Guild Wars 2

Intel i5-2500k CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 CPUs)
16 GB RAM
Windows 7 64-bit, Service Pack 1
ATI Radeon HD 5450 and ATI Radeon HD 5670

I get about 5-15 FPS in town and 5-30 FPS out in the world. When I have the map open, or when I’m at the character selection screen, it’s at 60 FPS where I have it capped.

I’ve looked through that CPU, GPU, and FPS FAQ thread, it seems that I have a GPU bottleneck – it’s running at 100% GPU load all the time. This setup I have uses two displays, but I’m quite sure that I made GW2 run on the display powered by the 5670. I’ve tried swapping the monitors around… doesn’t seem to help.

The computer I used to play on had a video card with 256 MB of dedicated VRAM, but I got better framerate on it – around a solid 25-40 outside of World v World or events with lots of people. I believe the 5670 I’m using has 1 GB of dedicated VRAM. I’ve also tried the small tweaks that I’ve found on these forums that made GW2 playable on my old computer, but they won’t work on this one. Not sure what’s going on.

Have you tried using just 1 display, not just swapping them around?

Those 2 are media cards not gaming cards. They will run slow no matter what u do. Try check if ur PCI e Port is running at 16x, download GPUz and post a screenshot of it while running the game. U can also get a midrange gaming card, lets say a GTX 650ti or a radeon HD 7770/7750. Those will run this game just fine since is not very heavy on the GPU side and u have a strong CPU.

CPU, GPU, and FPS FAQ thread

So you are saying the HD 5450 256mb has higher FPS than your HD 5670 1GB?

Also depends what settings/resolution between the two and what tweaks are you using? But i do recommend better a better GPU.

The 5670 is a little worse than a nvidia 9800M GT ..which is an OLD laptop card. I think you should most definatly update your GPU specialy since the rest of your rig is pritty much up to date baring a simple cpu OC which i also sugest you do to get the most out of it.

Use the website below to compare GPU performance
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Tried using the display with the good GPU, no difference.

My previous computer had a 4670 with 256 MB of VRAM, and it performed better than a 5670 with 1GB of VRAM. It just feels a little bit off.

… Hmm, I think I found the problem. It’s a PCI-E 2.0×16 that’s running at 2.0×1 – I don’t think that should be happening.

So you are saying the HD 5450 256mb has higher FPS than your HD 5670 1GB?

Not quite, the previous computer I had used a HD 4670 with 256 MB. It had 3 GB of RAM and a 3.06 GHz processor, too. It performed better than this one I’m using right now.

Most motherboard only have one x16 pci-e, the rest are slow. I suggest putting the better GPU into the x16 slot.

Better yet I suggest getting a higher end GPU with dual monitor output. I use a GTX 660 with dual DVI works fine.

The other video card’s running 2.0×1 as well.

Are there motherboards with two slow slots?

Have you looked in the BIOS for PCI-e settings?

Try taking one card out see if it works at 16x

It could posisbly be a compatabilty issue. Old cards ..new board.
IIrc those cards were out when PCI-e v1.0 and 1.1 were mainly in use.

Both video cards support PCI-E 2.0.

They’re just running at 1×.

I just checked the BIOS and there are no options that mention PCI-E.

Sorry for the double post but…

I took apart the computer and looked around inside. The computer’s previous owner had the 5670 plugged into a 4x slot. I moved it to the 16x slot and I am now enjoying 40-50FPS where I had 20 before.

Thanks for the help, everyone!