend £40 on six/seven highly rated games via Steam’s Summer sale, – Dead Souls I, Brothers, Empire of Ages II/III, Icewind Dale, Grim Flamdango and Oath of Eternity – only the later appears to be non-DirectX9.0c.

OP: My 2 cents …

As it’s a new PC and expected to last say five years, you should go for a four core. Almost a no brainer really as newer games will increasingly not run on two cores over a five year period.

Imo, the best value Intel CPU atm are the 4th gen ones. There has indeed been improvements in intel cores but I am not that sure the price differences are merited for those improvements. Raw performance improvements have been on the scale of 5 to 15% whereas the price differences can be up to 50%.

Would most definitely wait for the RX 480/470/460 etc.

For what it’s worth, my own intentions are to buy a RX 460 and pair it with a Athlon X4 860 and/or a RX470 to pair with a i5 4770. I am pretty confident that the latter will saturate out GW2’s performance and graphics, the former is a little iffy but possible. The differences between these two for DirectX 9.0c/GW2 are likely to be minor when playing actually playing, imo.

Short answer for the OP is, No. If the dips are a concern then your only available solution is to down grade the graphics – in particular the char limit (you’ll get invisible chars with a name tag if the numbers are high enough). Whether this is worth it giving that any down grading will stay with you for the whole session is debatable – each to their own, methinks.

Giving that you have a four physical core processor, then an AVERAGE CPU utilisation of ~60% is the best you can get. Essentially GW2 uses two thread; any thread can synchronously hop, skip & jump between physical cores (this is automatic on all modern processors to spread the thermals across the chip as much as possible, with HT or without). So a four physical core chip will, when flat out with GW2, be around 50% AVERAGE core usage. There is an asynchronous overhead of around 5 to 10% plus maybe up to 5% OS overhead.

So with a four core running at an average of 60% utilisation you’re near or extremely close too, the GW2-CPU limit. Which means your GPU is not holding you back. A TWO physical core processor could hit 100% but giving the asynchronous overheads etc these will always be less efficient than a four core (for identical cores!).

Intel are capable of producing better individual cores than AMD (in recent years) and therefore ultimately better GW2 performance, but only at high price points!

Note, I happen to think the server is also capable of bottlenecking GW2 under these circumstances at popular times, so down-grading the graphics might not yield exactly the improvements you would expect all the time.

Vabbi! (if Old World)

It’s low pop and at present only one of the BLs at a time is usually Q-ed (5 minute wait).

Only time I have seen ‘unfriendly’ is a few times in pvp and abuse towards commanders in WvW – far more common. PvE wise never seen a single example of Wowism.

There is not a lot of uber about – except from the Germans but they have invaded HoT so you can ignore them for a while.

saerni.2584:

I’m considering an upgrade to my system. Currently I run an i7-4770K and GTX 660ti on a 1920×1080 screen. Clearly, GW2 runs more on CPU than GPU speeds, however I have found that messing around with several of the GPU based settings has increased or decreased my FPS in various areas including WvW—where I like to run at full settings where I can.

Running at max/close to maximum settings I get ~25–35 FPS in cities, ~45–60 FPS in various open world areas, and anywhere from ~15–60 FPS in WvW (and in large scale events in HoT zones with tons of people) depending on how many are on screen.

I’d like to ask everyone what they are running CPU/GPU wise, screen resolution, and what their FPS experiences are like. I’d like to move to a GTX 1080 when the partner cards are available so I’d trying to temper my expectations for GW2 with some rough numbers.

You’re not going to see any visual ‘improvement’ with a GTX 1080 unless you display FPS to detect it!

Otherwise I would expect a noticeable reduction in noise, assuming you have some

Follow your personal story.

It will take you places and the stage rewards are pretty good. If you’re not high enough for the next stage just hang around in the appropriate area.

You can also get full exotics gear from some of the mega events at later stages if you have enough karma.

As you say you are new, a good tip is to use WvW to empty your bags and do crafting (own BL only). If you log out while in WvW you always re-login into where you were in pve – this saves a lot of costly travel.

Also note that right clicking and selecting on crafting items in your inventory will deposit the item in a crafting slot – I mention this as easy to miss. There is also a way to transfer all your looted crafting items from bag inventory with a couple of clicks – gear icon to the top right of inventory panel.

Play 1 or 2 games of unranked PvP each day, many of the tracks give an selectable exotic weapon as a final reward. This also yields around 2 of the 3 dailies within say 15mins.

My best advice is to log into your home BorderLand via the WvW Tab and run towards one of the ‘diamonds’ on the maps and hope its a big zerg (large group).

Alternatively hang around where you log into the borderland and a zerg will appear at some point, then follow them – there is plenty around this area to checkout.

Do that enough times and you will get the WvW picture pretty fast.

I have a two year old HP laptop that rides on a AMD A8-6410 processor which has ‘internal’ R5 graphics. Has remarkably low cooling requirement of 15 watts and so far no sign of it cooking the laptop. Plays GW2 no problem on low settings at around 20 to 30 fps, nothing jerky. Which is fine for its use – similar to your own.

There is a slightly faster processor upgrade in the A8-7410.

Roughly speaking the laptop equivalents – A10s/A8s/A6s -of the desktop Ax processors run with half the graphics power but at extremely low cooling requirements.

In my experience at the low end it is still very difficult for Intel to out match AMD if you want a ‘bit of graphics as well’. You effectively trade off better graphics for less powerful cores. And giving that the most common use of laptops is social – which has very low core power requirements – AMD is usually the way to go.

Would also suggest you get a SSHD rather than a HDD as Windows 10 does not half churn hard disks, which giving the slower speeds of laptop drives is a major general and random annoyance. Alternatively a 240GB SDD is a very good buy (any sort as you’ll be reading most of the time) but you will not find these yet on low spec machines.

So my advice is go cheap AMD R5 or if possible R7 laptop coupled with a 240GB SDD and you will not go wrong in regards of GW2 playability. It’s really quite impressive. There is plenty of free software to switch drive – I use Macrium Reflect. Do as soon as you get the laptop and checked working as advertised to avoid complications – will invalidate the warranty of course. The SDD is not required for GW2 but it doesn’t half improve the feel of the laptop and well worth the $$$ over a more powerful processor.

For what it’s worth most laptops produced within the last two years will easily meet your requirements at the price specified, for that reason I would suggest a new laptop rather than a refurnished one as there is less risk of getting kitten graphics that may come with the older Intel processors.

Also if you interested in comparing real machines then there is a website which can be found by typing in ‘userbenchmark’. The benchmarks are not great but you do get a good feel for the specs which you can alter and compare. Based on this the PC you mentioned would have roughly the same graphics performance but consume 35watts over the A8-6410 (15 watts) I mentioned- so I doubt you would have to put up with 5 fps either way!

Well nowadays I usually buy mATX/ITX motherboards as there seems little value in having lots of PCIe slots or 4 DIMM slots rather than just 2. I combine this with dumping the need for a internal DVD drive and use only 2.5" drives.

As such cube cases are well within reach, and some are quite cool imo.

The only real limiting factor is the wattage on the GPU. if you can keep that to within 100 to 150watts then you can have a near silent PC (not a bad consideration for a living room). You’ll not get 60fps with GW2 but you’ll easily get >30fps on max settings and the right CPU/GPU.

There are plenty of possibilities which are only going to improve over the next year or so. I wouldn’t go for a case that was too small as this tends to limit your future options because the components are too specialised.

Would avoid ‘fanless’ systems as well as imo the CPU/GPU power isn’t there yet to run GW2 on max settings at > 30fps. Not saying it can’t be done, but it can’t easily be done with common – and thereby cheap – components.

Checkout a Thermaltake Core P5 Mid Tower ATX Case if you want real flash at a so-so price. Remember a living PC is more off than on!

Would buy the coolest looking case I could find.

The 3DMark06 benchmarks for these two cards are 22997 and 26525. So at best your probably looking at a 15% improvement in fps (4 to 7 fps). Better but not worth the potential hassles, imo.

For what’s its worth, a R7 260x-1GB (165watts < 350watts; approx. max power draws) has a benchmark of 24817(measured recently) when running on a i5-4570 (no OC). With settings on max I get slightly lower fps – chiefly due to the weaker CPU. A more powerful GPU would be bottlenecked by the CPU when running GW2 – you will not get much more than an average of 65% CPU loading on a straight four core (HT is of very low worth).

I am pretty sure – with a max fps of 15 – that you must be running GW2 in the processor’s iGPU (HD 8650G ).

Reason I say this is because I used to run GW2 on a 4 year old machine which consisted of A8-3820 + HD 7570 – a lesser spec than your system. Aside from WvW battles etc the lowest this gets is 20 fps – I still casually use this machine when convenient.

I would suggest you measure the temperatures of the two GPUs whilst running GW2 to confirm which is running. There is a freebie package called HWINFO64 that will do this, but there are many other packages of a similar nature.

Frankly there are a lot of problems in this area when using Windows 10, especially with laptops that use AMD’s older hardware.

Play one or two games of sPvP per game session. This helps to tune your character(s), get two dailies and most reward tracks yield an exotic.

There is a hard limit on the price of bags due to a buy-only crafting component. Which means the price in TP is almost certainly the cheapest you can get, i.e. there is not a great mark-up on the bag prices.

Many low level materials sell for a significant premium – wool scraps anyone! – and if you can manage it you get 2 gold per day from doing three dailyies.

Also check out any cultural armour vendors – it’s usually prettier-than-normal stuff.

Fermi.2409:

lilypop.7819:

…

It being a bad PSU is a possibility, but otherwise your advice is awful. Like this bit:

lilypop.7819:

My advice would be to purchase a second hand R7 250 (under 65watts cooling and no need for PSU six-pin cable, very simple to retro-fit), which should be better that the GTX 580, BUT has lower power rating – cost is around £40 ($55?). If this – lower power requirement) does not cure the problem you can resell the card with little lost.

An R7 250 isn’t even anywhere close to a 580 lmao. It’s a garbage low-end card that’s not worth anything close to $55, let alone as a downgrade from a 580.

Downgrading your GPU in general is idiotic, assuming it’s a PSU problem. You can get a decent 450-500W PSU For like $30

User’s problem is that they are NOT getting 580 performance!

The R7 250 is cheap, considerably less power draw, very easy to fit and does not require a six-pin PSU cable, and I suspect would yield better graphics than the user is currently experiencing – albeit at a lower frame rate.

Fitting a new PSU is not so simple – for many people – for example, is that 450 – 500 watts continuous or peak?, is 450 – 500 watts enough giving the users rig and its age?, will the new PSU last more than a few months? Point is there is more uncertainty in swapping out the PSU. And the cost isn’t than much less than a second-hand R7 250.

Also as I tried to suggest, sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort to keep an old PC up and running as a gaming machine. In which case the R7 250 would be a better bet for any ‘re-purposing’ of the machine. Frankly you don’t want a general purpose machine burning the watts a gaming machine burns.

I am also of the opinion that it just isn’t worth blowing lots of $$$ on a GPU to play GW2 at PRESENT. I would put any savings to a better PC in a year or twos time and if you must spend money NOW then 4th Gen Intel i5s are a good value-for-money bet than an existing low to mid range GPU cards as the future benefits – for your $$$ – are likely to be better.

Also note that the benchmarks that determine whether a GPU is kitten or wonderful tend to be based on DirectX 11 measurements and are very strongly influenced by the particular game being played (chiefly due to the wars between GPU vendors).

As for the R7 250 being a ‘garbage low-end card ’ it’s a fairly decent card for the price tag, that easily runs GW2 on fairly decent settings and gameplay. Many people are perfectly happy playing GW2 with the card, and as someone who has played GW2 with the card I can understand why.

Sounds like your laptop is running GW2 on the Intel® HD Graphics 4600 rather than the 970M (I can get 30 fps on a desktop i7 4770 with the 4600 – low/med settings).

Problem is almost certainly the interaction between the 6200U iGPU and the R5 M335.

The wait is probably the processor loading up and installing the R5 drivers – you’re laptop probably switches between the two as it sees fit! I am not sure how GW2 handles the loading screen but it could be fooling you’re laptop into switch one way then another.

Unfortunately laptops in this area can be very dependent on the vendor, so check for BIOS or driver updates (these can be particular for the individual laptop vendor rather than AMD – it’s all a bit messy).

If you can go into the BIOS and switch off the R5, if this improves loading then this confirms the cause – note, the R5 will be the PCIe bus GPU. Windows 10 can also do rude things in this area as well – like overriding BIOS settings no matter what!

But 3 to 4 mins is roughly the time it takes to re-install GPU drivers.

Another way to check the problem is to monitor the temperatures of the Processor and GPU noting the exact time you load up – it’s almost the only way of knowing for sure which GPU is actually running.

Also check that you have installed DirectX 9.0x correctly as – again – Windows 10 maybe installing this each and every time.

Try and see if the problem exists in with GW2 in windowed mode or full screen – whatever is different.

Or, play around with the compatibility of the Gw2.exe – for exmaple set it to W7.

Or, run GW2 in Admin Mode.

Suggestions are all harmless.

Judging for the processor you are using I would say the most likely cause of your problems is your PSU.

I am thinking you have a kinda old system, and with a processor pulling 125 cooling watts (which could mean as much as 175 watts actual power draw) plus a graphics card what may be happening is that as the PSU has got older the voltages on the rails have gone off a little on high power draw, very small voltage changes can trigger resets on the motherboard (or even command reset by the processor).

My advice would be to purchase a second hand R7 250 (under 65watts cooling and no need for PSU six-pin cable, very simple to retro-fit), which should be better that the GTX 580, BUT has lower power rating – cost is around £40 ($55?). If this – lower power requirement) does not cure the problem you can resell the card with little lost.

If you still have still have a problem consider replacing the PSU with a > 350 watt second-hand business PSU (these are usually of high quality – if not very pretty -and being business items are never run hot). Cost is problem less than £15 ($20).

The cheaper solution is ofc to purchase the PSU first however it can be more hassle to fit (or make sure you are buying the right thing). Albeit I could be entirely wrong in suspecting the PSU.

I most certainly won’t spend a lot of money on a new graphics cards with the processor you have. My old general computer used a A8 3580 (slightly better than your processor) and a HD 7570. Was ok fro GW2 but I wanted to use a 260x which was a big step up on the 7570, unfortunately I couldn’t get the computer to consistently work with the 260x (suspect the BIOs needed up dating or AMD and MS were having an argument – was also having to use a workaround as the 260x needed a six-pin supply from the PSU which wasn’t directly available).

I have a preference for the 260x chiefly because I don’t like or need a power hungry GPU. For GW2 you’re looking at FPSs around 40 to 50 with medium settings.

Another thing to consider is that some graphics features are very power hungry but of low value – prime example being shadows. So a zero cost solution might be to start off with every on low settings and slowly inc up whilst monitoring the GPU temperature (an indirect indication of power draw).

All told I think you’re best bet is to purchase a cheap but newer second hand GPU and give is a go. Save your pennies (or cents) for a CPU/Motherboard upgrade – you’ll find 4th Gen Intel processors are now very good value – aim for a 65/84 watt i5 – failing that an A10 (FM2+ mobo) without a GPU will out perform your current system, an A8 7xxx will be better as well.

Note, a 4th Gen i5 with an iGPU (4600) will probably out perform your system as well! You can buy an ex-business machine that have been running MS Outlook for the last 3 years for $300 to $400 – although you would be wise to budget for replacement Hard disks as reseller often throw in any very old HDs (the original owner usually removed these). Note however you will most definitely will not be able to retro-fit a powerful 3D GPU into them. So if you’re GW2 gameplay is casual then that might be the way to go, as these ‘old’ machines are shockingly fast when you’re not playing 3D games.

Your GTX 580 has a 244 watt cooling requirement, almost any ~$100 GPU over the last 2 years would have lower wattage and probably be better. However DirectX 11 benechmarks indicate the 250(65watts)/260x(110watts) would be slightly worse however GW2 runs on Direct 9.0c so might be a bit of a muchness about muchness – a mote point as you’re saying you can’t deliver the performance expected of a 580. You’ll definitely consume a heck of a lot less power with a more modern GPU.

POI: GTX 750 Ti is ~60watts cooling so would say that’s a good bet as well, a little more expensive, but whatever. Iffy decision – if the problem is the PSU and it’s not lessen by reduced power draw – but think of the electricity you’ll be saving! Bottom line is that if you purchased the card for $130 you’ll most definitely be able to resell it for $100 at present.

Depends on the server.

On Vabbi – a low pop server since release – there has been a marked increase. This has chiefly been due to that doubling up of servers on WvW. Now you have to get on early – UK time – to get into EB or even a BL, something completely unheard of on Vabbi.

Qs for sPvP feel shorter.

PvE is as always controlled via mega-server so it’s impossible for to get any sense of population. On ‘events’ people always turn up – perhaps more than usual, pre-April fix patch.

HoT -VB in my case – still suffers for emptiness. Although I suspect this is down to the appalling UI map system – curser the same colour as the background being a particular annoyance – and the difficulty of travelling (even without 100s of mobs to pass thru). Anet still have a serious problem here in that their UI Map system just doesn’t bloody work with HoT maps.

I also don’t see how difficult it is to add a range of user selectable cursors – colour and size (flashing?) – to the game giving how deflective the default is at times. There is also the problem that has been mentioned repeatedly regarding how the hero points indicate completion or not. These problems are not fixable! Seriously?

Anet can’t program a flashing ‘current-position-marker’ on a 2D UI map display?

Buy a mini-desktop and stream the game to a cheaper laptop – I have two gaming cubes and can stream games to any laptop, I use AMDs technology to do this but I am sure there are plenty of alternatives, frankly there is no substitute for a 24" monitor with GW2 but there are some games where this doesn’t matter.

As regards the specs of the laptops mentioned, 120GB of SDD is small for the price you’re playing. I also think Seagate is producing hybrids with 32GB SS(cache) + 1 or 2 TB HDD – these are far better value for your money relative to the overall cost of the laptop.

Also if you’re gaming with a laptop you’re well advised to invest in a secondary monitor.

I would also predict that over the next year or two new desktops are going to shrink to a quarter of there current size. I can already do this with current technology, unfortunately the size (or length) of high level graphics cards holds this back from going all the way. That problem is going away very soon …

Overall I would say laptops – for the same $ – are half as powerful as a desktop and have half the lifecycle of a desktop.

Would strongly recommend you try the Azure Race first, as it has the best starter zone – also quite funny and generally busy.