Guild Wars 2

Have played GW2 since shortly after its release, it’s always run well (although low FPS when I was in big groups, which was to be expected). Two years ago, I assembled a new PC and initially, I don’t recall having any kind of graphic problems whatsoever. I could run with major zergs with graphics on high/ultra (by the game’s autodetect), never an issue. Then I took a break of about a year and then every once in a while, I find myself playing the game again. Except I’m having some graphic problems. And though they seem to be appearing somewhat consistently— I can’t seem to find out if there’s anything in specific that ‘triggers’ these problems.

Attached is an image with a small scale of the problem (it’s difficult to get it in a screenshot). I would call them these big stretched out areas/lines that seem to be prominent in a blue/gray color. While in the image, you see only a small example of it— it can at times fill up 60% of my screen— and they do seem to move around quite well as I rotate the camera, as if it’s literally part of the game’s textures? I don’t have them all the time, however. But often enough to be a huge nuisance (especially when they tend to happen in a bigger quantity).

I’ve turned on V-sync (this seemed to initially get rid of them for a few minutes?), triple buffering in my Catalyst’s options (same thing)— I’ve messed with settings and nothing seems to particularly change much. Any help in resolving this would be hugely appreciated.

Here’s some specs:

Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit
Motherboard: Asus Z87-PRO
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4670 CPU @ 3.40GHz (4 cores)
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Graphics: MSI Radeon R9 270X Gaming 2G

P.S.: I’ve tested various games, including WoW, TERA, FFXIV, Aion, League of Legends and none of these problems appear at any point. It’s only in GW2 from what I’ve tested.

Here is another image of the problem in a much more bothering sense. If I move, then it seems to move around as well. It’s very bizarre to me— as if it can’t properly load certain game textures? When I aimed the camera towards the sky when this popped up, they disappeared— I aim it back down, they reappear. If I run away towards a different part of the map (not using waypoints), they eventually suddenly disappear.

whats your graphics card? latest driver? try “best performance” in graphics options and try checking them all one by one until you bump upon one that makes your screen look like puddle dirt?

I’ve always seen anomalies like this when a GPUs memory clock is unstable or the vRAM is over heating.

Have you cleaned your GPU recently? The vRAM chips onboard usually have their own heatsinks but they aren’t cooled by the fan nearly as well as the GPU Core is(due to them being offset and not directly under the fan).

I would try cleaning the Finstacks on the GPU,they can get obstructed by dust very easily. If that doesn’t work,try to underclock your GPU Memory by 10-15mhz.

Though to be fair. I also see almost this exact “Polygon stretching” effect in GTAV no matter if i have my r7 260x OC’ed(1175/1670) or underclocked(1050/1500) while no other games give me any anomalies.

Drendir.9102:

whats your graphics card? latest driver? try “best performance” in graphics options and try checking them all one by one until you bump upon one that makes your screen look like puddle dirt?

R9 270X and yep, fully updated. And I’ve gone through that process, the stretching of graphics seems to remain. Thank you for the suggestion, though!

MrFayth.3546:

I’ve always seen anomalies like this when a GPUs memory clock is unstable or the vRAM is over heating.

Have you cleaned your GPU recently? The vRAM chips onboard usually have their own heatsinks but they aren’t cooled by the fan nearly as well as the GPU Core is(due to them being offset and not directly under the fan).

I would try cleaning the Finstacks on the GPU, they can get obstructed by dust very easily. If that doesn’t work,try to underclock your GPU Memory by 10-15mhz.

Though to be fair. I also see almost this exact “Polygon stretching” effect in GTAV no matter if i have my r7 260x OC’ed(1175/1670) or underclocked(1050/1500) while no other games give me any anomalies.

Ah, you may be onto something there, as it’s been quite a while since I’ve checked. I’ll have a look and clean it in a little bit and get back to you, to see if the problems have disappeared. And yeah, it’s somehow only producing these problems in GW2, games which I’ve learned require a lot more graphic/power-wise seem to function just fine. These anomalies really seem to only happen with GW2, which is what threw me off. But considering I don’t remember having this issue initially, I wondered if Arenanet changed something graphic-wise which just didn’t mesh with my card or— well, dust is another great explanation, it does take time to accumulate! And if it doesn’t fix it, I’ll look into underclocking a bit, see if it makes a difference.

Anyway, I’ll have a look. Thanks a ton for the help!

MrFayth.3546:

Have you cleaned your GPU recently? The vRAM chips onboard usually have their own heatsinks but they aren’t cooled by the fan nearly as well as the GPU Core is(due to them being offset and not directly under the fan).

I would try cleaning the Finstacks on the GPU,they can get obstructed by dust very easily.

Did some cleaning with the remaining canned air (wasn’t extremely dusty, but dusty enough) I had and the anomalies seem to have disappeared. Thank you a ton, again! Very appreciated.

seriously? dust ftw…

Sae.8974:

MrFayth.3546:

Have you cleaned your GPU recently? The vRAM chips onboard usually have their own heatsinks but they aren’t cooled by the fan nearly as well as the GPU Core is(due to them being offset and not directly under the fan).

I would try cleaning the Finstacks on the GPU,they can get obstructed by dust very easily.

Did some cleaning with the remaining canned air (wasn’t extremely dusty, but dusty enough) I had and the anomalies seem to have disappeared. Thank you a ton, again! Very appreciated.

maybe it wasn’t just the dust …. sometimes removing and reseating a Video card in a PC-E slot fix things … you probably did both ( cleaning and reseating )

This happens quite a lot actually. And its usually due to memory corruption. For me 90% of the time a reboot fixes it. I have noticed it happening more on dynamic textures then anything else though (Effects such as Twilight/Sunrise).

Hell once It happened against Teq’s Foot. If I got with in 800range of the foot then the entire screen would turned gray-blueish with simple models bleeding through, step back to 1000-1200range and it was a normal day, move back to 800~range then gray-blue screen again.

Its really hit and miss and has happened across every driver from AMD since 12.4 across 6-7 different Cards.

Yeah, I’ve had this on and off for ages – across multiple cards and drivers. Mucking with settings can somewhat help but the only sure fire way to resolve it (until it reoccurs again anyway) is to restart the game.

It’s an odd bug. I can be tied to a weapon or almost anything in game – weapon swapping can make it go if that’s whats causing it. But switching back to it…. it comes back. Ones like in the OP’s post are usually mobs – and it’ll be all mobs in a zone, but only of that mobs type.

Does anyone with an Nvidia card get this? I’ve only ever seen it on AMD cards.

I’d ask what Catalyst version you’re on atm, because it’s probably some wonky voodoo happening on the driver’s backend, seeing as Win 7’s DX stuff’s pretty stable, especially if other games on your computer don’t behave that bad.

Advent Leader.1083:

I’d ask what Catalyst version you’re on atm, because it’s probably some wonky voodoo happening on the driver’s backend, seeing as Win 7’s DX stuff’s pretty stable, especially if other games on your computer don’t behave that bad.

They solved it,temporarily at least.

Overheating vRAM.

I had this issue for a long time with my R7 260×. Others on the forums with similar series of R series cards also shared the issue. We never could come up with a concrete fix for the issue. Sent reports to AMD to no fix that we ever heard of.

Most I could do for the longest time was alt tab when it was freaking out (the Legendary greatswords were the worst culprit for the graphics bug to occur) and then tab back in the game and it would clear up for a while.

I assumed it was overheating at first, since thats what it definitely looks like. But computer would be running quite cool everytime it occurred so it was strange. Did the usual cleaning, but it would still pop up every day.

Personally the issue went away for me after fixing another bug with the default manufacturing overclocking speed of the card. It caused another issue with just random black screen at times. Others had this issue a lot with the card as well so there was a lot of posts about it to fix it on other forums. But after manually changing the overclocking speed down to 750 hz in the Catalyst control center. Never seen the weird graphics issue again.

I’m not sure if its entirely tied to the same thing. Since as far as I have heard the R9 series doesn’t suffer from the manufacturing problem the R7’s did. But its something to look into if it continues to crop up.

On my old PC I had same issue , I think it was something with GPU ….from what i’ve read… I used to open case and put a huge fan in front of it too chill the system LOL one of those old cases with terrible or no air flow I had same viasual bug in multiple game .
But scince I use Nividia 760 now 970 I had 0 issues …..Especialy Gigabity 970 is wonderful is coolest card I ever had barely 55 C of Max Loading and this is now durring hot Eu summer…

Katreyn.4218:

But after manually changing the overclocking speed down to 750 hz in the Catalyst control center. Never seen the weird graphics issue again.

You downclocked what to 750mhz? Core or Memory? Either is suboptimal given the card is relatively weak to begin with.

My Sapphire r7 260x run Gw2 fine @ 1180 Core and 1690 Memory.