Guild Wars 2

OK so I’ve read about how the game taxes the CPU related to threading and multiple cores, and I think based on what I’ve seen it MIGHT point to a CPU bottleneck, but I was hoping to get some confirmation from the community about this issue. First of all, here are my specs:

Sony Vaio SVS15113fxs (Win 7 Ult x64)

GPU: nVidia GeForce GT 640M LE Kepler @ 1000MHz core/1025MHz Mem clock
http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/13/01/04/ahn.png

CPU: Intel Core i5-3210M
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i5/Intel-Core%20i5-3210M%20%28BGA%29%20Mobile%20processor.html

6GB RAM
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4650/cpuzraminfo.png

HDD: Seagate Momentus XT SSHD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591

Please let me know if I’m missing any vital info.

Here’s the issue:

Like the title says, I sometimes encounter this annoying 1 second long freeze or so. This usually occurs when entering a battle and opening up with a targeted AoE. It seems to freeze for a second or so while the AoE target on the ground loads up so I can see it and move it around. After the freeze, everything continues as normal. I can use more AoE targets and they come up instantly. I can even continue entering more battles and the AoE target comes up fine. Also, I can still hit abilities and click where I think the target will be to execute them, and it registers my input, “catching up” after the freeze ends with what I told my character to do.

If I take a short break, and then start fighting mobs again, the first AoE attack will freeze the game again for about a second like before. Sometimes, the freeze happens when I’m running around in an area. It might have to do with loading up new textures, but this doesn’t just happen when I’m loading into an entirely new area or using quicktravel, it also can happen when I’m just running into a new area within the current map. This doesn’t happen as often as the combat situation though.

Lastly, and less frequently, it can happen when simply running into combat and using regular abilities. This all seems to occur more frequently in WvW.

Note, I am coming from a fresh re-installation of Windows because I thought it might help the problem. This was also happening in SWTOR when I enter combat or run to a new area within the current map, but I haven’t tried SWTOR since reinstalling windows.

So is it simply a cpu bottleneck or something else? I provided links to detailed specs of the components to help any posters help me identify any other potential bottlenecks. I pondered if my GPU’s DDR3 memory type, Bus or Bandwidth might contribute too, despite the massive overclock.

Normally, I’m getting between 25 and 55 FPS depending on area with high settings. If a specific list of which options are set to what setting will help, let me know and I will provide a list. Also, I tried playing with the lowest settings possible and that did not help solve the problem. My native resolution is 1920×1080 so I’m not touching that.

Hopefully that is enough info for anyone to help me, but let me know if you need more. I’m also curious if anyone else is having this problem. Thanks in advance!

Part of the issue with the momentus xt is the firmware itself handles idle/power management, So it is simply impossible to make it work for all users in every case. Should it be the momentus, it would be the fact the disk platter is spinning down during periods where all the data required is cached rather than be spun up and ready to access the next lot of data.

Seagate did poorly by not providing the drive with a configuration utility to adjust such function from the operating system.

Run some monitoring tools and see what changes on the graphs as you get those 1 second freezes. (See Part 4.1)

Well if turning down the graphical settings without touching the resolution, it sounds like a CPU bottleneck. Running at 2.9Ghz, which is still a little slow, I can see it freezing for a second because of this.

You should try lowering the resolution just temporarily and see if the problem persists.

kirito.4138:

Run some monitoring tools and see what changes on the graphs as you get those 1 second freezes. (See Part 4.1)

Can you recommend a tool, or just use the task manager?

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Well if turning down the graphical settings without touching the resolution, it sounds like a CPU bottleneck. Running at 2.9Ghz, which is still a little slow, I can see it freezing for a second because of this.

You should try lowering the resolution just temporarily and see if the problem persists.

I’ll try that and see what happens.

Fruban.4169:

kirito.4138:

Run some monitoring tools and see what changes on the graphs as you get those 1 second freezes. (See Part 4.1)

Can you recommend a tool, or just use the task manager?

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Well if turning down the graphical settings without touching the resolution, it sounds like a CPU bottleneck. Running at 2.9Ghz, which is still a little slow, I can see it freezing for a second because of this.

You should try lowering the resolution just temporarily and see if the problem persists.

I’ll try that and see what happens.

Tool were listed in Part 4.1

kirito.4138:

Fruban.4169:

kirito.4138:

Run some monitoring tools and see what changes on the graphs as you get those 1 second freezes. (See Part 4.1)

Can you recommend a tool, or just use the task manager?

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Well if turning down the graphical settings without touching the resolution, it sounds like a CPU bottleneck. Running at 2.9Ghz, which is still a little slow, I can see it freezing for a second because of this.

You should try lowering the resolution just temporarily and see if the problem persists.

I’ll try that and see what happens.

Tool were listed in Part 4.1

Oops! Missed that, thanks.

Sounds to me lke u may have windows power saving kicking in.. check ur performance profiles. .make sure it isnt getting in the way.

The CPU being a 3210m isnt what i would consider for running GW2 on a laptop since its max turbo frequency is only 3.1ghz ..BUT it hoenstly doesnt sound like a CPU thing. usualy when that happens u just notice low frame rates ..kinda like what u get normaly. .but if ur ok with that then fine

try switching graphics drivers. .try older ones ..or newer ones ..to see if it helps.

Lower graphics settings will likely help make it less noticable but it will probably still be there.

Well, I disabled CPU parking, which didn’t seem to do much, and I examined what all 4 cores were doing in Process explorer: http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/2567/processexplorer.png

The hardest spike made all cores go between 80%-93%. Would that indicate the bottle neck then?

Lowering resolution this time with all other settings still didn’t help. I do notice a difference in frequency of freezes though, obviously getting much worse in WvW but in PvE it’s not as obvious what makes them less/more frequent. Lowering settings in WvW made them less frequent, but not dramatically.

Edit: I just realized that the image i posted was for a graph that included all tasks that were being processed (though I was limiting background tasks as much as possible of course). Here is a different image. http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/3549/gw2monitor.png

From the second image you can see that the first and largest thread of GW2 is using around 24%, and the others are 6-7%. I set the gw2.exe for “real-time” priority but of course in the background at the moment I was just standing in a safe place when I took the screenshot. Does that tell you guys anything useful?

SolarNova.1052:

Sounds to me lke u may have windows power saving kicking in.. check ur performance profiles. .make sure it isnt getting in the way.

The CPU being a 3210m isnt what i would consider for running GW2 on a laptop since its max turbo frequency is only 3.1ghz ..BUT it hoenstly doesnt sound like a CPU thing. usualy when that happens u just notice low frame rates ..kinda like what u get normaly. .but if ur ok with that then fine

try switching graphics drivers. .try older ones ..or newer ones ..to see if it helps.

Lower graphics settings will likely help make it less noticable but it will probably still be there.

I made sure I have maximum performance where applicable for gaming, including in the nvidia control panel. I’ll try the different graphics drivers later. Edit: Also, I was using Process Explorer to check out GPU utilization during the game and it never maxes out, so I really don’t think my GPU is a bottleneck at any point at all. My biggest fear is that it isn’t the game itself at all but some other process in the background that is affecting performance. I hate the idea of going through that slow process of tryign to find the culprit, but a recent reinstall should mean that there is very little possibility of that.

I suppose I could try temporarily disabling Comodo Firewall stuff and Avast! to see if that helps.

I would like to try one more thing. What are the most CPU intensive parts of the game that I can lower besides reflections and shadows? I want to see if lowering only those settings reduces the instances of the short freezes. (I always thought shadows were calculated by the GPU’s main processor, not the CPU…)

Fruban.4169:

My biggest fear is that it isn’t the game itself at all but some other process in the background that is affecting performance. I hate the idea of going through that slow process of tryign to find the culprit, but a recent reinstall should mean that there is very little possibility of that.

Clean windows installation is best for ruling out 3rd party application as the culprit. Its a known good state so if you still get freezes then the issue is else where.

However, aside from doing clean installation, you can try cleanboot mode. (See Part 1.1) not as good as a fresh installation, but you can try that first.

kirito.4138:

Fruban.4169:

My biggest fear is that it isn’t the game itself at all but some other process in the background that is affecting performance. I hate the idea of going through that slow process of tryign to find the culprit, but a recent reinstall should mean that there is very little possibility of that.

Clean windows installation is best for ruling out 3rd party application as the culprit. Its a known good state so if you still get freezes then the issue is else where.

However, aside from doing clean installation, you can try cleanboot mode. (See Part 1.1) not as good as a fresh installation, but you can try that first.

Maybe I wasn’t clear or you may have missed it, but I did mention I did a recent clean install; it was only a few days ago and I only have the essentials loaded, updated drivers, antivirus, and 3rd party firewall loaded. Unless it’s some Vaio proprietary driver, it can’t be a background process. I will try that clean boot mode. (I only loaded the Vaio software/drivers that were necessary to run key hardware-related features of my laptop.)

Squall Leonhart.2075:

erm… sure its not that piece of junk hybrid hdd you have.

It’s not, because it’s awesome, much faster than a typical HDD, only a tad slower than an SSD, as reviewed by many different reviewers. My computer also restarts in seconds, and this issue didn’t begin when I installed it.

neither did the stuttering for all the other Momentus XT owners.

contact seagate and ask for the SD26 update.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

neither did the stuttering for all the other Momentus XT owners.

contact seagate and ask for the SD26 update.

Thanks for the direction; I’ve checked out a number of possible things to try out regarding a potential fix. Apparently SD26 turns it into a basic 7200RPM drive and essentially disables the SDD caching, so I’m not thrilled about using that one. I also read that SD25 may be a good option for me since I’m on Win 7 and the issues with SD25 seem to affect Mac users, so I may try that. I did read something about possible corruption when dealing with large files, but I’m not sure that applies to Windows either. Mine shipped with the latest, SD28, which some folks have reported being fine with, and others still had issues. I did see some other possible solutions in these threads:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/621265-seagate-momentus-xt-users-should-read-2.html

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/UNIFIED-THREAD-Momentus-XT-spreadsheet/td-p/99676/page/2

P.S. – With respect, why not post a more constructive tip about the Momentus drive in your first post instead of the useless, snarky comment?

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Part of the issue with the momentus xt is the firmware itself handles idle/power management, So it is simply impossible to make it work for all users in every case. Should it be the momentus, it would be the fact the disk platter is spinning down during periods where all the data required is cached rather than be spun up and ready to access the next lot of data.

Seagate did poorly by not providing the drive with a configuration utility to adjust such function from the operating system.

I’m having trouble finding a way to download the earlier firmware updates, so I think I’ll try disabling APM to see if that solves the problem first.

Well, after much toil and trouble, trying every possible fix I came across for my hard drive, i ended up switching it out for the original HDD (Samsung Momentus 640GB 5400RPM) drive that came with my laptop.. and the game runs way smoother now. No hiccups at all! Thanks squall for pointing me in that direction. Getting 25-60 fps with my setup now (heavily overclocked GPU) at high settings on everything! turns out CPU is plenty fast to perform well on the game and the gpu can handle it quite well at 100% overclock (lol).

Thanks everyone else for helping me troubleshoot, I learned a lot about optimizing the game in other ways!

yeah, sorry to be right mate about that drives stutter issues mate

Seagates short sighted design…. well if i designed it, i would’ve put atleast 32GB’s of nand on it instead of only 8.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

yeah, sorry to be right mate about that drives stutter issues mate

Seagates short sighted design…. well if i designed it, i would’ve put atleast 32GB’s of nand on it instead of only 8.

Mine only has 4gb (2nd gen?)… newer generations have 8gb, and since the tech is still relatively new, I’m going to wait for a while before jumping on this new technology. (The 1st gen had 512mb I think.) It’s a great idea, and worked really beautifully for a while, but I guess it had more hidden, nuanced kinks than I anticipated that took a while to surface. Maybe in a couple of years they will smooth it all out.

Well apparently i just learned you can use certain software to force APM off which resolves the stutter for that windows session

unfortunately the drive discards the APM settings every power cycle, so if you rebooted after toggling APM, that would be why it didn’t help.

WD have just announced their own Hybrid Drives, starting with a 1TB drive with 24GB of cache…… im tempted already

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Well apparently i just learned you can use certain software to force APM off which resolves the stutter for that windows session

unfortunately the drive discards the APM settings every power cycle, so if you rebooted after toggling APM, that would be why it didn’t help.

WD have just announced their own Hybrid Drives, starting with a 1TB drive with 24GB of cache…… im tempted already

Yeah I tried using some software in one of the above links to disable APM (and i remembered to do it upon reboot too) but it only helped a little, and I was still getting more issues than I’d have liked. It didn’t work for me, but reportedly it worked for others.

I ended up setting up an RMA with Seagate to replace the drive (using the one where they send you a replacement first) but I got a message saying they’re out of stock at the moment to replace it with… I wonder if it’s because it’s from the previous generation or they have so many people returning the drive…

Interesting to know that WD has their own hybrid coming out, I will give it a while to see if any issues come up online similar to what I had.

Game freezes are very often caused by the Hard disk drive…
when my game freez i see my HDD at 100%

Fruban, difference with WD’s hybrids, is they are based on the Caviar/Black drives xD

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Fruban, difference with WD’s hybrids, is they are based on the Caviar/Black drives xD

It’s too bad their new drive wont be available til the end of 2013 according to an article I read… If it was sooner I might hold out for it but I’ll have enough money before then for an SSD to replace my lappy’s 5400RPM drive. Maybe when I build a new desktop though… (Mine’s 5 and a half years old lol.)

Hi Fruban! I’m having the exact same issue as you are; freezes mostly at selecting AoE and when in combat, and also (though less frequently) when just walking around.

Did Squall Leonheart’s answer about the HDD-ussue fix your problems? I have a completely different HDD though.
Or are you still experiencing these freezes?

I’ve tried pretty much everything; clean boot, direct internetconnection through Ethernet-cable, reïnstalled GW, reïnstalled windows, CPU/GPU are not bottlenecking… So I’m pretty desperate and these freezes annoy me a LOT. I die all the time in WvW because of these freezes.

Thank you!