Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m still getting very low FPS even though I have a high end computer. I’ve tried everything I could think of. Does anyone have a fix for this at all?

CPU: i7-3820 @ 3.6GHz
GPU: 2x Gefore GTX 680 (SLI)
RAM: 16GHz
Graphics Driver: 310.33
Monitor: Samsung SA750 (120Hz)
Monitor Res: 1920×1080

PVE – 50-120 FPS
PVE – Boss battles – 20-50 FPS
WvW – 40-70 FPS
Wvw – Zerg/Major Battles – 15-30 FPS

Doesn’t matter if i set to a lower graphics setting in WvW – i still get 15-30 FPS regardless.

Any help will be appreciated.

i honestly think its the game, your computer is better than mine (and mine still isnt ‘bad’) and i get way lower fps than i thought i should have to the point im kind of mad because every other game in existence runs better than this game.

Very true, every other game i play runs very smooth. I would like to hear from someone who can constant 60+ FPS in WvW Major Battles. I would be very interested to see their specs.

yeah i dont even think NASA has a computer than can get constant 60 FPS.

Same FPS as you, nearly exactly the same but with an i5 2500k on 4.2 ghz and a single GTX 680. The game is pooooorly optimized making it no difference wether you have sli gpus or not. Overclocking your cpu might help though.
Off topic:
I’m buying that samsung monitor you use, how is it?

There aren’t any people getting 60 FPS constant .. From what i can tell ppl always drop pretty danm low in massive fights..

this is the monitor i have, got it on ebay for cheap…and got glasses for free even tho they were never advertised with it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236092

(best monitor ive ever owned)

I was actually planning to upgrade to a I5 3750 but after reading this i am starting to feel it won’t be worth it … How much FPS do you get in LA like the near the old statue

Those FPS sound about right.

If you want to understand why read this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ/first#post504481

But all you can do now is Overclock that CPU for better WvWvW fps.

Those FPS for your system actually sound about right. You Render Sampling should be on Relative (Default) and optionally set your Shadows to None to get try and get a FPS boost.

Other then that the only way to see an improvement would be to downgrade your CPU to the overclockable version and overclock it over 4.50 Ghz.

@ dacooli.6712

The monitor is great! when you can sustain 120 fps its incredible. highly recommend it for 2D. 3D issn’t the best on it though.

@ Gibbel.5734

about 40 FPS in Lions Arch

Thanks all, i guess i have wait until its fully optimized and just bare with the low fps until then.

My advice is to get a good water cooler and jack that kitten up to 4.5ghz and you’ll be getting a lot better fps in WvW. If you’re not comfortable with setting up an open loop water cooler, check out the h80 and h100 from corsair. Both will keep that cpu cool at 4.5ghz easily.

i’ve heard many with 680’s complain, i think it’s just as much a driver problem tbh.

Currently the only driver that gives me stable 60 fps is the 304.79 driver. the newer the driver the worse, i dunno what nvidia is doing each driver update but its not for the better, at least not on my 2 570’s

And turn of reflections, it completely ruins the fps, at least for me, can get 60 fps in LA as long as reflection is off – everything else on high.

Also something seems to be wrong with sli or my i5 2500k is to weak to feed gfx cards cause i’m rarely over 50% usage.

On a sidenote i highly recommend the samsung SA850T 1440p monitor its amazing xD

What needs to be done besides forcing us to spend cash to beef up our already beefy PCs, is to optimize the living daylights out of there current rendering engine, with all the improvements and changes they added to there GW engine you’d think they would have at least tested its performance maxed out vs low settings.

An ppl with Really high end PCs with OCed CPUs and highend GPUs weather its single or SLI’d/Xfire are getting some of the worst FPS ? That’s just wrong when you look at the system I’m using and I get better on average FPS for the system I have.

System being a X4 955BE @ 3.9GHz, 8GB DDR3 1600MHz, HD4890, and I play at 1680×1050 with mostly high settings minus shadows which are set to medium, and I average 45+ PvE and 35+ in LA or any other crowded city, lowest I have seen is 15-20 FPS in big boss battles. I don’t do WvW cause that would prob make my ancient HD4890 explode lolz but I could guess it would be bad :/, but yes to say the least they need to work on the rendering engine A LOT :/.

Anyone that come here and say those performance sound about right are out of their mind. Like seriously, his pc should get a constant 60fps no matter the situation , stop defending Anet for their bad coding work. This is getting pretty ridiculous.

965BE @ 3.8
8gb RipjawsX @ 1600
GW2 running off main SSD
MSI 660ti OC (tried diff drivers using Sweeper)
1920×1080
Win7 64

Ultra? No way. I have to turn reflections OFF, Shaders LOW/MED and shadows OFF/LOW if I want any sort of fun, smooth experience. Super frustrating. Lions Arch just won’t run smooth no matter what I do.

I’ve also run GPUZ and CPUID logging in the bg multiple times and neither my CPU nor my GPU max out, EVER. Scratch this. Tested some more tonight with different tool…My 965 is getting hammered.

Regardless… I can’t stop playing this game

I am running a Phenom II 965 @ 4ghz with a HD6870 in crossfire.
Like kirito explained to me even if you CPU isnt showing MAX load it’s because the main game thread is maxed out.
Basiclly any AMD cpu isn’t fast enough to get good FPS in WvW or in Towns.

But then again after reading this not even the latest INTEL cpu’s are capable off getting 30+ FPS at all times..

Obviously this has to be fixed cause if you need to OC the best cpu’s on the market to keep the game running 30+ fps in any situation then it’s cleary a sign of bad coding no matter what they say.

Oh i am getting average 25-35 FPS at fountian in LA any other town it’s always 30 +
WvW can drops as low as 12 fps and events about the same.

I’m running an i5 3570k that isnt overclocked yet as I just bought it 2 months ago, a GTX 480 and 8GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM @1600mhz, windows 7 64bit, 1680×1050 monitor and GW2 running off a SSD. I get around 60fps when running around and when I get into a big fight it goes down to around 40~ Here’s a screeny of all my settings.

I lost all hope for solid performance in this game. I mean I would run on low settings of it would give me 60 fps constant, but it just stays at ~50 regardless if I have settings on max or low. It’s not a bottleneck.

I still play the game a lot but the performance issues are really annoying

actually lower the graphics option only reduce gpu heat and fan speed, the framerate doesn’t seem to improve at all.

If lowering graphic settings (low or high) doesn’t change FPS, the CPU is being bottlenecked.
Read Question #4 [here]

Indeed the CPU is usualy what is causing people low fps. However i will deffinatly agree that GW2 has optimization issues. ATM though we as players cant od naything about that. So the only choice is to deal wiht it ..or sort out your CPU.

Any up to date Intel CPU running under 4.5ghz will likely drop under 30fps ingame.
From other people specs and posts including my own 4.5ghz is the sweet spot in regards ot keeping above 30 fps in ‘nearly’ all circomstances.

If you have an AMD cpu it wont matter how far you OC, AMD cpu’s aint great with single thread performance and GW2 additionaly has somthing against AMD it seems :P

So if you have an iisue with FPS and changing ingame grpahics options do little to help, its likely your cpu is to slow ‘per thread’ for the way GW2 runs.

Again its obviose GW2 has optimsation issues ..but for now …a faster cpu = better performance.

I can hold 60fps (min) in almost any area in the game. I have an i7 3770 OC to 4.6 Ghz, and dual GTX 670 cards. 1080p highest settings w/ reflections set to terrain & sky.

Even in WvW it’s smooth.

There are places on the map where I have surprisingly low fps, but they are the exception.

My friend got a very good i7 oc’ed to 4.5 ghz on water cooling and hes dropping in the 20’s fps in wvwvw and he probably dip lower then that sometimes. So yeah to pull a steady 30fps in wvwvw in this game you need a cpu out of this world, this is not right.

Natas.1306:

Anyone that come here and say those performance sound about right are out of their mind. Like seriously, his pc should get a constant 60fps no matter the situation , stop defending Anet for their bad coding work. This is getting pretty ridiculous.

I’m with this guy.

Lets all just hope that there is an optimization patch in the works.

I’m running on a 4 year old system,

gtx 295
i7 920
6 gb ddr3

I never drop below 30 fps EVER. even in WvW. I just hate anything below 60. If my system performs ok in this game and someone with 2x 680 and a top of the line i7 can barely pull 30 fps then this game is broke.

And Kirito, please kitten A bottleneck only occurs when your cpu is generations behind your gpu and even if that, a simple oc will destroy the bottleneck. It seems like the answer to all the questions you are answering is “THE CPU R A BAWTLENECK, PLZ C MAI THREAD.” This game is broken.

doesn’t matter how many generation a CPU is behind a GPU or how badly coded/optimize something is. If its the CPU usage is maxed out, it is the bottleneck and GPU is idling. You fix it by either getting faster hardware or optimizing software.

obviously you haven’t read it or simply don’t understand it. Many people ponder the same questions, linking is better than rephrase/retyping repeatedly.

Either way I’m laying this 965be to rest and picking up an intel asap. Will be my first one since…well…ever. Been with AMD since my K6-III… Don’t care about 8 cores. Need me some FPS.

I would agree that it’s not as simple as stating you would only see a CPU bottleneck with generation differences.

My CPU and GPU are recent, and I am pretty sure the CPU is bottlenecking in some spots on the map in PVE. This because of measurements, and because of how I can normally get high fps except in some spots – in those spots I don’t see the GPU being hammered…so I suspect CPU limiting.

i920, 12 GB ram
I replaced my RAID0 SAS with a sata3 SSD (MLC) and my GTX 285 with a new GTX 660.

Just turning around in LA gives me 8 fps. WvW is simply not playable. Please don’t tell me the CPU is the bottleneck.

How can there be a CPU bottleneck?
-None of our CPUs are running at 100%
-You all keep saying “the cpu is being maxed out at 25% because it separates it on 4 cores”. This would make sense, although most of us running on i7’s have HT enabled, making that 8 cores instead of 4, so the CPU can’t possibly be maxed out.
-There’s a difference between a bottleneck and this game only using 2-3 threads. If 2-3 threads of your CPU are being maxed out and your other 5 cores aren’t being touched then it is an issue with the game’s engine, not your CPU! A CPU is only bottlenecked when it’s at full load, which is apparently impossible in this game.
-Run prime 95 on your Quad Core CPUs. You’ll notice that all of your CPU cores go up to 100% – not 25%. That immediately proves your whole theory of 4 cores/100%= 25%/core wrong.

Kirito, you’re just giving everyone on here a huge reason to waste money on a new system. Granted, if your system is sub-par then yes, that is understandable, but it you’re just running around saying CPU bottleneck.

Home Style.9640:

How can there be a CPU bottleneck?
-None of our CPUs are running at 100%
-You all keep saying “the cpu is being maxed out at 25% because it separates it on 4 cores”. This would make sense, although most of us running on i7’s have HT enabled, making that 8 cores instead of 4, so the CPU can’t possibly be maxed out.
-There’s a difference between a bottleneck and this game only using 2-3 threads. If 2-3 threads of your CPU are being maxed out and your other 5 cores aren’t being touched then it is an issue with the game’s engine, not your CPU! A CPU is only bottlenecked when it’s at full load, which is apparently impossible in this game.
-Run prime 95 on your Quad Core CPUs. You’ll notice that all of your CPU cores go up to 100% – not 25%. That immediately proves your whole theory of 4 cores/100%= 25%/core wrong.

Kirito, you’re just giving everyone on here a huge reason to waste money on a new system. Granted, if your system is sub-par then yes, that is understandable, but it you’re just running around saying CPU bottleneck.

it is cpu bottleneck. you said it your self the games uses 2-3 cores. It matter more if your core are fast then there are more.

btw you are doing cpu usage math wrong
100 percent on 2 core on a quad core equals with 2 core idle equals

100%(percent usage) * 2(core running) /4(core available) = 50% total usage

No it is not seperate on 4 core intel compilers are not that smart

DO NOT USE SYNTHETIC BENCHMARKS TO JUSTIFY CPU PERFORMANCE
games are complex beast and they are not heavy parellel program. Using a syntehtic benchmarks to justify cpu usage is wrong. Note: PS3 is theoretically faster than xbox360. Real world performance xbox360 is king due to it ram architecture and faster graphic card.

Disable HT. It is an Intel scam. It is a worthless feature that is a waste of die space

btw, listen to Kirito. he is right

@Home Style: go back to prime95, change the worker thread count to 2, and tell me what happens. Is there 100% total usage? Are your cores being maxed? No.

Also we’re hitting 75% CPU usage on a quad (not hyperthreading garbage) during the larger WvW and PVE battles, so even if ANet did make the game more parallel, we’d be seeing less than a 25% increase. I wouldn’t hold my breath for the 100-200% increase til the next couple years where part of that difference will come from next gen hardware and part of it from Arena.

Only way to tell if it’s CPU bound is to look at the the threads running on each core, and the utilization for those cores IMO.

I would say that if some core is being utilized at nearly 100%, and the thread using the most time is a GW thread, there’s a good chance you are seeing a CPU bottleneck.

Home Style.9640:

How can there be a CPU bottleneck?
-None of our CPUs are running at 100%
-You all keep saying “the cpu is being maxed out at 25% because it separates it on 4 cores”. This would make sense, although most of us running on i7’s have HT enabled, making that 8 cores instead of 4, so the CPU can’t possibly be maxed out.
-There’s a difference between a bottleneck and this game only using 2-3 threads. If 2-3 threads of your CPU are being maxed out and your other 5 cores aren’t being touched then it is an issue with the game’s engine, not your CPU! A CPU is only bottlenecked when it’s at full load, which is apparently impossible in this game.
-Run prime 95 on your Quad Core CPUs. You’ll notice that all of your CPU cores go up to 100% – not 25%. That immediately proves your whole theory of 4 cores/100%= 25%/core wrong.

Kirito, you’re just giving everyone on here a huge reason to waste money on a new system. Granted, if your system is sub-par then yes, that is understandable, but it you’re just running around saying CPU bottleneck.

Please “re-read” Question #7 #8 here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ/first#post504481

The argument points you have presented has already been explained in detail there. Similarly, other people have replied with the same response invalidating your logic. But, you either don’t have the mental capacity to comprehend or simply never bothered reading it. Please, do your homework next time.

I am not making up reasons for people to buy new hardware, it is mere fact and measurable one. It is more likely you are too unwilling to accept the thought that your system is not the beast it was built to be & in denial. No matter how powerful a system can be, software can be coded to bring it down to its knees, whether its poorly written or not.

Ran the game at first with an i5-750 @ 3.8GHz, old GTX 260, SSD and 4 GB RAM at high settings (everything on max except reflections set to sky and terrain, AA off and post processing off).
Worked kinda ok. Sure, FPS were only around 20-35, but for the most zones it was enough, even in big events with dozens of players. Only when I entered jungle-type zones, it dropped to 15 fps, which was simply not enough. So I bought a GTX 660 and it is now super fast, at maximum settings. Getting 60 fps (vsync on) all day, with rare and short drops to around 40 fps.

The bigger problem with this game is that it has MASSIVE load stuttering. I mean, when I switch to the desktop (with GW2 set to fullscreen in options) and switch back to GW2, the first few camera spins stutter horribly, you can actually call them freezes in that situation. And that is loading from a fast SSD!!! Normal load stuttering while playing is barely tolerable, but still annoying sometimes.

Oh and yeah those load stutters do show on the FPS. I am pretty sure some people experience this here, because if it stutters that horribly on an SSD, it will stutter MUCH worse on an HDD.

Oh and my CPU usage is around 60-70%, with one of the cores almost maxed out, while the other 3 are around 30% or so – typical for games that are not well multi core optimized.

Hello, Cool Hand. I do see what you call load stuttering, but only occasionally. I noticed that when increased reflections to all, it got worse; so maybe one solution is to reduce reflections.

But it does not happen much. Even when scouting for vistas where I look around a lot, I don’t see that too often.

It would be fatal in a racing game, heh. But seems acceptable to me in this game.

@Homestyle

Another thing you need ot understand is that hyperthreading on for example a 4core system does not = 8 cores ..it = 8 THREADS ..its still 4 cores.

The THREADS are what are maxing out with GW2 meaning a single core with hyperthreading will not show 100% usuage.
If you have a 2500k ..thats 4 cores 4 threads ..that will show roughly 75% usuage and be maxed out for GW2.
A 3930k on the other hand has 6 cores and 12 threads ..so it will max out at around 25% for GW2.

Here is the math.

100/number of threads x 3
Where:
100 = a percentage
Number of Threads = Number of threads your cpu has (not cores)
3 = the number of threads GW2 uses for its main performance
So for example.
2500k:
100/4 × 3 = 75

3930k:
100/12 × 3 = 25

This may not be totaly accurate but its kitten close and it works out correct with what most people see. I see around 25% usuage when my fps takes a nose dive and my gpu usage drops.
Its not always the case as GW2 can cap out on only 1 or 2 threads in certain situation with a 2nd and/or 3rd thread also being highly used…meaning its more like 100/threads x 2.5… which again i have seen in some situations my CPU reaching 20% then my fps drops.
It all depends on the threads being used and how they are being used.
In the case of GW2 using 2.5 threads a 4thread cpu would cap at roughly 63%

So you could say a 4thread cpu is potential capped between 63% and 75% depending on the situation. Also note when 1 core = 1 thread ..you can see 1 or more cores actually at 99% usuage with GW2.

hope this helps.

michaeljhuman, some people think its bad, other dont care much. My friend for example actually thinks the whole game is slow because of that. And there are situations where it really can be annoying.
There are quite a few videos on youtube about it, showing how bad it can get.

And yes, its much worse with reflections on full.

@SolarNova lol, I think that’s too much #’s/text for Homestyle to grasp.

@Cool Hand have you tried running windowed fullscreen, switching between desktop and gw2 is smoother.

So what the purpose of this thread ?

-One side of peoples promoting peoples to all buy new hardware because Anet lied to us about system requirement by a lot.

-And the other side saying Anet optimization coding is bad.

Pick your side.

Just a little information to all the peoples repeating to everyone to buy new cpu’s and saying that your cpu a bottleneck. Run gw2 put it on 2 cores in the task manager and benchmark the performance, then put it to 3 and 4 cores and notice how performance barely increase. This is engine is badly coded right now it use cpu ressource terribly.

During beta week end1 i remember gw2 using only 30% of my cpu. Then as the beta week end 2 and 3 came cpu usage climbed up slowly and performance never got any better. And actually the performance of beta weekend 1 was probably the best one.

So yeah peoples need to seriously shut up about promoting everyone to buy new cpu and new hardware this is just misinformation, this game dont use cpu and gpu ressource properly.

Home Style.9640:

Kirito, you’re just giving everyone on here a huge reason to waste money on a new system. Granted, if your system is sub-par then yes, that is understandable, but it you’re just running around saying CPU bottleneck.

He just keep spamming this ridiculous cpu bottleneck post on every thread, just ignore him. My hardware perform 120+fps on every heavy new game, this is just poor optimization and bad coding. Period.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
CoolerMaster HAF 932 FULL ATX Advanced Blue Edition
Intel Core i5 Ivy Bridge 3570k Stable OC’ed to 4.5Ghz
Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Motherboard
16 Gigs of RAM G.Skill 1866 PC3 14900
XFX Radeon HD 6970 2 Gig, 256bit.
Corsair H100 Liquid Cooling (Push Pull Config with 4x 120mm Cougar CF-V 12HPB Fans)
Corsair TX 750, 80+ v2
2x ADATA SX900 SSD’s 2x 128gig in RAID=0 min 830mb/s max 1050 mb/s 3581.5 mb/s Burst
Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB 7200rpm
Seagate 3TB External USB 3.0
ASUS DVD RW Drive

^my rig and i get bad fps and dont dare tell me its my cpu or gpu your nuts this thing eats current games like kitten all arena net needs to optimize this kitten HARDCORE.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Home Style.9640:

Kirito, you’re just giving everyone on here a huge reason to waste money on a new system. Granted, if your system is sub-par then yes, that is understandable, but it you’re just running around saying CPU bottleneck.

He just keep spamming this ridiculous cpu bottleneck post on every thread, just ignore him. My hardware perform 120+fps on every heavy new game, this is just poor optimization and bad coding. Period.

Its not ridiculous, its mere fact and a measurable one. I am not denying GW2 isn’t optimized and could be better. If the hardware is bottlenecked, it is what it is. Whether due to good or bad code or if your other games has higher FPS. If you read the FAQ list i complied, it mentions multiple times GW2 isn’t optimized. You are directing your frustration at the wrong person.

People repeatedly ask why, want to understand why, and I provided that information. Not promoting anything. There is no magic fix atm.

You got two choices if you want better performance.
1) get better hardware to counter the bad code.
2) wait & pray that Anet will fix it and optimize.

With Shadows on high and reflections set to terrain and sky only, using 3D I am able to maintain 60fps while exploring outside, 45-50 in dragon fights, 30-60 in WvW, and 35-60 in towns. What I find very odd is that enabling stereoscopic 3D actually increases my average fps, when 3D is off, I can pull off 120fps outside but in large fights or towns the fps bounces around from 25 to 50.

What I do know for certain is that overclocking my i7 3930k to 4.82GHz made a significant difference, even if I just jump back and fourth from 4.0GHz to 4.82GHz there is a night and day difference of 10 fps avg increase.

And that Pelter is due to the increased single thread perofrmance given by that OC as you are probably aware.

However some people refuse to accept that there ‘new’ cpu is the issue. A new cpu if left on stock settings will be slow for GW2 .. YES GW2 is poorly optimized ..but we as the player can only do 1 thing to help get around that ..and thats to buy and OC a beafy Intel cpu.
If you dont want to or dont have the money to do that ..then thats all fine and dandy ..you will have to wait for Anet to ‘fix’ the the game engine performance ..untill then though ..dont throw your frustrations at those who are simply telling people what their options are. We never say its THE only option .we simply say its YOUR only option..as there is nothing else that YOU can do on your end.

(This is directed to those kittening at us who are just trying to help)

Don´t say those things about cpu …. friend of mine have intel core 2 duo or something like that which is kinda old CPU , and it´s worse then my phenom II x4 965 in many ways . He got even far worse GPU then me and yet , he is still able to keep the game running on mid/high settinngs and getting like 30-40 FPS pve and about 25-30 in towns …

It´s not like : Oh I spent 50€ on game which don´t run on my current rig , which is capable of maxing any game on market nowdays . I should buy new CPU cause mine isn´t sufficient .

That´s kinda bull**** , MMOs should be disigned for even older rigs … I wouldn´t say nothing if my PC was crappy , but this is just disapointing . I just sold D3 cause it sucked a lot , and I was looking for another game … aaand bang , this happend

Yes , u can take it as whining , but what else should be people do ? For somebody is 50€ a lot of money , especialy for me since I´m student and I´m not getting money from parents .

Only if I would at least see some feedback from Anet technicians , what are they doing , what seems to be problem , how long would it take to fix this problem or if they are fixing it already … Those things keeps comunity in calm and make them think that they are currently working on problem ( I´m not sayin that they are not already fixing it , but it would be nice if they would let us know about progress ) . It´s reasonable that teher will be more and more whiners , beacuse it´s only thing we can do , since we are getting no attention or feedback from oficial employees .