Guild Wars 2

It seems like a wide range of ATI cards have about the same (average performance) while Nvidia cards of the same generation seem to run the game better. Most importantly it seems like ATI cards run it at about the same FPS +-5 FPS across generations.. Wich should not ba happening. There is a huge increase between generations of Nvidia cards.

I also noticed that on most ATI cards setting everything to low tends to give about the same FPS as everything set to high. This definitely should not be happening.

Has anyone else noticed sub par performance with ATI cards? Even top end ones? Is it the ATI drivers? Has there been a word about perhaps better optimizing GW2 for ATI cards?

Thanks for any feedback on this.

Not sure what you have been reading but on avarage AMD/ATI cards tend to be perfoming better in GW2 than Nvidia cards are.

Tends to be the CPU that is making the biggest differance with perfomance for most people.

What are your sytem specs?

I’m running dual 6850’s and the game runs great for me (highest settings).

I can say this, i had a Hd 4870 (sapphire) 512, i could run on medium settings with 50-60 fps, today i got a Hd 7850 1 gig and i run 1-13 fps on all the settings.
And its not so cpu intensive as i has a i5 dualcore and it work just fine
I tried Bf3 on ultra and it ran really smoth!

Did you do a wipe all drivers and install the newest (12.11) drivers that were just released (two days ago?) that are specifically geared to the 7000 series AMD cards?

I just went to the website to download drivers and i can only find 12.10.

Ok i just went to amd instead of sapphire and found that driver

12.11 are beta and only for Vista/W7/W8 even. WinXP gets the shaft again.

Here ya go. It’s a beta release driver ATM which means it will be released in a few weeks. I would also make sure you have the latest CAP installed as well.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst1211betadriver.aspx

Duffmanlawl.9163:

I just went to the website to download drivers and i can only find 12.10.

Also on the driver download page, scroll to the bottom and it will list the latest beta drivers.

I dont expect you to know this, but how come that my old card, with a bug in bios and all that, can run the game better with like 3 months old drivers while my new one cant with well, a few days old driver.

What version PCI-E is your motherboard?

My own personal experience bears this out as well. GTX 560 Ti to Radeon 7950, and I actually got a drop in performance.

A couple things to keep in mind though is the 7000 series has ‘newer’ architecture and funstionality. They are PCI-E 3.0 as well as some other changes in the architecture. Plus, when this game was in development, the 7000 series wasn’t released yet. So I would expect it to possibly run into issues with some games until newer drivers come out. This is always the case when newer series cards are released. The Nvidia 600 series are running into the similar issues.

That said I am on track to getting a HD 7970 Ghz Edition by the end of the month. I also fully expect to possibly run into similar issues. But I am looking to the future so, it goes with the territory.

I’ve ran tests on a range of cards and motherboards, and Nvidia tends to get better FPS. High end Nvidia cards stick to 60fps while most ati cards are in the 40s and 50s. Tests were done on pcie3 and 2 boards and i5 3.4ghz quad core and i7 3.2ghz processors with 6,8 and 12 gb of DDR 3 with latest drivers from both manufacturers.

My biggest discovery is that 4850, 5850, 6850 tend to get about the same FPS in the same areas. And around 30 in Lions Arch. While respective generations of Nvidia cards tend to have a decent difference 9800gtx, GTX560, GTX460 having at least 10 FPS increase every generation.

So it seems like the ATI cards aren’t being used to their full potential.

Or perhaps there is something that GW2 does graphically that ATI cards aren’t good at? And therefore it bogs down the whole thing

Oh yea, that was one thing that might be an issue: At least, 16x Anisotropic Filtering (Best Texture Filtering option) may or may not be working with nVidia cards.

I’m using an HD 5870 1MB and have High settings except for Shadows=low (cpu), FXAA=off and Reflections=middle setting.

Low FPS is only encountered in extreme WvW (18-20fps) and I’m at 1920×1200. As others have concluded those situations of mass players are more CPU dependent. So, I’m playing perfectly fine with my AMD card.

I used to have an HD 5770 and that was on Medium settings with mostly 30+fps and 10-15fps in extreme WvW with an i5 760 at stock.

@Duxa, although the tests are informative they are hardly conclusive. I hit 80 FPS average (sometimes higher but never below 40) on HD 6850’s everything maxxed. Now the difference between us is I am running strictly an AMD rig. That means an AMD processor as well. When I make computers I tend to ‘keep it in the family’ so to speak. My previous rig was Intel with Nvidia, I rarely mix the two (i.e AMD with Intel or AMD with Nvidia).

Personally I believe sticking with amd/ATI and Nvidia/intel is a placebo effect, Nvidia cards are currently better than AtI(amd) which means that developers will tend to develop on Nvidia cards. So less testing is done on ATI cards. Coupled with AMDs slow driver release schedule I think ATI cards suffer.

I agree that my tests aren’t scientific, however under no circumstances should 4850, 5850 and 6850 have about the same FPS in the same areas. Something isn’t right.

So I’m hoping either ATI releases better drivers or Arena net comes out with some optimizations.. I don’t know what the issue is.. I hope one of them does… If they don’t then that’s unfortunate

The fix could be as easy as giving us more granular graphics settings.. For example the ability to adjust particle effects, give us granularity with anti aliasing, giving more rendering options, allowing us to adjust the draw distance etc…

Or perhaps it could be as simple as Arena net releasing an application profile tailored for GW2 that works best for the game.

It may very well be a ‘placebo’ effect but I have stuck to this method for years and have never had issues with games. I may have minor issues here and there that a little tweaking doesn’t fix, but nothing that doesn’t prevent me from playing games and playing them without having to sacrifice performance.

shrugs If it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it.

I also disagree with you that Nvidia are superior cards. IMHO it is all marketing. And game developers chose to favor one card over another based on what their own game engines will be most easily developed on. This doesn’t make it a superior card, just an easier developmental process. Also, AMD is getting better with their driver release schedules. Anyway, just my opinion.

Rabbiddog.7690:

It may very well be a ‘placebo’ effect but I have stuck to this method for years and have never had issues with games. I may have minor issues here and there that a little tweaking doesn’t fix, but nothing that doesn’t prevent me from playing games and playing them without having to sacrifice performance.

shrugs If it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it.

I also disagree with you that Nvidia are superior cards. IMHO it is all marketing. And game developers chose to favor one card over another based on what their own game engines will be most easily developed on. This doesn’t make it a superior card, just an easier developmental process. Also, AMD is getting better with their driver release schedules. Anyway, just my opinion.

I really don’t want to get into NVidia Vs ATI argument, but its not marketing, just look at anandtech or tomshardware benchmarks, Nvidia has been ahead for a few years across the board. Which is also the reason AMD is shifting their strategy from high end gaming cards. They aren’t able to compete.

As far as developers developing for Nvidia there are actually a few reasons… I work in the tech industry and get to deal with this all the time. The 2 main reasons are:

1- Nvidia tends to give out developers more cards than ATI does. Nvidia tends to give out top end cards while ATI gives out last gen cards. This naturally leads to devs using Nvidia more
2- whoever is in charge of ordering parts will look at benchmarks and will get the winners.. Since Nvidia has been winning for the last several years they tend to get Nvidia cards.

I have two 7970s and with the 12.11 beta drivers I get 120 fps on average but it can go down to 45 fps in a big zerg in WvW as well as the redone LA for the halloween update it goes down to 30 fps where as before the update I was getting 60-70 fps in LA. And while its true Nvidia cards pre 12.11 beat out the amd cards, thats simply not the case with the 7000 series anymore since the release of the 12.11 drivers. 7000 series cards with the new drivers match or exceed benchmarks vs the gtx 600 series now.

Duxa.2516:

I really don’t want to get into NVidia Vs ATI argument, but its not marketing, just look at anandtech or tomshardware benchmarks, Nvidia has been ahead for a few years across the board. Which is also the reason AMD is shifting their strategy from high end gaming cards. They aren’t able to compete.

As far as developers developing for Nvidia there are actually a few reasons… I work in the tech industry and get to deal with this all the time. The 2 main reasons are:

1- Nvidia tends to give out developers more cards than ATI does. Nvidia tends to give out top end cards while ATI gives out last gen cards. This naturally leads to devs using Nvidia more
2- whoever is in charge of ordering parts will look at benchmarks and will get the winners.. Since Nvidia has been winning for the last several years they tend to get Nvidia cards.

Again we agree to disagree. I have used both cards since since graphics cards became the necessity of gaming. And I have never seen anything in my own experience that places one ahead of another. Sure, there are times when one card exceeds the other because of new architecture\series, which then the other follows up soon with their version, and vice versa.

I also find the last part of your statement dubious. Why would, as a rival card maker trying to gain as much of market share as possible, and In constant competition with the other, why would they not give out their best and as much as needed to developers? To not do so makes no business sense whatsoever. It may happen on a smaller scale to small developers who are not established, but I find this hard to believe this happens for large established developers. And until I see actual proof of this I will take this with a grain of salt.

BTW, I am in the tech industry as well and have been working with computers since the Unix\OS2 days. I am not going to get into a long drawn out discussion because, again, from my experience it just isn’t true. So further discussion would lead nowhere. Again, we agree to disagree.

Yeah, I guess I should have stated that the video card giveaways is based on my personal experience.

Back on topic though….

So does everyone agree that GW2 runs as expected on ATI cards then?

@duxa, Can i ask what you do mate?
i was going off early benchamrks that showed the AMD cards perfomaing better than Nvidia in this game+ the fact there seems to be alot more people with Nvidia cards complaneing about perfomance problems on this forum?

I have 2 rigs with AMD/ATI cards and they both run the game with no problems atall allso have a laptop with an Nvidia card and again dosent rally give me any issues either tbh.

Nvidia are not ahead of AMD/ATI at the minuet in perfomance there both neck and neck

The 680 and 7970 trade blows depends on the game sometimes the 680 is faster sometimes the 7970 is faster with the 7970ghz eddition slightly ahead, the 7950 and 670 again more or less the same trading blows dependign on the game, and with the new drivers the 780 is about as fast as the 660ti..

You need to look at more recent driver reviews

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2059/1/

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/57413-amd-12-11-never-settle-driver-performance-17.html

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Never-Settle-1211-Beta-Driver-Performance-Testing

The main problem with just trusting the Anandtech bench is they do the test stick them on there then hardly ever update them with later drivers.

And there not more games that are just being designed for Nvidia cards, the dev’s get help ad tech support from AMD or Nvidia and there are probbably just as many big titled games on AMD’s gameing evolved program as there are on Nvidia’s The Way it’s meant to be played program. but they will still do the testing on both sets of cards before the game gose in to the public beta.

@Druxa, for me, yes, ATI cards run as expected. Although with any new MMO coming out I always go into it expecting there to be some issues. But for the moment, I am quite satisfied with how my ATI cards perform with this game.

Yes, they test on both… but if the entire development team is on Nvidia cards then they create code/assets based on their experience with the game they are coding.. which is based on Nvidia drivers… or ATI for some developers..

So basically it still ends up that the game runs better on one or the other platform. Its 2 years worth of art assets and coding plus QA time on 1 platformat… versus a few months of testing on another platform (if that).

The truth of the matter is that development teams are very short on time, on every game project… deadlines are everywhere… noone sits there and analyzes performance across a wide range of systems…. they basically run through the game a few times to ensure its playable.

You wouldnt believe how many games ship with “acceptable” bugs… some of which can easily be a worse performance on a certain card… the developer isnt going to lose sleep over a 10FPS loss on ATI architecture or Nvidia architecture… if the game runs 60 on one and 15 on the other then yes… thats a problem.. but if its 60 vs 45… not a big deal.

Not true when they get to the final testing phase they will let both graphics companys have accses to the game, so they can test it and give them time to try to fix any driver bugs before the game gose live, yes there will be differances and the game will run better on which ever partners GPU’s who helped with the tech support but the perofmance alot of the time evens out affter afew months or so with new patches and driver updates.

The last thing a game dev wants is a game that will be compleatly broken on one set of graphics cards beacuase it could cost them tens of thousands of sales.

they do how ever realse lots of games with lots of bugs or missing lots of content look at Crysis 2 and Shogun 2 Total War, both games where hyped up with DX11 both games failed to have it rdy for weeks affter the games went live, but thats more to do with the publishers like EA and Ubisoft and Sega only careing about the money and wanting returns asap, with the internet and it being easy to add patches they dont care if the game is finshed or not when it gose live aslong as they get the cash now.

I can think of lots of games in the last couple of years that are on the Gaming Evolved program.

Drit2, Dirt3, AVP, Farcry3, Hitman, MOH, Shogun2 Toatal War, BF3, Warhamer Space Marine, Dragon Age 2 , Dirt Showdown, Deus Ex, Sydicate, Sniper Elite2, Dawn of War 2, Sleeping Dogs, Aliens colonial Marines, Alan Wake. Dishonord, Two Worlds

And Nvidia have
Crysis/Warhead, Crysis 2, Borderlands 1, Borderlands 2, Metro33, Metro light, Mirows Edge, Massefect 2, Massefect 3, Batman Arkam aslyum, Batman Arkam City, Planet side 2, Mafia 2, and I think COD and Assasins Creed are Nvidia aswwell

So both sides have there fair share of big name games. Then there are just as many deves that don’t take sides aswell and just get on with making there games.

So alot of what you said earlier is wrong, most games are not part of Nvidias twimtbp program, AMD graphics cards do not offer last gen performance.

And allmost forgot about the bit about AMD being slow to relase drivers wtf? really lol AMD untill recently released a new driver every month with out fail, they have recently changed that though but still release a new driver every couple of months or so and tend o have lots of beta drivers inbetween.

I know it makes me sound like an AMD fan boy but I am not if you had been saying the same things about Nvidia that you have about AMD I would still have argued with you I go for what ever offers the best perfomance in the highen bracket when it comes to GPU’s and have switched back and forth alot over the years.

Nope Nvidia nor ATI get access to games before they come out. I don’t know where you got that idea from.

The program logos during game boot up are placed there when Nvidia or ATI pays them money for advertising.. There are some benefits to it (they will offer optimization) but that involves a meeti g or two a few hours long and only at developer!a request.. Total time Nvidia or ATI spend on game development is less than 10 hours.

Yes there are some inherit guarantees as to the game running well on that particular vendors hardware, but it hardly means much more than that. It’s mostly just a paid ad.

ATI has historically been much slower on driver releases than Nvidia.

Most games run well within a few months because either the developer optimizes the game or Nvidia or ATI will release optimized driver or combination of both.

Both of which are usually a direct result of the community going on and on about problems and demanding them to get fixed.

The fact is though that most of the games run well on both its because the cards themselves are much more powerful than what the game needs.

I have no idea where you get your information but most of it is wrong. You either haven’t been using ATI cards for more than 5 years or don’t know anything about game development.

Nvidia acquisition of AGEIA among other smart moves (CUDA) allowed than to stay ahead for the last few years. AMD acknowledged that themselves by talks of shifting strategy from high end gaming cards…

Depends on the game can range from just afew hours to days depends on the game how much investment they have made and what needs doing.

I know Dice when they where working on BF3 even though it is an AMD title still had meetings with Nvidia tech guys aswell to make sure it would run ok on Nvidia cards, and ok I could be wrong but both camps normaly have a beta driver ready to go as soon as most big games go into open beta. Which would sugest that they have had atleast some limited time to work on the drivers before the game gose live.

TBH Nvidia buy AGEIA was one of the worst things to happen to PC gaming in along time PhysX could have been one of the best things ever if it had remaind independant and still worked on both platforms yes you would have need to buy a seperate AGIEA card to use it but I think it is somethign alot of people would have done and it would have been alot more popular.

Yes it looks good can do some really cool stuff with it, Borderlands 2 for example got some really cool looking stuff in there but most of the stuff done with PhysX could be done just as easily on the CPU if it was coded properly, which PhysX is coded to run liek a snail on a CPU, Look at some of the stuff you can do with the Cry engine 2 and 3 you can do some absolutly stunning effects with that, also look at the Havok and Bullet engines both really good aswell.

Even affter all the money Nvidia pumped in to the Crysis games 2million dollars just for Crysis 2 alone, But still Crtek said no to PhysX there own in house engien is by far alot better than PhysX.

AMD have not been slow over the past few years atall I would hardly call 12 drivers a year with lots of beta and hot fix drivers in between as slow, I reamber when I had my gtx285 I can reamber going about 4 months once with out a single driver update.

Can’t ever reamber reading anythign about them saying thay are shifting away from high end graphics cards why would they? there where rumours about them maybe giving up on the high end CPU market but that was just someone getting the statement wrong what, they did say they are concentrating more on the mobile section there new APU’s are really good with pretty decent onboard graphics perfect for home theater PC’s and laptops and with rumours about Apple wanting them for there Macbooks things are looking up there.

Ok there highend desktop CPU’s are strugleing abit at the minuet, but Piledriver is a step in the right direction some nice gains over Bulldozer with lower power draw and at the curent price is pretty good value for money and with Steamroller out later next year with even more fixers hopefully they will be back on track.

And the graphics card division is the one bit of the company making a decent profit at the minuet with increasing market share over the last few years they spent alot of money devolping the GCN arch and have the fastest single GPU with the 7970ghz eddtion note the 690 is a dual GPU card so dosent count and are pumpng more and more money in to game develpment aswell.

+ it is looking like they have the contracts for the PS4 the next Xbox and the next Nintendo so unless they mess up things are looking good there aswell. Allthough personaly I think that is a bad thing I don’t think it is good just to have one graphics card company compleatly dominating the console market tbh would be good if Nvidia got atleast one of the contracts.

I should clarify about the drivers…. What I meant is that once there is an issue it generally takes Ati long time to release a fix… Let’s take Skyrim black texture issues… It took 3 driver revisions before the issue was resolved.. In the meantime people had to use an old driver to be able to play it.

This isn’t always the case, and they have gotten better, but that’s just kind of their history.

And yeah you are right about beta drivers for new games, in the grand scheme of things though those are far and few in between.

With consoles, I don’t think it matters who gets it, since unlike pc developers will be developing for that specific hardware.. Not a MHz higher not a MHz lower… So I’m sure everything will run perfectly.

HawkMeister.4758:

12.11 are beta and only for Vista/W7/W8 even. WinXP gets the shaft again.

As that Microsoft is officially abandoning support of WinXP, expect hardware manufacturers to do the same.

XP has had the longest run of any OS and it is a shame to see it it go affter all this time but nothing lasts forever

@ Duxa, yeah I know what you mean Nvidia can sometimes be quicker with the bug fixing, but both side can be slow to fix driver bugs from time to time.

Looks like all 3 consoles Nintendo, Playstation and Xbox could have AMD gpu’s and possibly amd CPU’s aswell, while that is good for AMD not sure it is good for gaming.

Brem.6792:

i was going off early benchamrks that showed the AMD cards perfomaing better than Nvidia in this game+ the fact there seems to be alot more people with Nvidia cards complaneing about perfomance problems on this forum?

Because there are more nVidia cards in the market? Just a hunch.

My experience is totally the opposite – my “upgrade” actually made me not play the game. It’s disheartening to have to spend US$370 and get worse performance.