Guild Wars 2

No laptop is strong enough to run the game at 1800p; at 1080p however 770M or 680M is fine to run at 60 fps while soloing. In WvW, world bosses and whatnot be prepared to drop down to 20 fps tho, that’s what desktops are getting as well.

Crawford.4135:

Stop suggesting Business CPUs to Gamers. i3/i5’s are not intended for hard gaming unless you want a mid-to-low system and don’t care that much about high performance. There are plenty of i7’s out there with more L3CACHE (which helps tremendously with gaming).

And the price difference between i3/i5 to i7’s is not even that large of a margin. Go with an i7

Please learn about the performance on each of the CPU line on GW2 before making suggestions like these.

It could’ve been just a server/patch issue then, if something happens for no reason and goes away for no reason the issue is usually not in your end.

I don’t know where do you live in, but here’s a nice little build, based on the components you chose: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/39a8e

It has Windows included there because I’m pretty sure you need it also. If you don’t, just take it out.

I’d say this one http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i3-4130-FCLGA-Processor-BX80646I34130/dp/B00EUUKVXM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1394725244&sr=8-2&keywords=intel+i3+4130 only a few dollars more but the performance increase is bigger. You would have to change motherboard as well, that one you chose only goes for certain AMD processors. Pick one with LGA1150 Socket and H81 or H87 chipset (Z87 is for overclocking and that CPU isn’t meant for it)

Someone tested that i3 (and not even the newest one) outperformed even FX-8350, so I would go with that.
The GPU is just fine for max settings (except rendering @ native). Plus it overclocks pretty well giving you even a little more headroom. If it runs at sub-60 fps it’s because the CPU is too weak. You could consider bumping the PSU to 500W at least, nothing more frustrating than buying a new system and seeing it lacks the power to run.

I wouldn’t suggest that, it might cut it at 1600×900 low/medium settings. HD 7790 is going somewhere near $120, used to be $99 at the end of the last year, not too big of an investment.

I would say no. 1080p or even 1440p would probably be fine, but based on my calculations 1800p would get you 30 fps, or course if you played on low/med settings it would be a different story, but why would one buy a 2k laptop to play on medium.

Now for half of that money you would get a desktop that would run the game, but if it has to be a laptop… I’m just a hopeless desktop fan and I can’t even cool the case (sorry for the pun).

Are you talking about “downgrading” the GPU to match the CPU?

GPU upgrade is indeed cheaper since you have to get a new motherboard and potentially new RAM and a new copy of Windows should you want to upgrade the CPU.

You don’t need wonders for this game from the graphics card, but I don’t suggest buying the lowest that “matches” with that CPU, the performance per dollar ratio isn’t there and if you someday decide to upgrade the rest you don’t have to buy a GPU again. Radeon HD 7790 or better is solid for this game, the better you get the longer you’re able to use it. Use this list as a reference.

Same story, different guy. I had Q6600 as well and it dropped down to 7 fps in WvW, PvE soloing was 30-45 fps. I doubt having only 2 core CPU would perform better. Like said, the word of the day is Intel’s Core i-series. See for yourself which has the best performance to cost ratio that you can afford and go with it.

Your GPU is capable of running GW2 at max graphics but your CPU isn’t. You can try overclocking that, upgrading your CPU (and the motherboard along with it) and regardless of what you do turning Shadows, Reflections and CharLimit down

Of course it counts, the need to render a bigger picture = more work needed to be done. I think what Avelos meant was in this game as most the GPUs are capable of producing those 60+ fps and whatnot. What I suspect Fade meant however wasn’t the about the performance but about the added FOV the ultra-wide monitor gives.

I suspect that your GPU is just fine as well. If you get decent framerate when soloing you shouldn’t see any increase upgrading your card. What you can do is download GPU-Z and see where your GPU usage % is when you dip down to low fps.

Did you try to disable the iGPU in the BIOS? It could be now that there’s a conflict between the discrete and integrated graphics? Do you have the latest chipset drivers and iGPU drivers?

And are there any other PCI-E cards placed there?

I just looked that mobo up at ASUS’s website and it indeed says that it shares the bandwidth with 1x slots and you can change the settings in BIOS. Is this what you did to get it from 2x to 4x? It doesn’t change the fact that it should work in the blue slot though.

I don’t see how formatting would help as this problem seems to be in the PCI-E slot or the GPU itself (which is also unlikely), unless you’re thinking of getting rid of the drivers for sure. Just for the heck of it, can you borrow another GPU from a friend or something to make sure your unit is not actually defective? Just to summarize things now, your GPU doesn’t work in the first 16x slot an in the second it works only at 4x?

In layman terms, here’s what you need:

A CPU with very strong per core performance, only 4 cores are needed. This is why for example AMD FX-8350 is not going to shine in this game, it has 8 cores and they are individually relatively weak. WvW is the most CPU demanding place in the game so you want the best available. I have, and you would recommend it also, the Intel i5 4670K, but basically any i5 from 2nd gen onwards will do (those are i5 2xxx, 3xxx and 4xxx). i7’s only add more threads so their cost is not justified for GW2.

This game demand very little from the GPU. You will do great with an HD 7790 or GTX 650 Ti. If you’re looking to play some more graphically intensive games, you might want to go for a bit stronger.

As for RAM, go for 8 gigs of DDR3 1600MHz. 8 gigs is plenty as GW2 can’t use more than 3 GB and Windows itself wont use more than a few either, but the difference in cost of 4 vs 8 isn’t much and it’s better to be on the safe side. The brand doesn’t matter too much as long as it’s reputable, $200 stick or kit instead of $80 isn’t going to bring you fps gains really, it comes in build quality and looks.

Now, as you’re upgrading the CPU you have to upgrade your motherboard as well. Remember to check the compability with the CPU you choose. For example, those 4th Gen Intels (i5-4xxx) go together with Z87 chipset and H87 chipset boards. 3rd Gen goes with Z77, H77 and so on. Z-series are for overclocking and you might wanna do that as you’re playing WvW and want the bets out of your CPU. Also, the K-versions of the CPU’s are the overclockable ones (such as 4670K, 3570K, there are regular 4670 and 3570 out there too).

Last thing you wanna look at is your PSU. as it’s a prebuilt budget computer it probably has 300-400W unit. You want ~600ish for gaming computer and please buy one from a reputable brand, such as Corsair (I personally have their CX600 600W PSU). The last thing you want is your PSU failing and frying all of your hardware with it. Trust me, it’s not that rare for untrusted PSUs.

Your HDD (if it has enough space for your needs) and the case can be reused if you wish.

Hope this clarifies anything, just ask if you need more info, even a build suggestion or evaluation if you want to look at the components first.

EDIT: Just so you know, you’re looking at $800-900 investment if you wish to get the most out of your WvW experience.

Also, some useful links:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html – here you can see the per core performance of each CPU. As you can see, the first AMD is pretty far away from the top.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html – HD 7790 is at 3000 point mark. You want to look at GPUs around or above that.
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/ – you can use this tool to select your components and see their total cost and show us what you have chosen. It also shows if there are compatibility issues.

^Also at least in theory 4670K could be a better overclocker since HT heats the cores more, might be able to push a little higher on the i5. Hard to test since it’s impossible to find an i5 and i7 with the same place in the silicon lottery.

Ok, download GPU-Z and Real Temp, go to divinitys reach and manually set your preferred settings. In GPU-Z have a look at your Bus Interface, temperature and Core Clock Speed. In Real Temp have a look at your CPU temps. Open up Windows Task Manager as well and have a look at your individual core usage. Log those results and report back here.

So what kind of fps are you experiencing? What have you done trying to solve this?

gabriel.8540:

in the first place …. why A-Net dont optimize this game? if A-Net will optimize the game we dont need to overclock our systems.

Overclocking is still added performance, be the program optimized or not. For some people it’s a way of life anyway. Also optimizing a program is not as simple as adding some content to it. It’ll take time to come up with the solution and even more time implementing it.

Yep, it’s never a bad thing to have more than required! And you never know if ANet adds some eyecandy and makes it more graphically intensive. Plus if you wanna go 1440p or multi monitors you’re gonna need a bit more!

Also, be sure to buy a mobo with Z87 chipset instead of H87 so you can overclock.

Well, that’s pretty much the best thing for GW2 as of today. GPU is more powerful than needed and unfortunately the CPU is lacking a bit, but there is no better option available. WvW will give you 15-25 fps in big zergs but it’s what you have to roll with, no one is getting much better. The only thing you can do is to overclock indeed, and it’s actually as easy as clicking two buttons. Grab a decent aftermarket cooler, like Hyper 212 EVO (only 30 bucks!) and you’ll get 20-30% performance increase!

sirsquishy.8531:

locx.6412:

In that test they always add another stick tho, so the amount increases as well. I’d like to see how 1×8 vs 2×4 vs 4×2 from the same manufacturer with the same timings would perform.

Buying pairs is of course the safest solutions, but I don’t see too much going wrong if you happen to find an identical stick. Also on my old board I did have one Kingston 2GB and 2×1GB OCZ sticks with different timings and it worked, but hey, miracles do happen!

Your talking Parallel ram using the same memory foot print between them.

But that is really illogical due to how Dual/Tri/Quad channel works

RW requests hit each bank of memory at the same time, in parallel. So even if you have 8GB modules in a 3way setup, your 2-3GB software foot print will be evenly across all Memory Modules.

Its the same way multi-threading applications work, but for memory. You add physical memory hardware to increase the memory bus speed. This can sometimes add latency if your memory timings are not that great though (such as a dual pair of 1333mhz CL11).

So there are a few things to consider for this topic really.

But how is it illogical?

Do you think 1×8 vs 2×8 is more apples to apples than 1×8 vs 2×4? I know it doesn’t make that much of a difference when the amount is high to begin with, I guess it would if the total amount was 2-4 GB.

Behellagh.1468:

Motherboards have sizes associated with them. ATX, microATX and ITX (decreasing in size) are the three current popular sizes. Cases list what motherboard sizes they take. You may have to go the manufacturer’s site to be sure. Case specs at the manufacturer’s site can also list the maximum length of a video card that can be installed. Normally a problem only with the highest end/multi-GPU cards.

This is true, There’s also EATX, the biggest solution, they can hold 4 GPUs and usually are the most expensive. mITX is the smallest and usually is for the enthusiasts focusing in portable/small form factor builds, they’re kind of hard to do since they require a little more thought as to where you put your cables and which part you put in your case first, whereas in the rest you just kinda slam your hardware in there. ATX and mATX are the most common solutions and most ATX cases can hold mATX board as well, but better check the specs.

Behellagh.1468:

As for the video card, the game’s performance limitations are normally due to an underpowered CPU and not an underpowered video card.

Do you think so? I’d say in the last 5 years GPUs have developed at much faster pace than CPUs. Back in ‘08 I built a system using Q6600, a decent CPU at the time and HD 4850, also a decent card. Now iGPU’s are almost as good while Q6600 can still handle most of the tasks, even GW2 was ok.

Having your GPU outdated is fortunately the better option as you can buy another one and still be in game for quite some time or just upgrade to a better one without much of a hassle, CPU upgrade becomes more tricky then.

In that test they always add another stick tho, so the amount increases as well. I’d like to see how 1×8 vs 2×4 vs 4×2 from the same manufacturer with the same timings would perform.

Buying pairs is of course the safest solutions, but I don’t see too much going wrong if you happen to find an identical stick. Also on my old board I did have one Kingston 2GB and 2×1GB OCZ sticks with different timings and it worked, but hey, miracles do happen!

For a bit of futureproofing I’d go for something like this:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

i7 for Hyperthreading, that’s where the future will be.
The video card is somewhat weak but decent enough for GW2. If you play other (more graphically intensive) games you could choose to upgrade that. At this point you might want to learn a bit about G-SYNC and thus an NVIDIA GPU. But that’s up to you.
People say dual channel RAM is better than single module, but 1×8 is usually cheaper than 2×4. Also I don’t know if there will be something using over 10 GB of RAM in the near future but at least there’s now the option to install another 8 gig stick (and get that dual channel running).
SSD is the future and that’s why I chose a 120GB drive there, to give you a piece of future. If you have the time and money you could look into it if you want to get even a little more of it.
I left the chassis, keyboard and monitor out so you can choose what you prefer. There’s plenty of headroom for them if the prices at your country are anywhere near those.

Building a rig yourself is not hard (and actually really fun!), especially with tons of guides around. Just have a look at some and you’re good to go.

Fair enough for the AMD part. Anyway, that translates into 5-5.3 GHz OC on an expensive mobo so I still don’t understand why you tell him to go for 5.5 GHz to begin with.

As for the Haswell, I don’t know where you got 4.2-4.4 but it could be right. Overclock.net’s Haswell OC Thread states that the average is 4.5-4.6, granted the sample is only 120 units so it doesn’t the absolute truth and I believe most of those submissions on OCN are by some experienced OC’ers with high-end cooling solution.

Uh oh, you didn’t have to delete the gw2.dat, that file is universal, all your personal data is stored in the local.dat file, that one you should’ve deleted.

Yeah sure, I’m not saying it’s not doable, but it definitely isn’t on all chips. I don’t know too much about AMD overclocking, but for example Haswell is gets pretty easily 4.5 on average, still there are some chips that’ can’t even reach 4.0.

1 core per module should decrease heat indeed.

Most of what can be said about this “issue” has already been said, your CPU is the bottleneck, Intels perform better and even they perform poorly.

As it stands, I wouldn’t go swapping hardware just for GW2’s sake for the aforementioned reason. 5 fps might not be worth $350. Your CPU is just fine for pretty much everything else and continues to be even more so when technology starts adapting multicore utilization more widely. If i was in your place, I would OC that chip as many have suggested.

@neurojame Which cooler did you have? I have heard very small percentage of closed loop coolers leaking. If you have a custom loop the risk is significantly higher.

@Bee don’t go giving people solid numbers to go for. All chips are unique and not all of them can handle that with even the best cooler. If you give them a number they will strive for it with the risk of possibly damaging their CPU. You should say OC it to max while watching your temps.

Hmm, I didn’t even notice those. I was only looking at Clarkdale (32nm) which is only i3 and i5, Lynnfield (45nm) i7’s could be an option if they go with his mobo.

Nonetheless, i7-860 seems to have lower single threaded performance than i5-680 but double the cores and threads. Whether 2c/4t is enough is beyond me, but if it is the i5 would make more sense. I think this calls for some research.

Before this thread gets messy, I’d like to add my $0.02.

Upgrading your CPU inside the generation (meaning motherboard swap is not necessary) is maybe the most hassle-free solution you can come up with. Looks like the best option that fits in your board is an i5 680. It’s still 2 cores with HT like your i3, but single threaded performance is almost 50% better. Look like it goes for ~$150 on ebay while a new one is $250+.

Now upgrading to a true quad core CPU requires a mobo change as well. an overclockable CPU+board combo (the newest 4670K for example) is gonna cost you about $300-350 while non-OC’able combo is gonna be $150-300 depending on which parts you choose, so you have to think is the increase in performance worth the money. On the other hand, stock 4670K is almost twice as fast per core as i3 530 AND it’s a quad core. Plus you can overclock it to add another 30% or so.

Last point, like many people has said, the best CPU isn’t gonna be enough. There’s something that needs to be about the game itself on ANet side (some newer API or something else, doesn’t really matter for that matter, but please let’s keep Mantle away from this thread) and we cannot know if it will be here in a week or in 5 years, if then. That’s all we can do for now anyway, make the best out of our situation. Twice the performance increase is surely a nice bump no matter what though.

^those and everything more powerful are solid options. 750/750ti are the newest released, they have the best performance per watt ratio, HD7790 might be a kitteneaper. As for PSU, depending on how power consuming card you get, get a 500-600W unit from a reputable brand.

GW2 is very CPU bound, even in solo PvE. My CPU reaches 90% easily while soloing as well.

BF3 on the other hand is very graphics heavy, much more than GW2. you’re hitting 99% with that GPU while CPU usage stays lower, it means your GPU is bottlenecking. I don’t know if you have decent framerate there but if you don’t then there could be an issue with your GPU.

Download GPU-Z, have a look at you Bus Interface and Core Clock Speed. They should be 2.0 16x and somewhere near 772 MHz.

SolarNova.1052:

For 800-900, IF you built it yourself, you would get more or less everything GW2 has to offer.

Good addition indeed. As I said, prebuilt has made (the wrong) compromises for your needs, even if you buy $1300 prebuilt, there might not be everything you need but a huge load of junk you have no use for.

Yeah, you said 3670K so you probaby mean 3570K or 4670K as there’s no such CPU. Anyway, I can recommend Hyper 212 EVO, dropped my temps by over 20c on my old chip and lets me OC my 4670K from 3.4 to 4.6 GHz with acceptable temps.

Now my CPU and GPU will bring me 90-150 fps when PvE soloing depending on the area,but even a small amount of players will drop it drastically. 10 or so players and my fps is well below 60. The truth is no CPU can handle WvW at 60 fps.

To summarize things, if you’re tight on money, cut on the cost of your GPU and get a better CPU (although 4670K is as good as it gets for GW2), or save up a bit more, GTX 660 probably wont cut it in the new titles, let alone HD 7790.

Yep, for WvW you need as good CPU as you can afford, regardless of settings. There’s no CPU that can keep steady 30 fps in the biggest of the battles. As for graphics card you really don’t need much.

I highly suggest considering building your own again as prebuilt rigs tend to have stuff you don’t need, lack the stuff you do need and cut the costs on some important parts you don’t want to fail (such as PSU.

No matter what, $600 is gonna be tough. For 800-900 you would get everything GW2 has to offer.

Anything past HD 7790 will bring 60+ fps if your CPU allows it. Don’t know which GPU you have now but assuming it’s a decent one you’re better off spending your money on a good CPU cooler and overclock it to max.

@Aidan your CPU is about 6% faster than his. I’d put my money on the fact that it has HD 4000. At least it’s 1366×768 and not 1080p.

If you turn everything to the absolute lowest, including resolution (just for testing) do you see a performance increase? If you do, it’s your iGPU holding you back.

I do see it getting all the way up to 100% on my i5’s 4 cores. I don’t think it will do that with 8 cores though (not yet…). Anyways, if you look at your individual core usage and any of them is maxed out that means there only so much you can do. My former weak Q6600 was getting 15-20 fps in LA pre-attack and this 4670K was 35-70, depending on the population. Seems like there’s nothing wrong with yours setup and only thing you can do is overclock that bad boy.

Try doing a clean install of the GPU drivers as well. Shouldn’t be running at ver1.1.

See if your power saving plan’s min state is set to 100%. Also, have you tried unparking your cores?

Yeah, the letters CPU comes from Central Processing Unit, that’s the processor. That is somewhat weak, having only 2 cores as well, but upgrading this part is a lot harder than your GPU (graphics card). On the other hand, most of the CPUs have integrated graphics in them and by looking at comparisons, they all are better than your discrete HD 4350 card. So while a CPU upgrade is harder you also get better graphics without even buying a new card (mind you that it’s still not enough to run too smooth at low settings).

GPU looks something like this: http://images.pcworld.com/images/article/2011/04/graphics_card_slot-5166542.jpg and that’s really not hard to swap, all you have to do is detach the power cord, push or pull some lever (varies by motherboards) and pull the card out. Easy peasy. There are literally hundreds of videos and guides on the internet that show you how to do this (along with other parts as well)

Depending on your budget I would probably go buy a new card first and worry about the rest later when you have the money. If you do have enough now, I can suggest the parts you could get, then take them to your local computer store and have them build it for you (or see if you have a friend who knows about this stuff and save some bucks)

Which CPU do you have?

There’s the lag that occurs when you enter a huge combat, like 2 zergs meeting in WvW. In this scenario you need a powerful CPU. Intel i5-4670K like I have is a solid option, basically any i3/5/7 CPU will do you good but the better one you get, the better you fps is.

Then there’s that fps drop that gets fixed when you turn graphic settings down. This is fixed by getting a newer graphics card. You don’t actually need too powerful card for this game, in fact pretty much any card above $130 all the way to $1000 will perform pretty much the same because you CPU will start hindering your performance.

Graphics card is an easy upgrade since it requires no other parts (given that your PSU has enough power to run it), whereas upgradign the CPU usually results in changing the motherboard, RAM and Operating System as well, along with some other possible parts. Seeing you have a HD 4350 I would recommend something like HD 7790 or GTX 750 Ti and you’d be able to run the game at max graphics as far as the graphics card plays its role and get over 60 fps (now if your CPU is weak as well you wouldn’t maybe get 60 fps as it would cap your graphics card’s performance. Your GPU might just run at 10% of it’s potential because the CPU can’t keep up with it. Once you upgrade that you’ll release it’s full potential).

Sounds to me like both of you have heat issues. Download a program called HWiNFO64/32 (depending on which OS you have), load up the sensors tab and when you’re having these issues have a look at that quickly, look for core temperatures, voltages and frequencies. The temps can be monitored a bit better with Core Temp or Real Temp but HWiNFO shows more info.

Do the same thing to your GPU via GPU-Z.

Avelos.6798:

I get better performance, at least slightly better, with crossfire on my 7970s since I changed to Intel i7.

Interesting. Could it be that CrossFire is supported better than SLI?
Also what did you upgrade from? If you had a weaker CPU and the same GPU it could be that your CPU was bottlenecking that much and now it’s released it a bit.

HT doesn’t help much as it only adds threads, this game uses 4 threads heavily, one of which is the rendering thread and when that is capped it doesn’t help to add any more threads, so that’s that.

As for SLI, the performance of HD 7790 is adequate and after that the CPU becomes a bottleneck, GTX 780 is way above that so SLI shouldn’t help. Also the use of multi GPUs requires some optimization and if GW2 is lacking that you could possibly see a decrease. Hard to say since I only have 1 card.

When my PSU failed it showed the no signal on the monitor, but it failed to the point where it wouldn’t show anything else, no signal right after turning it on. It could be indeed that your PSU is coming apart and it now fails only when it’s pushed to the extreme.

If you can borrow a working one from a friend or somewhere test it out with that. You could maybe do a CPU and a GPU stress test at the same time to see if that crashes your system as well (which might not be the best of the ideas as if your PSU really is broken, this could further facilitate it’s death and it could create a current spike frying all of your hardware). Or you could underclock both of them a bit to force it running at a lower wattage and see if the issue persists. If it doesn’t, run like mad to the nearest hardware store.

run the repair command for the game client.

Download CPU-Z and GPU-Z. While playing the game, verify from CPU-Z that your CPU is running at 2.4 GHz. Also in the mainboard tab see that you Link Width is 16×. In GPU-Z verify that your Core Clock is close to 850 MHz.

Sweet, good to hear! Happy gaming!