Guild Wars 2

Specs:
2x Sli Nvidia 680’s on One display “Max 3d” single display settings, 120 hz
-checked the hz 60/120 settings and nvidia recommended settings on guildwars 2 site so thats not the issue
Asus P8Z77-V Pro
Intel Core i7-2600k Cpu
16.0 GB Ram
-some cooling, strong powersource, ect.

My in game settings are on Max
minus shadows (high) and render sampling on (native)
reflections (none)
(once again guild wars 2 recommended settings, minus the 60hz vs 120 which i tested and saw no difference)
-frame limiter on 60

Frame drops happening during WvW when raids occuring on towers ect, Goes down to 45 fps basically
LA sometimes receives drops down to 50 fps

Otherwise Im at a steady 60 fps

Anyone know if I should be getting these drops in fps during WvW raid sessions ect.?

Once u get into proper WvW zergs u will see sub 30 FPS.

its totally normal. GW2 is bad thread optimisation, its main rendering thread is on 1 core/thread and will max it out, lowering all other threads performance on the CPU and thus the FPS.

Your CPU is bottle necking your system it doesn’t have the power to run the game but then again no CPU had that power

chris.9142:

Your CPU is bottle necking your system it doesn’t have the power to run the game but then again no CPU had that power

I have a CoolerMaster Silent Pro 1200 W power supply thou.

How can I not have enough power? Does my actual house power supply come into affect? Is their any way to test this and see?

How can I avoid Bottlenecking or fix the problem?

Thanks!

He means that the CPU can’t do as many calculations as needed, which is usually called power, it doesn’t really mean power in watts or volts, more like a metaphor, like horsepower in cars. It’s like if your car’s engine doesn’t have enough horsepower it wont go any faster if you add more gasoline to the tank. The only thing to do to fix this problem is to get more powerful CPU. However, as chris said, there is no CPU on the market that can provide the “power” this game requires.

CPU power as it performance, not electrical power.

locx.6412:

He means that the CPU can’t do as many calculations as needed, which is usually called power, it doesn’t really mean power in watts or volts, more like a metaphor, like horsepower in cars. It’s like if your car’s engine doesn’t have enough horsepower it wont go any faster if you add more gasoline to the tank. The only thing to do to fix this problem is to get more powerful CPU. However, as chris said, there is no CPU on the market that can provide the “power” this game requires.

Thank you,
This helps out a lot.

Also I have noticed one thing with my Motherboard and the PCI slots

I have installed GPU-Z on my computer. The Bus Interface says my cards support PCI-E x 16 v.2.0 Howerver, I am running the cards in PCI-E x8 v.1.1
Could this be a problem?
Note: That I am running 2x 680’s In SLI
The mother board is a p8Z77-V Pro and it says the following on the box for Expansion Slots:
2x PCI Express 3.0/2.0 × 16 slots (single at x16 or dual at x8/ x8 mode)
1x PCI Express 2.0 × 16 slot
and 2x PCI-E 2.0 × 1 slot, 2x Pci slots

Would it be recommended to get a new motherboard that supports SLI in 2x|16x slots? Or can my current motherboard support this?

Thanks!

As far as I know, all motherboards turn it down to x8 when there are 2 graphics cards connected, even the most expensive ones that support 4-way SLI/CrossFireX. I only have 1 card so if I’m talking nonsense someone please correct me. However it shouldn’t stay at 1.1.

Remember that motherboards do turn the link down to 1.1 to save energy if system is idle so if you’ve taken these results with nothing else running it might be another story when GW2 is pushing the GPU. If that’s not the case, try updating your drivers or reinstalling them if you have the latest ones, if it doesn’t help just pull the cards out, detach the power cords too and put everything back to their place.

EDIT: 3.0 vs 1.1 Shouldn’t matter too much tho, at least when there’s two 680’s running. I have a single GTX 660 and I get 100-150 fps on native rendering, 60-90 Supersampling enabled if it’s is under 99% load. your 680 SLI should have multiple times the performance of my card. Your CPU is still the part that’s dragging your fps down.

locx.6412:

As far as I know, all motherboards turn it down to x8 when there are 2 graphics cards connected, even the most expensive ones that support 4-way SLI/CrossFireX. I only have 1 card so if I’m talking nonsense someone please correct me. However it shouldn’t stay at 1.1.

Remember that motherboards do turn the link down to 1.1 to save energy if system is idle so if you’ve taken these results with nothing else running it might be another story when GW2 is pushing the GPU. If that’s not the case, try updating your drivers or reinstalling them if you have the latest ones, if it doesn’t help just pull the cards out, detach the power cords too and put everything back to their place.

EDIT: 3.0 vs 1.1 Shouldn’t matter too much tho, at least when there’s two 680’s running. I have a single GTX 660 and I get 100-150 fps on native rendering, 60-90 Supersampling enabled if it’s is under 99% load. your 680 SLI should have multiple times the performance of my card. Your CPU is still the part that’s dragging your fps down.

Thanks for the response,

When GW2 is running it changes to 2.0
Is this the right driver?
And what CPU would you recommend and what kind of frame rate increase do you think I would get?

http://www.geforce.com/geforce-experience download that if you already haven’t (It might come with a CD if you got one in the package with your video card, can’t remember lol) you can download the latest drivers there. Drivers are kind of like software, bunch of code, whereas those 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 and are different hardware technologies.

As for the CPU, i7-2600K is still one of the best ones for this game. If you were to upgrade that you would have to upgrade your motherboard as well and things would get very complicated. What would be the wisest thing to do in your case, is overclock that bad boy. Invest in a CPU cooler, something like Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO at least or if you want some more performance, you can spend on something like Corsair H100i. Those might not be the best (certianly not the only) options so do some research maybe before running straight into a store. On the other hand, both of those are very commonly used so I don’t think you can go wrong with either one.

1200 watt power supply is absurd. Get two more 680s and four-way SLI.

Anyway, basically you have to brute force this game for more FPS via CPU speed.
I’m on an i7 4770K pushing 4.4 Ghz and well I still get awful FPS in some spots.

The advantage of the 2600K over the 3770K and 4770K has to do with overclocking. The default performance is faster with the newer models but they tend to be more limited in how fast you can overclock them due to shrinking die size and a switch to an inferior thermal compound to transfer heat to the spreader on the chip.

Yes that model does go from on x16 to two x8 slots. And the 2600K is only equipped with PCIe V2.0. Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs are V3.0. But your motherboard can handle either Sandy Bridge (2600K) or Ivy Bridge (3770K) and has the components on the MB that can support PCIe V3.0 (I believe it’s line drivers aka amplifiers).

your motherboard supports PCI-E 3.0, force it, and you should see a little boost in fps.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=375347

Doesn’t matter as the PCIe controller is on the CPU and it only supports PCIe V2.0. And the Z77 only has 8 PCIe V2.0 channels out of it as well.

http://ark.intel.com/products/52214/Intel-Core-i7-2600K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

You can’t “force” a standard that came out after a controller was made.

Behellagh.1468:

The advantage of the 2600K over the 3770K and 4770K has to do with overclocking. The default performance is faster with the newer models but they tend to be more limited in how fast you can overclock them due to shrinking die size and a switch to an inferior thermal compound to transfer heat to the spreader on the chip.

Yes that model does go from on x16 to two x8 slots. And the 2600K is only equipped with PCIe V2.0. Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs are V3.0. But your motherboard can handle either Sandy Bridge (2600K) or Ivy Bridge (3770K) and has the components on the MB that can support PCIe V3.0 (I believe it’s line drivers aka amplifiers).

Thanks for the info,
Do you know a good link for support on overclocking the 2600K with my setup
I also have a H100 corsair cooling system

http://www.overclock.net/t/1198504/complete-overclocking-guide-sandy-bridge-ivy-bridge-asrock-edition that guide is specifically ASRock boards, but the principles of overclocking is the same no matter what board or CPU. You basically just bump up the multiplier and voltage as well and then start fine tuning once your temperatures are getting high. OCN is one of the great portals for overclocking help so you might want to browse those, or any other, forums a bit.