Guild Wars 2

I’ll preface by saying Gw1 will forever hold a special place in my heart. However I felt extremely burned and left down by the fact that I had to give up playing gw2. It could not maintain decent fps while action was happening. I’m interested in giving the game another try but not if the accepted fix for poor fps is buying Intel products. To be clear this is not a monetary issue. If I wasn’t morally opposed to intel as an organization because of their well recorded historical practice of shady business I would simply buy Intel. I won’t fund criminals with my paycheck now matter how good their product is no matter how bad I need it to do a thing I would enjoy.

I don’t need an explanation of the difficulties, and challenges around improving multi-threaded performance. I don’t need or want excuses from those who enjoy the game. I need a straight forward answer to the two following questions

Can I keep stable over 30fps in action sequences with the game in its present state on top of the line AMD FX hardware. Does this feat require setting the number of characters on screen to the lowest setting to achieve? If it appears that I can, I will purchase the game.

I can’t answer your questions directly, but you said that you “gave up playing GW2”. That implies that you played it before. So why not just download the game again and try it for yourself? Find out first hand how it runs before you decide if you want to buy the expansion.

I would say try the free to play portion of the game and if it is running smoothly then you should be fine. You might see a slight drop in HoT but I wouldn’t imagine that much.

I have an and 9590 fx processor with corsair h100 hydro. I can consistently keep up above 30 fps throughout the game except in situations where the entire map of players is congregated in one spot, like when fighting shatterer or teq burn phase, just durning down a couple of settings, setting the hi res player models to medium amount when I get in those situations (which again is not that often) fixed that.

In short, yes, even in the most highly congested situations, the game can and will look beautiful and run smooth so long as you shave a bit off the top.

There are two things you HAVE to understand (what people refuse to believe).

I’m running AMD rig at the moment with these following components -:

GPU: AMD R9 280x
CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5 > 4.2 OC (Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212) <— Fan

Now you have to ask yourself, do you want performance over appearance, or opposite? Heck many people refuse to play with lowest settings and maintain 20fps. I find this very unplayable and of course very unenjoyable. By playing with 20fps doesn’t give me a satisfying feeling.

I run most of my settings low, except for shaders, textures and environment on “High” these settings doesn’t impact your cpu way to much. What’s killing the FPS is shadow and all the other stuff.

I capped my fps at 60, so everywhere I am – my fps is 63, unless I’m doing Teq (35fps), TT(30-35fps), WvW zerg. I managed to keep it stable like this by overclocking, if necessary – tune down a couple of cores and bump up (overclock) the other cores. This game is only using 2 cores, due to the old engine. So AMD won’t be beneficial, even with many cores and threads. With uncapped FPS, my fps is sitting around 120 in sPVP, and around 65-75’ish other places.

In the BIOS settings you should try having these off;

AMD Turbo Core Technology – OFF. // This will make your cores be on the performance you give them, the turbo works basically like this; If you play a game that is demanding, it will underclock the other cores and bump up the clockspeed on the ones that in use.

Cool’N’Quiet – OFF. // This is limiting your CPU’s clockspeed to maintain cool and powerefficient. Obviously off for gaming

Core O6 – OFF. // I really don’t know….I just notice some weird jitter on my fps when it’s on.

High performance in the BIOS settings, windows too if you want to (shouldn’t matter) I also found an increase in stability with the AMD Beta driver, instead of the newest official driver with CSGO improvements.

When it comes down to Character Limit Quality, keep it at low. You’re not going to inspect every single character on your screen anyways, and most of the time you won’t be focusing on more than 10. You really don’t need to see the all the other hundreds of people far infront of you. Switch Character Models Quality to Low/Medium, depending on your fps.

FX6100 here and I get 24-50 fps with a GTX760

My gf is using my old GT640 and matches my FPS because her CPU is an FX8360

AMD is fine… but I wouldn’t want to try it on the A series or anything less than a six core.

I’m hardly a power user, but I know I play on AMD. The game runs very smooth with low number of characters on screen, even in big battles. It tends to lag on some Karka Queen and Teq instances, but I think its more a connection issue.

You’re probably not going to manage 30 FPS in super heavy areas; I can’t even do that/barely do that with character density at medium. That being said, you already own the game, so log in, go to Teq/Wurm/Maw and set your settings how you like. Then you can see what your actual framerate is going to be

My initial post was rushed. I’m running my fx-8350 at 4.8ghz and it will pass a full week of prime 95(went camping) and ibt runs with out a hitch. It’s actually stable up to 5ghz but i like to back off from max an average of 200mhz once finished.
My recent tests of previously released world events just barely squeaks by with occasional dips below 30 fps if and only if i turn # of character models to min.

The reason i’m still asking about the expansion is I can foresee two things happening. It is not uncommon for expansions to push beyond the visual limitations of the the original release. However it is also foreseeable that newer world boss fights might be designed with frame rate issues kept in mind at all times. The standard game has only recently seemed to reach the point where frame rates are tolerable. If the expansion performs on par that is enough for me to try it out but if it is pushing limits it seems likely the expansion would perform the way the standard game used to. Insufficiently. I’m basically trying to see how large world battle content in the expansion fares compared to the standard game thus far.

Trying to farm dragonite at 18 fps when I last left was simply infuriating. If this doesn’t have a chance of winning me over, i’d rather hold off and give anet another chance later in the future in another expansion or another game. I’d like that chance to be a fair and real one, not an expectation I could have learned in advance was unrealistic. The truth is if I buy it and end up feeling burned again it is unlikely i’ll be willing to make the risk a third time. I’m going to give Anet a second chance one way or another…. I just wonder if now is the time or if next expansion is looking like the way to go.

I run a crappy HP out of box from 2013 with AMD parts and I run it without any problems.

Unless you are talking about an FX chip bought circa 2007; you should be fine.

Any computer bought 2011 or newer with a mid-range or better GPU made 2013 or newer; can run GW2 at quality settings with only slowdowns during massively populated events.

GPU: AMD R9 280x
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 B55

My processor is way low and it still is playable. Don’t have an average fps but it is playable.

CPU is AMD PHenom II X4 955
Now have Nvidia GTX 970. I run everything high graphics all the time and I’m always fine.

I used to run a Radeon 6870 until about a year ago. I had to keep my graphics low for WvW but was fine everywhere in PvE.

My computer is old, 2011, only runs 3.2 GHz.

Why don’t you post up all your specs?

The new zones (at least VB) is a bit more demanding then previous ones, so you may have more performance issues, honestly. I personally had to knock shadows from ultra to high to maintain 60 FPS in the open world and it still dips in the boss events. It’s fine outside of that.

So basically, it’s about the same as it was, honestly. If having settings knocked down is a dealbreaker you’re not going to be happy and it still might not live up to your expectations anyways.

Fine with dual graphics AMD A8-3820 + HD 7570.

I also have a AMD Athlon II X4 680 + R7-260X (about three times the graphical power).

There isn’t much difference between the two, latter is slightly more pretty.

Oh I don’t feel any difference between HoT and Core, key is the number of characters around you. Seems to be the main choke point in most MMOs in my experience.

For laptops, runs fine on a A8-6410 (no discrete GPU).

FX series CPUs are weaker per core over the older Phenom II’s. its due to how AMD decided to design the new CPU Module with dual Int’s and a single FPU rather thena 1:1 mapping.

When I had a FX8350, to get the best performance I also had to disable the 2nd ‘core’ per module and run it as a quad core CPU clocked at 4.8ghz. At the time I was running a HD7850 GPU.

When Haswell first came out, I bought a G3220 for a smaller build (media box) and decided to throw GW2 on it to see what it was capable of. In the starter areas the FPS double and nearly trippled in really open areas over the FX8350, using the HD7850.

I have since moved from AMD for compute over to Intel, because of the performance per core. And I highly suggest that you also consider it too for the best performance in the game. Even A G3258 clocked at 4.8ghz (You are overclocking the FX series CPUs anyway..) beat the snot out of the AMD offerings for this game.

Chris.3290:

I run a crappy HP out of box from 2013 with AMD parts and I run it without any problems.

Unless you are talking about an FX chip bought circa 2007; you should be fine.

Any computer bought 2011 or newer with a mid-range or better GPU made 2013 or newer; can run GW2 at quality settings with only slowdowns during massively populated events.

The core of the whole game(both pvp and pve) is massively populated events(at least in my opinion its the main lure). Hence the problem. I don’t care if get 60fps capped or 200+ wandering around in an empty field. Saying it only slows down during massively populated events is like saying It only doesn’t work 70% of the time.

Gw2 like all old games is built to use only two cores since they are not designed with intention to achieve the greatest performance.

Thus, amd, which focus on number of physical cores will not able to run Gw2 as well as intel which focus on high single core performance. For amd to be on par with intel, amd users have to overclock it to achieve higher single core performance.

Thanks for the input everyone. Just looking for a comparison to the core game honestly. It’s not so much that i’m married to AMD as i’m opposed to Intel. I know intel offers vastly superior single core performance and that this games older directx api among other things makes its cpu over head very high and its multi-threaded performance very low. Like I stated, i’m fairly versed in the architectural differences between AMD and Intel and the particular challenges GW2 engine faces. I simply hoped they could have made some slightly better inroads on that problem by now. I know it’s not something often considered by people building what they want to be their “dream rig” but I feel an obligation hold up what little market competition there is. I remember watching cpu prices drop dramatically when AMD hit the scene with real competition to Intel products(where those prices for the most part stayed) I know amd has been lagging for years i’m just not ready to sign up for a return to the days when Intel sets the price however they want. If there was a third option, I’d explore it. To reiterate i am not an AMD fan boy by any means. I’ve often switched between nvidia and amd(ati) graphics cards and usually have a better experience with nvidia parts. I just find it very difficult when developers pigeon hole users into very specific brand hardware to acquire decent performance. I know it makes me kind of weird but the guilt i’d feel would steal the joy from the buttery smooth frames. I have no expectation that will cater to me or that by bickering anything will change. I’m simply looking for a status update as I was previously less than thrilled and i’m patiently waiting for an opportunity to try again. I still have a Phenom II system that performs better in some select scenarios in this game but I keep it in another room and this system plays almost every other game far better.

For the record i’m not requiring that all settings be maxed or that my frames be outlandish. I simply desire frames to stay around a playable 30 fps when the game action gets truly intenseThis is my definition of playable. Regular dips in the 20’s are unbearable. I’ve just experience that slider options rarely make a dent when the world events take place..Screen stutter is like nails on a chalk board for me and long periods of it make my muscles very tense. Everything from immersion to player skill goes out the window when this baseline can’t be met consistently in an average bout of game play.

What i’ve gathered is the expansion has made no specific progress other than that which has been slowly but surely added to the game engine through regular updates. This has been measurable and appreciable but is still just shy of my standards. There are some elements to new zones that are more taxing but those are likely gpu related and shouldn’t play a role in my case. If this progress continues the expansion may be worth delving into eventually and waiting for an additional expansion may be unnecessary. However at present I should save my money for a little while longer based on my recent retrials in world events and input from users who have been playing the new expansion. Just trying to avoid hard feelings so i can give them a fair shake in the future. I see more potential in this game than any other MMO at the moment and i’m sure it is currently making many people happy, I however would not be if I invested my money today with my expectations what they are however unreasonable or inflexible some may find them. Maybe the next quarter year will be the difference.

SkyShroud.2865:

Gw2 like all old games is built to use only two cores since they are not designed with intention to achieve the greatest performance.

Thus, amd, which focus on number of physical cores will not able to run Gw2 as well as intel which focus on high single core performance. For amd to be on par with intel, amd users have to overclock it to achieve higher single core performance.

Wrong! Two cores is required but the game does perform much better with an actual third or fourth core (rather than HT cores of the i3 or “thread cores” of the AMD Bulldozer architecture (FX and 2nd gen and beyond A-series APUs).

Angel.6085:

CPU is AMD PHenom II X4 955
Now have Nvidia GTX 970. I run everything high graphics all the time and I’m always fine.

I used to run a Radeon 6870 until about a year ago. I had to keep my graphics low for WvW but was fine everywhere in PvE.

My computer is old, 2011, only runs 3.2 GHz.

Why don’t you post up all your specs?

I have the same cpu overclocked to 3.6 ghz and a gtx 960.
I often struggle to get more than 30 fps in some parts of HoT, even when no players are around and nothing is going on.
Character Limit and Character Quality set to low or lowest to maintain playable framerates during events.
So I have a hard time believing that it runes fine for you.
Or you have a different definition of fine.

The fact that you have a CPU with horrible single-thread performance is not Anet’s fault.

It’s an MMO running on a old engine with a d3d9 renderer... there’s nothing else to it.

Spiuk.8421:

The fact that you have a CPU with horrible single-thread performance is not Anet’s fault.

It’s an MMO running on a old engine with a d3d9 renderer… there’s nothing else to it.

The fact that they use an old engine with a d3d9 renderer is their fault though

Behellagh.1468:

SkyShroud.2865:

Gw2 like all old games is built to use only two cores since they are not designed with intention to achieve the greatest performance.

Thus, amd, which focus on number of physical cores will not able to run Gw2 as well as intel which focus on high single core performance. For amd to be on par with intel, amd users have to overclock it to achieve higher single core performance.

Wrong! Two cores is required but the game does perform much better with an actual third or fourth core (rather than HT cores of the i3 or “thread cores” of the AMD Bulldozer architecture (FX and 2nd gen and beyond A-series APUs).

i don’t know what you are saying

are you talking about processors with only two cores?

Thanks everyone for the input regarding the questions I asked. There is no need to get snarky my aim is not to indict anet or be involved in flaming. My aim is to avoid dissatisfaction that would be entirely my own fault had I not done research first. The dev notes detailing performance changes were not explicit enough so I came to the forums to ask peoples first hand experience. I did not want to assume the original content would speak entirely for the new content. If and when the game runs within the parameters I can enjoy I will buy and play the expansion, until then I will not. A decision not to at present should not to be interpreted as a negative remark about the game or company as a whole nor should it be interpreted as an expectation for Anet to revolve their business model around me. Those getting defensive do not need to. I’ve accepted the situation for what it is and i’m perfectly fine waiting. There are no new x86 competitors coming to the rescue but progress is slowly being made on the game engine and AMD has a new architecture on the horizon. Inevitably the time will come when I can enjoy the game the way it is intended to be experienced and by exercising patience I won’t spoil that experience by frustrating myself in the present. It’s that simple.

I do appreciate the effort from those who tried to explain the low IPC issues with amd, or the set backs of the d3d9 renderer who did not take on a condescending tone. However as I stated I was previously aware of these issues in the past and was simply questioning how far have they gone to alleviate the problem thus far in my absence. Actual details on this are sparse when searching.

Hope everyone enjoys their time in Maguuma