Guild Wars 2

So i’ve just purchased Guild Wars 2 today and have been extremely excited since payment. I had no issue installing and creating my account and even flew through the customizing and story introduction. It wasn’t till i landed into the game itself in which everything went to unbearably slow speeds. I had a extreme delay, choppy sound and that was just standing in the Charr starting area. It went to heck as i approached the battle area.

Im not exactly knowledgeable of knowing what specs i really need to tell or how i could find out how. But what i know of my computer I have is..

Processor: Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
Installed Memory (RAM): 3.00 GB
System type: 64-bit Operating System

Graphics Card: NVDIA GeForce 8600 GT

And thats about as much I know from where I am. But even after lowing every bit of my settings to the best performance and sound too.. Then altering my task manager so I BARELY run anything in the background.. The game is only SLIGHTLY better. I could bare it in moving around slightly, but voices/music ingame is still horrible and choppy and whenever approaching someone or battle, the whole lag/slowness and skipping starts up again. Its beyond any possibility to play. Even when on the game and checking out my Memory, It was only taking up a small percentage. I had over half of my memory free to be used.

Though also when i managed to reach a short.. conversation cutscene of sorts.. It went to perfect quality/sound again. Its only when playing the game itself it goes bad.

Any help please? I’m REALLY excited to play but im beyond able in these conditions. It has me quite confused since I could run World of Warcraft in ultra quality, Skyrim in high.. Saints Row in Medium.. And i never really had any other game issues. If i could run all those even WITH stuff in the background. How can Guild Wars 2 run so horrible without anything stopping it?

An old Core2 series cpu specialy one only running at 2.4ghz will have ALOT of trouble running GW2. Additonaly 3gb ram is not alot, i bet nearly all of that is in use, specialy if your using windows vista or 7.

ontop of that the graphics card is rather dated now and wont be helping ether. All in all im sorry to say that i think you just out of luck with that computer of yours.

please note: and pass this info along (since loads of people do this)
You can NOT compare a modern mmo like GW2 to a old game like WoW that uses an old engine that for all intents and purposes was designed to run smoothly on old hardware just like you have.
Single player games like saint row and skyrim also take ALOT less from cpu, and thus rely mainly on your gpu.. that should be able to handle them to some degree.

what settings and resolution? it sounds like your putting your system to the limits with settings that are far too superior for your old graphics card

i actually have a q8300 at 2.5ghz and i’m running it fine(so choppy sounds, cpu @ about 65-80%) although i have 8gb of ram so like solar said, that could be an issue

Your hardware is definitely NOT up to the task. CPU is slow, not enough RAM, video is ancient. It has provided many years of good service; it’s time to build a new box and keep that one for wiki-ing without alt-tabbing.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com

This is a great website. It will usually tell you what is wrong with your system and where to improve it.

I appreciate all the comments given thank you.

And I understand now about not comparing Guild Wars 2 to other games, Its a good matter of fact that theres a big difference especially in terms of this being a new game and im on an old running gaming computer.

First Id like to say that my Memory, Though is a low 3gb. Is freely up for use and ive monitored how much is used up. And with Guild wars 2 running Its only taking up less than half my memory since i barely run anything else in the background when i play games. So i honestly dont think Memory is that much a major issue.

But this is this is the important question so i know what to do..

WHAT needs replacing that will MAJORLY fix my issues? I dont think my Memory is the worse of it.. I can assume my graphics card but can anyone specifically point out whats the changes that need to be made?

Even extreme rigs have troubles running GW2 in optimal or highest settings.
But looking at your rig you shoulnt realy expect alot of candy in gw2.

But look around for some FPS issues posts (alot of them ) and try to check what can help you a little to get more fps.

For me fps seems to drop and go up randomly as i have a feeling the engine isnt optimised yet.
Alot of work Anet needs to do to resolve the major fps drops.

But give them a little air to breath iam sure their tech support and technonerds are all over it

ill be honest, you cant upgrade just one component on a omputer as old as yours.

Simply put, if you upgrade your grpahics card, your cpu will slow it down, if you upgrade your cpu, your grpahics card will slow it down. Both ways you will see enxt to no improvment.

To upgrade you will bassicaly need a new computer.

New cpu+ new cooler = new motherboard = new ram = new graphics card.

if your case is a BTX format you will need a new ATX case (90% of cases nowerdays are ATX) Check wikipedia if you dont know the difference between BTX and ATX.

You most likely will need a new powersuply (its usual a good idea to replace an old one anyway)

So unfortunatly, you will need to save up some money

Dreamerwolf your Quad Core cpu is fine, I have the Q9550 @ 2.8GHz and a Nvidia GTX480.

I get between 50 – 60 FPS in PvE (I have yet to play WvW)

I use High Textures and medium for most other settings except for shaders and shadows, which i turn off or put on low as they seem to be buggy.

the 400 and 500 series graphics card seem to be running well with GW2 and the Q6600 were overclockable if your into that kind of thing.

you certainly don’t need to buy a whole new computer to get better FPS in this game.

The sound problem could be just your sound settings – try moving the latency slider under sound options closer to the “more stable” side.

If you bought your PC from a computer manufacturer such as DELL, ACER, SONY, etc then if you choose to upgrade your graphics card, do so carefully as manufacturers have a tendency not to give you a power supply with much head room for upgrades.

In my opinion your pc has plenty of life left in it yet, the only thing I would look at is the 8600GT that was a step up from the 7600 series to about the same performance level as a 7800-7900 which according to the minimum system specification a 7800 series is the minimum recommended. This is what is most likely holding you back.

The q6600 will be fine for most PVE, in WvW it will suffer a bit.

The 8600GT however is not up to the task. 8600GT is slower than the 7800GT which is minimum for GW2.

I would recommend getting a new graphics card, and possibly over clock the q6600.
For around $100-120 you can get something like a Geforce 550TI or a Radeon 6850, those will be able to bump up your frame rates pretty much. You could go higher, but then again you’ll be limited by your CPU.

The q6600 is one of the better over clockers, and I’ve seen people running it on 3.5Ghz and 3.0-3.2 Ghz should be doable with even modest cooling.

Also, many good advices in this thread already, and be sure you have enough power cables.

I’m pretty sure most 8600GT need one 6 pin power lead, which should be enough for 550TI and 6850, although some might need two.

There is also a 7750 which is slower than 6850 and 550TI, but it should be able to be used without additional power. It’s still miles faster than the 8600GT