Guild Wars 2

Yes yes, I’ve read through the forums. For some reason the dev’s stance on this is that it should be disabled for anything with 2 cores or less. However, it really should not be. The power of the CPU has little to no affect on performance when it comes to textures.

What DOES affect the CPU is how many things are happening simultaneously. Particle effects, people running around (just the fact there are people, not how high quality they are.) I can turn my graphics setting to low and not break 40fps in the cities because you decided that every single NPC should be loaded all the time. You didn’t create an option for that. I can however turn down how many players are visible (affects CPU+GPU), and how many of them are in their armor or stock armor (affects nothing because they are still there, and still have to be controlled by the CPU and drawn by the GPU.)

I have a hard time believing that the dev’s don’t know this. Yet, if they do. Let’s look at these: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-2100-vs-AMD-Phenom-II-X6-Black-1100T that’s an old 6 core AMD vs a 1st generation i3 dual core. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-4160-vs-AMD-Phenom-II-X6-Black-1100T here’s the same AMD vs a 5th generation i3 dual core. You’re completely ignoring CPU efficiency over quantity. I’m running a 5th gen i5-5200U. Dual core with hyperthreading. You’re telling me that old AMD is going to be able to run the textures better than me? I think not. (P.S. This is an example, no a fanboy statement. I could have used an old intel server CPU as the example.)

I’d have an easier time believing this if they were disabled for low amounts of VRAM. But, even then, that can be offset by system memory. There is no reason to disable that option other than, “because we said so!” You’re basically calling people idiots. You’re assuming they won’t experiment with the graphics settings to find what works best for them. Maybe some people won’t, but that’s THEIR problem. Don’t make it MINE.

Thank you, have a good day.

Open %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/GFXSettings.Gw2.exe.xml

Set the value:

<OPTION Name="highResCharacter" Registered="True" Type="Bool" Value="true"/>

Make the file read-only.

(I’m assuming it still works)

dashrem.4368:

You’re basically calling people idiots. You’re assuming they won’t experiment with the graphics settings to find what works best for them.

They are. Most don’t.

They didn’t disable it for no reason because that would have been a waste of resources. That setting was likely a common complaint they had to deal with and the majority with only 2 cores are likely using older hardware.

Healix.5819: “They didn’t disable it for no reason because that would have been a waste of resources. That setting was likely a common complaint they had to deal with and the majority with only 2 cores are likely using older hardware.”

The CPU has little to do with texture quality. It’s a bad fix. This is amateur level knowledge. If they wanted a fix like that, disabling Shader Quality, Post-Processing, and SSAO/HBAO effects would have been better. Shader Quality and SSAO/HBAO because they can wreck a mainstream GPU. I can’t turn it on to any level and I am using 940M. Shader Quality draws extra details on surfaces using your GPUs shaders, which is a poor idea – could have done this by using layered textures at much less requirements. SSAO/HBAO puts dark spots in corners and angles of textures and around foliage, barely noticeable but costly. Post-Processing because it’s a purely useless aesthetic setting that puts a large load on the CPU.

Game developers are not realizing that even the cheapest GPUs can handle high resolution textures. Last generation nVidia 820 (slowest possible card) has 2gb of VRAM @ 1800MHz. Dumping texture quality/resolution is DUMB. Makes the game look like crap and offers the smallest performance boost.

I paid for the game and I should be able to play it without it looking like it was slapped together in MS Paint. Sorry other people can’t figure it out, but once again – why should that be MY problem?

Edit: Also, editing that file and making it read-only didn’t work. Heck, I went in and revoked SYSTEM, USER, and Admin rights and it still turned itself off. Magic, that is.

First two cores is required.

I think it’s because the texture load from the dat file and the likely is one of the lesser threads that runs. On a two core system that means time will be taken from the two main threads which will impact framerate. When you have more than two cores, doesn’t hurt it as much.

Don’t forget, this is Dx9. GPU memory management is developer controlled rather than part of the API. Also from what I’ve seen, the game doesn’t use much more than 1GB of video memory so if you have loads more, it doesn’t help.

Behellagh.1468:

First two cores is required.

I think it’s because the texture load from the dat file and the like is one of the lesser threads that runs. On a two core system that means time will be taken from the two main threads which will impact framerate. When you have more than two cores, doesn’t hurt it as much.

Don’t forget, this is Dx9. GPU memory management is developer controlled rather than part of the API. Also from what I’ve seen, the game doesn’t use much more than 1GB of video memory so if you have loads more, it doesn’t help.

MORE than 2 cores is required now.

I am using 1.14gb of RAM standing in Hoelbrak.

Load times are dependent on RAM, VRAM, and HDD speeds. It’s barely a tick for the CPU.

I have read multiple threads where people running 2 cores were fine before the setting was locked out. Never take choices away from people. Never.

A third core always significantly improved the performance since launch. As they’ve been working on the engine they changed something where players were now reporting issues in frame rate. That was ANet’s easy fix based on what they thought the problem was at the time and that was the lockout of HR Textures. Now I’ve only seen that done before when it was a VRAM size issue.

I have a 4 core / 4 thread i5 6600k.
-No Hi-Res Character Textures
-Low/Med only for Textures

Everything looks great and moves smoothly but I can’t help wondering what I am missing

Now that’s weird.

Evolving Minotaur.5871:

I have a 4 core / 4 thread i5 6600k.
-No Hi-Res Character Textures
-Low/Med only for Textures

If you use a CPU utility (like CPU-Z) to look at your CPU, it’ll likely be displayed as only having 3 or less cores. If this is the case, you’re not using the full power of your CPU.

Worst case, there’s something wrong with the CPU and it can’t be fixed. You may need to update your BIOS and/or reseat the CPU. If at some point you upgraded your CPU however, Windows may be the problem. If you open msconfig for example, you can limit the number of cores used under the advanced boot options. Ensure this hasn’t been set (uncheck number of processors). If it is unchecked however and the drop down doesn’t show the number of cores you expect, then you’ll need to use a utility to fix Windows (or perform a clean install).