Guild Wars 2

Threads are still telling people to upgrade their video card for better performance. ArenaNET said the game was no longer CPU bound, but I have argued that since the game went live. Today a new set of Nvidia drivers were release and the comments flooded in.

As I read through the comments an Nvidia employee stated this:
“Guild Wars 2 is CPU-bound, meaning performance is primarily determined by the CPU in your computer and not the GPU. As such, there’s nothing we can do. All I can suggest is overclocking your CPU.”
Source: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-310-33-beta-drivers-released/

Last night we got our first content to the game with some adjustments to classes with a new slew of content — which is great!

Why, however, is ArenaNET not looking deeper into the game performance that has flooded the forums? I have checked the Dev Tracker since launch and still have not seen anything stating a fix is coming.

My anger was towards Nvidia, but for one of their very own employees to state what we have all said was true, my anger is shifting towards another entity now . . . . that and the games Antialiasing is horrible.

The antialising does not look bad to me. Not sure if you can blame the game, if it’s using the GPUs own anti-aliasing. But I am no expert on how the new versions of AA work.

I think the question on performance answers itself. They are commiting their resources elsewhere. I am sure the programmers are not sitting around doing nothing.

I honestly think people think software development is easier than it actually is. Coming from over 20 years in that profession, I can assure you that things often take longer than projected.

Also, you don’t know whether they are working on it or not. It could be complex and time consuming, and maybe someone is already working on it for a future release. How can we make assumptions on what’s being done without being there?

@michaeljhuman.3940

I clearly understand that, and from a development standpoint. However from a business standpoint the consumer has flooded the forums with performance issues, so resources are not being shifted towards that area on a higher priority. I enjoy the game, but the WvW situations are horrible and I am on a beefy system — I couldn’t even imagine those with low-end systems have to endure.

Also note that ArenaNET told us the game was no longer CPU bound upon release. I feel that was unfair of them to announce — then an Nvidia employee tells us differently.

How do you know that a random nVidia employee without access to the game’s source code, developer tools or testing environment is capable of making a more accurate assessment of the game’s performance than Arenanet?

What would that Nvidia employee have to gain from saying that? Or are you suggesting that the Nvidia employee doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

I’m not suggesting he’s lying. He’s a member of the marketing team, not the dev team. He could be making an honest mistake. He could be repeating an off-the-cuff comment made by a driver developer. He could be misinterpreting something else he heard. He could be just trying to get people off his back. He could be working off of old information.

Or he could be correctly relaying information given to him by someone else at nVidia. I’m saying, we’ve got no reason to take when he says at greater face value than what we hear from the ArenaNet devs, who have generally been honest about performance issues.

Perhaps one of them will chime in on this thread.

There’s quite a lot of evidence the game is CPU bound.

Sure the game is cpu bound. However if you have a processor that is powerful enough, you will still see double fps from having two cards in sli/crossfire. My setup gives me double fps with my second 7970. If I disable crossfire I will only get half the fps.

I have seen very high fps with my SLI setup. Well over 100 fps.

There’s also areas where fps barely manages vsync rate of 60hz. Be interesting to know what’s going on in those areas. Someone suggested the middlware they use, called Umbra, could explain some of the low fps seen.

WvW and such would obviously call for a lot more CPU power, which is maybe where some systems can’t keep up no matter what the GPU.

I have no problems with a lot of players though. I just see a big drop due to the static scenary in complex areas (least I assume that, as it seems independent of characters, npcs and monsters.)

I noticed that the game won’t populate players in the Halloween costume battles at Lion’s. I would see just a few NPCs, then when I got close to forge, BAM, 20 player would pop onto my screen.

Yep, this has been an issue for months and every time the response is “the game is still being optimized”. The way I see it it’s an unfortunate “feature” of the game, the same way some other engines ended up being very CPU dependent (the Aurora engine, recent TES games).

Zax.6170:

Yep, this has been an issue for months and every time the response is “the game is still being optimized”. The way I see it it’s an unfortunate “feature” of the game, the same way some other engines ended up being very CPU dependent (the Aurora engine, recent TES games).

Although Skyrim did have a very valid reason for why it was though. They had tonnes of dynamic AI everywhere you went. GW2 doesn’t have that.

So basically you are telling me (verifying what I have found elsewhere) that my cpu sucks. I am debating about OC but it runs so hot now trying to play this game that I am not going to ruin my computer over it. The game is fun when I can play, but I think it is terrible that I crash so much. I keep finding more posts about bottlenecking now. I know I am not alone in my constant crashes (which have nothing to do with recent patches) based upon hundreds of other posts I have read and attempted fixes, to no avail. There has been thousands of attachments but yet no mention from anet that there is an issue on their part. It must be a problem with the hundreds of people, myself included, and whatever setup they have, despite most finding no issue with anything else they attempt to do on their systems. I am constantly checking the forums and patches to find a fix, but so far not even acknowledgement that there is a problem with the random crashes.

For my part, sometimes I get windows shutting down the program, sometimes the game freezes, sometimes the game quits and asks me to send a report, sometimes bsod. Sometimes I can play for hours, sometimes minutes, sometimes I can’t even log in. There is zero consistency. I monitor my temps on my cpu, gpu, and case and there isn’t even consistency there. It does run hot playing the game, but I crash as much at 45 degrees as I do at 60+ degrees on cpu (gpu and case are always good). Maybe all this fits into this bottlenecking. I guess I don’t know enough about computers to figure it out. What I do know…is a bit of common sense would tell you that way too many people are having problems (basically identical problems with different setups) and no issues with anything else they run that I would suggest it is a game issue. I wish I could fix my computer to not crash, but I have tried every fix I have read, and nothing has worked. So I wait and keep sending nasty feedback everytime they ask for a report. It makes me feel better to vent my frustration to them Until they address it, I will keep playing when able until I finally lose it and quit. But what do they care….they already got my money. But they won’t again if this isn’t resolved very soon.

Evidence to the contrary stares me straight in the face whenever I pull up gpuz.

On my hand-overclocked gtx-670 this game easily pegs the GPU in open areas, major cities, and heavy fire-fights. When the field of view is limited, the GPU does quiet down, but then again so does everything else on the system.

This sounds like a bunch of bullhockey from NVIDIA, unless you’re running a GTX-690, which is definitely a “tock” on the proverbial “tick vs tock” moore’s law scale of hardware advancement. (a single 690 outperformes a double-680 SLI setup on the heaven benchmarks).

Chances are, if you are CPU bound in this game, your vid card is beastly or your settings are screwed up.

The main issue is that people with i5 and i7 oc are having bad frames in wvw. Why make a game that is zerg prevalent and thus bottlenecking even modern cpu’s that are oc?
My GTX 680 oc windforce is running the game no problem, even with supersampling. I have tried WvW and large events with SSampling off and the GPU is irrelevant.
This game is CPU dependent but it is also in dire need of optimization.

In most parts of the game it IS GPU bound, but when it comes down to world vs world and DE’s with lots of people around it and even around the mystic forge in Lion’s Arch during the Halloween event- the game decides to shift to CPU and that’s where the majority of players are having FPS issues. I’ve been monitoring both CPU and GPU usage in the mentioned situations.

When I drop in FPS in GW2 my gpu usage also drops which is a sign of bad optimize OR cpu heavy. And it is cpu heavy in that case, since I got i5 2500k 4.2.

plasmacutter.2709 said:
….

They should start banning users on the basis of idiocy…..

OP: At this point I can assure you, the performance you seek shall not be found in GW2. There’s not much good hardware can do to help you, when CPU cycles are wasted away by inefficient algorithms and hidden overhead.
There is a serious throughput issue that can only be solved by thorough analysis and profiling, The best solutions will most likely involve a redesign/restructure of major chunks in the codebase, which is not likely to happen.

I learned something recently, you can’t stumble upon good performance on c++. That doesn’t mean you can’t achieve it, it means you will not achieve it unless you actively program for performance. From the start. Something these developers, either didn’t care or couldn’t afford to do.

I have a i5-2500k @ 4.8GHZ and yeah, performance is still terrible. CPU bottleneck has been fairly obvious from the starts. My 690GTX just sits there, under clocked and with low utilization as the frame-rate plummets just traveling around certain areas (not even taking into account the horrible drops in heavy player activity). Even dungeons run like crap which is really odd since those areas should most definitely be GPU intensive.

It seems like people with high end Ivy Bridge and great OC’s are doing well… but seriously, that’s the best Anet can do in terms of optimization? It’s pretty obvious they have not put any effort into making this any better either. Ultra shadows and all reflections still cause massive camera stuttering and that issue has been around since the game launched (possibly in beta… I don’t recall).

Varna.5162:

I have a i5-2500k @ 4.8GHZ and yeah, performance is still terrible. CPU bottleneck has been fairly obvious from the starts. My 690GTX just sits there, under clocked and with low utilization as the frame-rate plummets just traveling around certain areas (not even taking into account the horrible drops in heavy player activity). Even dungeons run like crap which is really odd since those areas should most definitely be GPU intensive.

It seems like people with high end Ivy Bridge and great OC’s are doing well… but seriously, that’s the best Anet can do in terms of optimization? It’s pretty obvious they have not put any effort into making this any better either. Ultra shadows and all reflections still cause massive camera stuttering and that issue has been around since the game launched (possibly in beta… I don’t recall).

A 690 hits 90 FPS on the heaven benchmarks. “Crappy” for a 690 in gw2 is the equivalent of “stellar” for graphics cards that DON’T cost as much alone as the vast majority of entire PC setups.

Or are you saying you drop below 50? Because if you are, I have a bridge to sell you. I limit my fps to 60 on a sandy bridge I7 at a similar clock rate and have zero issues with a card that cost 1/3 as much.