Building a budget computer for WvW

[supercooper3000]

Hey all, I'm looking at building a new computer specifically to play guild wars 2 on. Being able to WvW at a playable framerate is extremely important to me and I was looking for some feedback. I've been doing some research over the last couple days and I was wondering if an intel i5 is needed or if there are any other comparable AMD processors that could run WvW smoothly. I've heard that the FX-8350 is good but at that pricepoint wouldn't I be better of just getting an I5?

My original plan was to get the AMD A10 5800K and buy a cheap 2nd video card and run both of them at once but now i'm not sure it will be able to handle WvW and I don't want to invest in it if I can't play. It has decent single thread performance as far as AMD's go, which i've read is very important for WvW. heres the specs on it:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?...0K+APU&id=1446

I'm basically trying to build the cheapest computer I can that can comfortably play Guild wars 2 on low to medium settings, any thoughts?

[Zerk]

Yes for gaming you can not beat the i5 3570K /2500K Large WVW zergs will even bring them down to 30/45 FPS
The game is very CPU bound so for low/mid settings a $150 video card is fine as long as you are not playing on a 1200p monitor.
i5 3570k with a decent cooler overclock to 4.2GHz or so, Z77 motherboard, reuse anything from your old PC you can.

[Zorac]

Welcome to the forum supercooper

I can't give much advice on AMD cards or CPUs since I avoid them, there is nothing wrong with them in general, I've just had bad experiences (had 2 die for no reason other than to piss me off.) But as Zerk said an i5 will do plenty good and a moderate video card will let you play at a decent framrate on midsettings. I have an i7 (uhh, 3.8 ghz nonoverclocked I think lol) and am running a GTX 670 2gig card. I play on max settings (which is awesome ) and lowest I've seen my framrate drop is 35 which was a 3 way zerg fest in wvw. (I may have dropped lower at some point than that as I don't walk around watching my fps, but I checked during that zerg fest to see how i was doing lol)

Good luck on your new pc, and if you are still looking for parts to save don't forget to look for previous generation cpu's and gpu's on clearance. There is nothing wrong with a card that is 2 years old that preforms almost as well as a brand new one, especially if it saves you some money.

[skidawgz]

supercooper, all the chips you mention can handle the games at the settings you are looking for. It is not the best coded game in the world, but it does look great on high. I mention the coding because in WvWvW some of the best CPU + GPU combos take a good beating. I'd say you'd be most satisfied with the FX-8350 or some sort of i5.

If you don't care for high settings then you can throw a Radeon 7770, 7850 or GeForce 650Ti or 660. Those can still play the game on high but may dip occasionally in huge battles.

The answer to your question really depends on best price by online retailers, and personal brand preference. AMD is more power hungry and creates a bit more heat. I tend to like to support the underdog, but.... that will require a slightly larger PSU wattage and more though to cooling.

[Zerk]

I would get nothing below this and would not even consider a AMD processor for this game in WVW ( at one time I would till all the performance issues they have), add your choice of operating systems I still recomend windows 7 64 bit. You could save a few bucks if you can reuse your SATA HDD and CD/DVD drive.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/vjtp

[supercooper3000]

Thanks for all of the replies guys! I've spent the last few days browsing around and found an awesome deal on microcenter. I ended up buying a Core i5 3570K+ a Z77 mobo for 240$ combined so i'm really happy. I'll have to wait a few more weeks to finish buying the rest of my parts for the computer but im extremely happy with the mobo/processor combo and i'm glad that i came here and asked before buying a processor.

[supercooper3000]

One more question with the processor/mobo combo i listed above would I be okay getting a 1gb video card like a ge force 650?

[skidawgz]

you are very capable of playing on high now with that CPU. You can buy any video card you want, but it will be the bottleneck if it isn't very powerful. They way to choose which to buy is always your budget, games you play, and resolution/number of monitors.

I would tell you the 650Ti and 660 are a much better purchase for your current setup.
check this if you want some quick advice. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3107.html

The game looks amazing on high, congrats on the i5! I have the same chip.