Guild Wars 2

I realise there are other threads like mine and I’ve read through most.
I also realise the game might be optimized poorly.
However not all setups are quite alike and I would like a second opinion on what might be the root of my issue.
Long story short; haven’t played for well over a year and I got this pc roughly 2 years ago.
The only thing that has changed on my end is an upgrade from a 21" 1920×1080 monitor to a 27" 2560×1440.

I added a screenshot below for my graphic settings. My fps does jump quite alot. In LA semi-crowded it jumps between 40-70 fps and in the middle of a starting area it jumps between 45-100. World bosses with a decent amount of people around and such put me at 20fps which is the real nuisance for me. Also not having a solid 60fps in normal zones without alot of people seems very odd to me.

The rig I’m running this game on includes:
Mobo: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K Processor
Memory: Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz 16GB CL9
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 GHz 3GB GDDR5
SSD: Samsung SSD 830 Series 128GB

Now my question: Could my cpu be bottlenecking? I looked around and supposedly my graphics card should be able to run 2560×1440 without trouble. If not, I would appreciate any advice on what could be causing the low fps in general. I understand the fps will take a hit in zergs but I run a decent pc for a reason.

All help appreciated, thanks!

Your screenshot shows 88 FPS.

for your ingame settings, that perfectly normal.

If you want better FPS you need to lower post processing effects to low, and set reflections to sky and terrain, or off.

Yes it says 88 FPS because I’m standing still in a starting area with no people around. As I mentioned above, it jumps between 45-100. Standing still on this spot was 88 solid. If I move the camera 45 degress to the left which I did afterwards I had 101. When I started running in that direction it was jumping between 50 and 90 at that particular time and place.
I was perhaps not too clear on what exactly I wanted or was hoping to achieve.
With the rig I have and comparing to other games I’ve run I would at the least like a more steady fps, especially in low-populated areas like the starting area I was in where it can jump anywhere from 45-100.
I would of course also like not to have as low as 15-20 fps during world bosses etc. I was hoping 30-40 wouldn’t be too much to ask for. How zergs in wvw compare to that I don’t know, I don’t do wvw zerging.

I also forgot the weird… don’t know if stuttering is the correct wording here. I’ll try to explain as best I can; Imagine running forward, smoothly, with proper fps and then for a second it slows down momentarily only to catch up again and then repeating every other second or so. It doesn’t feel like low fps and this is not the first time I’ve encountered this phenomena but I’m not sure what it’s called or what causes it.

I’ll try the changes you suggested though, thanks! Although I honestly don’t feel like I should have to lower everything so freaking much because, to me, I have a decent enough system to play this game and still enjoy the beautiful graphics.

crashflow.1607:

Yes it says 88 FPS because I’m standing still in a starting area with no people around. As I mentioned above, it jumps between 45-100. Standing still on this spot was 88 solid. If I move the camera 45 degress to the left which I did afterwards I had 101. When I started running in that direction it was jumping between 50 and 90 at that particular time and place.
I was perhaps not too clear on what exactly I wanted or was hoping to achieve.
With the rig I have and comparing to other games I’ve run I would at the least like a more steady fps, especially in low-populated areas like the starting area I was in where it can jump anywhere from 45-100.
I would of course also like not to have as low as 15-20 fps during world bosses etc. I was hoping 30-40 wouldn’t be too much to ask for. How zergs in wvw compare to that I don’t know, I don’t do wvw zerging.

I also forgot the weird… don’t know if stuttering is the correct wording here. I’ll try to explain as best I can; Imagine running forward, smoothly, with proper fps and then for a second it slows down momentarily only to catch up again and then repeating every other second or so. It doesn’t feel like low fps and this is not the first time I’ve encountered this phenomena but I’m not sure what it’s called or what causes it.

I’ll try the changes you suggested though, thanks! Although I honestly don’t feel like I should have to lower everything so freaking much because, to me, I have a decent enough system to play this game and still enjoy the beautiful graphics.

As you know GW2 is heavy against CPU. So any CPU bound effects is just going to slow the game down.

Reflections – All, enables reflections on EVERYTHING. Even the water that is UNDER THE GROUND, that you cannot see

those 2 settings can make/break 20-25FPS easily.

as for the FPS cycling down while moving, that will relate to your HDD. its possible its not fast enough to query the new data as the game requests it from the giant dat file.

I tried the reflections change and gained from 88 to 94-95 so I’m running that on Low now, thanks. The post processing setting didn’t affect my fps at all.

The fps doesn’t actually cycle down with the phenomena I explained, nor does it seem to have any connection. Running while watching the fps-meter, I can’t see any correlation between fps and the slowing-down effects I experience.
What you said about the HDD sounds like something I knew from years back but have forgotten. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to remedy that, like freeing up more space but other than that, I haven’t got a clue. Got 40gigs free out of 120. It’s an SSD, albeit it’s a few years old now so could perhaps be that.

Loving the help btw. I didn’t have these problems when I played a year back.

crashflow.1607:

I tried the reflections change and gained from 88 to 94-95 so I’m running that on Low now, thanks. The post processing setting didn’t affect my fps at all.

The fps doesn’t actually cycle down with the phenomena I explained, nor does it seem to have any connection. Running while watching the fps-meter, I can’t see any correlation between fps and the slowing-down effects I experience.
What you said about the HDD sounds like something I knew from years back but have forgotten. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to remedy that, like freeing up more space but other than that, I haven’t got a clue. Got 40gigs free out of 120. It’s an SSD, albeit it’s a few years old now so could perhaps be that.

Loving the help btw. I didn’t have these problems when I played a year back.

Edit*
I see your running a 830, what version of the SSD is that?
There are some older 830’s that had NAND issues. Basically, TRIM wasnt really working on them, and the NAND started to fail. It was happening with the first run of the 830’s but was fixed later on in the year (this was a couple years back)

I honestly can’t tell you. All I know is the model name. It was near 2 years ago I ordered it. If it was an old model they had lying around or not I can’t tell and my old order information doesn’t give me more information than that.
All I can tell is that I read up on each and every component before ordering and there was talk of shaky SSDs back then but this one was a recognized OK model.
The NAND and TRIM problems you’re describing (I’m decent with computers but some details are beyond me without me looking it up), is this something that can show 2 years on or would I have noticed problems earlier if that was the case? And how exactly would these problems appear?

**Edit: Found the maker’s serial number (or whatever it’s called) if that is of any assistance.

MZ-7PC128D/EU

crashflow.1607:

I honestly can’t tell you. All I know is the model name. It was near 2 years ago I ordered it. If it was an old model they had lying around or not I can’t tell and my old order information doesn’t give me more information than that.
All I can tell is that I read up on each and every component before ordering and there was talk of shaky SSDs back then but this one was a recognized OK model.
The NAND and TRIM problems you’re describing (I’m decent with computers but some details are beyond me without me looking it up), is this something that can show 2 years on or would I have noticed problems earlier if that was the case? And how exactly would these problems appear?

The issue with TRIM was a firmware issue. They released a fix. But if you already scrubbed NAND due to the broken TRIM issues, then you were to RMA the SSD. That 830 has a 3 year warranty on it.

I would popup CrystalDiskInfo and verify the Firmware version, the Model number revision, and SSD health reports on it.

I’ll start working on deciphering that last post of yours and check out CrystalDiskInfo, cheers.

**Edit: Is it the info software or the benchmark software I need?

So I looked up what TRIM and NAND is. Trim was fairly easy to understand but NAND is likely beoynd me.

I got the CrystalDiskInfo and according to it, my SSD health status is Good (99%). It also offered a firmware version CMX02B1Q. On Samsung’s support site, the most recent firmware they offer is CMX03B1Q, released almost exactly a year ago. I got my SSD in December 2012.
Does that mean my firmware is decent or should I update? I’ve had bad experiences updating firmwares before so I prefer to ask before doing.

I have to ask btw: did you dismiss the idea of the CPU bottlenecking or being the actual cause of the issues?

Yes your cpu is probably limiting your fps, and possibly your gpu is on the edge as well. Its the monitor, you upgraded to a whole lot more pixels so the gpu and cpu both have to process alot more data.

Gw2 isn’t as graphically taxing as other modern games, but more pixels on screen also means more shader and texture processing and more cpu draw calls in general.

Also single 7970 ghz edition could barely run modern games at 60fps on ultra at 1600p in the first place.

Hey cookies, happy you could join in.

Yeah this is why I mentioned the monitor but also why I later mentioned I’ve read up on it from what I’ve seen, my card is more than capable and I have no problems running high settings in other games without issues. I forgot to add that the sapphire card is some Twin Frozr w/e. Some extra cooling system and a little bit of factory OC.

Do you think I’ll get an improvement if I upgrade the CPU or/and are you saying I actually need another/new graphics card?

**Edit: Other games as in Battlefield, Diablo, Wildstar. Don’t think there are others worth mentioning but I suppose one or two of these could compare.

you probably dont need a new video card, just overclock your cpu more (or upgrade cooler so you can overclock more), otherwise the performance is within expectations on high settings.

Or you could get a whole new mobo/cpu combo, but that’s a lot of outlay for maybe another 15-20% performance. Not really worth it if you are happy with performance everywhere else.

just lower settings if you feel performance is lacking in wvw/zergs. turn off dynamics shadows (low or none) and reflections, lower character limit, and shaders to medium, and maybe LOD to medium if you feel like it.