Guild Wars 2

Hello all, I have a pretty good PC, here are the specs:

-Intel core i7-2600k 3.4 GHz Quad-core
-XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition
-4 × 4 GB RAM Corsair Vengeance
-Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 LGA1155 Intel Z68

I just purchased Guild Wars 2 and when I started playing the character customization and cut scenes were running smoothly, but the second gameplay starts up the thing tanks down below 10 fps. I tried using the steps listed in the sticky thread about game optimization and the fps is now up to 18 fps, fast eh? I also found another thread that had me change the power options and some windows multi-core sleep settings.

Has anyone else encountered these problems in the past and if so how did you fix them/did you fix them?

I guess lets start with the obvious. Did you download the latest drivers? Also make sure your graphics card is seated right as well as in the correct PCI slot.

Related party here –
Drivers are current, card is in fact seated correctly, in correct slot.

I recommend checking to see that heavy anti-aliasing options found in Catalyst control Center are off and checking to make sure that the card is running at normal clocks.

If that doesn’t help then… I’m lost myself.

I sometimes encounter this issue on my GTX 580 where the game causes the card to throttle. Mostly I just restart the computer and make sure that MSI Afterburner is on and the fan spinning.

A reboot normally clears the issue for me. I play in windowed mode sometimes so if I’m tabbed out and tab back in the game throttles the card and needs a reboot. Are you playing in windowed mode?

Okay, as Dhoo has said, we checked to make sure that all of the drivers are up to date and that the card is slotted in correctly. She also does not play in windowed mode and we reset the machine a couple of times with no success.

I’m not quite sure what to do at this point :/

Use a program like Msi afterburner to check the percentage of the video card being used in the game. It should have an on screen display you should be able to configure in options. You’ll most likely have to start gw2 first then start up Msi. At least, for me, gw2 will crash with Msi started first as it doesn’t like to start with on screen displays.

It seems like to me with 16 and 18 fps that your computer isn’t utilizing the graphics card at all and using integrated graphics. If this is the case, the card will measure like 0 percent or close to it.

Check your thermals on CPU cores and GPU core, both your CPU and your GPU will throttle down if your temperatures are too high, either capable of causing this.

Download"RealTemp". In the settings tick the box “ATI” and tick all “Show Icon” boxes as well, you may wish to make the GPU temp a different colour to the CPU temps. This will put temps for all components in the system tray.

Once this is complete, start up GW2 in a window, and run it in a heavy area for a while. See if you get any abnormally high results. High results are anything above 80 degrees. CPU will start its thermal management at 100 degrees, the GPU will start thermally managing progressively but aggressively at around 80-90degrees depending on the card design (as the GPU power voltage regulators are running hotter than the core itself).

If temperatures are not an issue I would recommend you do a complete removal of all drivers by removing the drivers through add/remove programs, rebooting, then using a cleanup tool like Treexy Driver Fusion, rebooting, then installing the latest drivers fresh.

Worst case scenario you know your drivers are clean and your thermals are good. This is good information for anyone running high end kit.

Hope this helps,

If you want to get aggressive with the thermal diagnostic to make sure the machine is stable under load, please download and use IntelBurnTest and MSI Kombuster.

PLEASE be careful with these tools, they are designed to stress and uncover any imperfections in the cooling on any device and DO cause system damage where such cooling issues exist. ALWAYS monitor thermals and immediately stop at signs of problems.

Good luck.