HOT optimization
The only change that happened with megaservers was that you are now seeing more players around than before.
You have a nice amount of RAM and a powerful CPU, but your GPU is the bottleneck. I would recommend you tweak with the in-game settings to improve your framerate if you are not willing to purchase a new computer.
Some of the most GPU intensive settings are Antialiasing, Shadows, Reflections and High Res Character Textures (this is mainly capped by your GPU’s VRAM which I suspect is either 1GB or 2GB and could be slow DDR3 type). Try tuning these down first.
One – Piken Square
The GPU is not the bottleneck lol….besides that GW2 doesn’t “eat” as much GPU as it does other things.
Your true bottleneck in this is the HDD. The speeds are prehistoric…it’s not even 7400rpm. A normal 7400rpm HDD moves slow on a desktop PC by today’s standards…imagine how a 7400rpm HDD moves in a laptop. You need to upgrade your HDD to SSD. If your laptop has 2 drive slots (altho i doubt it) u could easily install SSD+HDD and have both the speed for stuff u regularly run AND the space to store stuff (GW2 should be installed on the SSD).
Personally i’ve noticed that GW2 eats mainly 2 things. CPU and HDD/SSD. The amount of stuff loaded around u doesn’t consume as much GPU as it does processing power + speed with which your hard drive actually writes that data (hdd/ssd speed).
An SSD upgrade will benefit you overall not just GW2…it’s one of the most intelligent upgrades u could do to a laptop besides RAM which u have.
AS FOR OPTIMIZING GW2.
Yes i agree it can be better and it SHOULD be better in this day&age. Main issue is the DirectX used for the game. It’s really outdated. That would solve a lot of issues. It’s useless to have extremely beautiful graphics if most ppl can’t run or run at lowest settings. That’s including character models and details. How can u brag to others about your cool looking “stuff” if most have it turned to low and see a generic character skin of you.
Considering how ambitious they are and where ANet wants to take this game it would be “really very” embarrassing for them not to do something about this game’s performance. It’s by far one of the biggest and most underrated issues of the game.
(edited by Rebound.3409)
Well he was talking about FPS which is not affected by SSD/HDD with him having 6 gigs of memory to go around. Sure, it does affect his loading screens – a lot. And he might get a stutter when there are new players coming to the scene, but it still won’t affect his FPS.
I do second though that replacing the HDD with an SSD would be an enormous QoL upgrade, with or without GW2 in the equation.
GT 740 is still a bottleneck if he’s got his graphics settings cranked up, because he’s sitting on a frigging i7 on the CPU side. Nvidia doesn’t even classify GT740 as a gaming GPU, much less the cut down mobile version.
One – Piken Square
Hmm…it might be “inbetween”. As i personally see it (which may be wrong ofc) is if he is in an area of the map ppl spamming stuff…and people loading in and out of his view, that means drive writing/reading for that short amount of time which could create sporadic drops in FPS even tho it’s not related to GPU. After the dudes are loaded on his screen, that’s when GPU comes into effect…but most noticeble lag (for me) happens DURING the load not after loading.
My desktop is:
- i7 (first generation) but more then enough for a game. It barely loads 40% during GW2 peak
- Sapphire HD 7970 GHz edition vapur-x which was one of the best quality/price GPUs u could find when i got it (i am sure better ones appeared):
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/product_index.aspx?pid=1679&lid=1
- 6gb DD3
- Added cooling systems for better performance
….and HDD 7400RPM.
With the gear above i almost always stay at medium max knowing if i bump into an event like the plant-boss (new marionette) my performance drops a lot.
A PC (not laptop) like mine should NOT have issues with an MMO. Hell i run at max new single-player games with no FPS drops (which are tailored to go “all out” on graphics) and i can’t run an mmo (which should be fine-tuned to run everything on anything). I only consider a downside my HDD because it’s even on SATA-2 not 3 (MB doesn’t support it sadly)….but the rest? i mean if those are not good enough to run an mmo what is? the latest most expensive PC? i mean come on. It’s well above average. Hell i run at 50FPS the latest Assasins Creed which was said to be a PC killer in the first month, with most settings at high and a few turned off like shadows which i don’t like. My rig (specs wise) 3 years ago u could consider it one of the more hi-end combos, when GW2 came out.
Anyway….one thing is for sure. An mmo should not move like this on medium PCs/laptops (not hi-end because those move good). It’s in need of a rework when it comes to performance and i would honestly love to see ANet actually take this seriously, recognize it as a problem and make a blog about it and future plans.
(edited by Rebound.3409)
Since the release of the game i had 1 problem with every patch my fps gets lower and lower on release i didn’t had that problem but after megaserver my fps went to the ground.So the only thing that will probably stop me from buying expansion is the game performance on low end machenes.Im a student and the only thing i can use is Laptop since i have to be out most of the time during the day.Are there any plans for optymising the game for low end machenes?
Laptop specs:
i7-3230QM
GT 740m
6 Gib RAM
1000 Tib HDD 5400 RPM
The only thing that will save you is indeed optimization. I have a gtx 760 with fx 6300 i can play bf4 ultra 60+fps but on this darn game i cant get over 30 fps on wvwvw. They need to optimize the game because as far as i know the hadn’t optimized it since the beta release. I know there is a lot going in ncsoft about some stuff but there are some places where the fps drops are dramatically low and i keep wonder why. In the other hand if you can pay up for i7 then you are good to go. For some reason this game requires Intel power and AMD GPU because they use Havok as their engine. I hope aswel with you for better optimization at the next releases and i can see some difference since the last patch.
The thing is on release i didnt had problems i played it and enjoy it on mid-high with about 60 frames but after all the patches i now have 60 frames on mid-low and all the options like AA Shadows Reflections and High char textures are disabled the game needs optimisation.I know my laptop is not much but having crapy optimisation and not being able to run it and having good optimisation and not being able to run it are 2 different things.
Yeah, the point is that GW2 doesn’t look good enough to warrant the kind of system it demands to run it smoothly. This means it is poorly optimised, which is something that needs to be fixed.
Well said Gazareth
Yeah, the point is that GW2 doesn’t look good enough to warrant the kind of system it demands to run it smoothly. This means it is poorly optimised, which is something that needs to be fixed.
I can’t think any game that looks as gorgeous as GW2 does, with the same amount of players on the screen.
Can you?
One – Piken Square
That’s not an excuse for the bad performance Tom. As great as it is, it shouldn’t be so demanding. It’s not at that level at which it should be that demanding specially on good gear.
As long as the game demands nonstop hi-end rigs which just a handful of ppl can afford, those “great graphics” u are talking about will never be achieved by most GW2 palyers as most of them have low or medium at best settings.
By your logic, even if the game performance is crap, because it looks pretty it should not be touched/improved. You might be OK with sub-par quality but me personally will never be.
Quality for me doesn’t mean just a “pretty looking car” but it’s performance is a coma-induced hamster on a broken square-wheel. The car has to have “good performance” also, in balance with the aspect of the car.
(edited by Rebound.3409)
Yeah, the point is that GW2 doesn’t look good enough to warrant the kind of system it demands to run it smoothly. This means it is poorly optimised, which is something that needs to be fixed.
I can’t think any game that looks as gorgeous as GW2 does, with the same amount of players on the screen.
Can you?
enlighten me, how much more gpu must calculate for player than for npc? i play shadow of mordor that looks 10x better than gw2 (models complexity, huge textures, all the effects), having insane ammount of enemies at screen and..its stable high fps. i know, its mmo, it works differently…but still load on gpu is jsut too huge, when my i5 is just dying of boredom. and as they announced even bigger map, the performance may be terrible as well (dt/sw need more power than sc did. and sc is still much more demanding than vanilla maps)….
Yeah, the point is that GW2 doesn’t look good enough to warrant the kind of system it demands to run it smoothly. This means it is poorly optimised, which is something that needs to be fixed.
I can’t think any game that looks as gorgeous as GW2 does, with the same amount of players on the screen.
Can you?
enlighten me, how much more gpu must calculate for player than for npc? i play shadow of mordor that looks 10x better than gw2 (models complexity, huge textures, all the effects), having insane ammount of enemies at screen and..its stable high fps. i know, its mmo, it works differently…but still load on gpu is jsut too huge, when my i5 is just dying of boredom. and as they announced even bigger map, the performance may be terrible as well (dt/sw need more power than sc did. and sc is still much more demanding than vanilla maps)….
A lot more. Mostly because in a single player game the hordes of enemies are mostly identical to each other, whereas in an MMO every single player model has not only an unique mesh but also unique textures (demaning absurd amounts of VRAM to be able to keep from mem swapping). Modern GPUs are quite good at calculating identical or mostly identical objects in masses, like blades of grass, or hordes of identical enemies.
That’s why GW2 runs fine when there are no other players around, but starts to choke when there are more players on the screen. Drop your detailed model display count to low or lowest and you’ll see huge improvements in your FPS.
Again, show me an MMO with 100 players on the screen, looking as good or better as GW2 and running better.
One – Piken Square
Again is your only solution to just leave it like this Tom? Because i don’t see u giving any solutions good or bad. I just see u come up with excuses by asking us about other games.
(edited by Rebound.3409)
That’s not an excuse for the bad performance Tom. As great as it is, it shouldn’t be so demanding. It’s not at that level at which it should be that demanding specially on good gear.
As long as the game demands nonstop hi-end rigs which just a handful of ppl can afford, those “great graphics” u are talking about will never be achieved by most GW2 palyers as most of them have low or medium at best settings.
By your logic, even if the game performance is crap, because it looks pretty it should not be touched/improved. You might be OK with sub-par quality but me personally will never be.
Quality for me doesn’t mean just a “pretty looking car” but it’s performance is a coma-induced hamster on a broken square-wheel. The car has to have “good performance” also, in balance with the aspect of the car.
Sure optimizations can always be made, but if you read my post above you’ll understand no amount of optimizations can make up for the sheer work required by drawing and calculating dozens of unique characters, which again, are absolutely gorgeous and detailed – every one of them.
Optimization here would mean cutting down on the details (and that option actually already exists in the game options) for character models that are not in your immediate view or further away.
I’m sure they could also optimize the code somewhat, but as I said there is a limit of what can be done. Also, the average computer that is running GW2 is getting more and more powerful all the time, so the problem will also alleviate in the long term – unless of course Anet decides to make the game even more detailed and/or increase population caps of the maps.
One – Piken Square
Drop your detailed model display count to low or lowest and you’ll see huge improvements in your FPS.
However that increases your framerate, I would never do that because I would hate to see everyone wear the same armour.
No.
Again is your only solution to just leave it like this Tom? Because i don’t see u giving any solutions good or bad. I just see u make up excuses by asking us about other games.
What is your solution? You’re just calling for these magical “optimizations” which you claim can be done because some single player games or 64 player multiplayer games with identical character meshes are running better than GW2.
Are you saying Anet’s client programmers are incompetent or just lazy?
One – Piken Square
Drop your detailed model display count to low or lowest and you’ll see huge improvements in your FPS.
However that increases your framerate, I would never do that because I would hate to see everyone wear the same armour.
Well here we come to the problem. People expect to be able to run a hundred super-detailed, unique character models on the screen with silky smooth 60+ FPS. Again, show me ONE game that can do it today.
So far I’ve only gotten some non-comparable examples of single-player games. Those comparisons just don’t apply, so try again.
One – Piken Square
Here’s one that dramatically improved AION which at it’s peak had huge fights in their version of wvw (abyss)..like really huge…not only horizontally but vertical fights also (both above you and under you in flight mode) that included pve elements in them…and the graphics are at the same level but different techniques.
They changed DirectX. After that change my FPS increased dramatically from around 40FPS in fights to 60-70fps….in big fights where everyone was spamming skills inside tight space-keeps while fighting both a huge boss and the enemy players. The same FPS i got in open spaces where it had to render further away.
Even tho AION turned out not to be such a great game, they saw a problem, and 5-6 months after the game released, the devs actually upgraded the whole directx engine. For that they have my respect. It’s no small feet but the results can be mindblowing.
OH YEA..did i mention the game looked even better after the upgrade? So they upgraded both graphics and performance.
Now think DirectX12 is coming out…
(edited by Rebound.3409)
Here’s one that dramatically improved AION which at it’s peak had huge fights in their version of wvw (abyss)..like really huge…not only horizontally but vertical fights also that included pve elements in them…and the graphics are at the same level but different techniques.
They changed DirectX. After that change my FPS increased dramatically from around 40FPS in fights to 60-70fps….in big fights where everyone was spamming skills inside tight space-keeps while fighting both a huge boss and the enemy players.
Aion’s character models and armors are nowhere as detailed as GW2’s. It also uses a LoD system, dramatically dropping the details from character models not in your immediate vicinity. GW2 can do this too, you just need to select it from the menu.
One – Piken Square
Well here we come to the problem. People expect to be able to run a hundred super-detailed, unique character models on the screen with silky smooth 60+ FPS. Again, show me ONE game that can do it today.
So far I’ve only gotten some non-comparable examples of single-player games. Those comparisons just don’t apply, so try again.
I’m not complaining, my system runs the game smooth on max settings, only when a LOT of players are in view like WvW it drops to around 25 FPS, which is still playable. But it doesn’t take away that it CAN be improved. DirectX 9 is eleven years old kitten .
No.
Lol…“not as detailed”. Sry but u are wrong. They are at least as detailed but not the same STYLE of artwork search some screenshots really.
Yes i turned down character models around me to minimum…it improves it just by a bit….but still low FPS for the amount of detail i see.
To put it more precise, i wrote my PC specs above. To have 60FPS i run everything at minimum. However u look at it that is wrong. U see this issue as something inevitable and don’t offer any solution as if there is no solution. What i am telling you is if there is no solution u should make one. There is always something u can do.
What u said above doesn’t disclame the directx potential improvement…maybe they can do other things also who knows. This is just a solution from someone who noticed it in action and was impressed. Keep in mind back when AION released i did not have the specs i had above, i had a medium-at-best PC with everything already 4 years old in it.
For over 50% of the players atleast in GW2, atm this mmo is a “full-hd slideshow game” if u want good settings (not absolute best). Then i ask myself..why even bother making such a pretty game?…for what target audience exactly?
Sure the game looks amazing if i stay still if that’s what u wanted to hear. It’s by far the absolute best “stay-still” game on the market or a “screenshot game”. Nothing comes even close to it BUT if i actually want to move, meaning turning everything to medium at most, it transforms into a generic looking game…and most ppl at this moment i bet you literally anything are playing a “generic looking game”.
(edited by Rebound.3409)
So the only thing that will probably stop me from buying expansion is the game performance on low end machenes.Im a student and the only thing i can use is Laptop since i have to be out most of the time during the day.Are there any plans for optymising the game for low end machenes?
We don’t know if there are performance optimizations coming with the expansion.
But it doesn’t matter! Just wait for the release and see. All players are always using the same game client, doesn’t matter if they bought the expansion or not. Even if you don’t buy the expansion, you will get the updated game client as soon as the expansion goes live.
So you can verify yourself if the performance of the game changes with the expansion before you spend any money on the expansion.
Drop your detailed model display count to low or lowest and you’ll see huge improvements in your FPS.
However that increases your framerate, I would never do that because I would hate to see everyone wear the same armour.
Well here we come to the problem. People expect to be able to run a hundred super-detailed, unique character models on the screen with silky smooth 60+ FPS. Again, show me ONE game that can do it today.
So far I’ve only gotten some non-comparable examples of single-player games. Those comparisons just don’t apply, so try again.
ESO, with better graphic, more people and more effects on screen runs better than GW2.
Yeah, the point is that GW2 doesn’t look good enough to warrant the kind of system it demands to run it smoothly. This means it is poorly optimised, which is something that needs to be fixed.
I can’t think any game that looks as gorgeous as GW2 does, with the same amount of players on the screen.
Can you?
enlighten me, how much more gpu must calculate for player than for npc? i play shadow of mordor that looks 10x better than gw2 (models complexity, huge textures, all the effects), having insane ammount of enemies at screen and..its stable high fps. i know, its mmo, it works differently…but still load on gpu is jsut too huge, when my i5 is just dying of boredom. and as they announced even bigger map, the performance may be terrible as well (dt/sw need more power than sc did. and sc is still much more demanding than vanilla maps)….
A lot more. Mostly because in a single player game the hordes of enemies are mostly identical to each other, whereas in an MMO every single player model has not only an unique mesh but also unique textures (demaning absurd amounts of VRAM to be able to keep from mem swapping). Modern GPUs are quite good at calculating identical or mostly identical objects in masses, like blades of grass, or hordes of identical enemies.
That’s why GW2 runs fine when there are no other players around, but starts to choke when there are more players on the screen. Drop your detailed model display count to low or lowest and you’ll see huge improvements in your FPS.
Again, show me an MMO with 100 players on the screen, looking as good or better as GW2 and running better.
you mean that 1gb of vram is absurding? thats the most ive seen in use while playing gw2 (got 2gb on my gpu..)
also the new maps: on old ones i got stable 60fps with 50-70% load. on new ones (started with sc, but on dt/sw its even worse!) its like 30-40 with 99% load. so they are actually making the game more demanding. maps look great and better than old ones? probably. would players – that are not oh-look-i-got-super-expensive-gpu-and-all-sliders-further-than-you-loosers – prefer stable high framerate with slightly worse graphics? i bet they would.
and after HoT announcment it’ll just get worse, as they plan to release even bigger maps. it will be beautiful, no doubt. but at the same time, for majority of players unplayable in higher settings, and on low the game looks just TERRIBLE
the game engine is old. making more detailed content that can give even most powerful rigs chokes without touching the engine isnt the best idea.
ah also: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-directx-11-performance,2793-7.html
now keep defending outdated api
(edited by zaw.6741)
Drop your detailed model display count to low or lowest and you’ll see huge improvements in your FPS.
However that increases your framerate, I would never do that because I would hate to see everyone wear the same armour.
Well here we come to the problem. People expect to be able to run a hundred super-detailed, unique character models on the screen with silky smooth 60+ FPS. Again, show me ONE game that can do it today.
So far I’ve only gotten some non-comparable examples of single-player games. Those comparisons just don’t apply, so try again.
ESO, with better graphic, more people and more effects on screen runs better than GW2.
Exactly, ESO pretty much shuts down the whole “buh i hav to load 100s of unique character!” arugment.
Apart from the fact that, it shouldn’t be our jobs as consumers to make the game run smoothly. If the devs want huge battles with 100s of unique-looking players, it’s their job to make sure the technology supports that. As it stands, even the best systems with the latest components have a tough time running GW2 smoothly even though it’s years old.