Guild Wars 2

Howdy,

I have had all kinds of strange graphics artifacts since the 2nd beta weekend and I have tried everything I can think of to fix them. I’ve tried 4 different drivers now and the one that I’m currently using is 306.02 beta. The artifacts sometimes appear quite frequently and sometimes don’t show up at all, however when they do show up I can alt+tab out of the game and pull it back up. That seems to momentarily fix it. Please help, I sent in a support ticket a while back but haven’t heard anything, It’s getting to the point to where I don’t even want to play anymore until it gets fixed because it’s such an issue. I have included the guild wars 2 test file in the attachments with my computer specs.

This looks like a hardware issue. Your graphic card is going to die. My bet. Now other opinions.

On a side, note, I do monitor my card. It’s not overclocked at all and doesn’t run any hotter than 68c during extended gameplay. Every other game that I play runs flawlessly. Guild wars 2 is the only game that has any issues.

Yeah, it looks like a failing GPU. Strange that it doesnt happen in other games though. Exact same problem i had with my last few dying cards

Sorry to see that..My GPU dies a couple of day after looking like that several years ago..Best of luck.

What kind of temperature is your CPU hitting on load? I’ve had artifacts with CPU overheating as well, not just GPU.

I only ever saw the third picture happen to me, but very very very rarely. Running the latest BETA driver on a GTX 560m.

CPU shouldn’t be overheating as I have a pretty serious aftermarket cooler on it. I don’t even bother monitoring the temp anymore but tomorrow I’ll check the temp on it during play.

Morrigan.6508 I had a problem like that. What I did was change render sampling in the graphics options from native to supersample.

CPU temp was between 43-46c during play, nothing to be concerned with. I’ll try changing the render sampling to see what happens. I also have antialiasing and vsync turned off.

Try capping your FPS to 60 under options.

Hi I’m a computer tech and i have been replacing hardware and building systems for years, and this looks like tearing typically caused by a failing gpu however i play rift on one of my machines and it does this to. Nothing else causes the issues like gw2 etc. Possably its vsync and/or overheating. Good luck i hope its just heat thats easy to fix with a slot fan (vantec) blowing on the back of the card.

http://www.acousticpc.com/vantec_spectrum_fan_card_cooler.html

I have a second card coming back from nvidia. I had SLI but had to RMA one of the cards due to mechanical failure. I’ll swap them out to see what happens. I don’t think it’s heat though, it never gets above 68c during play. BF3 tops out at around 79c and it never has any problems.

As a computer tech I can tell you right now that there are few things that might be the problem.

As few people have already mentioned the most probable cause is GPU about to die, how ever there are few other things:

There seems to be overall problem with nvidia cards/drivers & GW2 atm, what you could do is use driver sweeper to remove your drivers from your pc and try reinstalling them (might fix the issue/might not). Or we can hope to get some better drivers soon.

Also there is one more thing that might cause graphical artifacts, and it is RAM failing, it is very rarely the case, but in this case you would have some issues outside the game to. If nothing else helps do a memtest

Hope you sort it out.

My best guess would be poop drivers or some kind of memory leak. I’ve tried 4 different drivers now using driver sweeper to uninstall the old drivers before putting in the new ones. I capped the FPS to 60 and set the render sampling to supersampling. I haven’t had any issues (so far) today, I’ll put more hours into it tonight and test it out more. When I have time tonight I’ll run a memtest app and I’ll put the new GPU in when it gets back from nvidia to rule those out. I’ll post again in a few days with an update.

@ OP

you by chance wouldn’t be forcing AA through Nvidia Inspector, would you? The first pic you posted has me asking that. The AA flag (0×00401240) doesn’t work well on some systems and has been known to cause graphical issues like the ones being showed in the pictures you posted.

There is an issue with the latest 306.02 Nvidia drivers that produces visual artifacts and transparent textures on some cards:

After experiencing this problem on my 560 Ti I went back to the previous 304.79 drivers and the problem went away, so the issue is definitely with those drivers.

I tweeted the issue to @Nvidia and @GuildWars2 although neither responded.

You may want to try the older drivers in case this is the problem you are experiencing.

AA is set to Application controlled in the nvidia control panel. I did in fact try the 304.79 drivers as they were the drivers recommended by ANet but I had the same issue on them as I did on the others. I received an email back from tech support with a list of things to try; I only barely managed to change my settings before the servers went down for maintenance. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see if it fixed anything.

Also, Game Adviser is uploaded under the three pictures as “Guild_Wars_2_Test”.

Same problem for me, Zotac 560 Ti (448) edition. i5 2500k.. Been happining scince 2 or 3 beta ago. Tried alot of diffrent drivers. Its not a temp problem as card only reached 50 Degrees or so. Also play BF3 on Ultra with no problem at all.

This only happens when Supersampling is Enabled. If i choose Subsample the Blue squares dissapear.

Might be a long shot. Can anyone try adding the -dx9single to your shortcut target line?

@MidgetMonk
Does this occurs in “Native” setting as well? Afaik supersampling render things higher than your native resolution.

Seems to be ok with Native, Will update once i play more tomorow. Cant Add the command to Target it says ‘invalid target’…

Should look like this

“C:\xxxx\Guild Wars 2\gw2.exe” -dx9single

Don’t use supersampling for now

Added the command to the target and it didnt change for me. Native seems to be ok.. But not as nice to look at as supersampling??

thanks for your help.

There might be error in supersampling other than that you can remove the dx9single and just pick auto detect on you graphic card you might want to stay on native too

Although I do not have a nvidia card, I’m having almost the excact problem that are show in the videos linked by Gaff.

Running a club3D 7850 royalQueen 1gb card. No issues with temp’s it seems cool enough.

The new driver from amd 12.8, if anything made it worse :\

It’s there from the time i log in and dosent seem to get worse or better over the log in period.

It is pretty wierd standing in open air, when on a mountain :\ and it can make part of the game unplayble etc. vistas where you have to “find” a way to it.

So I do not think this is only a nvidia problem. But on the other hand I haven’t really seen many/any post about “graphic environment disappearing” with amd cards.

Last time this happened to me on my 6800gt it was about to die. Seemed like a capacitor became damaged.

Card lasted maybe 1 month longer, games would hard lock after a few moments of graphical error.

First: Try my suggestion in this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/GTX260-GPU-running-at-about-60/first#post16173

Second. Try uninstalling your graphic, boot in safe mode and run DriverSweeper to clean all your graphic drivers. Install the graphic driver again and give it a try.

You can get DriverSweeper from here:
http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

So I got a response from the support ticket I put in and it fixed the problem. This is what they told me to do.

1. Right-click on your desktop and select “Nvidia Control Panel.”
2. Once opened, left-click on “3D settings” and select “Adjust image settings with preview.”
3. Select “Use my preference emphasizing” and move the slider to “Performance.”
4. Select “Use the advanced 3D image settings” and left click on “Take me there.”

This should take you to the “Manage 3D Settings” window. Once here:
5. Change “Power Management mode” to “Prefer maximum performance.”
6. Change “Multi-display/mixed GPU acceleration” to “Single display performance mode.”
7. Change “Vertical Sync” to “Use the 3D application settings.”
Once completed, click “Apply” and start up Guild Wars 2.

Once loaded, access the “Graphic Options” window and make the following changes:
1. Change “Refresh Rate” to “60 Hz.”
2. Change “Frame Limiter” to “60.”
3. Change “Reflections” to “None.”
4. Change “Render Sampling” to “Supersample” then back to “Native.”
5. Enable “Vertical Sync” at the bottom.

I think the problem was that I have 2 cards, a 560 ti i use for gaming and a 430 fermi i use to run 2 extra monitors. I think the 560 wasnt getting enough power because the nvidia control panel was set on multi display performance mode. I hope this helps everyone else, I have played for 2 days now with no problems after I put in these changes.

Thanks for posting that..

So you are playing with No reflections and Native sampling?

I also had a second monitor(tv) in the second slot on my 560 but with it disabled / unplugged makes no diffrence..

You think its a PSU issue then? i dunno how DX9 GW2 can use more than BF3 on ultra tho?

Im glad you have it sorted but im having to play with Subsample only

For what it’s worth, my 460 GTX handles supersampling fine.

Found my answer, Didnt realise shadows can go to ‘Ultra’ with this enabled artifacts are gone and supersampling is enabled :-).

Cancel that, its Native i can have now..still squares with supersampling.

My GTX680 with 306.23 which is WHQL also has this issue. Where sometimes textures go semi transparent and I can see right through them, makes it impossible to play, most of the time it’s the ground, others it just affects things randomly, by reverting to the previous WHQL drivers this issue is gone.

I’m playing at 1920×1080 with everything on high, (note shadows are also on high not ultra).

I had this problem as well. Turning reflections off cleared it up. Doesn’t seem to happen on the non beta drivers though.