Guild Wars 2

The game have been launched for almost 3 years, yet we still get random frame drops for no reason. I hope they improve optimization in HoT.

I don’t get random frame drops, are you sure it’s not a problem on your end?

Took this off reddit.

Install MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO.
Setup OSD to show, at least, “GPU usage” and “CPU core usage” (not total!). Things you may add: FPS, temps, voltages and clock rates.
Play normally. When you get an FPS drop, look at usages. If something is close to 100% that’s your bottleneck. The optional items may be useful to troubleshoot other problems, like for example an NVIDIA driver getting stuck on a low clock.

It’s optimized fine. You just need a better computer.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I don’t get random frame drops, are you sure it’s not a problem on your end?

Took this off reddit.

Install MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO.
Setup OSD to show, at least, “GPU usage” and “CPU core usage” (not total!). Things you may add: FPS, temps, voltages and clock rates.
Play normally. When you get an FPS drop, look at usages. If something is close to 100% that’s your bottleneck. The optional items may be useful to troubleshoot other problems, like for example an NVIDIA driver getting stuck on a low clock.

You forgot the single most important counter in today’s gaming world. VRAM Usage.
What is the bottleneck maybe for most recent games is the amount VRAM on the GPU, and for GW2, in big events with lots of people around, your VRAM might not be enough.

DavosTheOnionKnight.1653:

It’s optimized fine. You just need a better computer.

Oh the quake rule… no wait that’s like a 15+ year old reference…

If you’re not already, be sure to run the game in “Fullscreen – [your resolution]” rather than “Window” or “Windowed Fullscreen.” Occasional and random drops in FPS can be expected when running some games with a borderless window setting.

DavosTheOnionKnight.1653:

It’s optimized fine. You just need a better computer.

Darn, my high-end graphics PC is not good enough for a DirectX 9 game from 2012…

It is indeed known that GW2 requires too much from CPU, instead of GPU. Hopefully they will update the whole engine with Hearthstone Heartofthorns.

Lishtenbird.2814:

DavosTheOnionKnight.1653:

It’s optimized fine. You just need a better computer.

Darn, my high-end graphics PC is not good enough for a DirectX 9 game from 2012…

It is indeed known that GW2 requires too much from CPU, instead of GPU. Hopefully they will update the whole engine with Hearthstone Heartofthorns.

Game requires too much from the CPU in WvW mostly, in PVE the usual bottleneck is the GPU (and VRAM)

DavosTheOnionKnight.1653:

It’s optimized fine. You just need a better computer.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

further comment is refracted!

More doritos in the cardboard make the hamsters run faster, and more pewpew goes on the screen!

Biggest problem is the dependancy on network travel & latency. my pc runs at 30-40% CPU and 60-70% GPU on ultra, and can reach 100-180 FPS, but at large scale engagemnents (zerg vs zerg( vs zerg) orworld bosses it dropt to 12-20 FPS and lower GPU and CPU usage, mostly due to not enough data reaching my pc. (90 Mbitps down / 9 up) wired on Gbit LAN, and lag and latency problems even though ping is generally good.

This game is bottlenecked by the amount of other players and or their (wireless) LAN latency and corresponding lag… problem is the game cause it needs to send inormation about the distribution of damage, conditions and HP for all players & foes. for 100+ players on an event this could cause quite a bad package trafic jam…. bad sends and required retransmits will cause lag and rubberbanding….

the actual engine of the game allows me to play up to 180 FPS,with extremes to 220 FPS, showing the engine isn’t that bad. it is the amount of data stacking up cumulatively
1 player needs 1 communication packet sent with his conditions
2 players needs 2 communications send with the conditions, actions locations of 2 players and all affected foes
3 players needs 3 communications send with the conditions, actions locations of 3 players and all affected foes
100 players need 100 communications send with all conditions, actions locations of 100 players and all affected foes.

Showing bandwith will increase fast with player amounts. especially when all are in the same area and sharing FOV

maddoctor.2738:

Game requires too much from the CPU in WvW mostly, in PVE the usual bottleneck is the GPU (and VRAM)

In PvE, zergs also happen. But yes, out-of-memory crashes do happen (IIRC since the game is 32 bit). I’m currently used to lowering graphics during Tequatl or WvW zerging not to crash.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

This game is bottlenecked by the amount of other players and or their (wireless) LAN latency and corresponding lag…

So that long post with lengthy calculations is saying that I’m having bad FPS because of my Internet connection? …wow.

I wonder why my offline games ever had bad FPS. Probably because they had no online connection

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

… a lot of misinformation …

Sorry but your computer doesn’t wait for the server while it draws the frames, so the bandwidth is irrelevant when talking about FPS.

Now lag is a whole different thing (and I know a lot of people talk about lag when they get low FPS, which has nothing to do with it). Lag can cause warping (other players’ characters jumping around your screen) and delay in both your skills executing after they keypress, and them registering on the enemy (and you getting the feedback in the form of damage readings). You may have noticed that all skills that deal damage have a casting time. This is there because not just balance reasons, but the fact that in order for your computer to show the damage appearing on the enemy at the time your attack “finishes”, it must have first sent the “I’m going to attack this guy” information to the server and get feedback from the server “ok you hit the guy and did this much damage” before the attack is finished.

There is nothing much you can do to improve lag once you’ve got a decent connection. I’ve not monitored how much data your client receives in a big WvW combat, but I would believe it’s pretty manageable by any modern broadband connection. The problem comes when the server has to process all that information coming from 100 players and also outgoing to 100 players. I’ve also understood that one of the main reasons for server side lag (causing the infamous skill lag) for GW2 is that every condition stack on every creature is tracked individually, with a timer for each. That’s not a small amount of extra data to be sent across all the clients when there is a 50 vs 50 vs 50 fight happening on a small area.

Now about the FPS, there is a lot to do to improve it. Both yourself by upgrading your PC, and by Anet to optimize the client software. Server software, I say again, has zero impact on your FPS. Zero. Now, MMO clients are notoriously difficult to optimize due to the fact that practically every character model is different in both meshing and textures. This puts a tremendous load on your GPU. On top of that in WvW there also is a problem on the CPU which I guess is busy doing client-side movement prediction on all the player characters. Movement prediction is an algorithm (or a series of them) that tries to “guess” where the other player character models are going while the client is waiting for the server to send an updated position and speed vectors for that character.

Hope this clarifies some misconceptions about lag and FPS drops, and gives you and idea what you can and cannot do to improve them.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

the actual engine of the game allows me to play up to 180 FPS,with extremes to 220 FPS, showing the engine isn’t that bad. it is the amount of data stacking up cumulatively

Hmm .. shure that the main problem is not simply the CPU-Power that is needed
to render all the different character with all those different armor models ?

However .. hard to test without having an offline version of the games with masses
of NPCs.

maddoctor.2738:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I don’t get random frame drops, are you sure it’s not a problem on your end?

Took this off reddit.

Install MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO.
Setup OSD to show, at least, “GPU usage” and “CPU core usage” (not total!). Things you may add: FPS, temps, voltages and clock rates.
Play normally. When you get an FPS drop, look at usages. If something is close to 100% that’s your bottleneck. The optional items may be useful to troubleshoot other problems, like for example an NVIDIA driver getting stuck on a low clock.

You forgot the single most important counter in today’s gaming world. VRAM Usage.
What is the bottleneck maybe for most recent games is the amount VRAM on the GPU, and for GW2, in big events with lots of people around, your VRAM might not be enough.

No… Just NO!

No game utilizes more than 8GB of RAM WITH other programs running. GW2 is no exception

I do find that some areas are noticeably not optimized compared to others. However ANET has done a splendid job on optimizing all areas players actually play in , in my experience.

Harathi used to give me horrid lag when those weird pillars of light were on the horizon, and zergs would lag me out, now it’s fine.

The only areas that are noticeably worse are the character creation starting areas (I mean starting area where you kill your first boss before you’re in the real world) – my frame rate there drops to 40, but as you never spend much time in them – that’s not on their priority list. Makes sense.

The thing with zergs apparently it’s a good CPU you need not just the graphics card, due to number of players to be shown. I’d suggest setting number of character models displayed to lowest – it really helps where lots of people gather. You don’t see everyone’s armor, true, but if you target them it’ll render (or walk up close enough). Plus I don’t care much about seeing other people’s armor, just mine :P

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I don’t get random frame drops, are you sure it’s not a problem on your end?

Took this off reddit.

Install MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO.
Setup OSD to show, at least, “GPU usage” and “CPU core usage” (not total!). Things you may add: FPS, temps, voltages and clock rates.
Play normally. When you get an FPS drop, look at usages. If something is close to 100% that’s your bottleneck. The optional items may be useful to troubleshoot other problems, like for example an NVIDIA driver getting stuck on a low clock.

You forgot the single most important counter in today’s gaming world. VRAM Usage.
What is the bottleneck maybe for most recent games is the amount VRAM on the GPU, and for GW2, in big events with lots of people around, your VRAM might not be enough.

No… Just NO!

No game utilizes more than 8GB of RAM WITH other programs running. GW2 is no exception

… I said VRAM not RAM. Unless you know many GPUs (available to the common people) that have 8GB of VRAM …

The number one reason for bottlenecks nowadays is the amount of VRAM of the GPU. VRAM usage is NOT readily available from the OS so using an external utility is important, like the MSI Afterburner mentioned by the post I quoted.

If it reaches 100% used then if the CPU or GPU usage are both below 50% the PC will freeze and FPS will drop, a very very common occurance in GW2 (usage below 50% but low FPS)

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I don’t get random frame drops, are you sure it’s not a problem on your end?

Took this off reddit.

Install MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO.
Setup OSD to show, at least, “GPU usage” and “CPU core usage” (not total!). Things you may add: FPS, temps, voltages and clock rates.
Play normally. When you get an FPS drop, look at usages. If something is close to 100% that’s your bottleneck. The optional items may be useful to troubleshoot other problems, like for example an NVIDIA driver getting stuck on a low clock.

You forgot the single most important counter in today’s gaming world. VRAM Usage.
What is the bottleneck maybe for most recent games is the amount VRAM on the GPU, and for GW2, in big events with lots of people around, your VRAM might not be enough.

No… Just NO!

No game utilizes more than 8GB of RAM WITH other programs running. GW2 is no exception

… I said VRAM not RAM. Unless you know many GPUs (available to the common people) that have 8GB of VRAM …

The number one reason for bottlenecks nowadays is the amount of VRAM of the GPU. VRAM usage is NOT readily available from the OS so using an external utility is important, like the MSI Afterburner mentioned by the post I quoted.

If it reaches 100% used then if the CPU or GPU usage are both below 50% the PC will freeze and FPS will drop, a very very common occurance in GW2 (usage below 50% but low FPS)

Same goes for VRAM, 1GB for reduced detail up to 1080p.
2GB for high detail WITH a decent GPU coupled. GTX750ti / R7 265 class card.

I do not understand what you mean about an external utility needed? The OS does not manage it, the driver of the card does, which should be more than capable of doing this.
Can you provide some more info to support this “3rd party utility” improving performance?

The only places I get FPS drops are:

• Great Jungle Wurm
• Frozen Maw
• Karka Queen

Those 3 bosses can drop me heavily no matter what graphic settings I use.
Rest is above 50fps.

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I don’t get random frame drops, are you sure it’s not a problem on your end?

Took this off reddit.

Install MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO.
Setup OSD to show, at least, “GPU usage” and “CPU core usage” (not total!). Things you may add: FPS, temps, voltages and clock rates.
Play normally. When you get an FPS drop, look at usages. If something is close to 100% that’s your bottleneck. The optional items may be useful to troubleshoot other problems, like for example an NVIDIA driver getting stuck on a low clock.

You forgot the single most important counter in today’s gaming world. VRAM Usage.
What is the bottleneck maybe for most recent games is the amount VRAM on the GPU, and for GW2, in big events with lots of people around, your VRAM might not be enough.

No… Just NO!

No game utilizes more than 8GB of RAM WITH other programs running. GW2 is no exception

… I said VRAM not RAM. Unless you know many GPUs (available to the common people) that have 8GB of VRAM …

The number one reason for bottlenecks nowadays is the amount of VRAM of the GPU. VRAM usage is NOT readily available from the OS so using an external utility is important, like the MSI Afterburner mentioned by the post I quoted.

If it reaches 100% used then if the CPU or GPU usage are both below 50% the PC will freeze and FPS will drop, a very very common occurance in GW2 (usage below 50% but low FPS)

Same goes for VRAM, 1GB for reduced detail up to 1080p.
2GB for high detail WITH a decent GPU coupled. GTX750ti / R7 265 class card.

I do not understand what you mean about an external utility needed? The OS does not manage it, the driver of the card does, which should be more than capable of doing this.
Can you provide some more info to support this “3rd party utility” improving performance?

The post I quoted:

Install MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO.
Setup OSD to show, at least, “GPU usage” and “CPU core usage” (not total!). Things you may add: FPS, temps, voltages and clock rates.
Play normally. When you get an FPS drop, look at usages. If something is close to 100% that’s your bottleneck. The optional items may be useful to troubleshoot other problems, like for example an NVIDIA driver getting stuck on a low clock.

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

There is definitely a bottleneck somewhere in the game engine. During world bosses my CPU stays around 80%, but my GPU usage tanks down to almost nothing. I have 4gb of VRAM, and 16gb of normal RAM so that’s not the issue. Game is running off an SSD so it’s not a hard drive or pagefile issue. I haven’t monitored network usage but I’ll try that with tonight’s Teq to see how much it’s actually using.

I think what needs to happen is an improved scaling system for effects during large events. For example I don’t need to see the path of every projectile and it’s associated effects that’s launched at a boss, and scaling it down to something like a simple “ping” to know that someone else’s attack has hit would be good enough while keeping the framerate up. I would be curious as to how much overhead this would reduce if any, but I don’t think the devs will be willing to discuss this level of detail on how the engine works.

maddoctor.2738:

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

Common misconception.

Bottleneck does not require one “resource” to display as being fully utilized.

Consider this :

Graphics running @ 80%.
Quad core CPU running @ 60%.
However 2 of the 4 “cores” are running at 30% each.
RAM is still more than empty enough.

However you still do not get the 60 FPS you want from the game you are playing.

Is there a bottleneck?

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

Common misconception.

Bottleneck does not require one “resource” to display as being fully utilized.

Consider this :

Graphics running @ 80%.
Quad core CPU running @ 60%.
However 2 of the 4 “cores” are running at 30% each.
RAM is still more than empty enough.

Is there a bottleneck?

Not 100% utilized, but if it goes above 80% then there might be a problem there. If with the above info there is also huge FPS drop there are two possible Bottlenecks.

A) The 2 cores that are not running at 30% are way high up in usage, the engine isn’t optimized to spread the load between cores causing trouble.
B) If everything else looks fine check the VRAM

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

Common misconception.

Bottleneck does not require one “resource” to display as being fully utilized.

Consider this :

Graphics running @ 80%.
Quad core CPU running @ 60%.
However 2 of the 4 “cores” are running at 30% each.
RAM is still more than empty enough.

Is there a bottleneck?

Not 100% utilized, but if it goes above 80% then there might be a problem there. If with the above info there is also huge FPS drop there are two possible Bottlenecks.

A) The 2 cores that are not running at 30% are way high up in usage, the engine isn’t optimized to spread the load between cores causing trouble.
B) If everything else looks fine check the VRAM

OK ill add more refinement.

VRAM underutilized, lets say 50%.
Other cores on CPU are barely even being touched by usage.
Also I had a brainfart, the CPU usage is TOTAL of 15%. Which is where the 30% on each of the first 2 cores comes from.

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

Common misconception.

Bottleneck does not require one “resource” to display as being fully utilized.

Consider this :

Graphics running @ 80%.
Quad core CPU running @ 60%.
However 2 of the 4 “cores” are running at 30% each.
RAM is still more than empty enough.

Is there a bottleneck?

Not 100% utilized, but if it goes above 80% then there might be a problem there. If with the above info there is also huge FPS drop there are two possible Bottlenecks.

A) The 2 cores that are not running at 30% are way high up in usage, the engine isn’t optimized to spread the load between cores causing trouble.
B) If everything else looks fine check the VRAM

OK ill add more refinement.

VRAM underutilized, lets say 50%.
Other cores on CPU are barely even being touched by usage.

And still having huge FPS issues? I guess next stop is network and hard disk usage…. Usually FPS drops can be explained with data, I don’t get what you want to say? That a PC might appear completely unutilized and still have severe fps drop issues?

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

Common misconception.

Bottleneck does not require one “resource” to display as being fully utilized.

Consider this :

Graphics running @ 80%.
Quad core CPU running @ 60%.
However 2 of the 4 “cores” are running at 30% each.
RAM is still more than empty enough.

Is there a bottleneck?

Not 100% utilized, but if it goes above 80% then there might be a problem there. If with the above info there is also huge FPS drop there are two possible Bottlenecks.

A) The 2 cores that are not running at 30% are way high up in usage, the engine isn’t optimized to spread the load between cores causing trouble.
B) If everything else looks fine check the VRAM

OK ill add more refinement.

VRAM underutilized, lets say 50%.
Other cores on CPU are barely even being touched by usage.

And still having huge FPS issues? I guess next stop is network and hard disk usage…. Usually FPS drops can be explained with data, I don’t get what you want to say? That a PC might appear completely unutilized and still have severe fps drop issues?

Jip. Last part, sorry you keep skirting the point im getting to. :P Not intentionally I am sure. Anyway.

Point is assuming everything looks to be underutilized.
Can it mean there is a bottleneck or not?

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

Common misconception.

Bottleneck does not require one “resource” to display as being fully utilized.

Consider this :

Graphics running @ 80%.
Quad core CPU running @ 60%.
However 2 of the 4 “cores” are running at 30% each.
RAM is still more than empty enough.

Is there a bottleneck?

Not 100% utilized, but if it goes above 80% then there might be a problem there. If with the above info there is also huge FPS drop there are two possible Bottlenecks.

A) The 2 cores that are not running at 30% are way high up in usage, the engine isn’t optimized to spread the load between cores causing trouble.
B) If everything else looks fine check the VRAM

OK ill add more refinement.

VRAM underutilized, lets say 50%.
Other cores on CPU are barely even being touched by usage.

And still having huge FPS issues? I guess next stop is network and hard disk usage…. Usually FPS drops can be explained with data, I don’t get what you want to say? That a PC might appear completely unutilized and still have severe fps drop issues?

Jip. Last part, sorry you keep skirting the point im getting to. :P Not intentionally I am sure. Anyway.

Point is assuming everything looks to be underutilized.
Can it mean there is a bottleneck or not?

Bottleneck is a general term… it doesn’t have to be hardware, it could be anything including the game engine that is preventing the rest of the system from being utilized fully.

Slacker.2679:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

Common misconception.

Bottleneck does not require one “resource” to display as being fully utilized.

Consider this :

Graphics running @ 80%.
Quad core CPU running @ 60%.
However 2 of the 4 “cores” are running at 30% each.
RAM is still more than empty enough.

Is there a bottleneck?

Not 100% utilized, but if it goes above 80% then there might be a problem there. If with the above info there is also huge FPS drop there are two possible Bottlenecks.

A) The 2 cores that are not running at 30% are way high up in usage, the engine isn’t optimized to spread the load between cores causing trouble.
B) If everything else looks fine check the VRAM

OK ill add more refinement.

VRAM underutilized, lets say 50%.
Other cores on CPU are barely even being touched by usage.

And still having huge FPS issues? I guess next stop is network and hard disk usage…. Usually FPS drops can be explained with data, I don’t get what you want to say? That a PC might appear completely unutilized and still have severe fps drop issues?

Jip. Last part, sorry you keep skirting the point im getting to. :P Not intentionally I am sure. Anyway.

Point is assuming everything looks to be underutilized.
Can it mean there is a bottleneck or not?

Bottleneck is a general term… it doesn’t have to be hardware, it could be anything including the game engine that is preventing the rest of the system from being utilized fully.

Exactly!
So looking at something like MSI Afterburner means very little in most cases.

With enough experience in stuff like this you can make an educated guess quite accurately as to what the culprit it.

I have the following specs :

I5 3570K
HD7950 3GB.
16GB of 1866MHz RAM.
256GB Vertex kitten.

GW2 does not max out ANYTHING visibly on my system, but HELLISH drops in some cases to the low 20s and occasionally to the high teens.

The game is coded terribly for the extreme amount of data it need to track. Period.

Missing some specifics, but here are my specs:

Windows 7 64 bit
i7 975 Extreme (overclocked to 4.1 GHz)
780Ti EVGA Superclocked
16GB of 1866MHz RAM
1920 × 1080 @ 120 Hz (3.00x Native Resolution via Nvidia Super Resolution)

There are things in this game that definitely need optimization, and badly. These things include:

-Water Reflections: Turning reflections from “All” to “Terrain & Sky” yielded a 25 fps gain… WHEN THERE WAS NO WATER AROUND. But there’s the catch! They placed water entirely beneath the maps of the world, so you’re always near water, you just can’t see it, and it taxes your machine unnecessarily.

-Shadows: Pretty taxing. From “Ultra” to “High”, I gained 10-15 fps, depending on the area.

-Character Model Limit: Anything above “Medium” in an area with a lot of players drastically lowers my fps from the usual 70-120 to 45~. It’s clear that the game, while designed for massive zerg battles, was not optimized for it.

Also, if they ever optimized the game for DirectX 11 (or, by chance the new DirectX12 when it’s released which is a long shot) we would see a large performance gain. DirectX9 is soooooooooo bad.

Two things:

1. There have been cases of good PCs experiencing drops. There is no clear fix on the user side. Obviously you can keep buying better and better stuff, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting what you’re putting in (in hardware.)

2. While it would be great to see optimizations in HoT, I don’t see how HoT would change anything. Unless they are making use of a higher budget in this regard, I’m pretty sure we are still going to see optimizations in the same way we have always been.

Amiron.1067:

-Shadows: Pretty taxing. From “Ultra” to “High”, I gained 10-15 fps, depending on the area.

Is there any MMO where shadows are not one of things that eat the most FPS ?

At least i remember it from EQ2 and RIFT.

Most of my problems with FPS drops comes from particle effects, the excessive amount of them, not to mention being seizure inducing in some instances. I usually don’t experience massive drops in FPS till the skills start flying.

Tom Gore.4035:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

… a lot of misinformation …

Sorry but your computer doesn’t wait for the server while it draws the frames, so the bandwidth is irrelevant when talking about FPS.

Now lag is a whole different thing (and I know a lot of people talk about lag when they get low FPS, which has nothing to do with it). Lag can cause warping (other players’ characters jumping around your screen) A.K.A. rubberbanding and delay in both your skills executing after they keypress, and them registering on the enemy (and you getting the feedback in the form of damage readings) signs of an overflooded server either calculations wise or in communication. You may have noticed that all skills that deal damage have a casting time. This is there because not just balance reasons, but the fact that in order for your computer to show the damage appearing on the enemy at the time your attack “finishes”, it must have first sent the “I’m going to attack this guy” information to the server and get feedback from the server “ok you hit the guy and did this much damage” before the attack is finished.

There is nothing much you can do to improve lag once you’ve got a decent connection. I’ve not monitored how much data your client receives in a big WvW combat, but I would believe it’s pretty manageable by any modern broadband connection. The problem comes when the server has to process all that information coming from 100 players and also outgoing to 100 players. I’ve also understood that one of the main reasons for server side lag (causing the infamous skill lag) for GW2 is that every condition stack on every creature is tracked individually, with a timer for each. That’s not a small amount of extra data to be sent across all the clients when there is a 50 vs 50 vs 50 fight happening on a small area. Well actually we are thinking the same, you focussing on server flooding, I mostly on the fact it needs to be sending this data as well. I beleive I posted 1 remark about the amount of calculations

Now about the FPS, there is a lot to do to improve it. Both yourself by upgrading your PC, and by Anet to optimize the client software. Server software, I say again, has zero impact on your FPS. Zero. Now, MMO clients are notoriously difficult to optimize due to the fact that practically every character model is different in both meshing and textures. This puts a tremendous load on your GPU. On top of that in WvW there also is a problem on the CPU which I guess is busy doing client-side movement prediction on all the player characters. Movement prediction is an algorithm (or a series of them) that tries to “guess” where the other player character models are going while the client is waiting for the server to send an updated position and speed vectors for that character.

Hope this clarifies some misconceptions about lag and FPS drops, and gives you and idea what you can and cannot do to improve them.

I run a hex-core i7 @3.8 Ghz, 32 Gb Ram, 2 GTX 780’s in SLi both on a PCI-e16x on 3.0 supported by both hard and software, 2 screens 1 being 1920*1200 other just 1920*1080. The computer has no problems running Gw2 and running a 1080p Mkv movie on the second screen, I do not get real fps drops, neither does other multitasking. My sli set calculates ahead, so short prediction, and it’ll make my pc drop most frames anyways.. Software and windows setup have been streamlined. No AV, regular scans for virus and spyware, initiated manually, cleaned registry. My memory is reasonably fast, and even though I’m on a X79 based system which is not extremely modern it should be fast enough.

If i need to upgrade?…

I expect most information to contain a string about the armor/weapons, a location, skill(s) used (you’ll need to see telegraphs), damage, type of conditions on character,
health. I doubt there is much more, but if you see 100 ppl you’ll need this string 100 times. If you’d only get this info every .1 sec you only see 10 different frames/ second no matter if your pc can calculate 100. Certainly in wvw your gpu making assumptions would be a big problem… cause you’d be targetting things which could be somewhere else that is why rubberbvanding exists, maybe autotarget could manage, and maybe you’d try to predict routes, but it would be difficult…

Also I really am wondering why server side calculations would be a problem: gigantic servers are not extremely expensive anymore… most costs of server is upkeep in power, cooling and bandwith, not purchase of the original server

In my experience the game functions perfect, the system runs 170-180 fps, but if i start top meet ppl FPS drops like a brick… I tried it with other people, FPS drops more with people playing wireless, but not as much with slower PC’s and wired connections. Giving me the impression the game IS waiting…

^ Kind of hard to test unless you could import more than 30 of each group into a single map.

Beldin.5498:

Amiron.1067:

-Shadows: Pretty taxing. From “Ultra” to “High”, I gained 10-15 fps, depending on the area.

Is there any MMO where shadows are not one of things that eat the most FPS ?

At least i remember it from EQ2 and RIFT.

This is true. But I’d expect shadows to be more taxing than the water reflections. Other games can handle water reflections so much better than GW2 does.

I still believe the root of the problem is DirectX 9.

Amiron.1067:

Beldin.5498:

Amiron.1067:

-Shadows: Pretty taxing. From “Ultra” to “High”, I gained 10-15 fps, depending on the area.

Is there any MMO where shadows are not one of things that eat the most FPS ?

At least i remember it from EQ2 and RIFT.

This is true. But I’d expect shadows to be more taxing than the water reflections. Other games can handle water reflections so much better than GW2 does.

I still believe the root of the problem is DirectX 9.

I’ve been seeing too many modern games using cubemaps instead of real reflections though.

reflections on terrain and sky makes a lot of difference. I do not see any real advantage in changing any of the other settings though…
running ultra and supersample.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

reflections on terrain and sky makes a lot of difference. I do not see any real advantage in changing any of the other settings though…
running ultra and supersample.

We’re all a bit confused on that too.

The way the game is set up, changing most of the visual settings has very little affect on the FPS. Because of this, people think their GPU is fine and the game is so very “CPU bound.”

However, there is one major graphics setting that we can not touch. Particles. Wintersday 2013, the FPS is Lion’s Arch was lower than usual. I believe this had to do with the snow cloud effects flying in our faces at all times. It would also explain why the first 20-30 seconds of Frozen Maw have a much lower FPS than most other zerg events as it has serious snow blizzard effects. Karka doesn’t count because Southsun has performance issues on its own.