Guild Wars 2

I just started playing again today and noticed that my cpu usage jumps between 70 and 100% usage at times. I don’t know why that is, and if it’s normal or not. My computer specs are below and any help will be appreciated. Thanks

CPU : AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition @ 3.40 GHz (not overclocked)
RAM : 8 GB ( 4×2GB )
Graphics Card : AMD Radeon HD 6870

It’s normal, guild wars 2 is heavy on CPU. I had a Phenom II x4 945 @ 3.0ghz and was the same thing. Nothing to do about it.

It’s because Guild Wars 2’s engine was built for a single core, so you’re likely to max out one core while the others sit around doing nothing.

So theres no way around this I guess?

SolidWing.9241:

So theres no way around this I guess?

You could switch to an intel CPU which has slightly better single-core performance, but other than that, not that I know of.

bwillb.2165:

It’s because Guild Wars 2’s engine was built for a single core, so you’re likely to max out one core while the others sit around doing nothing.

It’s not built around one core. It’s performance is limited by the performance of a single core but it uses on average 2 to 3 core’s worth of CPU power. On a quad that’s normally 50-75% but can go higher at times.

you guys forgot 1 big thing, why would gw2 not use that much cpu? all what is not used is just waste, if the game actually used 100% of the horse power new i5/i7 got to offer it would be running alot smoother in WvW and other demanding places.

As said, more hardware usage, more fps. If you think you have more fps than needed you could cap it and have your components running at lower usage. But basically, the program will ask for your computer to do the calculations as fast as possible and therefore the usage is as high as the program demands. That being said, having high CPU usage is not dangerous, if it’s not running very hot or too many volts.

Programs don’t naturally use all cores in a CPU. They need to be designed to use as many CPUs are there are available.

No, of course not all of the cores. If that was the case, i7’s would be vastly superior to i5’s and AMD’s would be back in game in GW2. What I meant was that program tells a CPU (and nowadays the core architecture kinda means there are many CPU’s in one physical chip) to calculate something, and it tells it to do it now and fast and not when it feels like it unless you tell it to do that, of course, when it would lower the usage.

GW2 uses up to 6 cores on its own. You can use afinity to force it to spawn across 8+. However, the rendering thread – the main issue here- uses 1 core/1 thread.

AMD’s CPUs are weak in single threaded applications
Intel’s CPUs are strong in single threaded Applications

That is why its the way it is.

If the Rendering engine was split into 2 threads, we would see a 50-60% performance increase over what we have today. And AMD would stand a chance against Intel’s i-Series CPUs for this game/Application.

OP, its normal ..and what Sirsquishy said is correct.