So by now it´s clear that anything under 4 cores can safely forget about stable 30-40+ FPS in this game (especially we cheapkitten AMD users :p).
Be it in “high Zerg encounters” and PVP, or just daring to go for medium shadows or (gasp) reflexions.
I very well understand that this game has just started out and may be improved upon. In fact more content (free even) is already a done deal.
That´s all very awesome and great.
But what about the actual engine code?
Is the current performance all we´re ever gona get or is there at least a sliver of light on the Horizon?
Very much hoping for an actual Dev-answer on this one, but I´ll take the opinions of the unwashed masses too.
The table shows that even a PentiumG Dual Core outperforms any AMD system. It also shows that a 50€ PentiumG dual core will get u 80% the FPS of a 150€ i5 quad core.
So actually u get 80% performance for 1/3 of the cost using just a dual core SandyBridge intel CPU.
This indicates to me that GW2 scales very bad with cores and its more a matter of raw speed per cpu cycle and CPU architecture.
SO my advice would be grab a cheap PentiumG dual core and spend the extra 100€ on a better graphics card
That´s a pretty badly done test with an outdated version of the client.
I´m not giving it much credibility except as a data point from where the client started of pre-launch.
The point here is not how OMGWTFPWN awesome Intel is, but if we´re going to get a better optimized client at all.
Its not a bad test. This is what is true fol allgames as of today . SP or MMO/MP Beyond 2 cores they all perform better with more mhz rather then more cores. This has been true since day one of the first quad cores and still is.
Which is why i always shake my head at gamers thinking that their new 3.0ghz octacore cpu will be amazing at games since a dual core running at higher clock speed will outperform it.
You obviously haven’t played a bunch of other “great graphics” MMO’s like Aion (CryEngine) or FFXIV. I find GW2’s performance a lot better in comparison.
Quotes:
*Our time spent playing Guild Wars 2 before the beta closed was far too brief, unfortunately.
*(Update: Because we tested the game’s beta client in order to get this story ready in time for launch, the Guild Wars 2 lead engine programmer, Chad Taylor, dropped us a line to let us know that the game was updated with performance optimizations in the final build. One key change was putting the renderer in its own thread so that blocking driver calls wouldn’t create stoppages in the main game loop. He mentioned that this change should make a notable difference on machines with four or more CPU execution cores, and that a few of the graphics preset options were also tweaked.
As a result of these changes, we’d like to revisit Guild Wars 2 in the near future to re-benchmark CPU performance and update the driver settings images with examples from the full release. Stay tuned for the update, due in mid-September.)
You obviously haven’t played a bunch of other “great graphics” MMO’s like Aion (CryEngine) or FFXIV. I find GW2’s performance a lot better in comparison.
And I could care less about the AsiaGrindfests.
This is about GW2.
Other than wvwvw keep/zerg battles and very high player count DEs, I think the performance of GW2 on my 2.4 ghz Core 2 duo and HD 6670 is surprisingly decent. 20-30 fps in cities, 25-40 in outdoor areas, 30-50 in spvp. Yes I have to turn shadows to low, and reflections off, but shaders and post processing are high, native rendering, and FXAA is on. Compared to the last 3 MMOs I’ve played: LOTRO, SWTOR, and AION, GW2 feels the most smooth, despite the lower framerate. What I mean is those other 3 have terrible jerks and hitches for hard drive access. Like WoW, GW2 seems to reserve some cpu time for HD access and let it take it’s time, rather than doing a “OMG STOP ALL RENDERING RIGHT NOW AND FREEZE FOR .5-1 SEC WHILE I LOAD THIS ARMOR TEXTURE!” For a 6 year old cpu it does ok for a 2012 MMO, especially one that looks as good as GW2 does. It’s not like it’s poor performance for meh visuals.
Quotes:
*Our time spent playing Guild Wars 2 before the beta closed was far too brief, unfortunately.
*(Update: Because we tested the game’s beta client in order to get this story ready in time for launch, the Guild Wars 2 lead engine programmer, Chad Taylor, dropped us a line to let us know that the game was updated with performance optimizations in the final build. One key change was putting the renderer in its own thread so that blocking driver calls wouldn’t create stoppages in the main game loop. He mentioned that this change should make a notable difference on machines with four or more CPU execution cores, and that a few of the graphics preset options were also tweaked.
As a result of these changes, we’d like to revisit Guild Wars 2 in the near future to re-benchmark CPU performance and update the driver settings images with examples from the full release. Stay tuned for the update, due in mid-September.)
Yup.. and then , outside of the PR talk the usual real world performance: Higher clocked Dual cores still outperform it.
Yup.. and then , outside of the PR talk the usual real world performance: Higher clocked Dual cores still outperform it.There are tons of games out there claiming quadcore support ,ever since crysis 1. Not one has managed to live up to it outside of PR talk and Theory PR.
Funny thing, My old Core2Duo system with a crappy nvidia GTX 250 vid card out preforms my friends cutting edge rig in GW2. I have NEVER had video issues, no disconnets and fps is 40-50 soloing, 25-30 on boss fights. Medium settings.
And yes, I like to rub it in his face. I wanted to get one more mmo out of this rig, and he spent a TON on a new comp for GW2. Mwhahahahaha.
“SO my advice would be grab a cheap PentiumG dual core and spend the extra 100€ on a better graphics card”
Any of the current generation cards would be bottlenecked by a dual core. Heck, I have a GTX 670 and worry that my i7 950 is bottlenecking it. An SSD would help a great deal, go with the Vertex 4 and don’t be tempted to buy the cheapest one (lowest gigs) as the 256GB one you will be able to fit your operating system, Guild Wars 2, and so many other programs with plenty of room to spare. Or you could just go for the 128GB, which still has reasonable space.
“SO my advice would be grab a cheap PentiumG dual core and spend the extra 100€ on a better graphics card”
Any of the current generation cards would be bottlenecked by a dual core.
What do u exactly mean by “bottlenecked” ?
So lets assume i have 300€ budget to spend on a upgrade, for GW2 i would buy a 50€ CPU and 250€ GPU.
Do u mean u get better FPS, if u spend 150€ on a CPU and 150€ on a GPU? If so can u provide some data links that shows this reasoning?
I also don’t get how a SSD will “bottleneck” FPS? The SSD will improve loading times and maybe texture streaming, depending on the game. Since GW2 does not use texture streaming i don’t understand how a SSD will impact FPS, while playing GW2?
I run 2 systems side by side. One is a venerable Core2Duo (E8400 from 2008). The other is a modern i7. They both perform “about the same,” and to be honest the i7 hangs a bit more often.
It really feels like the i7 isn’t benefiting from having the 4 cores/8 threads at all.
You obviously haven’t played a bunch of other “great graphics” MMO’s like Aion (CryEngine) or FFXIV. I find GW2’s performance a lot better in comparison.
I had way better performance with Aion. Atleast in zerg vs zerg situations.
I’ve noticed certain particle effects just annihilate my fps. Hell just looking straight up in Rata Sum cuts my fps in half.
I have an older pentium dual core I think it’s 4 years old now although I have upgraded my graphics card within the last year. I get nearly 100 FPS. Not sure if it’s stable and not I’m not sure how I would know but I don’t really have any issues and I don’t even have the much ram either.
If you have a low end system now, basically any money you put into it will just be a waste.
This doesn’t make any sense and contradicts all benchmarks i have seen in the last couple of years, what are u talking about?
If i have a old Core2 Celeron “famous” 4300 and a 9600GT and now replace the 9600GT with a shiny new gtx 660TI, the FPS will triple or quadruple? So how is this a “waste”?
If you have a low end system now, basically any money you put into it will just be a waste.
This doesn’t make any sense and contradicts all benchmarks i have seen in the last couple of years, what are u talking about?
If i have a old Core2 Celeron “famous” 4300 and a 9600GT and now replace the 9600GT with a shiny new gtx 660TI, the FPS will triple or quadruple? So how is this a “waste”?
It’s a waste because that 660TI will be severely bottlenecked by that Celeron, GW2 is mostly still a cpu bound game that still isn’t optimized enough to properly utilize hardware from higher end pcs. Sure, you’ll get more fps going from a 9600GT to a 660TI at higher resolutions and FSAA, but it’s not going to be the huge jump that you think it’ll be. You’ll get a lot more upgrading your cpu/motherboard to a sandy/ivy bridge i5-i7 than dropping that kind of money on a new video card in this situation.
The amount of misinformation in this thread is staggering.
Claiming cpu bottlenecks without a graphed measure of CPU utilization and cpu queue is just armchair computer nerd crap. Get real, show the performance metrics, or stop talking out your behind.
If you have a low end system now, basically any money you put into it will just be a waste.
This doesn’t make any sense and contradicts all benchmarks i have seen in the last couple of years, what are u talking about?
If i have a old Core2 Celeron “famous” 4300 and a 9600GT and now replace the 9600GT with a shiny new gtx 660TI, the FPS will triple or quadruple? So how is this a “waste”?
Actually you will hardly see an increase. Youll will notice some, but only due to the extra memory and architecture of the chip. If you were to benchmark your system indepth, you wouldnt find much of a increase at all. mainly due to the extreme bottlenecking both with the card and the fact that you would have an older motherboard that would struggle to cope with the new GPU
I run 2 systems side by side. One is a venerable Core2Duo (E8400 from 2008). The other is a modern i7. They both perform “about the same,” and to be honest the i7 hangs a bit more often.
It really feels like the i7 isn’t benefiting from having the 4 cores/8 threads at all.
I have a 2008 E7200 DualCore (o/c’d from 2.53Ghz to 3.8GHz) with a HD5770 card, and I get a perfectly satisfactory performance (about 25-35 fps, fine for an MMO) out of the game with everything cranked up to 11 (admittedly only on a 1280×1024 4:3 aspect ratio monitor, I think I’d have to turn shadows off or something if I were to run on a widescreen).
What I find really fascinating is how little slow-down there is when there’s lots of stuff going on. It’s a quality gameplay experience all-round, and the engine seems like it’s already been highly optimized (unlike the usual practice with MMOs recently, which has been to optimize after launch, at the risk of lots of complaints).
Note: My system specs are pretty Atari-esque compared to some systems. Multi-core processors are fine in GW2 as well as most or all other MMOs these days. The processor(s) themselves are the issue.
Note: My system specs are pretty Atari-esque compared to some systems. Multi-core processors are fine in GW2 as well as most or all other MMOs these days. The processor(s) themselves are the issue.
“Actually you will hardly see an increase. Youll will notice some, but only due to the extra memory and architecture of the chip. If you were to benchmark your system indepth, you wouldnt find much of a increase at all. mainly due to the extreme bottlenecking both with the card and the fact that you would have an older motherboard that would struggle to cope with the new GPU”
Not relevant for the OP, but what the heck are u people talking about?
I just garbed a GTX 660 from MSI and my FPS went from 25 to 60. I also can now crank up most settings, except shadows?
So doubling my FPS, while increasing the overall quality is “hardly see an increase” and “wouldnt find much of a increase at all”?
“SO my advice would be grab a cheap PentiumG dual core and spend the extra 100€ on a better graphics card”
Any of the current generation cards would be bottlenecked by a dual core.
What do u exactly mean by “bottlenecked” ?
So lets assume i have 300€ budget to spend on a upgrade, for GW2 i would buy a 50€ CPU and 250€ GPU.
Do u mean u get better FPS, if u spend 150€ on a CPU and 150€ on a GPU? If so can u provide some data links that shows this reasoning?
I also don’t get how a SSD will “bottleneck” FPS? The SSD will improve loading times and maybe texture streaming, depending on the game. Since GW2 does not use texture streaming i don’t understand how a SSD will impact FPS, while playing GW2?
Bottlenecks are when there’s a part of your computer holding all other parts back. For example, all computer parts transfer data at a rate of gigabytes… except for mechanical hard drives, which are still in megabytes so they would be a bottleneck. Likewise, if a GPU is far better than the CPU then it’ll mostly be a one sided communication as the GPU communicates much faster than the CPU. SSD won’t bottleneck the computer and that’s the entire point of having the operating system and programs (while having videos and pictures on the mechanical HDD) on it and why it’s worth buying one despite it being far more expensive per gigabyte than a HDD.
This article may be old but the principle still holds:
I’m playing this game on a poorly made Compaq CQ50 laptop with a 1.9ghz Athlon X2 and 4gb of ram. Oh and a integrated 8400g M grahpics with 256mb shared.
The heatsink for the gpu had about a mm of gap between it and the gpu with some heat foam to gap it. Hence I used a folded piece of paper held in place with a band aid to press on the heatsink from above to close the gap.
It still gets hot enough to burn my fingers. The keyboard, that is.
I run it in a window with bare minimum graphics at half sample. I get 15 fps outside, 5 in a cave, and .1 fps in a zerg vs zerg.
the question that should be asked is actually when are games going to utilize more than just 4 cores? as we move into the future cpu’s are going to start having more and more cores, and it’s just silly that video game developers aren’t taking advantage of each core. BF3 is the only game I know of that utilizes 6 and 8 cores.
Going with your article, doesn’t the article show the exact opposite?
80% of the presented games did run 10-20% faster going from 1 to 2 cores, while going from 2->3->4 made either no difference at all or only in a few games and than it was also just 10-15% more?
Going by this article, having more than 2 cores for those games seems like a waste of money. If i could drawn any conclusion, than that “mostly” 2 cores are enough and that u have to actually test every game to be able to make any valid statement.
Anet needs to optimize better for AMD systems. Intel is faster but not by that much. I hope they get it fixed as the game is almost unplayable on my laptop. The pentium 2 cores should not be beating 4 core AMD systems by that much considering this game uses more than 2 cores.
The pentium 2 cores should not be beating 4 core AMD systems by that much considering this game uses more than 2 cores.
Finally a word of sanity in this sea of fanboys&gals.
This is the big problem in a nutshell.
It´s irrelevant how well your aged intels happen run this game or even how awesome some laptop supposedly can do hardcore PvP or something.
Which I call shenanigans on with extreme prejudice BTW.
The tech-support fora was swamped with performance problems from day one and instead of a supportive word we get the proud (and useless) announcement of a mothakittens Mac client.
Guess it´s clear now where all the programming power went.
I´d like to know if it will come back to solving a major problem for good chunk of your current customers or if we´ll get an announcement for the XBOX client next?
