Guild Wars 2

I recently purchased guild wars 2 . I have windows 8.1 and am having major lag issues. I contacted support a week ago and still no response. It’s frustrating I cannot play the game. I did everything listed in the support page as well as updated every driver in my whole PC . I have a dual core processor and an antivirus that the military uses to protect highly sensitive documents so there is no way I could have issues due to a virus. My computer runs great with everything else even playing my xbox 360 online. Can anyone help me!

funny, i had the same problem, on large scale combat my actual OS 2008 R2 lags less than 8.1, the only difference i noticed was Win8.1 could keep high res on cities but high resolution were overkill to my laptop specs anyway.

@Yath try do clean your chipset drivers and gpu ones, and download them again since some are diferernt from W8 and W8.1

The fact you are using AV will cause your performance to deteriorate, especially during gameplay, Gw2 uses 3-4 threads on my pc, I expect one of those is a game related network thread.
I have 12 threads available on 6 cores, which is a luxury.

You say you have 2 cores and this could mean 2 or 4 threads, It would also mean you are sharing limited resources while a lot of things are happening: You run your OS, AV, GW2, background services all on 2 cores…

I’d could advise you to remove your AV during gameplay, but I will not It will boost performance with 10-20% though on a light platform, mostly because it will reduce memory load, cpu load and will require less thread swapping.

If you are playing on an integrated GPU (mostly intel HD) your graphics will be lower performance, If you have a dedicated GPU part of your RAM could be used for graphics when having 4 Gb it could lead to frequent caching on fixed drives (= slower performance).

Windows tends to cache data before sending it, it tends to improve bandwith. It is not so perfect for gaming though. wireless is severely hampered by thefact each channel can only have 1 broadcast in transmitter range reach , else information can be corrupted and rejected, requiring additioal communication and a re-sent of the packets lost (tends to cause problems in appatment buildings, dorms, and other places with a lot of wireless communication.) —> use a wire.

I got a new laptop, Windows 8.1 installed by default.

Superior hardware, yet it is slower in every single area. And unstable! Applications just feel like they could crash at any moment (and they often do).

No, really. If you get a new machine, wipe W8/W8.1 and install good old 7.

Structurally unstable computers and laptops tend to have 1 or more faulty memory modules.

it’s a well known problem… And has been since the high density RAM (DDR,DDR2,DDR3 and on) appeared. Only chance to test it is to run a memory tester for an extended period, (say 3 hours min, when in doubt 12 or even 24 hrs), and see if you experience bit errors.

It can be caused by static elcetricity, static discharge, or just a bad chip. tests are being done very quick and sometimes even only 1 or a few per batch. Some companies tend to have more problems, OC-ing tends to worsen these errors (A LOT!)

Yahtzee, if you are somewhere other than the US then the trouble may not be at your end at all. There are lots of people with lag/rubberbanding atm, see this thread for info:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Latency-Lag-for-EU-Players-merged

To save you reading through 18 pages; there doesn’t seem to be a fix just yet but they are working on it.

Duel core processor – is VERY weak by modern standards and only minimum GW2 specs
Military grade AV – Stupid, windows has AV built in, ditch it, all it will do is make you PC suck
Have you lowered your video settings to match the capabilities of your PC?

What version of windows 8.1 do you have, it’s it’s 64bit you need a minimum of 4GB ram

What hardware do you have? exact CPU, exact Graphics, RAM and windows version. Nobody can help or advise without this basic information. Just stating windows 8.1 is like asking why your car is slow, it’s a red one.

^ love your comment, was actually grinning

Yahtzee.7195:

I recently purchased guild wars 2 . I have windows 8.1 and am having major lag issues. I contacted support a week ago and still no response. It’s frustrating I cannot play the game. I did everything listed in the support page as well as updated every driver in my whole PC . I have a dual core processor and an antivirus that the military uses to protect highly sensitive documents so there is no way I could have issues due to a virus. My computer runs great with everything else even playing my xbox 360 online. Can anyone help me!

Edited: I live in the US. I have a desktop that is hard wired into my router. I terminated all processes before running the game manually through task manager. My antivirus is extremely light while running in the back ground. My desktop is about 4 years old and the ram is maxed by the system board standards at 4 gigs. I did however see an error message after letting the game initially download all night. I thought I might have to re download but the game still allowed me to play. It has been laggy from the first, even when doing my initial character setup. Any additional thoughts? I have even ran a chkdsk /r through command and I know how to keep my PC running at top performance. I only have a few programs downloaded on my PC.

the defenition of laggy ur using looks like a conection issue, do you have rubberband effects while playing and also try to ping the map server that you are conected.

follow link : https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/27698133-Connectivity
or : https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/27698053-Optimization-Performance

Yahtzee.7195:

Edited: I live in the US. I have a desktop that is hard wired into my router. I terminated all processes before running the game manually through task manager. My antivirus is extremely light while running in the back ground. My desktop is about 4 years old and the ram is maxed by the system board standards at 4 gigs. I did however see an error message after letting the game initially download all night. I thought I might have to re download but the game still allowed me to play. It has been laggy from the first, even when doing my initial character setup. Any additional thoughts? I have even ran a chkdsk /r through command and I know how to keep my PC running at top performance. I only have a few programs downloaded on my PC.

Unless you provide this information

What hardware do you have? exact CPU, exact Graphics, RAM and windows version

Nobody can help you

Mental Paradox.3845:

No, really. If you get a new machine, wipe W8/W8.1 and install good old 7.

No really, this is the most spectacularly bad advice you can give to anyone. Even Microsoft won’t sell you Windows 7 any more. There is nothing wrong with Windows 8.1 as a gaming platform, it may have it’s design and marketing issues (Yuk! metro on a desktop) but for gaming it has the better performance

Test comparisons:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/11/24/battlefield_4_windows_7_vs_81_performance_review/5

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1460

AMD Athlon™ II x2 255 Processor 3.10 GHz 4 GB Ram 64 bit operating system Windows 8.1 NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430

This is my desktop system .. I have a 7 Meg DSL connection! Any Ideas for the lag!

NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE <— that onboard video card is terrible for gaming.

I recommend that you get a decent gaming video card.

Agree, I’m sorry to say that you will never have the game playable on such a weak graphics card. Your CPU isn’t great but will play GW2 reasonably well (It’s actully recommended minimum spect) but your graphics card kills you stone dead.

The minimum specs are on the wiki:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Running_the_game

If you look at this page

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

You will see that your card has a score rating of 23 which is spectacularly terrible and well below the minimum spec card scores of around 180.

Personally I would be uncomfortable playing on a card with as poor a score as 180, you need to have a card around the 1500-2000 for reasonably smooth gameplay. In the US I assume (I’m UK) that you are talking around $100 for something like a GeForce 650.

I have a GeForce GTX 750 Ti which will cost you about $130, about twice the power of the 650

In the mean time the only thing you can do is press F11 and make sure that you set every graphics setting to absolute minimum. You will also notice that the F11 screen shows you your frame rate in the bottom left of that window. That’s useful when you are playing around with the graphics options; I suspect you are seeing a very low number there.

@Sandpit You are 100 percent correct! After reading your post then doing my own research my issue is solved. My graphics card is crap even though everything else is up to par to play. I was gonna buy a graphics card but found a computer on Ebay custom built that will serve me better in the long run. Unfortunately my 4 year old pc isnt up to snuff for gaming. I have only played facebook games and never a full on interactive game such as this until a friend of mine talked me into buying it. I was more of an x box guy but tired of their crap as well. I really appreciate the help. Im glad I have found a solution and would like to thank everyone that gave me advice to try to help me figure out what the problem was. I will get a graphics card such as yours which will cost 130 just to get the hang of the game and when I get my tax return im going to invest in a computer with a MSI NVIDIA GTX 980 Gaming 4G Graphics Card built in it. I have contacted the seller on ebay and with that and 16 gigs of ram and quad core amd, im sure I will have more than enough power to enjoy this game on my 32" Sony Bravia Monitor LOL. Thanks alot guys for the help and when I get the hang of the game hope to add you all as friends. Im new to this but I am on the black gate server! Thanks again!

Glad you have a way forward

If it’s only temporary a 650 will be fine to enjoy the game at a decent level, the 750 is worth the extra $30-$40 but if you are going to get something even better soon then go for the cheapest temp upgrade you can, a second-hand card off ebay or even a lower spec temp card maybe closer to $60