Think I need a new computer too!

So I was reading Lakshmi's post about her computer last night and I started wondering if my current machine has a hope of running GW2 smoothly. Here are the specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz

GeForce 9600GT

2 GB ram

750w power supply

Intel DG35EC main board

I got this machine in the fall of '08 to play Warhammer which it ran just fine. It also runs Rift well but only if I'm by myself. As soon as a lot of stuff starts happening my frame rate drops like a brick (down to 5-7FPS in many circumstances). Mind you this is with the qulity preset slider set to low.

I'd like to play GW2 with all the bells and wistles turned on, so Im guessing my machine will either choke or explode! My question is: can my machine be upgraded sufficiently (and if so what would you reccomend) or should I just look into a new machine? Also, I have a new iMac purchased just about a year ago that I could install Windows on (Intel 2.5Ghz i5, 4 GB ram, radeon 6750M 512mb). Is this worth looking into as well? Thanks all!

Meh. I found GW2 optimization very haphazard and all over the place. Sometimes a BWE works better for me, sometimes worse. Won't know where it's going to be by release. I have two computers, a weak one and a strong one. Just want it not to melt my computer on the weak one. I'd get 2 more gigs of ram if I were you, though...

Yup, it's time for a boost for sure, particularly if you plan on doing any WvW or many of the open world random events. Can you upgrade your system? In some ways, yes, but you may still be leaving yourself hamstrung by doing so. I don't know that your system can handle any of the newer Intel CPU's (the i3/5/7 series), and an Intel chip is likely what you'd be looking to buy for that mainboard. So your CPU is limited, and due to the age of your system you wouldn't be able to access the data transfer speed that is available via a SATA 3 port for your hard disk. As a side note to this, you also wouldn't have any USB 3 ports which are also significantly faster than what you currently have. Unless you're playing from a jump drive or external disk then this wouldn't impact your gaming, but it's worth noting. Memory could probably be bumped up easily and cheaply. Having more memory doesn't necessarily automatically make gameplay faster, particularly if the game is only 32-bit (which most of them still are), however it will make a difference if you have multiple other programs/resource hogs running in the background. In modern systems I wouldn't consider anything less than 4gb, and I prefer 8 or more just because I'm stupid. Your video card needs help. Badly. While you may have purchased the card 4 years ago, that chipset is at least 6 years old and will perform accordingly. You can probably find an upgrade to it for relatively low funds, however you might be hamstrung yet again by the type of slot it's in. One other item you didn't mention is your hard drive. HD's are usually waranteed for three years, and once you start approaching six years they tend to be on borrowed time (in my experience). Besides age, data transfer rate can come into play for things like loading screens when jumping zones. Getting a SATA3 drive and pairing it with a SATA3-capable board can help this - and help even more if it's a SSD! In short, there are some ways you can probably upgrade your system, but you would be doing so knowing that you are still limiting yourself in the long run. In my opinion, I would just get a new computer. Upgrading the old one would be throwing good money at a not great situation. A new gaming computer capable of playing GW2 decently can be had for less than $800 (here is just one example... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227408). You can also do it yourself for around the same price, give or take $100. For my money, the AMD Radeon 6850 is one of the best values out there for graphics. Not the best performing, obviously, but you get a pretty damn good bang for your buck with that card (it's what I happen to be running right now). Tom's Hardware and Passmark are good hardware resources for research on components, performance, and value for the dollar. Anywho, my $.02. See you in game!

» Edited on: 2012-08-02 18:32:36

Cheap and easy improvement that I think will be noticable is to drop in more RAM. Guessing by the age, if you're running 32-bit Vista, 4 GB of RAM will be more than your computer can actually access, but it's better than getting choked. The good thing about upgrading the graphics card is you'd get some immediate performance improvement, and could carry over that card if/when you decide to upgrade to a new CPU and motherboard. The processor, if that's an E8500-ish, it may be ok to keep using it for another year or two. Going from Core-2 to the new stuff (say an i5) will require a new motherboard, too, and the new mobo will require DDR3 RAM instead of DDR2, so upgrading the CPU is gonna mean $4-500 or so. The slower of my computers uses Core-2-duo, and I've done fine with GW2 during the betas, but I have more RAM and a beefier graphics card.

You'll need a new comp. I'd say the only thing you can salvage from that machine is the Power Supply. 750 Watt is pretty safe for even the best graphics cards as long as you don't have 4+ HDs hooked up. My Recommendations: A Quad core Processor with at least 2GHz. Most likely an i5. At Least 8 GB of RAM DDR3. Kinda required, especially if you plan to have music or vent going on. I also have a AMD Radeon 6850 and It does run GW2 at 60 FPS alone, and around 25 FPS in WvW on ultra settings. Its not a big deal, but having a SSD for Windows and GW2 makes a HUGE difference in load times. Rebooting takes around 7 seconds. Teleporting ingame takes only 3 seconds. Where with a regular HD it ussually takes 30+ and 10+. A case with enough space and fans to keep this all cool. And a Motherboard that supports all of this. And your power supply may not have the correct hookups to support some of the newer connections. Might even need to replace that. Over all your looking at a bill over 700 dollars...

@Psypher: thanks for all the info... I kind of had a feeling that a new machine would be the better option. Not even sure what my HD is other than it's 7200RPM. Oh and I forgot to mention that I still run Windows XP. @Mulch: CPU is an E8400... does that make a difference?

well the cpu would be ok but the rest of the hardware is just wayyy to outdated 4years old+ so it all depends on the budget u have but u can pln new cpu mainboard ram psu and btw dont trust on a mac for gaming ssd is nice to have but isint a must dpends on u if u pay the cash for it right now for 125 gigs around 100 bugs so yeah as wolfie said 700 bugs for sure +- if its intel/amd/nvidia

The E8400 benches out to be a few notches behind the current crop of Intel CPUs. I use tomshardware.com as my first goto reference, and when I said notches, I think of their hierarchy performance charts. They'll rank CPUs or graphics cards into tiers. 1 tier apart and you won't really notice a difference. 4 tiers apart and you'll giggle with appreciation. Of course it's always a balancing act between $$ and performance when you upgrade. For me, I have pretty-much decided to keep my E8500 for the time being (unless it breaks), but it's close enough that I've begun looking at my options. The rig that has my Core2 has DDR2. I'd keep the graphics card, case, powersupply, hard drives (but prob'ly get a solid state for the system), and DVD, but it'd still be at least 1/2 of the price of building from scratch. Is it worth it for "3 notches" of improved performance? Not to me, not at this time. But it's getting close. Considering your system, if it were up to me, I'd definitely look at your RAM and RAM slots. If the mobo can take it, 2x1GB is about $30, and would solve a bottleneck in your system. Unfortunately in an MMO, the biggest memory demands come at the times when you least want the system to bog down, those times when lots of people are around. Let me say: I would not at all second guess you if you decided to do a complete overhaul, new mobo, cpu, ram, graphics card, etc. Fast computers are fun, and gosh durn it, you deserve fun!

» Edited on: 2012-08-02 22:52:04

If I was doing a mid-level build today, it would look something like this: Intel Core i5 3570k 8GB DDR3-1600 (I prefer corsair as a brand) MSI Z77A-G43 Motherboard Corsair TX650 v2 PSU MSI Radeon HD 7870 On newegg it comes out to about $769. You can keep your HDD and case but may have to change your DVD drive if it's IDE. Those are around $15 so...not a big deal. Either way, you'd be good to go for 4 more years. I've been doing computer builds, repair, deployment and all sorts of technical services for 16 years now so it's all second nature to me. If you have any questions, let me know. Also, if you have a Micro Center nearby, they always run deals on motherboard/cpu combos. The i5 3570k is $190 there and $230 on newegg. They usually do a combo deal where they'd take $50 off the motherboard price as well. As far as the iMac goes, all you'd have to do is buy a copy of windows and install it using the bootcamp assistant. That would be the cheapest way to go and would run GW2 a lot better than your current system. Not to mention you'd get a nice screen :)

» Edited on: 2012-08-03 08:48:40

yup good choice there sarosan

So... question about the Radeon HD 78xx GPUs. (I've been pondering this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150609&nm_mc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r&cm_mmc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r-_-Video+Cards-_-XFX-_-14150609 -- less powerful than the 7870 but also significantly less power hungry.) It's PCI Express 3.0. As my mobo is a couple years old I'm pretty sure it's only PCIe 2.0. Can I use a Radeon 78xx GPU *without upgrading my motherboard? Since I'm not that comfortable with hardware, I'm ok to swap out a card and even a PSU. But I'm trying to avoid the hard stuff, like moving my CPU to a new motherboard. UPDATE: I found the answer on Tom's (yes I can use PCIe 3 with my motherboard), so I think I'll order an HD 7850. 130 watts, compared to 175 watts... now I just need to figure out which manufacturer/model :)

» Edited on: 2012-08-03 11:32:04

Looks good Lakshmi! Less thermal power also usually means less heat and noise. Is good thing ^^ @Sarosan -- I see you list a new power supply (and others do it, too, when doing a rebuild). Why not reuse the old one, kinda like you keep using the old case, old DVD, etc? Do PSU wear out?

@Mulch Unfortunately unless I know the brand I assume what someone bought is lower quality. A 750w budget PSU probably wont ever hit 750w let alone provide stable rails free of excessive ripple. Most people overlook getting a quality PSU when they build a system in favor of higher output wattage. But by all means, if it's a good unit reuse it. The fact that the brand wasn't posted leads me to believe it wasn't something the buyer spent a whole lot of time thinking about. @Lakshmi Glad you found the answer. The ONLY card I can think of currently that MAY use PCI-E 3.0 at all would be the GTX 690. The bonus to getting PCI-E 3.0 on a motherboard now is that essentially PCI-E 3.0 x8 provides the same amount of bandwidth as PCI-E 2.x x16 does. The only reason that's important is because Intel's Ivy and Sandy bridge both only supply 16 PCI-E lanes. If you were to use two 7850s running at PCI-E 3 x8 you're getting the same bandwidth as PCI-E 2.x x16. That way you don't take a hit in crossfire or sli performance. PCI-E 3.0 literally doubles the bandwidth of PCI-E 2.x. Thankfully it's backwards compatible.

» Edited on: 2012-08-03 15:06:47

@snowdog Honestly I need more info about your computer processor before I decide. Like how much cache does it have. My current system doesn't seem like it should work, but it runs marvelously (and I mean I run GW2 in between next to highest or highest for the BWE) I run a Dual core 3 ghz with a E8400 (with 6mb cache) on a gigabyte motherboard 4gb RAM *winxp* 1gb nvidia 230 I've run this system on every game I've played including FFXIV which needed a powerhouse computer. Just because its a dual core doesn't mean you can't game with it :) I would suggest, though, 4GB for a winxp system since it is unable to really utilize more than 3GB of ram

» Edited on: 2012-08-03 18:03:17

@Saren He said he wanted it to run with everything maxed out. You're not going to get that out of his current system, period. At least not at a decent framerate. At the very least the video card needs to be upgraded. Honestly, I'd be tempted to just run boot camp on that mac and save my money until your current system craps out. It's still not going to run everything maxed out, but it'll be a much more enjoyable experience overall.

Ahh running max heheh That's a different story :) Yeah probably not gonna get it running good on that then I missed the "maxed" part I guess :D Passable performance doesn't hold a candle to max performance :) @snowdog Just try and make sure you get at least a 6mb cache though for the motherboard/processor (commonly in i5 these days). Especially for a gaming system. Personally, I do not like AMD whatsoever these days (used to love them though) and thoroughly dislike ATI heheh nVidia all the way for me :D Had too many problems in the past with ATI running games properly and eventually stopped using them at all.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I think a new machine is the way to go. I came across this neat site PC Part Picker. It helps you piece together a desktop and gives you links to online merchants to buy the parts. I'm gonna fool around on their and see what I can come up with!

awesome! goodluck and just ask if you need a suggestion. Shoot me a message if you need anything!