Worth upgrading graphics card

[Liu.4751]

I have Radeon RX460 but now playing on 1920 x 1080 resolution and HD screen is it worth upgrading the graphics card and is so what would be recommended.

[Solvar.7953]

Lots of details missing. What is your current frame rate? What are your current graphical settings? What CPU do you have?

If the performance & quality you get right now are fine, then updating your card will not do much. But guild wars is also CPU (and not GPU) bound in many cases. So even if there is room for improvement on graphics (low frame rate, using low quality options), if you have a slow CPU, a faster GPU may not help out.

 

[Liu.4751]

Testing now I get about 15-20 frames in wvw zerg fight on max settings. I have Intel i7-3770 3.4Ghz 8GB Ram

[rwolf.9571]

You might want to turn down player count in those zergs. GW2 is more CPU dependent than GPU. And FPS drops in zerg will still happen if you have a top end system.

 

Also it's a bad time to buy a new graphics card from a gtx1060 and up or RX570 and up (Basically anything that is an upgrade from your 460). They will mostly be sold out or fetch a price up to 3x the MSRP due to crytocurrency mining.

[MrFayth.3546]

Users above me are entirely correct.

 

Though in addition I'd like to recommend, if your motherboard suppors it, Overclocking your CPU if you need a little extra boost . (And if BIOS' for those boards still allow it all these years later)

 

If you're totally unfamiliar with BLCK overclocking then you should google the term. It's a bit lengthy for me to elaborate on, and it's been explained better than I could on mobile.

 

Make sure to watch your temps, being a rather old CPU, the heatsink could be totally clogged by now.

[Yamazuki.6073]

When it comes to MMORPGs you're more likely to be limited by your cpu and ram. An upgrade in gpu would only help if the drops in fps are due to the gpu. It is also currently a bad time to really buy gpus that were released after your gpu unless you live near a physical store that are selling at MSRP. At this time, if you want to upgrade something it's better to just get a new cpu/motherboard/ram. If you can afford it, current cpus and memory that are modestly overclocked can run GW2 at a near constant 30+fps at max settings even in crowded areas such as wvw or open world stuff.

 

Otherwise, the best you can do is make sure your internals are properly cleaned, when they're not it causes components to heat up which results in degraded performance. If you've had your pc for a while then re-installing Windows+drivers may help too; as well as lowering some settings.

[ArchonWing.9480]

It would help, but not as much as you would think. As others have noted, MMOs tend to be more limited by CPUs and Gw2 doesn't need that strong of a graphics card. However, the main thing atm is that graphics cards atm have insanely inflated prices so I do not recommend upgrading right now regardless.

[Goettel.4389]

For reference, my i7 6700K/16GB/GTX1070 buddy spits out around 50 fps generally , on max settings including supersampling, except shadows (low) and character model quality (low). Character model limit is at highest. That last one can be a killer in groups or even without many peeps around, with fps sometimes dropping as low as 15-20, depending on zone. Some vanilla zones allow for 100+ fps. Many PoF spots with groups are much worse.

 

As others have said GW2 is very CPU-bound, so upgrading might not be as big a deal as you would expect.

TL;DR: drop shadows and character quality to low, and set character model limit as low as is playable for you, see if that gets you into a good fps range.

[Threather.9354]

In WvW make sure you do these from ingame:

- Animations lowest

- Effect LOD on

- Play fullscreen instead of windowed

- Turn down player count and quality

- Possibly turn down other settings

- As final measure you can try Overclocking your Graphics card and CPU for better performance. It is safe if you use some YouTube guide and dont overkill it...