Guild Wars 2

My system:
-i7 5820K
-32 GB DDR4 Ram
-EVGA GTX 690 – duel SLI – 5760 × 1080 @ 60Hz
GW set at Windowed Fullscreen
Frame Limiter:60
Vertical Sync checked.
All other Graphics options maxed.

I get a solid 60 fps 75% of the time in Guild Wars. Where there are many objects on screen such as during Tequatl or Jormag, fps goes down in the 20’s. CPUID HWMonitor shows my max cpu usage in the game at 60%, max on both GPU’s (690 is dual processor) at 100%. I’m assuming the gpu is the bottleneck.

I DON’T want to reduce any of the graphics settings in the game, because face it, the game is beautiful. My question is, would springing for a GTX 1080 reduce the dips in fps? Is it possible there is a bottleneck in the game itself that is causing the dips?

Thanks for any help.

Your CPU is still the bottleneck in those cases

Even if it never goes above 60% utilization across all 12 threads?

Yeah. GW2’s performance is pretty much completely single core dependent, since no matter how many cores you have the main thread will only work on one of them. It’s why AMD’s CPUs are so bad for this game; even an FX-8350 will have terrible performance in big zergs despite being an 8-core CPU, since its single core performance is so low.

Your CPU is NOT a bottleneck here. The game simply isn’t made for modern hardware. People will preach the single-thread argument, but my 6700k never maxes any thread, even in wvw fights with frames dropped into the 20s.

So no, upgrades will not increase your performance. Best option is to lower your settings.

To OP, if you want to get better performance you’ll need to town down some settings: Character Model Limit (this is the most important one), Reflections and Shadows.

And if you haven’t overclock that cpu do it.

TheHeretic.3529:

Your CPU is NOT a bottleneck here. The game simply isn’t made for modern hardware. People will preach the single-thread argument, but my 6700k never maxes any thread, even in wvw fights with frames dropped into the 20s.

So no, upgrades will not increase your performance. Best option is to lower your settings.

Thread usage =/= core usage.
Disable HT in your 6700k and monitor cpu usage, you’ll see cores being used at 80-95%.

And yes, Gw2 is limited by single core performance.

Short answer for the OP is, No. If the dips are a concern then your only available solution is to down grade the graphics – in particular the char limit (you’ll get invisible chars with a name tag if the numbers are high enough). Whether this is worth it giving that any down grading will stay with you for the whole session is debatable – each to their own, methinks.

Giving that you have a four physical core processor, then an AVERAGE CPU utilisation of ~60% is the best you can get. Essentially GW2 uses two thread; any thread can synchronously hop, skip & jump between physical cores (this is automatic on all modern processors to spread the thermals across the chip as much as possible, with HT or without). So a four physical core chip will, when flat out with GW2, be around 50% AVERAGE core usage. There is an asynchronous overhead of around 5 to 10% plus maybe up to 5% OS overhead.

So with a four core running at an average of 60% utilisation you’re near or extremely close too, the GW2-CPU limit. Which means your GPU is not holding you back. A TWO physical core processor could hit 100% but giving the asynchronous overheads etc these will always be less efficient than a four core (for identical cores!).

Intel are capable of producing better individual cores than AMD (in recent years) and therefore ultimately better GW2 performance, but only at high price points!

Note, I happen to think the server is also capable of bottlenecking GW2 under these circumstances at popular times, so down-grading the graphics might not yield exactly the improvements you would expect all the time.

don’t upgrade for gw2. i just upgraded my 2x 680 2gb sli to a gtx 1080 and my performance is still the same. the reason i upgraded was for the vram to run other games at higher settings.

change your frame limiter to unlimited if you have vertical sycn on.
render sampling to native.
character model limit and quality to medium