Guild Wars 2

i5 and i7 are often very similar for games, and I have my doubts this game is any exception. Only differences I recall are L2 cache and hyperthreading. Or maybe also a difference in the IGP, but not sure on that.

Some of the i7s clock higher, but it’s usually not by much, and if you are going to OC, the actual speed is going to depend on how much and what kind of cooling you will use, and how good the specific CPU you bought can OC.

And of course, the extreme versions have 6 physical cores (or whatever they call that line,) but I have my doubts the game can really take advantage of more cores.

There is a new AMD beta driver released 2 days ago. That coupled with the patch update for Guild Wars 2 yesterday has made me able to run around Lions Arch at 30-40fps. Turning camera still gives me stutter but everything is running nicer now. Hope you guys are experiencing the same improvements.

The game wont take advantage of more cores than its designed to, BUT with more cores it means other applications like your OS can use said other cores leaving the cores GW2 uses free to deal with GW2.
A 2 core system with or without hyperthreading will struggle with GW2 as all processes will be utilizing said 2 cores. a 4core will deal much better ..specialy with hyperthreading.
And a 6 core better still.
The main thing though when you get to the current generation processor is that the core speed is atleast 3ghz at minimum for acceptable frame rates * quality. You will see a ingame speed difference up to possible 4.5ghz when it comes to mmo’s ..and higher still once you get into high end SLI’ing where the gpu can run just as fast as the cpu. (im talking quad sli + 5ghz cpu OC)

Hah, not convinced more GPU power is needed that my dual GTX 670s. I say this because I see fps of 120+. I actually saw 187 in one place last night. And the GPU still seems pretty lightly loaded.

As for more CPU power, I have been considering buying an i7 3770 K version. Not exactly an impulse purchase, but I made a mistake buying locked version to begin with, assuming I would never need more than stock clock.

Wow, so many idiotic responses and suggestions. i5 to weak for this game? Don;t play on a laptop? Some people obviously just wanna show off their rigs and/or dismiss any problem, just blaming the users hardware.

This is definitely a problem on Anet’s side. I ran the game perfectly fine for the past three weeks (max quality, i got 50 fps everywhere), and i’m using a laptop with i5 and a 460M card. A few days a go, after the patch, i got my first share of FPS troubles. Because it cleared itself after a restart, i gave no attention to it. But after that, each time i started the game, i had to restart the comp/game 2-3 times before the problem magically fixed itself and i could play. Now the day finally came when i cannot play the game anymore. No matter how many times i change settings/restart/whatever, i get 10 fps max. So don’t tell me that me and a thousand other people have hardware problems, all at the same time.

Like so many posts have pointed out, the problem is that the CPU is not used appropriately. It never goes beyond 50% usage, and before it had 80%-100%. THAT is what needs fixing, not getting some ultra mega high end PC.

Sorry about the tone, but i just hate it when unknowledgeable people give bad advice, and we seem to have a lot of these “experts” around here.

This problem is still persisting for me. Started up an engineer and when I went to the caves to grab the vista I couldn’t get over 15fps in there. Funny thing is, earlier when I was doing the quest to take back stolen supplies for the heart just outside the cave, everything seemed fine. I also did not notice a drop when I did the story quest to get the medicine (common folk human story quest).

Nothing has changed on my system at all in this time (I did story quest and heart quest earlier, logged for a bit then came back to grab the vista before continuing into the zone).

i have not logged in today however i noticed that the fix rolled back yesterday.

supergica.8652:

Sorry about the tone, but i just hate it when unknowledgeable people give bad advice, and we seem to have a lot of these “experts” around here.

Don´t be sorry at all.
It´s far too kind compared to what I have in store for all these ekitten waving intelkiddies.
But I´ll probably get my account banned if I´d unload.

Which honestly by now wouldn´t bother me much anymore.

I switched out my Phenom II x2 555 for a x4 965 and now have worse performance. Where I had to overclock the 555 to 3.7Ghz just for more stable FPS, now I´m watching the 965 cores almost idling usually around the 2.4GHz mark.
It gets downright comical when I use autodetect and I get 10 FPS after it has switched most settings to max.
Only I´m not laughing anymore.

The ONLY problem for me is Events and Dungeons and it’s getting really rediculous. I don’t play any of them anymore since i get 15 – 20 fps which is TERRIBLE.

Ok, I have read that the game is not cpu “bound” now. I am sitting in LA right now not moving. I have everything maxed (best appearance) with no post-processing. I am running 20 fps at these settings. My cpu cores are at mid to upper 90% usage and my gpu/s, I have 2 560 Ti’s SLI, are not being used equally; gpu 1’s usage is mid to upper 20% range while gpu 2’s usage is 40-50% range. I don’t understand the descrepency there.

Anyway, if I lower the reflections (terrain & sky), shadows (low), and shader (medium) while standing still in LA at the mystic forge I go from 20 fps to 28 fps.

Am I missing something in my settings? I know my system is above miminum, is my rig really not able to handle this game with 40+ fps? It is very rare I get above 35 fps out in pve.

Thank you, dxdiag (64-bit) attachment.

-MOST- of my pve lag and stutering while moving around camera is solved, and overall the camera moving lag is gone. but still got low FPS in wvw, and alot of ppl with same card experiences it. don’t worry guys, you are not alone. this is anets fault.

I may have a few fixes that could be helpful for improving FPS on the user end. If you already do these, or have done them, then simply ignore this post. But I wasn’t doing these following things before, and it shot up my fps quite a bit (I get a steady 50+ fps, when I would gradually fall all the way to a constant 12 fps).

1) How often do you clean the fans and air vents? Sounds a bit obvious, but for some non-techies, it isn’t something we think about. I had HUGE overheating problems until I used a can of compressed air to blow out dust. Dust and debris came out like smoke from a semi-truck’s exhaust pipe. This helped increase my fan performance, which decreases likelihood of overheating (which I believe is a partial cause to my gradual dip in fps).

2) I also purchased a laptop cooler, which is outstanding in keeping my laptop cool (no more 80+ C temps that I was used to seeing, even while simply surfing the web). It’s a Belkin laptop cooler that has the curve design and has air flowing in from the back and out on the sides. Can’t remember the exact model, but it’s helped me a lot. I no longer get over 85 C temps even while gaming (which is also helped by cleaning the fan vents).

From here, my fps rose slightly to a relatively constant 40 fps. But it wasn’t enough.

3) Lastly, I’ve been getting some nasty random computer freezes and BSODs. I recently found out that one of my friends had found Bonjour on my computer, and that I should uninstall it (or at least disable it). Bonjour is used as a sharing device mainly for iTunes, where you can share libraries with other people. He said that it has the potential to allow malware to invade the computer. So I disabled it (quick Google search tells you how), not just for this malware comment, but also because I never share libraries anyways.

From that, I got another 10+ fps increase, and I no longer see anything below 50 fps (even LA is getting around 50 fps for me).

As I said, this post isn’t for those that maintain their computers constantly and maintain them well. It’s for us non-techies who know pretty much squat about computers and just want to play the game (like me). Apologies if they don’t work for you and for taking up thread space.

Summary: Clean out your fan vents at least once every other week. Buy a cooling pad if you’re on a laptop (one that actually helps will be about $30). Disable Bonjour Service; if it doesn’t do anything, you can re-enable it again.

^
It’s cause your computer is low end, they are known to be running mmos better. My temps are all fine, all temps expect gpu under 50, and gpu like 60 (celsius)

I saw some little improvements in the game’s responsiveness, but the overall performance remains almost the same. In LA i found myself quite surprised when I didn’t get stuttering while I was in the middle of 20-30 people on my mobile i3. On my E6850 i found an increment of 3-4 fps in huge zergs( 5-7 fps before, 8-10 today).
Can anybody confirm this or am I victim of a sort of placebo effect?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been suffering from a freezing/crashing issue for almost a month now with no help beyond “try doing a clean install of Nvidia drivers” as almost every response. Until today. I had to share the help offered by the team.

Yep. I laughed so hard I almost cried!

HAHA! I think we should give this kind of answers a name.. something like “Unanswers”.

Since everyone is crying on low fps i will join the party.

OMG i cant play WvW, the fps lock on 8 when we are in a big fight.
In PvE during dragons events i play at 10 fps.
When completing areas alone i play at 30 fps and sometimes when theres nothing going on i get 60fps.

Well i love this game but i cant have much fun on the big events this game has to offer.
Yea i know my system is not great and that my cpu is the problem, but if i want to buy a new cpu i will need to buy another motherboard too and maybe ddr3 rams.
I will wait for the next generation of hardware arrives and then make a new machine i guess.

ANET STAFF!!!!!!
Can We Get any update that you are working on this issue? Or i can sell my copy of the game?

This in regards to fps below 60fps in some areas when much better fps are seen most of the time; and the CPU and GPU loads don’t seem high in these cases.

My latest test -

Pulled my GTX 670 cards, and put my dual 6950 cards in place. Installed 12.8 drivers. No obvious improvement. I understand the GTX 670 is better, just noting that the 6950 was not obvious improvement. If it had always run over 60 fps, that would have been some indication of a GTX 670 specific variable.

For example, both seemed to suffer in one sport in Black Citidel

Ze Dos Cavalos.6132:

I will wait for the next generation of hardware arrives and then make a new machine i guess.

It’s been three generations; what are you waiting for?
A robust 2012 game isn’t going to run smoothly on 2005 hardware.

I’ve had a significant fps drop since the last few patches. Prior to that, I was running at 50 – 60 constantly, now I’m running between 35 – 40, and sometimes as low as 19.

Also, I would like to add, that I got a major fps hit in big cities such as Black Citadel. Previous to the last patch, I enjoyed frames as high as 45 – 50. Now I barely get 20.

im 100% sure its the game engine. found another kitten fps drop location. its a test apparatus(lighting effects) in southern lornars pass heart quest. when i look at it fps drops by 60. doesn’t even matter if i can see it aslong as im looking in that direction.

cpu utilization was only at 15% and gpu at 30%. its like the game isnt even recognizing that the effect is there. similar issue in areas of lions arch and a bandit cave in queesndale. ive reported it in bugs but get the feeling that doesn’t actually do anything:(

system
i72600k
gtx 670
8gb ddr3 RAM

I love this game so much but the bad FPS is really bringing me down. I tryed literally everything and nothing works. You know what is really funny, if i put my settings on medium i get better result than low. I can play in the open word with 30- 50 FPS no problem but as soon i go either Events or Dungeons i have 10-15 FPS all the time and it will never change. Please for the love of god try to fix this problem or i’m forced to buy a new computer…

same problem
please fix it

The bombs in the cave seem to be spawning like, endlessly, which is why I think the lag is there. There’s literally hundreds of them stacked on eachother, probably more, can’t seem to put a dent in the pile ever.

for some with this issue it will be just that, get a new computer how some expected to play this game with an old pc is beyond me. for others there is a genuine issue.

for me, i change settings and my fps actually got worse, so back to high for me as it was actually better than it was at med/low. kind of weird scenario i know.

so high across the board 55+ fps with natural drops to 30 in wvw time to upgrade my graphics card i think:(

Anet are most likely trying to work who actually has a problem over those that just need to be realistic with thier expectations.

@ Orlen

While that might be partially true, you can’t rule out the fact that GW2 may have some serious memory/optimization issues. Since the last patch, I got a major fps hit in cities, running barely at 19fps. Prior the patch I was enjoying frames as high as 45 – 55fps (at max settings no less)

For a person like me (and I’m sure many others) that have been pc gaming since the early 90’s (don’t mean to brag – just want to point out that I’ve been dealing with pcs for nearly 20+ years) I know for a fact that my system/setup/configuration is not the issue.

Game is unplayable right now with crashes every minute or so. Machine is about 2 years old, all drivers patched, etc. Died so many times in the past 2 hours. Pandas are starting to look more attractive each day…

To the people saying “duh it’s a new game you need a new computer obveeislee”. Anet disagrees.
•Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
•2 GB RAM
•NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)

It says 2.0ghz dual core. I have 3.0ghz dual core.
It says 2gb ram. I have 8gb ram
It say Geforce 7800. I have Geforce 560.

It was perfectly reasonable to assume I could play this game with max settings and no problems.

I tried WvW, and despite all of the enemies being invisible at the time, I had 2FPS at the lowest point. There are picture slideshows that move at a higher frequency. This was with gamebooster shutting down anything unnecessary.

Until they optimize this, I just can’t do WvW. And I need to spend time researching overclocking, hoping I don’t destroy my CPU. I shouldn’t have to do any of this.

I have the same problem

I noticed this problem as well.

I can confirm that this problem is back again.

Experienced this as well. Went from 45-60 down to 5-10. Tried all kinds of things…thought my cpu was overheating or my gpu. Cooled them off, shut down my pc, turned off my overclocking, ensured everything was closed (software wise), and after a fresh reboot, it was dog slow. I thought maybe it was the bombs, and animations from the torches…turned off just everything and it was as other’s have called bad fps, a “powerpoint presentation”. Never had a cave experience in there or elsewhere like this before.

Chalice.1280 you are correct sir. The problem is the endless spawning of the bombs. I noticed this a few days ago as the constant sparkle of them seems to just overlap each-other. I am curious as they have been having a Respawn rate bug, where monsters are rapidly respawning. Maybe this bug is ALSO Effecting the Respawn rate on these items??? ANet may want to take a look at that.

From all the comments, it seems as though it is a game problem. However I thought I would just post what happened to me, and maybe a few of you are in the same boat.

I was constantly getting 10-15 FPS, no matter what settings. I have a Q6600 (not the best I know) 8gb RAM, and a GTX 580. So its not the best system, but it certainly should run the game on low-med settings. I came here weeks ago, and just presumed I had the same problem as everyone else, and have been following this thread closely ever since. A few days ago, I was looking in my BIOS, and a power saving setting called ce1 (I think) was on. This actively under-clocked the CPU. I disabled it, and I got a fairly sizable FPS increase to around 30-35 FPS. I have since overclocked the CPU and added better cooling, and am now getting ~45 FPS on max settings, no matter where I go.

I get that this won’t help everyone, but it might help a couple of you.

Rolo.9248:

It’s been three generations; what are you waiting for?
A robust 2012 game isn’t going to run smoothly on 2005 hardware.

Um, it was released in 2012, the game is based on an API thats MUCH older.
Directx9c came out in 2004.

Dx9 is hardly a robust 2012 engine. Now… what the devs are trying to DO with it, is an entirely different story, and interestingly enough, is the main source of the framerate issues. My bets are on the occlusion methods they are using, especially if they are using them for player models. Umbra is designed for non-dynamic static objects like buildings and trees. If they are trying to use that engine for player models, its not wonder even the most powerful systems are barely managing 30 fps.

It always comes down to 3rd party engine software that devs try to impliment into their game. Especially when they try to tweak it beyond what it was designed to do. (horrid flashbacks of swtor and the hero engine).

The problem here is that the game simply does not like single bottlenecks.

For example, if you run a first gen or second gen quadcore like the q6600, q8200 etc, even with some overclocking the game still fails to gain fps. At the same time, if you upgraded your GPU to some of the latest (500, 600, 7000 series), the game again will not increase its fps. One way to check if you have a CPU bottleneck is to change the resolution of the game from high to low, as well as the graphics, if you see no noticeable improvements, then there you go.

Even though CPU utilization is still horrible when you upgrade to say an I7 3770k, the extra bandwidth and newer architecture seems to equalise the bottlenecking. I am running an i5 3570k @ 4.5GHz, and the game only manages to use 40-45% of it, where as GPU (GTX 670 heavily OCed) is at 70-75%. This again seems to be a slight bottleneck, as my frames becomes unstable. If I downclock the CPU to around 4GHz, the game actually becomes smoother overall.

Thus the game requires a precise balance of CPU and GPU power in order to maximise its efficiency, apart from the horrible coding that went on, it pretty much is telling gamers to buy “a certain PC combo”, perhaps endorsement from Intel I do not know.

I ordered, at great expense, an unlocked i7 to replace my locked i7. I will be able to test to see if that helps, and will report back.

If as some people speculate, sometimes GPU and CPU don’t seem to be maxed out, the bottleneck “could be” the bus. But I have the Ivy bridge with the Z77, and thought the bus is PCI Express 3.0 – would seem odd if that was the issue.

michaeljhuman.3940:

I ordered, at great expense, an unlocked i7 to replace my locked i7. I will be able to test to see if that helps, and will report back.

If as some people speculate, sometimes GPU and CPU don’t seem to be maxed out, the bottleneck “could be” the bus. But I have the Ivy bridge with the Z77, and thought the bus is PCI Express 3.0 – would seem odd if that was the issue.

And PCIE 2.0 and 3.0 as ~1% difference in gaming.

Probably. Maybe one day will will figure out what’s happening when the fps drops in some areas, and it seems like the CPU and GPU load are both not maxed…

I will be curious to see if OC the 3770 helps, and am spending a fair chunk of change to find this out (and have a new toy to play with, to be totally honest

I wouldn’t OC the non Ks, as you will have to raise the baseclock which is very unstable, you might be able to get an extra 400mhz of out it though.

Best Performance settings after patch today, pulling 4 FPS in WvW (maybe 20 vs. 20 players). Combine that with player popping and it was completely unplayable. ATI HD 7850, i7 860, SSD, 8 GB RAM.

Today’s patch made an already annoying problem much worse, the single digit fps drop that I usually experience once every 20-30 minutes is now happening every 2-3 minutes. This is making the game nearly unplayable.

No improvement for me after today’s patch. Still sitting at 17-19 fps in Black Citadel (before I enjoyed frames as high as 45). Lately my gaming sessions are as follows:

log in – check fps – log out.

Seem to be having the same issue as above, game ran flawlessly until today’s update, now can’t break 12fps even on lowest settings. Updating drivers to see if that works as a solution but has anyone else experienced an extreme FPS drop from this update?

Yes noticing worst performance with today patch. Made a thread about it there: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Worst-performance-october-1-patch/

You can raise the bclock a bit Z. But not much. I ran perfectly stable with a 103 Mhz BCLK for a small bit o’ OC on my locked 3770.

No quote button so here are responses to the prior several posts:

- DirectX is an API, not an engine and is irrelevant. Besides, DX10 didn’t offer much and was slower than 9 and 11.x brings us tessellation, which very few games have anyway. Additionally, DX9-based games in 2004 could still crush hardware years after that (one could say to Oblivion even).

- Your Core2Duo can’t feed your GTX560Ti fast enough; they are mismatched and the CPU will certainly bottleneck—not because of Anet’s programming—but because it’s an old CPU. If any part is in the same class as the minimum requirements, you will get minimum performance. Such has been the way of PC gaming for a couple of decades now. “Minimum requirements” means the program will run, not give you a pleasant experience. Anet should state recommended hardware.

- I’ve never had CPU or GPU pegged in WvWvW (and occasional PvE areas) when my FPS dropped to 30, so better hardware won’t resolve this particular issue (rebalnz documented this as well). Before you upgrade/troubleshoot/blame Anet, analyse your system to isolate the cause. (If your vehicle were to suddenly stop/not run correctly, I hope you would at least look at the dashboard for indicators first.)

- PCIe2 vs 3 is negligible and only comes into play when loading textures. To check your bus interface, your GPU has to be busy to use 2.x/3.x modes (1.x=power saving)

- Black Citadel is rough, even more so than LA with a bunch of people in it. Depending on your in-game and driver settings (turn off reflections, drop shadows some), I doubt anything short of tri-SLI could render it smoothly; it is hardly representative of the game’s performance as a whole and you never, ever form a conclusion with one data point.

Well, just as a quick update, I was only realizing my GPU-usage was in the 50s-60s% or so as I was trying to record which of coure eats up a lot of thoroughput. Was just playing tonight in Brisban Wildlands and all during the outdoors areas, my normal GPU monitor was instead showing 70-95%. Skrittsburgh and Venlin Vale for example, both put me in the upper 90s to 99% so it’s good that the GPU is being fully utilized.

I’m still going to have to test out WvW and larger events to see how things go though.

Of course the FPS issues are that people seem to be having the opposite issue. I’d still think I’d need a higher frequency to offest areas like Lion’s Arch or such. Haven’t tried Black Citadel or other higher areas yet to report on.