Guild Wars 2

Playing this game for few months and the one thing that’s bothering me is graphic optimisation. When I’m playing alone I have no problem geting even up to 120 FPS, but I limited it 60 FPS because that’s more than enough.
But when it comes to group events, FPS drop down to 30 or even below that. One time I had 12 FPS on some boss event.
First I thought it’s because of my graphic card, but I downloaded software to monitor GPU usage. I expected to have GPU usage at 100% at events, but instead my GPU usage is always below 50%, regardless to FPS count.
Why doesn’t game use more GPU to try and perform those 60 FPS? It’s not CPU either … using i7 4790 and GW2 never used more than 30% of it. I just don’t get it why won’t game request more PC resources to try and keep at 60fps.
Was playing around with those game settings but nothing realy helped me to solve this problem.

My question to other players: What’s your GPU, and how much FPS do you have at big events with like 50+ players on same boss?

Lowering the character model limit will improve the fps. That way the game will only show the player character models near you. It does take away from the experience a bit, since you can’t see all of the big crowd around you, but it does improve the fps a lot.

The CPU monitor will show load of all cores combined. Your CPU has 8 threads (aka 8 cores to the operating system). GW2 will not use all of them, 2-4 most of the time. So if you bring 4 cores to 100% load it will show as 50% CPU load in the system monitors. But it can’t go any faster.

You can only bring modern CPUs to 100% with heavy multithreading or running more programs at the same time. Only way to get GW2 run faster is to overclock so the singles cores go even faster. Not really worth it IMO, if you’re not really interested in this kind of computer tuning.

Since you asked. I have a i5-3570 with a Geforce 660Ti. Drops to as low as ~15fps in huge events (center of the effect meltdown). Southsun Cove Karka Queen it does down to even 5fps for some reason.

I’m pretty sure that GW2 support multi threading.
Using HWMonitor for my PC, and all 8 threads are working on around 40% each. Playing only GW2, so no other program is using CPU.
tested it at events and I must say that even when my FPS drop below 20, non of the CPU core is even nearly to 100%. Same goes for GPU load and memory usage as I mentioned before.
There are still tons of CPU and GPU ressources left that could be used by GW2, but for some unknown reason it won’t use it.

Was thinking about buying R9 390 or GTX 970, but what’s the point if game can’t even use my current GPU to 100%. Would spend 350€ on new GPU and in the end game wouldn’t even use all of ressources that are avaliable.

Does GW2 perform better on Nvidia than AMD cards maybe?

The OS doesn’t tie each thread of the game to a specific core, they will be switched around. That’s why they can be ~40% all the time. My i5 usually has 3 cores at almost 100% and 1 at 50%.

I’m not using AMD cards, so I can give no advice here. Though the GTX 970 is probably the fastest (Nvidia) card that makes sense for GW2. You can test by lowering features that almost purely rely on the GPU. Like resolution, post processing, etc. If it ends up significantly faster, new GPU will probably be worth it.

But 30fps in huge zergs is fine I’d say. For 60fps you’ll probably need liquid nitrogen cooling and 6GHz.

What if I change affinity for gw2 at task manager?
Would that force to use only main 4 physical cores instead of those threads?

Not sure why you want to do that. The process will be tied to specific cores which will probably go to 100% then. That makes only sense for very specific code. Things that compute stuff and run almost only from CPU caches. Turbo clock will probably kick in more often if it’s just running on a single core. But I’m not sure it will do anything for GW2.

This game needs not really Graphic Optimizations (despite that this Game really needs finally an Upgrade zu Direct X11 or 12 only – this way would profitate multi core PCs the most from it that they can make then finally usage of all their cores for multi threading to give the game a performance boost, and if it is just only a small one, but it would give one.
ANet said also 64bit clients wouldnt be such a big thing and look at how they instantly solved the HoT OOM fiasco for mostly all people)

However, what GW2 absolutely really needs to get finally are much better “personal Graphic Setting Options”.

The FPS wouldnt drop so heavily into the cellar for alot of people, if we could finally make these kinds of decisions for our Graphic Setting Setups:

• Activate/Deactivate Visuality of other Player Miniatues (active = you see only your Miniature and none of other players anymore on screen ever)
• Activate/Deactivate Visuality of other Player Backitems (active = you can see only your backitem if you have yours active, but never any of other players, reducing this way your visual clutter on the screen from tons of huge wings, animated ugly crap and other stuff)
• Activate/Deactivate Visuality of other Player Legendary Effects (active = you see only your legendary Effects like Footprints ect, but none of other players, if you activate this, then are plays that wield legendaries shown to you, as if they would just wield the precursor version of the weapon without any special effects
• Activate/Deactivate Visual Noise (so that we can finally get back our nice skill animations for those that want to have them!!!!)
• Visual Noise Intensity (Slider) Added there a Slider with like 4 Intensity Levels for Visual Noise

Simple = How it is now under reduced Visual Noise
Normal = How it was before ANet reduced the graphics to stoneage level…
Enhanced = Slightly more intense Skill Animations to help the Skills to look a bit more epic/realistic like for example Fireballs gettign Smoke Trails and a better Explosion Effect on impact that makes clear, that this attack hits multiple targets
Ultra = Ultimate high visual noise for best epic looking results for skill effects, for people that absolutely have no problems with the visual effectss of the game and that have also the pcs for that

Then needs ANet something to do for their shaders and improve that part of the game more, for example by making some kind of similar thing as an integrated solution like what does SweetFX to the game, when you use this external program to optimise the visual looks for the game to give it alot more visual saturation, alot better contrasts and makes the game look sharper and slightly more realistic this way.

I despise using 3rd party programs for such effects, when it could be simply also done by Anet as an integrated self made solution, but as long stuff like SweetFX gets tolerated as lazy and cheap solution, I guess this will never happen, that Anet moves their own butt here and makes an integrated own solution for this to optimize better through shaders their game for better contrasts, better saturations and sharper looks for GW2.

Alot of that can you get also with Post Processing, the problem with Post Processing is only that it makes many things in the game “too shiny” (at least for my taste), what wouldnt happen, if you could just improve through better and more customizable shaders that work like SweetFX better manually your wanted Contrats, Saturations and so on to the point how you exactly want to have it for you instead of having to use a pregiven thing that you can’t customize at all
—-

Lowering settings is just the simpletons solutions for getting better game performance for FPS. A game should never force or lead the player to massively reduce the game to stoneage settings, just to get some proper performance that allows you to run the game smoothly.
A good game offers the player enough customization options and integrated tools with that you can regulate manually the graphic performace for your account in such ways, that crippling the graphics down to stoneage level are absolutely the VERY LAST THING you should do, if everything ELSE before wasn’t already enough to improve your game performance to a smooth point.

Thats my opinion.
So when removing visual clutter effects like miniatures, backitems, legendary effects and such similar stuff from other players ins’t already enough, then and first only then you should begin slowly to reduce your own affecting settings, like shadow quality, number of palyers shown, quality of other player equipment shown, environmental quality shown in regard of textures and so on that reduce the visual quality for your own character and general game experience and the quality of the environment around you and see how far you get with that then. Cripplign down these thigns should always be for a plaxre some kind of last resort, when absolutely everything else before wasn’t enough…

@ Orpheal.8263

Are you trying to say that GW2 doesn’t even have DirectX 11?

ShinyDay.5349:

@ Orpheal.8263

Are you trying to say that GW2 doesn’t even have DirectX 11?

It’s DirectX 9

I don’t know why I had in mind that with HOT release, they also updted to DirectX 11
I’m sure there would be nice performance bump if they would go from dx9 to dx12

ShinyDay.5349:

I don’t know why I had in mind that with HOT release, they also updted to DirectX 11
I’m sure there would be nice performance bump if they would go from dx9 to dx12

Not really, the difference in performance will be very little. As explained by the devs the main bottleneck of Guild Wars 2 is that the main thread of the game is not “spliting” on multiple cores very well. DirectX 12 won’t help with that at all, it will make other threads go faster, but not the main one, so the bottleneck will still be the bottleneck.

The way to get more performance is to have more powerful cores. If you have a choice between powerful cores or more cores GW2 benefits way more from the first.

The point is, Anet officially said that they would upgrade the game, before it got released also somewhen to DX11 and we wait on that now for over 3 years…

It would have been nice at least to get on that topic finally an clear update from ANte, if we will ever see in that part of the game a positive change, or if the game will stay always on DX9 and that they practically scrapped already their plans they had for this to upgrade and that these plans are practically offically forever off the table.

As long as this doesn’t get finally officially answered by a responsible dev of that department that works on graphical performance things for the game, so long will stay the demand after at least a DX11 upgrade, same as like that demand stayed for all the years and got permanently requested again and again for finally giving the game a 64bit client to the point, that Anet was with Hot finalyl practically FORCED to brign it to give us a quick solution to solve the terrible OOM fiasco that came along with HoT due to the new vertical much bigger map designs being way too much for the 32bit clients to handle with their bottlenecked very limited ressources.

By that way of thinking I guess we might see a DX Upgrade first maybe with the next expansion, when Anet does somethign with that they practically force themself to react to the situation, due to having created something, that the old mechanics and systems we use right now can’t handle anymore good enough…

Sometimes I ask myself, why always something under game development must turn out first into a fiasco, before something happens to improve the game, instead of doing something first, that will prevent the game from such situations to happen at all.

It guess this comes from this very bad habit of “We can patch the game later”-thinking that comes along from developers, as you see this now alot more oftenly also from console game developers, that game developers in general put not anymore so much effort into the things day do or think about consequences of their decisions, because they can simply say later – we make a patch and change things later…

Maybe its just me who thinks that this is a reason for all of this, can naturalyl speak only for myself here, but i think just better and more thoughtful quality management and especially communication with us could prevent alot of these kinds of escalations and fiascos, that always needs to happen first something bad, before we see fitting reactions of the devs to fix the situations, when there would have been handled just a bit more preemtively with us together on solutions, so that these bad situations could hve been just prevented completely directly from the get go once they see that some content they work on requires first some improvements in other sections of the game, that they then communicate these thigns also with us to inform us, that somethign with the game might not run well, if we don’t prepare our pcs due to some technical changes within the game.

If anet will ever brign out DX11 or better, it will be again the same thing, just that this change will hit harder and will cause more negative backlash, if this won’t get communicated with us good enough, if they ever will bring it and everyone klnows here, how big of a negative backlash it brigns to Anet, when they don’t communicate with us at all and are just silent…

Guess thats no news for anyone here.
The DX topic has been in my opinion already way too long silent.
Its a boiling topic and its just a matter of time, until it boils so over that it won’t be any good for Anets reputation, until we get here finally some official clear words on that topic that will tell people, if they can get finally happy fo some iupcoming improvements here, or if they can finally get to know, that they never need to have any hopes up for this topic anymore and can GO ON.

The problem is, Anet seems to have lost their guts to disappoint maybe people with decisions out of fear it might lead again to a mass exodus of players leavign the game, if they say something here on their official forums, that will disappoint people because they won’t get something that alot of people wan,t or it is a change of something that has been said once in the past that could have been seen as “promise”

Thats also the reason, why more and more of them flee now over to sites like reddit, because there they don’t can get scolded for writing there something that might end up maybe later into something completely different and doesn#t come at all anymore, because Anet reiterated that content or changed theiur minds totally and won’t wring somethign anymore.
Then they can say naturally, that the topic was written by a dev not on the “official” forums, so that we have no reason to see that somethign as a kind of “promise”, because as long as somethign doesn’t get written on the official forums, its legally seen unofficial simply said

However, I get offtopic I guess and should stop, before I might write something that I will regret later

It’s a shame that game like this is still using DirectX 9.
Probbably DirectX 11/12 alone wouldn’t increase performance by much, but at those big events every FPS is important.
I just hope there will be some update regarding game performance and system ressources usage.

hell even tera is got DX11 now and they too started with DX 9

To OP:
Disable Reflections and Shadows, tick Effect LOD, and put Character Quantity Limit to “Low”.
Game will be much more smoother and you won’t see those deeps in zergs.

Orpheal.8263:

The point is, Anet officially said that they would upgrade the game, before it got released also somewhen to DX11 and we wait on that now for over 3 years…

They never said they would upgrade the API, but they’d look at it. They must saw the improvements of a newer API were really small, since the issues of Gw2 are not graphic related, but with the game engine.

Orpheal.8263:

It would have been nice at least to get on that topic finally an clear update from ANte, if we will ever see in that part of the game a positive change, or if the game will stay always on DX9 and that they practically scrapped already their plans they had for this to upgrade and that these plans are practically offically forever off the table.

As long as this doesn’t get finally officially answered by a responsible dev of that department that works on graphical performance things for the game, so long will stay the demand after at least a DX11 upgrade, same as like that demand stayed for all the years and got permanently requested again and again for finally giving the game a 64bit client to the point, that Anet was with Hot finalyl practically FORCED to brign it to give us a quick solution to solve the terrible OOM fiasco that came along with HoT due to the new vertical much bigger map designs being way too much for the 32bit clients to handle with their bottlenecked very limited ressources.

Anet has already said something:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

Orpheal.8263:

Guess thats no news for anyone here.
The DX topic has been in my opinion already way too long silent.
Its a boiling topic and its just a matter of time, until it boils so over that it won’t be any good for Anets reputation, until we get here finally some official clear words on that topic that will tell people, if they can get finally happy fo some iupcoming improvements here, or if they can finally get to know, that they never need to have any hopes up for this topic anymore and can GO ON.

That thread is silent because there’s nothing more to say. It has been said and explained dozens of times why moving the game to a newer API wouldn’t bring a performance overhaul, since the issues are not graphic related, aka DX9 has nothing to do with gw2 problems, so DX11, DX12, Vulkan… wouldn’t be able to solve the problem.