Guild Wars 2

Hello everybody,

I have been playing gw2 for a while now and, although it usually runs just fine, my pc takes about 1-2, sometimes 3, minutes to load new maps (especially LA is a pain to load). As soon as Im loaded Im able to run around at 20-40 FPS on medium settings. The only events that really drop my frame rate down to 3-10 FPS is WvW fights and the Claw of Jormag.

I noticed that when running Gw2 my CPU usage gets pushed to the max. Sometimes it runs at 100%.

I was wondering what improvements I could make to my pc (about 2 years old) for faster loading times and a more stable frame rate.

Specs:
Mainboard: Pegatron Narra6
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.61Ghz
Graphics card: NVIDEA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
8GB Ram

Thanks in advance!

Your CPU seems a little under-powered. That would be the first thing I’d try to improve, but that’s a tricky thing to do.

I don’t follow NVIDEA cards, but I don’t think the 550 is up to much. So upgrading that might also help. GW2 is pretty CPU intensive though.

CPU, just what I thought. What would be a good CPU to have for GW2? Im guessing that most likely means that the mainboard needs to be changed too.

The CPU should not be causing the game to take 3 minutes to load. What kind of hard drive? How good is your sense of time?

Highly doubt my hard drive would have anything to do with it, it has over 700 gb free space.

Hard drive: Western Digital WD Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

My sense of time is okay, since I actually timed it :P! But sometimes its only like 60ish seconds.

Ahh…now, it’s not much, but I feel like my SSD loads maps slightly faster than my old HDD (as far as harddrive is concerned).

Good CPU for GW2… well, my i5 (3,2 Ghz, I think…would have to check though) handles it just fine.

You likely need a better CPU. Having a 2.61 Ghz is very slow by today’s standards when it comes to games.

What graphics settings do you use in game?

Phenom II X4 965 will fit with that motherboard possibly. I need more details though including your power supply since that CPU is 125W. It also only sells for $99.

I can do a more thorough look later if you’re interested in upgrading.

Loading maps is normally dependent on the hard drive and obviously the CPU.

You may have a SATA3 hard drive but it all depends on the motherboards connection to the hard drive. I’ve done some testing in the past and found the following real time speeds for SATA connections.

SATA1 = 100MBs
SATA2 = 200MBs
SATA3 = 400MBs

BUT, all HDDs regardless of connection type will saturate at around 100MBs. So a SATA3 HDD won’t be much better than a SATA1 HDD. (this is based on the standard 7200rpm drives)

SSD on the other hand can easily hit 400MBs if you buy the right one, effectively giving you 4 times the throughput.

Now I can’t guarantee that grabbing an SSD will make your system much faster but I can tell you what I have found out through experiemnt (above).

But if your CPU is maxing out, that’s where I’d start…a new mobo and CPU would definitely improve your load times and you can always add an SSD at a later date.

Hope this helps.

Priest Tully.3798:

Highly doubt my hard drive would have anything to do with it, it has over 700 gb free space.

Free space has little to do with performance. Here’s possibly your problem:

Hard drive: Western Digital WD Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Using a 4-year-old, energy-efficient, 5400 RPM model might have an impact on loading performance. Here’s how it compares to modern drives. (It’s at 76.83)

Do you have a slow internet connection?