Guild Wars 2

I just bought a new system, and am confused about why my FPS is still dropping.

While running with a large zerg in EOTM, my FPS is able to drop to the 40s at times. I am monitoring my hardware usage with Open Hardware Monitor, and it shows no CPU core ever passing 75%, and my GPU never passes 78%. GPU memory at 50%.
I have 16GB RAM and am running the game on an SSD.
Nothing else on the system is maxing out.

I have found that the only setting that affects FPS at all is Character Model Limit.

My system is:
GTX 780
i7 4770k (not overclocked)
Windows 8

Thank you for any help you can provide.

This is totally normal. It’s like this in every MMO.

But something on my end has to be causing this, right? The fact that Character Model Limit somewhat affects the FPS must mean something, but nothing is struggling with this game according to the hardware monitor.

Nothing is on your end OR Anet’s for the matter. It’s how an MMO works. It requires raw processing power to handle it. To even further your FPS you’d need to seriously overclock your i7.

But that is true even though my CPU shows no core ever going above 75% in GW2? Shouldn’t at least one core be maxing out?

I will overclock soon if you say this makes a difference, I have the cooling set up for it, but was holding off since I didn’t think it was necessary yet.

The use of each core you’re seeing is also normal judging by the information you’ve provided. It’s about the best you’ll get on a stock experience.

Ah OK, so I was just wrong to assume that a component not hitting 100% rules it out from being the cause. I’m not used to having a decent system like this. I will try overclocking tomorrow and will post my results.

Don’t worry I was the same when I got my first ridiculously high end gaming system. I came from an Emachines with a Pentium 2.93 GHz HT prescott processor with 2 GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 3650 to then an AMD Athlon X2 64bit 4600+ w/ 5 GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 5770 to ultimately this machine I have in my specs. (It started out as a Phenom 2 quad with a 7970, then two 7970s, then FX 8350, then intel i7 4770K with 7970s and now R9 290Xs) It’s an amazing feeling every day I look at my computer because I look at it and I’m like “I bought that. I’m proud of that.”

I overclocked to 4.5 GHz. It might be slightly better but almost unnoticeable difference. My CPU/GPU utilization still won’t go past the mid-70%s. Other games are capable of pushing both to 100%, only GW2 can’t.

I realized there was a setting I’d missed – turning Shadows to None gives me 60FPS everywhere in the game, even zergs / pavilion / etc. I can max out EVERY other option, including Supersampling, and hold a constant 60 FPS even in the middle of crown pavilion zergs. But as soon as I turn Shadows to High, I dip down to 45 FPS.

I wonder if shadows in this game are somehow unoptimized. It seems a bit strange that one option has such a great affect.

The core usage readings you’re getting are normal. Most people will report 70% use on something like an i7 on one core and the rest of them being around 20-40%

As the game is CPU bound mostly, the more GHz the processor has, the more FPS you’ll get (not to say that it’s purely CPU bound or anything, attach a crap GPU and you’ll see it grind to a halt)

I’m an individual that prefers the pretty side of the game and don’t mind it going to the 30 range. I run my game on max settings without FXAA.

Alright, well thanks for replying. I guess I’ll leave it at that and stop worrying about this. I did send a letter to Support showing what I realized with the Shadows option (how disabling it = 60 FPS everywhere with every other option maxed), because it seems a bit unusual to me, like maybe Shadows could potentially be optimized in the future. Maybe not, but figured it was worth mentioning.

Shadows and reflections are both the best options to turn off in high player areas with high amounts of combat. Huge boost to low fps.