Should I upgrade my Processor?

I have a Processor AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core Processor, 4000 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor. They said this was a CPU driven game. I am thinking should I upgrade this and if so any suggestions for an affordable budget? maybe 120 or 130 max? I noticed my Radeon 580 it seems to get loud even at low temperatures. I can hear the fans moving very loudly. Do I have an okay processor and if I do have to upgrade do I need a new motherboard or DD4 memory?

I am starting to wonder how CPU heavy this game really is, or if the idea behind it being so CPU-Heavy on a few cores is just another tech bandwagon because people just keep reading it. Either way, it makes some sense that it should be CPU heavy, based on the particles, but with a AMD 8350 you should be able to get like 50+ FPS on lowest setting, which makes me wonder if it is the graphical aspect behind it all, that is making your fps lower

I wonder if there truly are a few working with this sort of thing on the forum, or people just guestimating based on youtube videos they have watched.

@zengara.8301 said:I am starting to wonder how CPU heavy this game really is, or if the idea behind it being so CPU-Heavy on a few cores is just another tech bandwagon because people just keep reading it. Either way, it makes some sense that it should be CPU heavy, based on the particles, but with a AMD 8350 you should be able to get like 50+ FPS on lowest setting, which makes me wonder if it is the graphical aspect behind it all, that is making your fps lower

I wonder if there truly are a few working with this sort of thing on the forum, or people just guestimating based on youtube videos they have watched.

Lowest settings is all I can do? I have a Radeon 580 XXX. I am considering going to 1070 TI Video Card. Right now I have settings on medium. I notice its very noisy. Very loud sometimes. I play for 30 minutes to a few hours before I let it take a break. What can I do? Do I need a different processes for higher settings?

I dont think I made my comment clear. It would be great if someone working with graphics cards and CPU´s could clear the theory of CPU>GPU in GW2 up. It seems somewhat to be a myth, since it does not make much sense overall. Generally speaking, ur radeon card is underrepresentating ur CPU though

@zengara.8301 said:I dont think I made my comment clear. It would be great if someone working with graphics cards and CPU´s could clear the theory of CPU>GPU in GW2 up. It seems somewhat to be a myth, since it does not make much sense overall. Generally speaking, ur radeon card is underrepresentating ur CPU though

I see. I keep seeing posts that say this is a CPU driven game. I honestly thought my Radeon 580 xxx was really good. It's much better than my 780 GTX. However I appear to need to upgrade my video card it seems even more so. I wonder why people keep saying its a CPU driven game.

My AMD setup and dual SLI video cards is what caused me to have 10 fans(and a floor fan) to keep it cool.

When I upgraded to an Intel chip(4core) all my cooling problems went away. I run a single video card, can drop to 12-15 fps in some instances and have no issues playing.

Edit: Remember this is a 2012 game running DX9. To me anything above the requirements of what ArenaNets says is needed to play the game is a waste of money unless you play other games.

Edit 2: My computer specs.

Memory- Kingston HyperX Beast 16 GB Kit (2x8 GB) 2400MHz DDR3 PC3-19200 Non-ECC CL11 DIMM XMP Desktop Memory KHX24C11T3K2/16X

Motherboard- Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC Desktop Motherboard

CPU- Intel Core i5-4670K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.4 GHZ 6 MB Cache - BX80646I54670K

PSU- Apevia ATX-WA1100W WARLOCK POWER 1100W PSU

SSD- Kingston HyperX 3K 120 GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 6.0 Gb/s Solid State Drive SH103S3/120G

Video- Radeon XFX R7 260X

Main HD- 2 Terabyte

OS- Windows 7

BIOS- F9c

@Icemanfrost.5428 said:I have a Processor AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core Processor, 4000 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor. They said this was a CPU driven game. I am thinking should I upgrade this and if so any suggestions for an affordable budget? maybe 120 or 130 max? I noticed my Radeon 580 it seems to get loud even at low temperatures. I can hear the fans moving very loudly. Do I have an okay processor and if I do have to upgrade do I need a new motherboard or DD4 memory?

GW2 is a badly optimised game, it's because of this that I think people have noticed processing power makes all the difference. Your CPU might be running at 50% which would cause you to think it's your GPU that needs upgrading, but in actuality the game is just poorly optimised and with a more modern CPU that has better benchmarks, it actually runs better.

Your CPU is a bit dated now IMO, CPU's have come a long way recently. I would look at upgrading both the CPU and motherboard to something like intel skylake 6700k, or getting better 7700k<8700k depending on what you can afford. I would do run some tests and make sure your GPU is running at 100%. If it's not running at 100% your CPU could be causing a bottleneck. Also check what your CPU is running at, temps e.t.c.

RX 580 is a decent GPU, do you have the 4gb or 8gb version? If you know its your GPU running loud and not CPU cooler, you can use something like MSI afterburner to control the fan speed depending on temperature, as for it running loud when gaming, it kinda needs to do that to keep temperatures down.

If the fans are loud, then you may be up against one (or both) of two things;

• The fans are physically small and therefore must move the air at a higher linear speed to get the same volume of airflow that a larger fan could do with a slower flow.
• The fans and/or the heatsink they blow air on are dirty and are having a hard time blowing enough air. CLEAN THEM.(1)

They may also have damaged or worn or faulty bearings, although that tends to make noise even when the GPU is mostly idle.

And as Itz Jay said, are you sure it's the GPU fan?

(1) Get an old toothbrush that you aren't going to use again to clean your teeth.(2) Make sure it is totally dry (leave it for a few days).

(2) Hint: after you use it to brush dust and stuff out of your PC, you aren't going to want to use it again to brush your teeth.

Some answers and opinions for the OP:

I have a number of PCs of varying compute power, I can most definitely say there is no need to upgrade your CPU. I run on a Ryzen 1600 with a RX470 and a X4 80K with a R7 260x, the differences are far too small to justify binning the X4 860K - which has the single core performance approximate to your own PC. For you to upgrade you would have to move from a AM3 to AM4 socket motherboard - if sticking with AMD - and quite frankly because of the huge cost of RAM few people are building new PC atm.

The CPU loading for the old and new builds above whilst running GW2 are 65% and 35% respectively. ALL MMO type games essentially run two threads, a 'gaming' thread where computation of positioning, user input, physical, sequencing and surrounding actively are made, and a 'Render' thread which constructions the commands sent your GPU for the display. In general the 'Render' thread never bottlenecks a MMO game because you can always turn the graphics quality down. Hence ALL MMO type games are said to be CPU limited because there isn't much you can do about the 'Gaming' thread loading (many AAA type games limit the number of characters in play to negate the effect of the 'Gaming' thread loading to obtain very high quality of display, (GW2 does this in PvP for example), MMO type games can't do this in the open world maps.

On the whole I believe GW2 is very well optimized for a MMO game where 100 of characters can be present on a open map. Also there is almost nothing to be gained from DirectX 11/12 over 9.0c for an MMO type game in terms of performance and graphic quality - there are plenty of very beautiful 9.0c games out there. The graphic features added since 9.0c are never deployed in MMOs as the drive was to improve AAA type games (PS4/Xbox types), there has been little soft performance improvement in 9.0c features in later editions of DirectX.

Your 'problem' is clearly with the GPU.

I run the Rx 470 - which is about 20% below your 580 - in GW2 without the fans going crazy on a more powerful machine. I can't tell you what is wrong with your GPU, you really need to work it out yourself. But here are some suggestions:-

(1) Your fans should not be going full speed ever, twin fans on a GPU are designed to max out at 50% speed on 100% GPU load processing, they are essentially two to do the work of one (with a healthy margin for overclockers where the fan will go way over 50%). The RX 580 fans should effectively be off on idle, they only kick in when your GPU processing yields temperature above 50C - max loading is at just over 70C (they also kick up briefly on start-up). The RX 580 will drive the fans to maintain a temperature at or around 72C. Modern GPUs over the last 2 years have evolved to an almost ON/OFF state. Any 3D graphics loading AT ALL will result in the GPU running at up to 70 to 72C with the fans running between 20 to 50% of max speed. This leads to the rather odd effect that your CPU can be lightly loaded - and thus low temperature - and your GPU fans kicking in just because you triggered a 3D graphic effect. This is very different behaviour that older graphic cards - like the 260x -where CPU and GPU tended to smoothly follow each other in terms of temperature variation.

This maybe what you are seeing, with an 8-core CPU whilst running GW2 the loading will be around 30% and hence 'cool', yet your GPU fans could be at full (50%). This is the new 'norm' with recent GPU cards.

(2) AMD new Radeon Adrenalin drivers and software suite have some very cool features and can be used to investigate the performance and settings of the GPU. In particular there is a new utility called 'Chill' which will automatically drop your frame rate - and thus GPU loading and consequently fan speed - if your character is not moving and/or inactive. You can also adjust the fan speed profiles and completely switch off the ON/OFF effect as well as providing an in-game overlay so you can check temps/fps/loadings etc whilst playing GW2 (unfortunately the four possible positions tend to overlay something in GW2 but you can toggle the display on/off with ALT+R)). Just be sure to completely remove exiting AMD drivers - there is a separate downloadable utility to do this. The Software suite also allows you to set individual GPU settings for each game you play! If you have a AMD GPU then the Software Suite is pretty good addition on top of the AMD drivers Windows will automatically load in.

(3) If you have a 60Hz display make sure you set the fps limiter in GW2 Option/Graphics menu to 60Hz (the Adrenalin suite can do this too). Your GPU can deliver way above 60Hz if you allow it to no benefit to you!

@ OP: Didn't you have another similar thread a week or so ago? I recall that the resolution was that you may be unintentionally overclocking your GPU without adequate cooling, and/or your GPU may be defective and you should probably try to return it since you should be within your return/warranty window. There was also some talk on that thread about making sure your case fans are installed properly.

@Sagramor.7395 said:@ OP: Didn't you have another similar thread a week or so ago? I recall that the resolution was that you may be unintentionally overclocking your GPU without adequate cooling, and/or your GPU may be defective and you should probably try to return it since you should be within your return/warranty window. There was also some talk on that thread about making sure your case fans are installed properly.

@Itz Jay.8941 said:

@Icemanfrost.5428 said:I have a Processor AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core Processor, 4000 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor. They said this was a CPU driven game. I am thinking should I upgrade this and if so any suggestions for an affordable budget? maybe 120 or 130 max? I noticed my Radeon 580 it seems to get loud even at low temperatures. I can hear the fans moving very loudly. Do I have an okay processor and if I do have to upgrade do I need a new motherboard or DD4 memory?

I have the 8GB on Radeon 580. Maybe its just the dust. Maybe I need to clean the fans off. It is a little dusty. It goes from 28 degrees to 50 degrees. Even on that. It's a little loud. I used to have a 780GTX. That would run fine and quiet mostly on whatever game I played. I just never noticed the loud Machine. I could play for days and it be fine. I notice either the fans in Video Card are moving at fast speed. It just sounds louder than I'm used too. I live in FourPlex. I just worry it is getting a little too loud sometimes. . How can I perform these tests to make sure everything is alright with it?

@Sagramor.7395 said:@ OP: Didn't you have another similar thread a week or so ago? I recall that the resolution was that you may be unintentionally overclocking your GPU without adequate cooling, and/or your GPU may be defective and you should probably try to return it since you should be within your return/warranty window. There was also some talk on that thread about making sure your case fans are installed properly.

Yes. I posted that general discussions by mistake in the main discussions. I have since changed it to this discussion. I have a cooler master fan in my system too. It's supposed to make it much more quiet. I can still play the game. I just crank my settings down to medium. I would be playing much much longer if they were whisper quiet. Does thermal paste on processor's need to be replaced. I noticed when my brother did that for me. When he first got it. I'm not sure if it needs to be re-done now. I'll be returning video card on monday.