Guild Wars 2

I’ve followed the advice in the sticky above about fps issues with no success. As it stands now I cannot even move in game. I’m running at 1 FPS, likely less than that.

I suspect it may be my bargain bin graphics card but that’s really just a shot in the dark as I have minimal tech knowledge.

Windows 7 (Service Pack 1 Installed)
Intel® Core™ 2CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz 2.13GHz
64-bit Operating System
2 GB RAM
GeForce 9400GT

…And Plenty of HDD space.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

9400GT is actually below the minimum requirement of HD3000 integrated GPU.

Your RAM and CPU are a bit low as well. I’m commenting because I have a similar (older) rig that generally gets a steady 30+ fps in most areas on (mostly) medium settings. I’ve got 4GB of RAM though. My card and CPU are a bit better as well (9800 GTX+ and a Core 2 duo E7400 which I’ve overclocked a bit) but I wouldn’t think your rig should be doing THAT much worse than mine.

Contrary to what the kirito said, I believe your graphics card exceeds the minimum requirements. I’m looking at the box right now and it says 7800 or better, which is an older card. Guild Wars 2 is also said to be more CPU intensive than GPU intensive, so with these things in mind I highly doubt the culprit is your graphics card.

Your processor and RAM are right at the bare minimum requirements for the game, however. So I imagine those are the culprits, especially if there are a lot of background applications draining them down.

The first thing I’d do is look into simplifying things as much as possible as far as what you’ve got running in the background. Next I’d lower in-game graphics settings (which I assume you’ve already tried) but especially things like shadows and draw distance which tend to be the most CPU intensive.

If the game is still virtually unplayable, the next cheapest thing to do would be to try adding more RAM. You’ll definitely want to make sure you’ve got at least one more open slot for RAM on your motherboard, and make sure you’re getting the right kind and everything. If you’ve got a friend with the same type of RAM, you might try and borrow one of his sticks before you buy some.

After that, if it still doesn’t work well enough to play, or you’re lacking RAM slots on your motherboard, it’s probably time to get a new computer. I mean, a CPU upgrade is likely going to require a new motherboard, and a new motherboard might require a new graphics card, and all of that might require a new case and power supply… it all kind of chains together into a several hundred dollar lump at that point.

You MIGHT see if you can overclock your CPU to get more out of it, which usually is easier to do now-a-days than it used to be. However, it depends on your CPU and heating conditions, and can be risky to attempt (some CPU’s, especially older ones, don’t automatically shut off when they overheat, so the potential is there that it can completely burn itself up and be unusable), so I can’t recommend it if you’re not very tech savvy.

Yes, 2GB is very low. Likely the game is running partially on paged ram off the HD.

However, 9400 GT is very low end. Scores only 204. While a HD3000 scores 323. Being the bare min spec requirement, it still plays gw2 pretty laggy at low settings.

SwiftWrath’s 9800 GTX scores 1,134 vast difference there.

Yup CPU is slightly above min spec.

So All three things combined will result in horrible performance in GW2.

kirito.4138:

Yes, 2GB is very low. Likely the game is running partially on paged ram off the HD.

However, 9400 GT is very low end. Scores only 204. While a HD3000 scores 323. Being the bare min spec requirement, it still plays gw2 pretty laggy at low settings.

SwiftWrath’s 9800 GTX scores 1,134 vast difference there.

Yup CPU is slightly above min spec.

So All three things combined will result in horrible performance in GW2.

Those scores are pretty much unrelated as hell,anyway,Its just time to upgrade your system.9400 is getting pretty old and was already a low end card in its prime time,,and 2 gb is barely enough to even run gw2 since it takes up about 2.8gb max on my system.

How are those scores unrelated?

So I put in an old Geforce 9400 GT I had and took out my two 7970s just for giggles on my system to see how it would perform in GW2 in LA specifically.

At Best appearance: 3-4 fps

At Best Performance: 17-20 fps

And in pve solo:

Best Appearance: 5-6 fps

Best Performance 35-60 fps (mostly 40 fps)

Hope this helps.

Thats fps results with a i7-3930K which is much better CPU than core 2 e6400 too.

Well many said the 9400 was under min reqs. It is perfectly playable if you don’t have an old CPU. In this case its most likely his CPU. It still wouldn’t hurt upgrading the video card but his CPU is causing most of his problems.

Thanks for all your responses. Looks like GW2 is, for me, going on the shelf for a while.

I find GW2 is not as graphic card intensive as some other games such as SWTOR even, but it is pretty CPU intensive for a mmo. It seems to like 4 cores, so with that fact and the 9400 it could just be too much. I find with a quad core, gtx 560 and 4 gigs of ram I can run ultra and get around 30 fps consistently and 60 in the open areas. 2x 9800gtx+ are equivalent pretty much to a 560.

Obviously, new cpu is the most expensive fix of it all, but you could buy some more ram, toss in another 9400 in sli which wouldnt be expensive to get and get by I bet. All of that would be less than $100.

The next mmo though is going to eat your system lunch so start saving