Guild Wars 2

Today I checked a game I played before GW2 (the game is at least 5 years old, MMO, some people say it started a a WOW-clone, went F2P 1-2 years ago) and was surprised that they announced “true multicore support” for their game.

They explained that when they started, there was the DX9-API and that was developed only with “single core” CPUs in mind. But DX9 is showing its age and technology improved dramatically since then and “multicore computers” are the norm.

So they changed the game engine to have “true multicore support” which will result in a much better frame rate and better response time. And of course they have to switch from the DX9-API to some newer DX-API (but they don’t tell which one).

“That Company” does not have unlimited money (A-Net also does not have unlimited money), but thinks, that changing a several years old game to multicore-support is a good business decision.

Maybe Mike O’Brian and Scott Hartsman could have a chat about this between president and CEO? And maybe Scott could Mike lent/rent some developers that have experience with this matter?

Zok.4956:

Today I checked a game I played before GW2 (the game is at least 5 years old, MMO, some people say it started a a WOW-clone, went F2P 1-2 years ago) and was surprised that they announced “true multicore support” for their game.

They explained that when they started, there was the DX9-API and that was developed only with “single core” CPUs in mind. But DX9 is showing its age and technology improved dramatically since then and “multicore computers” are the norm.

So they changed the game engine to have “true multicore support” which will result in a much better frame rate and better response time. And of course they have to switch from the DX9-API to some newer DX-API (but they don’t tell which one).

“That Company” does not (like A-Net) have unlimited money, but thinks, that changing a several years old game to multicore-support is a good business decision.

Maybe Mike O’Brian and Scott Hartsman could have a chat about this between president and CEO? And maybe Scott could Mike lent/rent some developers that have experience with this matter?

Why do you think ANet has unlimeted money ? Also in “that” game i never had
more than 40-50 FPS no matter where i was, even staring at the sky will not
give me more.

Oh an in another game with DX11and Unreal Engine i play at the moment i already
had some fights where the FPS went down to 0.5 or whatever.

Beldin.5498:

Why do you think ANet has unlimeted money ?

I don’t.
I meant: “That Company” does not have unlimited money and A-net does not have unlimited money.

I fixed it in my original post now, to make it clearer.

Beldin.5498:

Also in “that” game i never had more than 40-50 FPS no matter where i was, even staring at the sky will not give me more.

Not so different to what (some / a lot) people experience in GW2.

i have V-sinc on so it doesn’t go above 60 FPS…….something is seriously wrong if you have an expensive PC but doesn’t go above 50 FPS….

Ayrilana.1396:

Blackhearted.1264:

Well, according the the most recent AMA anet is just going to sit around and make no improvements to their engine whatsoever.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0nwdsl

It’s incredibly disappointing that, in 2016, they still refuse to make any effort whatsoever to properly support modern hardware like most of their competition does.

There are other ways to improve the game engine other than update DX.

I asked in the ama if there is any plan the game engine will be optimised to utilise all the cores but no reply.

sad face

SkyShroud.2865:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blackhearted.1264:

Well, according the the most recent AMA anet is just going to sit around and make no improvements to their engine whatsoever.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0nwdsl

It’s incredibly disappointing that, in 2016, they still refuse to make any effort whatsoever to properly support modern hardware like most of their competition does.

There are other ways to improve the game engine other than update DX.

I asked in the ama if there is any plan the game engine will be optimised to utilise all the cores but no reply.

sad face

Yeah. I wouldn’t expect it as it would be a very labor intensive project that may or may not produce enough results to be worth it. They couldn’t easily add sections to the LFG because it would create complications or something. You’d think it would be designed in such a way to easily allow expansion. Just imagine the rest of the game. I’d haphazard a guess that we’ll never see a rebuilt engine but more along the lines of tweaks here and there.

for the engine to support more cores/threads is going to require a rewrite. Maybe by the next expansion they will induce a beta of a new engine, but nothing production ready. as it takes a long long time to build a API engine and then to get that engine adapted to the core application. Its not an easy undertaking, BUT it is doable with funding and personnel+time.

Its just very low on Anets bucket list. as there is so much more that needs to be dealt with before an engine is going to really make a huge difference.

but if u consider the long term benefits of the engine will bring…it is worthy investment

the new stuffs apparently moving towards more cpu intensive gameplay like more units, shiny fancy bling bling stuffs, the hot map being multi layered so the likelyhood of new living story map being too and so on……

the optimised engine will simply give everyone a better game performance which result in better game experience and thus better game play. this also means that anet has lesser limitation on the type of contents and bling bling caused by performance issue

is a win-win situation for both the players and the developers

unfortunately, throughout the years, anet does give a impression that they give little cares in term of long term goals.

You’d figure that the devs would have invested by now, but oh well.

Hello,
I was redirected here by the Guild Wars 2 Customer Support Team. Since a couple of months, I no longer posses the ability to run windows on my computer due to certain reasons/restrictions I do not wish to publicly declare. So I was curious to see if the developers would consider using Vulkan, making it compatible with SteamOS while at the same time, possibly improving performance on the Windows and OSX Version? I really miss playing GW2.

Thanks

I run GW2 (64-bit client) just fine under Linux (my serious OS) using WINE. In fact, I just mounted my Windows (my toy OS) game drive (SSD formatted NTFS) and pointed my wine shortcut to it, and voila! You will have to modify /etc/fstab to properly do NTFS, but it is very easy (fmask, umask, etc).

There are a lot of how-to’s out there, and GW2 runs quite well under Linux. I really doubt they will be converting it to Vulkan API’s, as they are quite new – but you never know.

I followed (mostly) the manual section in this guide except I had already downloaded the game under windows and since it was already on a drive, didn’t re-download it.

Vulkan came up in an AMA recently. There are no plans to change graphics engines, such as to DirectX12 or Vulkan. Sorry!

Redenaz.8631:

Vulkan came up in an AMA recently. There are no plans to change graphics engines, such as to DirectX12 or Vulkan. Sorry!

That is too bad. I’m not keen on moving to DX12, but it would be interesting to see how Vulcan pans out. The industry needs it to start and break out of the Windows Catch-22 they are in. SOMETHING needs to be done, lest they all be at Microsoft’s mercy, and from what I’m gleaning, it isn’t going to be fun for devs (who do not sign their souls over) in the long run.

Is there even a GW3 in the works or on the boards? Sorry if this has been asked, I have only recently come to discover Guild Wars (yeah, better late than never?).

Old Roy.5924:

Redenaz.8631:

Vulkan came up in an AMA recently. There are no plans to change graphics engines, such as to DirectX12 or Vulkan. Sorry!

That is too bad. I’m not keen on moving to DX12, but it would be interesting to see how Vulcan pans out. The industry needs it to start and break out of the Windows Catch-22 they are in. SOMETHING needs to be done, lest they all be at Microsoft’s mercy, and from what I’m gleaning, it isn’t going to be fun for devs (who do not sign their souls over) in the long run.

Is there even a GW3 in the works or on the boards? Sorry if this has been asked, I have only recently come to discover Guild Wars (yeah, better late than never?).

No, absolutely no plans whatsoever. Currently they are working on LS3 and a second expansion

I never knew why my computer fans always blasted while playing GW2… Now I know why. Whenever I play any other games, my CPU does not really go that high, but whenever I play GW2, it uses almost 100% of my CPU prowess.

I thought I f-ed something up when I built my computer…. NOW I FEEL BETTER…

There are plenty of new games coming out with DirectX12 support.

No, absolutely no plans whatsoever. Currently they are working on LS3 and a second expansion

Why should I care about that when Overwatch will be much better on the CPU while still being graphically superior?

I also agree that dx 12 would help this game(gw2) a lot. any one saying the opposite do not know what they are talking about. face it dx12 brings all core and thread can be use. new pc have 4 core and 4 thread. other dx version where all using 1thread of 1 core. so it can use 8x more of the cpu power. also dx 12 can use all the graphic card on the pc as one what ever size or brand. and new pc have often have 2 or more now. so of course it would help the game a lot. it would free the cpu and send the job to the gpu. no more bottle neck. means higher fps and more constant.

stephanie wise.7841:

I also agree that dx 12 would help this game(gw2) a lot. any one saying the opposite do not know what they are talking about. face it dx12 brings all core and thread can be use. new pc have 4 core and 4 thread. other dx version where all using 1thread of 1 core. so it can use 8x more of the cpu power. also dx 12 can use all the graphic card on the pc as one what ever size or brand. and new pc have often have 2 or more now. so of course it would help the game a lot. it would free the cpu and send the job to the gpu. no more bottle neck. means higher fps and more constant.

DX12 itself will not provide the improvements that you think.

I feel like I may be able to clear up some things here.

GW2 stays on DX9 and 32bit client which kinda.. lags a lot, and sometimes even crashes on huge battles/worldbosses (i see you Tequatl).

For the vast majority of players, the lag is unrelated to both of these.

All software have a thing called threads. You can think of each thread as a highway lane: They run in parallel, and they each perform different tasks simultaneously. They are what applications use to scale with multiple cores on CPUs, as each thread can only run on one CPU core at a time.

Each application has a thread known as the main thread. For games that thread is usually the thread that’s in the driver’s seat of the frame. It determines what to process and when on a higher level, such as “process OS messages”, “update the game state”, “process animations”, “send state to the render thread”, etc. All the different things that go into a game frame. The majority of game engines do some of these on a different thread, but in many cases the main thread still determines when it should happen.

So since threads are useful for scaling things, you’d think that you could simply create more threads and get more work done. But while it’s true that you have more computing power with more threads, threads also have downsides. For one, you cannot modify data in memory while another thread is reading that same data. In order to do this one thread has to wait for the other to stop using the data, meaning work is done in serial even if the code itself is running on multiple threads. To make matters worse, the OS is not guaranteed to put a thread back to work the very moment the other thread has finished. It can actually take a long-ish time (long being a very relative term). Due to this, software engineers are forced to properly design their applications to work well in parallel. Doing this after the fact is usually on the range of non-trivial to very hard.

Which brings us to GW2. GW2 does a lot of processing, and much of it is done on the main thread. That is also where its bottleneck tends to be: The main thread. There are conscious efforts in moving things off the main thread and onto other threads (every now and then a patch goes out that does just this), but due to how multi-threading works it’s a non-trivial thing that take a lot of effort to do. In a perfect world, we could say “Hey main thread, give the other threads some stuff to do if you’re too busy”, but sadly this is not that world.

As for DX9 and 32bit: Moving off of DX9 wouldn’t buy us a whole lot performance wise, as all interaction with DirectX is happening on the render thread, which is generally not the bottleneck. Moving from 32-bit to 64-bit also does not really buy us a lot performance-wise. There are some optimizations the compiler is able to do with 64-bit that it can’t do otherwise, but the actual FPS gain is minimal at best.

And about crashing on Tequatl: Here’s one case where a 64-bit client could actually help. Many of the crashes happening on Tequatl (which are still quite few, mind you) are cause of memory fragmentation. The bigger memory address space of 64-bit apps could help prevent that. This becomes more of a problem the longer you keep your client running.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

Skill “Thread Necromancy” activated!

Description: Summon a deceased thread to attack foes with outdated posts.

Damage: 20% of number of days since the last post.
Stun: 2 hours.
Number of targets: Unlimited.

Cooldown: 6 months.

I do not agree with this. look at it this way when hot came out it was crashing a lot. moving to 64 bit client solved the issue. why because 64 bit can use more memory. 32 bit is limited to 3gb of speed and 4 gb of memory. the fact is that gw2 is using dx9 that is limited in the graphic animation by fps that it can run in a instance. meaning that once that limit is reach you start to get fps drop. that limit is 1000 animation environment(castle ,tree, plant, wall, node, monster, npc ,character etc…) player(character),skill and skill effect. Any animation that is not a copy is a new animation. draw call limit of dx 9 is 6000. those number are much higher in dx 12, dx 12 draw call limit is 600000k. as for what you said: The primary feature highlight for the new release of DirectX was the introduction of advanced low-level programming APIs for Direct3D 12 which can reduce driver overhead. Developers are now able to implement their own command lists and buffers to the GPU, allowing for more efficient resource utilisation through parallel computation.

A multi-core processor is a processor that includes multiple processing units (called “cores”) on the same chip. This processor differs from a superscalar processor, which includes multiple execution units and can issue multiple instructions per clock cycle from one instruction stream (thread); in contrast, a multi-core processor can issue multiple instructions per clock cycle from multiple instruction streams. IBM’s Cell microprocessor, designed for use in the Sony PlayStation 3, is a prominent multi-core processor. Each core in a multi-core processor can potentially be superscalar as well—that is, on every clock cycle, each core can issue multiple instructions from one thread.

Simultaneous multithreading (of which Intel’s Hyper-Threading is the best known) was an early form of pseudo-multi-coreism. A processor capable of simultaneous multithreading includes multiple execution units in the same processing unit—that is it has a superscalar architecture—and can issue multiple instructions per clock cycle from multiple threads. Temporal multithreading on the other hand includes a single execution unit in the same processing unit and can issue one instruction at a time from multiple threads.
Microsoft execs expect frame rates

to more than double when comparing DX12 to the current DX11 API. But that estimate looks to be conservative if Futuremark’s new API Overhead Feature test is to be believed.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2900814/tested-directx-12s-potential-performance-leap-is-insane.html

Yes and no about the game using more memory. From a layperson it certainly appears to use more memory but a portion of that is because a type of data called pointers, which are memory addresses, are now double the size and it’s the nature of Object Oriented Programming that it uses tons of pointers.

What 64-bit did was prevent Out Of Memory errors due to not being as concerned with memory fragmentation. I call it “swiss cheesing” (yes Quantum Leap reference) of the memory pool where you have chunks of unused memory available but the chunks are too small to satisfy the program’s request for a block of memory and due to 32-bits the memory pool can’t be extended anymore. It’s a natural result of software that requests and release memory frequently and/or is running for a long time. That’s all 64-bit bought, a memory pool that is substantially larger where having a failed memory request is virtually unlikely. Now whether ANet upped any internal limits to how much of what data type they can keep track up in the 64 Vs the 32 bit version, don’t know.

No one is disagreeing that DX12 has better stats than DX9, and more modern features. The problem is that the GW2 engine can’t take advantage of those modern features, and that DX isn’t the bottleneck(for GW2) in the first place. You should have read the linked reddit post rather than just rabidly posting more DX9 vs DX12 stuff. DX12 will not solve the problem, no matter how much anyone wants it to.(without the GW2 engine being majorly reworked)
IMO they need to forget expansion 2 and move on to GW3, with a totally new engine.

Do you work for microsoft? Lets hope for Vulcan not DX12
Vulcan means multi platforms, Linux, Windows, Mac, Portable, etc.

Sorry if you sold your soul to Windows 10, but the population is not going to jump ship to windows 10 so easily. Even when its free. We are done with being gated by the DX API. Freedom is coming, stop begging for slavery.

If you’re going to be a supporter, you might want to learn to spell “Vulkan”.

If Vulkan is simply an alternative to Dx12 and runs as well as Dx12, why not, from a player perspective, use Dx12?

There is limited reasons for GPU developers to spend time develop decent enough drivers to challenge Dx12 you need to popular games that have Vulkan as an option. But why would developers include Vulkan unless it performs as well or better than Dx12? Chicken … egg.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

If you’re going to be a supporter, you might want to learn to spell “Vulkan”.

I know some Vulkan!

May the force live long and prosper!

look from what I have read so far it seams that gw2 was made single thread. build of from gw1 that was also single thread. even at that time multithreading existed. I know I was playing gw1 at that time. but to say there is nothing to be done does not help. when they started to talk about making game multi thread I was there also. to do this it is only some line of code that needs to be added to the end of the existing code. why not put a dev on it? after why not optimize the game to dx 12 and solve the dx 9 limitation? Developers are now able to implement their own command lists and buffers to the GPU, allowing for more efficient resource utilisation through parallel computation. some devs at anet should be able to do that? yes it is a job anet as devs working for them for this game. so give them the work. anet pay them any way, that they do nothing or that they do something. as for Cobrakon.3108 comment: the game work with dx api. and there is no alternative. if you think about open gl. it is good on the web but for game it is far from being there. as for the comment of windows 10 it is the same since windows 10 in 3 month will become the major os in use. july 29th is the last date to get the free update. windows 10 is all ready running on 300 millions pc. Vulkan is dead long ago also get your fact straight. for Elden Arnaas.4870 comment: yes dx 9 is the bottle neck for this game. the fps drop you get in game for the big event and big zerg where there is to much animation it is cause by the dx 9 limit of 1000 animation by fps in instance. there is a reason that dirext x version evolve and get better and push back some limit. the same is true with hardware. the direct x api usely is the link between the software and the hardware. look at the pc you have now and the pc you add in 2003. do you see that your new pc as much higher limit then your old pc? more fast more memory more storage more cpu power or cpu core. dx 9 was in use when cpu add only 1 core with hyper threading. they have now 4 core with hyper threading. the math is simple if you have 4 core and 4 thread at the place of 1core thread. it is 8 time that 1 core thread. to give you a simple example: if you have a company that ship stuff and you have only 1 car on the road if you put 7 more car on the road you can ship a lot more stuff in the same time. well it is the same in computer. and dx 12 is the first version that gives this even if multi core and thread as been here for a little while now.

papry.8096:

Falanu.4289:

“We want dx12!” – That’s a “we minus me”.

Make it two.

Three here, If they ever add DX 12 to Win 7 i might enjoy it.

re: to do this it is only some line of code that needs to be added to the end of the existing code. why not put a dev on it? – This proves how little you know about coding. You’ve read some hype filled articles, and some misleading white papers, and you’re sure that they’re The Gospel Truth. Yet you pay no attention what Anet’s Lead Engine Designer has to say about it.
Yep, just do a compile with a -DX12 switch. Some person on the forums assures us that’s all we need to do.
You are severely underestimating the amount of work this will take to do.

Of course it’s possible. Race change, new playable races, and new weapons are all possible. Even finishing the missing new legendary weapons is possible. It’s whether or not Anet can invest the time and resources into it. It would be a major rework of the engine. And the changes would ripple out to other parts of the code and cause other changes to be needed. So it is most certainly not an “It’s a few lines of code, put a dev on it” thing.
But I actually agree with you. The current engine is really not sufficient. Scrap expansion 2, and start work on Guild Wars 3, with a totally new engine that will handle modern hardware and modern features of current APIs. I would license the engine from another company, or remake it from scratch. (I think licensing it would be the easier choice, but would introduce other problems. Neither choice is perfect.)

GW2 has more that one thread, 3 major ones actually and a slew of lesser ones (this is in terms of overall CPU %). It’s just the renderer thread isn’t the slowest. And the slowest thread governs framerate and a thread’s performance is limited to the performance of a single core. Doesn’t mean a thread is tied to a specific core, just bouncing between cores won’t make the thread run any faster than if it ran only on one core. Which is why people keep saying single core performance matters, not that the game runs on a single core, but like any program, it’s overall performance is limited by it’s slowest thread which is determined by the performance of a single core. It’s just other game engines that slowest thread is the rendering one where the GPU factors the threads overall performance.

That ol noob.7083:

Has anyone noticed that gw2 seems to rely much more on the CPU than the GPU? Are you noticing a lack of multi-core utilization? Wish gw2 could run a bit better? There is an answer to these questions…
Vote for DirectX12 support!
Too long has gw2 been confined to the ancient limitations of dx9. It is time to make your voice heard! If ANET were to rewrite gw2 in dx12, we would see massive performance gains! Why confine the game to a single core when we can use all the cores? Dx12 has massive gains over dx11, imagine what the gain over dx9 would be!
I want to see the marvelous world that ANET has sculpted better than ever before. I want to be able to use the full power of my system to make it sharp as it can be.
Are you with me?

it would take a complete engine rewrite for this… they’d sooner release guild wars 3 than do that, imo.

Will you also give all the ppl running this on “legacy computers” a computer with Directx 12 GPU’s then, or are you and the minority with high end systems going to keep this game going?

If you cut out 50-70% of the player base due to the shift to directx (10/11/)12, the lost income must be compensated or you’ll end up with a even smaller playerbase. no players to pay for developers/servers = no game. Even with DX 12…

As for starting on GW3 if they start now and get DX 12, in 3-4 years when it’s finished we’ll be at DX 14 or 15 and ppl will be whining as well, or maybe Vulkan takes off and ppl want everything in Vulkan… and are stuck with DX 12… choices must be made. DX 12 didn’t exist 3,5 years ago. understand you cannot program a game on non existant code or guesses.

I like my 3 yr old i7 3930K (@ 4.0Ghz) with my 2 GTX 780’s. Most games will work perfectly. Graphics for gw2?

NP, I’m at 30-45% GPU or maybe 45-50% if everything hit’s the fan…. I’m running 60 FPS cap most of the time cause I tend to want to save the lost computing power, the ambient temperature and the needed Watts. Oh and that’s on Ultra/High with supersampling, on a windowed screen… while watching HD stream/ series/ movie on 2nd HD screen.

My CPU however is at 33-40% max… squeeezing everything through 3-4 threads, the other 8-9 are idling or doing background services and other applications.

I do not mind If they make the game 4 core, NP, I don’t even care if they make it mandatory 6 core. But I do like playing with others, including friends on duo core i5’s with HT (e.g. laptops) and i3’s

And this will be a problem if I ask for 4+ core support. There are limitations. Mostly because the game is limited by the average player base and not build to be only playable on your or my OP 1337 Hyper Fiberoptic Artificially Inteligent System, just because others who want to play as well, and they’ll pay for my new content, and new expansions as well.

I want more content, I like the game, I need thers to play the game as well… for money flow (income for A-net) so more content can be build, and maybe engine improvements if they -have time to spare- . But I highly doubt ppl would pay for dx12 development if they would no longer be able to play the game.

I would like more performance, but in the end for a modified dx 8 engine upscaled to dx9 it does remarkebly well. Maybe we’ll be lucky and a patch comes which allows for many CPU cores and better GPU utilisation, But I do not see the direct need, yet.

stephanie wise.7841:

. but to say there is nothing to be done does not help. when they started to talk about making game multi thread I was there also. to do this it is only some line of code that needs to be added to the end of the existing code. why not put a dev on it? after why not optimize the game to dx 12 and solve the dx 9 limitation?

Devs have said it, in heavy situations the API is not the bottleneck. It is the main cpu thread that renders all the calculations. It has nothing to do with the graphics.

And here nobody says there’s nothing that can do. The problem is to solve it you need money, time and devs. You are completely wrong if you think multithreading a code just takes some line here and there…

pax the great one.9472 Will you also give all the ppl running this on “legacy computers” a computer with Directx 12 GPU’s then, or are you and the minority with high end systems going to keep this game going?

I have the simple answer for that. in 3 month the majority of pc will be windows 10. so having dx 12 would be nice for the majority. for people that do not have dx 12 the minority they can keep using the dx 9 version. problem solve. windows xp 10.63% if you look at vista 1.42% support is ending also so not many still use vista. and windows 7 47.82% windows 8 3.19% and windows 8.1 9.85% will all upgrade to windows 10 15.34%. what is left linux and mac? also very small number. mac as like 7% for all their os version. and linux 1.65% add all the windows 7 + to 10 together what does it gives for windows 10 66% of the market. I think it is the majority.

you can find those number here: http://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

as for gw3 it is not in the plan they still want to keep gw2 and make expension. but if the devs cannot make a single core software in to a multicore software for gw2 they are not able to make a gw 3 software in multicore also. and like I said the difference for that part is some code that needs to be added to the existing software to tell to what core or thread to send that thread of code. that is the difference between a single thread software and multi thread software. some line of code to tell where to send the code. once that is done part 2 is : Developers are now able to implement their own command lists and buffers to the GPU, allowing for more efficient resource utilisation through parallel computation. they test it if it run like it should they realease it.

as for dx 14 in 3 or 4 year will not happen . in 13 year they add 3 dx 10 11 and 12. out of the 3 12 is the major improvement. that is why game company did not continue to implement dx optimization like they use to. because dx 10 improvement was minimal. and the time and cost related they decided it was not worth it. dx 12bring over 70% improvement compare to dx 11. and for vulkan mantle forget that idea they stopped working on it saying dx 12 was much better. also for dx 12 it use 50% less power on the cpu and gpu. and it is backward compatible with the older dx version. so it can run them your old game but you will not get the improvement of dx 12 if you use dx 9 you will be stuck with dx 9 limit.
look I play gw 2 on max setting get between 65 to 105 fps. but if there is big event or big zerg the dx 9 limit bring me down, how down sometime to 19 fps. if the game would be optimize for dx 12 no more bottle neck and dx 9 limit. so I could have a constant fps. also the performance on dx 12 should double the frame rate. so I should get around 130 to 210 fps with no drops. yes this game is cpu heavy because it is single threaded and new processor cannot have more ghz(raw power)because over 4.2ghz the chip start to melt., but they can have more core and more thread. what core and thread do they split the processing job. so if you have 100% job on one core and split that job by 4 core thread and by 4 hyper thread. you divide it by 8. should give around 12.5% per core and thread. a lot less heavy on the cpu would you not say.

I can’t believe that it hasn’t occurred to the devs to just compile with the -dx12 switch.
How daft must they feel now?

Next you’ll be telling me that they don’t use the -run_smoother and -make_it_real_purty switches.

Stephanie wise you are wrong.

• Multithreading is not one or two lines of codes, but a general way to code an entire program. That’s why they generally recommend to code the program in multithreading from the start, because patches can be more harmful than helpful.
  With a game like Gw2 that includes millions of codes of lines multithreading is not an easy task.

• In heavy situations the API is not an issue, but the main thread in the cpu.

From here you can repeat yourself as much as you can, but know you’re repeating lies and fooling yourself.

stephanie wise.7841:

pax the great one.9472 Will you also give all the ppl running this on “legacy computers” a computer with Directx 12 GPU’s then, or are you and the minority with high end systems going to keep this game going?
-Ehmmm, when compatibility is maintained I’ll keep playing for a while, So I’ll keep supportiung the game, as for the type of DX 9 or 12, I honestly do not care. I started with pong in 1980… I personally see the beauty of this game. even if the engine sometimes struggles-

I have the simple answer for that. in 3 month the majority of pc will be windows 10. so having dx 12 would be nice for the majority. for people that do not have dx 12 the minority they can keep using the dx 9 version. problem solve. windows xp 10.63% if you look at vista 1.42% support is ending also so not many still use vista. and windows 7 47.82% windows 8 3.19% and windows 8.1 9.85% will all upgrade to windows 10 15.34%. what is left linux and mac? also very small number. mac as like 7% for all their os version. and linux 1.65% add all the windows 7 + to 10 together what does it gives for windows 10 66% of the market. I think it is the majority.
-OS isn’t the only thing whcih makes a PC compatable… Hardware is very relevant-

you can find those number here: http://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

as for gw3 it is not in the plan they still want to keep gw2 and make expension. but if the devs cannot make a single core software in to a multicore software for gw2 they are not able to make a gw 3 software in multicore also. and like I said the difference for that part is some code that needs to be added to the existing software to tell to what core or thread to send that thread of code. that is the difference between a single thread software and multi thread software. some line of code to tell where to send the code. once that is done part 2 is : Developers are now able to implement their own command lists and buffers to the GPU, allowing for more efficient resource utilisation through parallel computation. they test it if it run like it should they realease it.
-yes but it takes (programmer-) time to rewrite the engine, Time is a luxury.-

as for dx 14 in 3 or 4 year will not happen . in 13 year they add 3 dx 10 11 and 12. out of the 3 12 is the major improvement. that is why game company did not continue to implement dx optimization like they use to. because dx 10 improvement was minimal. and the time and cost related they decided it was not worth it. dx 12bring over 70% improvement compare to dx 11. and for vulkan mantle forget that idea they stopped working on it saying dx 12 was much better. also for dx 12 it use 50% less power on the cpu and gpu. and it is backward compatible with the older dx version. so it can run them your old game but you will not get the improvement of dx 12 if you use dx 9 you will be stuck with dx 9 limit.
look I play gw 2 on max setting get between 65 to 105 fps. but if there is big event or big zerg the dx 9 limit bring me down, how down sometime to 19 fps. if the game would be optimize for dx 12 no more bottle neck and dx 9 limit. so I could have a constant fps. also the performance on dx 12 should double the frame rate. so I should get around 130 to 210 fps with no drops. yes this game is cpu heavy because it is single threaded and new processor cannot have more ghz(raw power)because over 4.2ghz the chip start to melt., but they can have more core and more thread. what core and thread do they split the processing job. so if you have 100% job on one core and split that job by 4 core thread and by 4 hyper thread. you divide it by 8. should give around 12.5% per core and thread. a lot less heavy on the cpu would you not say.
-If they can implement it and keep compatability I’m all for it, but the compatibility is a HUGE thing here… will comment on it further below-

I would like to comment:

Windows 10 will support DirectX 12, but the PC running windows 10 DOESN’T need to support directx 12, their actual graphic solutions should be directx 9.0c minimum
You are correct versions will upgrade, problem is hardware requiress investment, not a free download.

Minimum requirements for windows 10:

1 GHz CPU
2 Gb RAM
16 GB for 32-bits OS of 20 GB for 64-bits OS instalation space
-AND-
GPU: DirectX 9 or newer with WDDM 1.0-driver
Monitor resolution: 800×600

This also shows your statistics of ppl owning windows 10 might not be 100% valid to draw the conclusion: “we should move to Directx 12”.

Which hardware will be DX12-COMPATIBLE? is more to the point

AMD said all of its Graphics Core Next-based Radeon GPUs (i.e. Radeon HD 7000 series and newer) will work with the new API. (RAdeon HD 7xxx series was released in 2012)
Nvidia pledged support for all Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell (i.e. GeForce GTX 400 series and newer) parts. The keynote included a demo of Forza 5 running in DirectX 12 mode atop an Nvidia GPU. (GTX 4xx serieswas released in 2011)
Finally, Intel said the integrated graphics in its existing Haswell processors will also have DX12 support. All in all, Microsoft estimates that 100% of new desktop GPUs, 80% of new gaming PCs, and 50% of PC gamers will be able to take advantage of the new API.

^ From old post: march 20th, 2014
(http://techreport.com/news/26199/directx-12-to-support-existing-hardware-first-games-due-in-late-2015)

Compatible cards might be slower due to some instructions having to be broken down and rescripted, by the directx software to allow for the compatibility. AMD uses the 11.1 version and Nvidia the 11.0 version both versions should be compatible, but the 11.1 has more instructions available

Which hardware is native DX12?

Well:

• Nvidia’s GTX 9xx series and the soon to arive GTX 1xxx series are true DirectX 12
  These were released in 2014 and 2015

• AMD’s R285 and up and R360 and up are TRUE directx 12
  These were released in 2013 and 2014

True DX 12 cards were delivered in the last 2 years. differences will be the true cars will be able to take full advantage of the DirectX instruction set, with minimal software interference.

nVidia: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/dx12/supported-gpus
(-no changes-)
AMD: http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/directx12
(-no changes-)

So 2011-2012 is 4-5 years ago so most PC’s will likely be capable of running direct x12?

Well… NO!

Most (prefab)computer suppliers deliver PC’s with a generation older GPU to save money. And in effect the window where most computers delivered with dx 12 compatible or capable GPU’s is more like 2-3 years IMHO, I buy a new High End PC every 5 yrs or so… Have done so for the past 20 years.. So this will mean many ppl using 3+ year old laptops and PC’s, maybe even 2 year old even…, might still have an old GPU solution not capable of supporting DX 12…. EVEN IF THEY DO HAVE WINDOWS 10.

COMPATIBILITY means the GPU’s will work with directx 12, BUT NOT NATIVELY else they would be directx CAPABLE

As for DirectX 9.0:

DirectX 9.0 cards have been available since 2002. We are looking back at Radeon 9xxx series (AGP) and Geforce FX 5xxx series (AGP) doubt ppl are still using 12+ year old PC’s but… this shows ALL present day computers should support directx by default.

My now ancient -former windows vista- 64bit machine I bought 8 years ago runs windows 7,8 and 10 without a problem, but it’s PCI-E 16 v1.0 slot(s) doesn’t really work with a directx12 capable graphics solution even though this 8 year old 2.3Ghz PC has 8 64 bit cores, WITHOUT hyperthreading…. and 16 Gb of ram….

Trust me I have full understanding what the differences would be… I also know we are not all having a big PC budget….

TL;DR:

• DirectX capability is both OS and hardware bound
• First DX 12 COMPATIBLE GPU solutions are 4-5 years old.
• First DX 12 CAPABLE GPU solutions are 1-3 years old
• COMPATIBILITY means the GPU’s will work with directx 12, BUT NOT NATIVELY else they would be directx CAPABLE
• Windows 10 minimum GPU has a directX 9 requirement.
• Having Windows 10 is no guarantee your 3-5 year old PC will be able to run DirectX 12 and have any benefit whatsoever.

It’s always interesting to read computer tech stuff because I’m a complete noob about it.

All I know is that the devs designed the game to put many players in one space, so stronger steps need to be taken to make improvements because it’s far from smooth playing at times.

I run a 3.5k machine, live in the US and have great internet, but still suffer from performance issues when the masses gather… Just saying that things could be better here and we all know it.

Where there is a will there is a way, so it’s not beyond the scope to make more improvements. Businesses reinvest all the time and it’s just what it is. I’m assuming that making improvements will also give the devs better tools to work with in the end and remove some limitations for themselves.

Players also have to make their own upgrades as well because y’all can’t sit there on 5-10 year old machines and expect miracles.

Swagger.1459:

It’s always interesting to read computer tech stuff because I’m a complete noob about it.

All I know is that the devs designed the game to put many players in one space, so stronger steps need to be taken to make improvements because it’s far from smooth playing at times.

I run a 3.5k machine, live in the US and have great internet, but still suffer from performance issues when the masses gather… Just saying that things could be better here and we all know it.

Where there is a will there is a way, so it’s not beyond the scope to make more improvements. Businesses reinvest all the time and it’s just what it is. I’m assuming that making improvements will also give the devs better tools to work with in the end and remove some limitations for themselves.

Players also have to make their own upgrades as well because y’all can’t sit there on 5-10 year old machines and expect miracles.

I just tried to explain and show ppl they might want DX 12, but the hardware is available since 2011-2012 and unless you SPECIFICALLY bought a PC for DX 12 in the 1st 2 years afterwards you can actually have a PC from 2013 or 2014 whcih cannot take advantage of DX 12 at all !!

SO the window could be 2-5 years actually… and not 5-10…. Does this change your view?

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Swagger.1459:

It’s always interesting to read computer tech stuff because I’m a complete noob about it.

All I know is that the devs designed the game to put many players in one space, so stronger steps need to be taken to make improvements because it’s far from smooth playing at times.

I run a 3.5k machine, live in the US and have great internet, but still suffer from performance issues when the masses gather… Just saying that things could be better here and we all know it.

Where there is a will there is a way, so it’s not beyond the scope to make more improvements. Businesses reinvest all the time and it’s just what it is. I’m assuming that making improvements will also give the devs better tools to work with in the end and remove some limitations for themselves.

Players also have to make their own upgrades as well because y’all can’t sit there on 5-10 year old machines and expect miracles.

I just tried to explain and show ppl they might want DX 12, but the hardware is available since 2011-2012 and unless you SPECIFICALLY bought a PC for DX 12 in the 1st 2 years afterwards you can actually have a PC from 2013 or 2014 whcih cannot take advantage of DX 12 at all !!

SO the window could be 2-5 years actually… and not 5-10…. Does this change your view?

I’m an idiot when it comes to any of this computer stuff, so I didn’t have a view on specific stuff like DMX, Vulkan, Clingon, Gungan Style, Java the Hutt… I’m just sayin’…

All I know is that when I play there are some major disturbance in the force sometimes, and then I’m like… “What the ….!!! Geez, thanks Anet!!!”…

Ya see, my “job” here is to play, buy gems, complain about not having nice things, play more, buy more gems and complain more… I’m doing my “job” pretty well, so we just need the devs to pull their “job” weight on this issue.

pax the great one.9472 people that are gamer usually upgrade the graphic card from the start when they buy or build their pc. and keep upgrading their system over the year, and over the year the price of graphic card also drop. so yes investment can be necessary. after 3 or 4 year a card that was 1200$ is about 50$to150$ as for vista why they do not support it in the free upgrade it is because there is a difference in the security. windows 7 and above use uefi secure boot. vista use hybrid bios uefi (transitional) windows xp bios.

UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a standard firmware interface for PCs, designed to replace BIOS (basic input/output system). This standard was created by over 140 technology companies as part of the UEFI consortium, including Microsoft. It’s designed to improve software interoperability and address limitations of BIOS. Some advantages of UEFI firmware include:

• Better security by helping to protect the pre-startup—or pre-boot—process against bootkit attacks.

•Faster startup times and resuming from hibernation.

•Support for drives larger than 2.2 terabytes (TB).

•Support for modern, 64-bit firmware device drivers that the system can use to address more than 17.2 billion gigabytes (GB) of memory during startup.

•Capabililty to use BIOS with UEFI hardware.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/what-uefi

if you got a green to switch to windows 7 and from there got a green to move to windows 10 you should be ok. there is 2 tool one for windows 7 upgrade and one for windows 10 upgrade run the tool first it can tell you of possible compatibility issue. but hardware also evolve with time and need investment. not every one as money to spend on pc. and those things cost lots of $ I get it . but divide the cost of your old pc by 8 year how much does it cost you per year? the number is lower I think. also newer system usely cost less. so to replace when you cannot follow eventually become a most.

And some people just don’t want to upgrade to Windows 10. Free or not; they might not like the interface, or the fact that MicroSoft wants to assert more control. Some can not afford to upgrade their hardware. Gamers come in all varieties, and from all levels of economic tiers.

Do remember, ArenaNet wanted the game to be available, and playable, to a very large cross-section of ‘gamers’.

Actually, just like GW1 before it, GW2 has fairly modest hardware requirements for this type of game. It even runs on my bog standard laptop.

stephanie wise.7841:

would you not say.

I would not.
1) giant wall of text
2) complete rubbish
3) see 1)

@Stephanie Wise:

What has the UEFI vs BIOS to do with DirectX capability??

I do not understand? UEFI was an addition to the capabilities of motherboards and allows for future compatability of many things…but I do not really see it’s relevance in conjunction of DirectX.

My 9 year old 8 core PC :

(tyan 2927-E A2NRF Thunder 3600B, w.:
2 quad core Opteron 2376’s @ 2,3Ghz and
16 Gb of DDR 2 ECC/REG
Nvidia 9600 GT Passive cooled GPU (1 Gb, Directx 9)
(originally bought with 3,5 TB of HDD space 2x 750GB (RAID 0) and 2x 1 TB (RAID 1), now has 1 128 GB SSD (sata2) and 2 500 GB HDD’s in Raid 0). Was fully direct x 9 capable and I played GW2 on it on medium settings (@ 25-30 FPS, 3-7 FPS in zergs)

Cost me about 2520 euro’s (now ~ 9 years old, 280euro/year) and is still functional, My wife and I use it to test software It is now a simple DB/GIS server for testing purposes, I sold the upgraded GPU (Radeon 6790 something)and replaced it with the Nvidia 9600 GT it came with.
It can still multitask perfectly, is a bit slower then my other PC in GPU and Datatransfer but I cannot get more then 2×1 Gbps over my home network anyways It would be useless if I’d invest in more as well, the few times I could actually get more then 176 MB/sec is a waste anyways as most transactions over out home network will not need that amount of bandwith, unless I’m copying huge loads of data

My 3 year old new PC cost me a comparable amount of money (now 900 euro/year).
Build:
ASUS Rampage IV extreme, with
a i7 3930K, with
32 Gb of DDR3 and
2 Nvidia 780’s in SLi (DX 11, DX 12 compatible), has
a 256 GB SSD (sata 3),
250 GB 10k RPM drive for swaps and
2 1 TB HDD’s 7200rpm (Raid0) for storage.

Replacing the SLi-ed 780’s could be done, but I’m inclined to replace the coolant paste and see when they burn out they are still very capable graphics solutions My present system is no longer upgradable (socket 2011 w DDR3 is now obsolete, and replaced by 2011v3 and DDR4) and I would require a full memory, CPU, Memory and GPU upgrade if I needed to upgrade my computer, and tbh my 3930K is still ok, and a 6930K is a huge investment for relatively low benefit. As would replacing my 2 GTX 780’s with 2 980Ti’s or 1080Ti’s be…. cause the end result would be I’d go from 60+ frames on my Full HD screen to 60+ on my Full HD screen… which is in the end just a destruction of my resources, as the difference would only show on the newest of FPS’s which I cannot play anyways due to photosensitive Epilepsy, I play (and tend to be limited to) MMO’s, RPG’s, RTS’s and tactic games…

In 2 years I’ll buy a new PC (likely) and I might get a VR set. I’ll see, I’m not gonna worry about it now…. Maybe I cannot handle it, I’ll test before and if so I might actually invest in 1 or 2 4k screens at that time…

I’ll likely have a full directX 12 capable Machine at that time….. Maybe an i7 7930 with 64Gb of Ram and 2 GTX 1180’s but it’s a guess at this time….. We’ll see.

And my oldest daughter will get my current rig, until she needs a laptop/tablet for school. She’ll be 8 maybe 9 at that time…. about the same age as I was when I started gaming on my father’s Tandy TRS 80 Model 4,and the Atari’s, MSX’s and Commodores @ friends.

re: in 3 month the majority of pc will be windows 10. – You seem to think that at that time, all qualifying PC’s will be automatically and uncontrollably upgraded to Windows 10. And that this will all go without a hitch and be perfectly fine. This is not what’s happening. At the end of the one year free upgrade offer, people will have to pay to upgrade to Windows 10. Or maybe Microsoft will extend the deal. But they won’t upgrade all qualifying PC’s automatically.

re: if you got a green to switch to windows 7 and from there got a green to move to windows 10 you should be ok. – No. As someone who works on computers for a living, the Windows 10 compatibility checking tools are nowhere near perfect. I’ve seen several PC’s that were approved have issues and need to be rolled back to the previous version of Windows. To be fair, it works most of the time. But the older the machine is, the riskier it is.

But even if we aren’t specific and say “DX11 or higher”, the GW2 engine will not be ready for that without a major rework. All hype articles, white papers, and oddly irrelevant UEFI references not withstanding. It isn’t the simple, easy thing that you seem to think it is.

64 bit client is STILL in beta. The world might end before we get DX12.

Opportunity cost – spend time and money working in DX12 or write content that you can sell……. Yeah, I’m wagering that they’ll look at it, but their efforts are going to be on content that’s going to make them money. I seriously doubt there are very many people who said, “Its not using DX12? Then I’m not buying it.”

as for those that say I said rubbish I don’t if you cannot understand the relevance of what I say. you have much more to learn. as for the uefi comment to pax the great one it was about is comment of having upgrade from vista up to windows 10. and wondering why dx 12 is not available on all os. and why graphic card when you buy a new pc they send you the cheap model that is low standard. as for the comment of Elden Arnaas.4870: windows 10 is free upgrade until july 29th. if you did not upgrade before that date then you will have to buy the windows 10 os or a new computer with windows 10 on it. it is not that they will make you pay for what was free. like you seams to think. I agree with you on the part of old system needing some investement to being kept current. you complain about article that provide information. is it because you cannot understand the relevance? and for what you said before it is not as simple as that to make a program multithread I agree with you there is some fonction that need to be properly design by the devs and tested. but it is part of a devs job. that is why I did not mention it. unless you want me to give you around 100 page on the subject. since there is many programming language that could be use by the software. just to give you example of what we are talking about.Many programming languages support threading in some capacity. Many implementations of C and C++ support threading, and provide access to the native threading APIs of the operating system. Some higher level (and usually cross-platform) programming languages, such as Java, Python, and .NET Framework languages, expose threading to developers while abstracting the platform specific differences in threading implementations in the runtime. Several other programming languages also try to abstract the concept of concurrency and threading from the developer fully (Cilk, OpenMP, Message Passing Interface (MPI)). Some languages are designed for sequential parallelism instead (especially using GPUs), without requiring concurrency or threads (Ateji PX, CUDA).

A few interpreted programming languages have implementations (e.g., Ruby MRI for Ruby, CPython for Python) which support threading and concurrency but not parallel execution of threads, due to a global interpreter lock (GIL). The GIL is a mutual exclusion lock held by the interpreter that can prevent the interpreter from simultaneously interpreting the applications code on two or more threads at once, which effectively limits the parallelism on multiple core systems. This limits performance mostly for processor-bound threads, which require the processor, and not much for I/O-bound or network-bound ones.

Other implementations of interpreted programming languages, such as Tcl using the Thread extension, avoid the GIL limit by using an Apartment model where data and code must be explicitly “shared” between threads. In Tcl each thread has at one or more interpreters.

Event-driven programming hardware description languages such as Verilog have a different threading model that supports extremely large numbers of threads (for modeling hardware).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computing)#Multithreading

so of course I do not go in all the detail of course. the devs should know how to do is job. so I should not have to go in to detail like that. I am talking about the basic of it. and even staying very basic people say rubbish. I am telling you the truth. all the info I gave you, you can find on the web by your self. rather then trying to shoot me down and saying rubbish look at the information and how it is relevant. if you are not even willing to try to understand. why are you here? to make your opinion more valid then some other one? we are discussing here on a subject. that as many simple thing and many complex thing. if you cannot understand the simple thing why even try to go higher?

stephanie wise.7841:

as for those that say I said rubbish I don’t if you cannot understand the relevance of what I say. you have much more to learn. as for the uefi comment to pax the great one it was about is comment of having upgrade from vista up to windows 10. and wondering why dx 12 is not available on all os. and why graphic card when you buy a new pc they send you the cheap model that is low standard. as for the comment of Elden Arnaas.4870: windows 10 is free upgrade until july 29th. if you did not upgrade before that date then you will have to buy the windows 10 os or a new computer with windows 10 on it. it is not that they will make you pay for what was free. like you seams to think. I agree with you on the part of old system needing some investement to being kept current. you complain about article that provide information. is it because you cannot understand the relevance? and for what you said before it is not as simple as that to make a program multithread I agree with you there is some fonction that need to be properly design by the devs and tested. but it is part of a devs job. that is why I did not mention it. unless you want me to give you around 100 page on the subject. since there is many programming language that could be use by the software. just to give you example of what we are talking about.Many programming languages support threading in some capacity. Many implementations of C and C++ support threading, and provide access to the native threading APIs of the operating system. Some higher level (and usually cross-platform) programming languages, such as Java, Python, and .NET Framework languages, expose threading to developers while abstracting the platform specific differences in threading implementations in the runtime. Several other programming languages also try to abstract the concept of concurrency and threading from the developer fully (Cilk, OpenMP, Message Passing Interface (MPI)). Some languages are designed for sequential parallelism instead (especially using GPUs), without requiring concurrency or threads (Ateji PX, CUDA).

A few interpreted programming languages have implementations (e.g., Ruby MRI for Ruby, CPython for Python) which support threading and concurrency but not parallel execution of threads, due to a global interpreter lock (GIL). The GIL is a mutual exclusion lock held by the interpreter that can prevent the interpreter from simultaneously interpreting the applications code on two or more threads at once, which effectively limits the parallelism on multiple core systems. This limits performance mostly for processor-bound threads, which require the processor, and not much for I/O-bound or network-bound ones.

Other implementations of interpreted programming languages, such as Tcl using the Thread extension, avoid the GIL limit by using an Apartment model where data and code must be explicitly “shared” between threads. In Tcl each thread has at one or more interpreters.

Event-driven programming hardware description languages such as Verilog have a different threading model that supports extremely large numbers of threads (for modeling hardware).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computing)#Multithreading

so of course I do not go in all the detail of course. the devs should know how to do is job. so I should not have to go in to detail like that. I am talking about the basic of it. and even staying very basic people say rubbish. I am telling you the truth. all the info I gave you, you can find on the web by your self. rather then trying to shoot me down and saying rubbish look at the information and how it is relevant. if you are not even willing to try to understand. why are you here? to make your opinion more valid then some other one? we are discussing here on a subject. that as many simple thing and many complex thing. if you cannot understand the simple thing why even try to go higher?

What?