Spec:
AMD Phenom II X4 955
ASUS GTS450 1024MB 128bit
Asus M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3 AMD880G
Kingston HyperX 2×2GB DDR3-1600 (x2 = 8gb)
Seagate ST31000528AS 1TB sATA II 32MB
Win 7, up-to-date
Issue:
At random times, at seemingly relatively fixed intervals (every 6~8 minutes), for about a minute or longer, i am having a huge FPS drop in GW2, from 90ish to 8~12.
Not only my game slows down, but the whole computer, even if the game is running in the background (minimised or not). This means that even my browsers and music players are having issues when GW2 decides to go on strike.
Running the task manager and observing the processes tab revealed that the game eats up to 99% of my CPU power when that happens, otherwise staying at ~30%.
It started happening only about a week ago, sometime around the Queen’s Jubilee update, or even after one of its subsequent patches. Hard to tell, but it’s a very new issue.
It happens regardless of my current in-game activity. I can have my toon parked at a secluded spot, doing nothing, with no effects flying around, and still have the GW2 app spike my CPU. It does not seem to occur more often during ‘stressful’ activities, like farming the Pavillion, big WvW fights or loads of effects stacked on a dungeon boss – it does occur during those times, the spike lasts for about a minute (a minute i can barely do anything responsive, though), then there’s everything fine for 6~8 minutes, then the spike occurs again. Heck, it even occurs while i’m in the login screen, if left for long enough.
I tried running the game without anything else in the background, including no browsers, no music, all extra processes turned off, but the problem would still occur.
It does not occur with GW2 off, whatever i am doing, and i can run other games just fine, even at highest possible settings (Starcraft 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Portal 2), even two of them simultaneously, with a lot of stuff going on in the background. I can also process videos in VirtualDub while playing SC2 on highest settings and nothing clogs up. The problem persists only with GW2.
Any advice, please?
.
