Guild Wars 2

Hello.

1. System specs
Old card: NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GT
(http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-8800-gt/specifications)

New Card: EVGA Geforce GTX 750
(http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=01G-P4-2751-KR)

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz

Motherboard:
http://us.msi.com/product/mb/G31TMP21.html#/?div=Basic

2. The issue

Until recently, I’ve been playing the game with my Geforce 8800 GT. Some lags there and there sometime, but the game ran pretty smoothly. No sound issue neither. I had lags mostly when the screen was crowded with players and such. All good, though it was a weak card.

But it died. Therefore I’ve bought a new one. Some people recommended the Geforce GTX750 1gb. It’s supposed to be twice the strenght of my first card. In theory yes, it is, and judging by its informations, it’s supposed to be.

Yet ever since I changed my card (with up to date drivers), everytime I play the game, it lags more than before regardless of the graphic settings I input. Even worse: the sound and music are now affected by the lag. It’s jerky and annoying and I don’t know how to repair that.

I’m supposed to have a stronger card. My PC has proven to be able to run the game in the past with a weaker card. Why is this happening?

Oh and it’s important to know that my old Geforce 8800 GT was connected directly to the Power Supply. But it can’t be just that, can it?

Thank you!

My first thought is that motherboard does not support PCI Express 3.0, it operates on a much older version, this could affect the potential processing power of the card as it cannot communicate fast enough between the game and hardware.

My other thought is it not getting enough power, what is the PSU rated for?

Also what do you mean by “connected directly to the power supply”? How is it connected now?

Irkie.8034:

My first thought is that motherboard does not support PCI Express 3.0, it operates on a much older version, this could affect the potential processing power of the card as it cannot communicate fast enough between the game and hardware.

That’s what I thought too, but this card is definitely compatible with my motherboard. GW2 is the only game having issues with my new graphic card, since I can actually push Tomb Raider 2013 to ultra settings with TressFX and no lag (something I couldn’t do before).

Irkie.8034:

My other thought is it not getting enough power, what is the PSU rated for?

My powersupply : http://i.imgur.com/7RWlGZC.jpg

Irkie.8034:

Also what do you mean by “connected directly to the power supply”? How is it connected now?

My old card had some wires connected directly in some kind of port at the back of my card, along with it being inserted in the PCI thingie. The new card (the EVGA) doesn’t seem to have any place for the powersupply to connect to, it justs had the monitor port and the PCI “teeth” to be inserted (sorry for my awkward way of describing things lol).

Nevertheless, it runs well on my other games, so I assumed it was normal.

The new card runs off the power directly from your PCI-E slot, your previous card required extra juice, more than what the slot alone can provide, thus the PSU PCI-E connectors to the vid card. If you purchased the 750 Ti you would need the connections.

As far as maxing Tomb Raider, you will need a better card for that one, 1GB vram isn’t enough unless you drop settings to Low :/

I would uninstall video and sound drivers, verify you have the newest version of each, restart, then reinstall.

sobe.4157:

As far as maxing Tomb Raider, you will need a better card for that one, 1GB vram isn’t enough unless you drop settings to Low :/

No I meant: I can now run Tomb Raider to max with this card, so I’m surprised I’m having issues with GW2.

I could run GW2 perfectly (no sound problem) with a 512 mb card. I even tried with a 2gb card: same issue. So I just don’t know what’s wrong now.

Edit: Okay, GW2 is not an isolated case, I tried to play another online game (Ultima Online) on a private server and I was experiencing the same thing… I have even less clue now.

If you haven’t overclocked any, see if you can get that Q6600 to the average overclock of 3.4 – 3.6GHz, that SHOULD show a bit of improvement, hopefully.

First, thanks for the replies.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

I would highly advise updating the rest of your hardware as soon as you can because while you may be able to play without issue (other than the jerky sound) currently, the issue could get far worse the longer you play with this configuration as your GPU is now overpowering the rest of your system and could cause hardware issues for you in the long run.

So, if I understand correctly, in a nutshell, my new graphic card is too powerful for what my PC can handle and it can causes issue in the long run?

It’s not that I don’t belive you, it’s just odd. Also no, unfortunately, I can’t play at all, I get lags regardless of the graphic settings and the sound is affected by it.

It wasn’t like that before with a weaker card. I mean yeah, I could get lag, but the sound remained constant and the amount of lag could be reduced with the graphic settings. Now it’s just lag and horrible sound whatever I do. It’s just weird that:
- My PC and a Weaker card could do the job properly before, the same PC with a better card cannot anymore

It’s now almost unplayable, the minute I turn the camera it lags/calculates and the sound become jerky.

So the source could come from the fact my card is too good for my motherboard? If so, is there nothing I can do beside upgrading everything else? Because GW2 (and another online old 2d game, Ultima Online) are the only games suffering from the change of card, everything else is now better.

Because, well, I don’t have the money for that right now, upgrading everything would take time I can’t really give neither and it’s just kind of odd that it would happen because my card is too good for my PC. :s

Thanks!

Tbh i think its your PSU that’s the issue,its a pretty cheap one tbh,not meant bad.But ive figured that out the hard way myself some years back,never get a cheap psu,Ever.Eventhough other games might not get the same issues as you have in gw2 for e.g,but gw2 just stresses out your pc in a diff way.And sound is usually one of the things getting affected first with a “bad” psu.

I did a quick google,and i saw yours is around 40 bucks now,thats really as cheap as you can go for a PSU,honestly..Try to switch out your psu for another if you can borrow one from someone just to test it out.

also,how long have you been using this same PSU ? And how did your 8800 came to its end ? Maybe its also related to your PSU,in wich case you want switch your PSU out ASAP before smthing else happens to your system.

I wouldn’t go by price to rate a power supply… price doesn’t mean it’s bad.

As far as Ultra goes, it’s not a brand I ever recommend, ever… In fact, the LS600 unit he has states 600watts, but really it’s a 500W continuous @ 25°C power supply with mediocre efficiency and no PFC, labeled as a 600W.

You bring up a good point with the power supply possibly being dead though, he can grab a multimeter and test the PSU to make sure everything is within 5% tolerance (12v, 5v, 3.3v).

A faster video card requires more CPU power to drive it. Your CPU is the issue here.

Other games (such as Tomb Raider) are not processing large amounts of network data packets, which is what MMO’s require. This is why MMO’s need more CPU power than other games.

abomally.2694:

A faster video card requires more CPU power to drive it. Your CPU is the issue here.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe this to be true.

I won’t argue the assertion that the CPU is the likely bottleneck here, but it’s still fast enough to run this game. If the CPU could handle the game before, adding more GPU power does not adversely effect CPU performance. The extra GPU Performance does not somehow feed back and overwhelm the CPU. The slowest component or ‘bottlneck’ in the system just effectively establishes the overall maximum performance of the system as a whole based on it’s own limitation. That limitation has not changed from one GPU to the next.

The common denominator in the 2 games you’re having problems with is that they’re both online games. The two most likely causes of your issue seem to be either a network latency issue or perhaps an overall system power issue. The GTX 750 does not have an external PS connector (For the record, some 750 Ti’s don’t either) but it does draw significantly more power from your PCIE Slot then your old card. I’m not sure why switching GPU’s would cause a network issue, but there could be a factor here I’m not seeing.

Here is where I would start if I were you. I would power down the computer. Remove or unplug all peripherals installed in your system. Disable/remove sound card, optical drives, etc. Boot up and try to play the game with just the video card, no sound or anything non essential and see if the game is playable. If it is, then re-add your devices 1 at a time until the problem returns. That might at least help you narrow it down. If it’s a power issue, running the system with the ‘bare bones’ configuration could reduce your power drain enough to get the game to play.

Try playing with some settings and hardware configurations before you go out and spend money on new components that might not even be your problem.

First, thanks all for all your advices/opinions. I really appreciate that since I’ve been really in the unknown about what was going on.

I might try Darth Llama’s solution and try one piece at the time. Before I do though, I bring in an update:

Darth Llama.9217:

The common denominator in the 2 games you’re having problems with is that they’re both online games.

I thought the same, since the probleme was, up to now, isolated to online games, but after buying a recent release on Steam (DreadOut), a single player horror game, this theory went to garbage: it also suffers from this glitch, aka lag and sound issues.

Caedmon.6798:

also,how long have you been using this same PSU ? And how did your 8800 came to its end ?

I’ve been using this PSU for (deep breath) five years. It’s very old, but it still works I guess since I can still run most of the things on my computer, minus three problematic games.

As for my 8800’s death… After playing all day on a 2D MMO (all fine), I wanted to play a little bit of Tomb Raider 2013 before going to bed. It didn’t take 5 seconds into the game that everything froze, forcing me to restart the computer. Same process repeated 3 time until the Bios starts being all crazy with “!” everywhere, colored flash/squares everywhere… And I couldn’t reach the Desktop at all except in Safe Mode.

Ever since I changed my card, it’s back to normal, except for this issue.