Guild Wars 2

This games recommend hardware has not yet been published, only its minimum hardware suggestion have been advertised. I think people are forgetting to add a number “2” to their google search for recommended hardware.

anyways the minimum requirements are:

Minimum System Requirements*

• Due to potential changes, system requirements may change over time, and you may be required to upgrade your current system (or obtain a new system) to continue to play the game.
  Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
  Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
  2 GB RAM
  NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
  25 GB available HDD space
  Broadband Internet connection
  Keyboard and mouse

secondly since you are using a laptop could you please confirm that your power profile under power option / management features is set to High Performance Mode. This should disable the Intel Speed Step technology and also the same can be done for Nvidia graphics cards by manually creating a game profile and selecting Performance Mode rather than Adaptive Mode when GW2.exe is running.

Finally please remember this game is recently just released, people are demanding miracles when it comes to updates and performance. We need to allow both the developers time to gain reports on hardware usage and make appropriate fixes and updates to the game code, the same applies for Nvidia/ATi, they have still to release new drivers that include optimisations of their hardware based around this game. Its still early, please be patient and let the developers do their jobs.

Add me to the list. The game crashes on my Nvidia SLI desktop, and is unplayably slow on my laptop.

was going to make a thread for this but 9/9 patch has taken me from 40 FPS to 5, i installed the latest drivers and reinstalled current ones, i can only hope the next patch fixes it

Dubious.7403:

Swordbreaker.2581:

Dubious.7403:

Xceptional.7985:

You forgot to mention your specs

What good would that do?
Obviously the problem is not with his computer, nor with anyone else experiencing this low fps issue with a system that passes the minimum requirements.

This is Anet’s problem, not our systems.

Ya whats a PCs specs have to do with performance of a game youre trying to run on it. /s

At this time it means jack squat, simply because ALOT of other people, me included, are also experiencing these problems. Anet even replied one my emails stating there’s a problem and they’re working on it.

If his problem will continue after Anet fix their shi t, then and only then will his specs mean something.

LoL couldnt agree more ^^

Hey all.

I was having some serious issues with fps performance with my brand new GTX 670 FTW. I performed a clean windows install and had also realized I was still running the game through the patched beta build. After installing the launch build directly from the website my auto detect is now all High and my FPS is between 70-80 fps and no lower than 30 fps during WvWvW zergs. I am very happy. Maybe this solution could help some of you out as well. Here are my specs if you were interested:

Win 7 64 bit
i7 930 @ 2.8 ghz
GTX 670 FTW (Factory OC)
6gb Ram

Dubious.7403:

Swordbreaker.2581:

Dubious.7403:

Xceptional.7985:

You forgot to mention your specs

What good would that do?
Obviously the problem is not with his computer, nor with anyone else experiencing this low fps issue with a system that passes the minimum requirements.

This is Anet’s problem, not our systems.

Ya whats a PCs specs have to do with performance of a game youre trying to run on it. /s

At this time it means jack squat, simply because ALOT of other people, me included, are also experiencing these problems. Anet even replied one my emails stating there’s a problem and they’re working on it.

If his problem will continue after Anet fix their shi t, then and only then will his specs mean something.

It’s a relavant question.
There are loads of people with pc’s below or with barely the minimum requirements making threads about bad performance.

Hey all.

I was having some serious issues with fps performance with my brand new GTX 670 FTW. I performed a clean windows install and had also realized I was still running the game through the patched beta build. After installing the launch build directly from the website my auto detect is now all High and my FPS is between 70-80 fps and no lower than 30 fps during WvWvW zergs. I am very happy. Maybe this solution could help some of you out as well. Here are my specs if you were interested:

Win 7 64 bit
i7 930 @ 2.8 ghz
GTX 670 FTW (Factory OC)
6gb Ram

Your 2500k @ 4.5Ghz was stronger than your new 3570k @ 4.2Ghz.

The difference between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge is minimal, somewhere around 5-7%~ in most circumstances. The only time you will see a large leap in performance is when the actual architecture is changed. This happens every other generation, Ivy Bridge however was not one of them. It was simply a die shrink.

I’ve been playing on my dad’s 3-year old XPS (Core2Quad, GTX 260) for the past 4-5 days and did not notice any performance degradation after the patch last night.

Until the original poster gives their specs we dont know either way if their fps problem can be lumped into cry babies with crap computers that complain they cant run the game or people that legitately have a reason to gripe because they have high end pcs and still get lower than average fps.

Have had terrible fps since launch.

Q6600 2.4Ghz
8800GT
4mb Ram
1920×1080

In some places I may get 15fps when not moving with all settings set to low or off.
Moving the camera drops frame-rate to below 5fps (if it wasn’t already there).

Certain objects/graphical effects (not always obvious what it is) make fps tank to below 5. eg water spouts. Which seems to make some areas worse, like Asuran tutorial area 1-2fps (if it doesn’t crash)

If I play with Logitech G930 headset i get sound static artifacts that only go away with game restart. As well as worse performance, so I’m just using speakers at the moment.

Thing I have tried:-
-Clean install (using Driver Fusion) of graphics drivers, tried 3 latest release and 2 latest beta versions.
-Uninstall sound drivers and clean install
-Updating DirectX
-Defrag Hard Drive
- Repair of client. Reinstall of client.
-Disabling PhysX, uninstalling Physx
-Lowering resolution (made the game run worse)
-Changing card performance profiles. Letting game decide settings.
-Systematically going through each graphical setting and trying them at higher/lower values.
-Temps are ok. CPU usage sits at around 40% with one core occasionally spiking up 60%

Had some great performance for 2 of the stress tests where I got 50+fps on auto detect settings (mostly medium, some low or off) if nothing was going on, 30-40 running around fighting.
The other stress tests had low performance (note I didn’t change any drivers etc during the stress test period).

Hope Anet can sort out the problems, having a blast with parts of the game I can experience

Tullamore.3928:

Have had terrible fps since launch.

Q6600 2.4Ghz
8800GT
4mb Ram
1920×1080

In some places I may get 15fps when not moving with all settings set to low or off.
Moving the camera drops frame-rate to below 5fps (if it wasn’t already there).

Certain objects/graphical effects (not always obvious what it is) make fps tank to below 5. eg water spouts. Which seems to make some areas worse, like Asuran tutorial area 1-2fps (if it doesn’t crash)

If I play with Logitech G930 headset i get sound static artifacts that only go away with game restart. As well as worse performance, so I’m just using speakers at the moment.

Thing I have tried:-
-Clean install (using Driver Fusion) of graphics drivers, tried 3 latest release and 2 latest beta versions.
-Uninstall sound drivers and clean install
-Updating DirectX
-Defrag Hard Drive
- Repair of client. Reinstall of client.
-Disabling PhysX, uninstalling Physx
-Lowering resolution (made the game run worse)
-Changing card performance profiles. Letting game decide settings.
-Systematically going through each graphical setting and trying them at higher/lower values.
-Temps are ok. CPU usage sits at around 40% with one core occasionally spiking up 60%

Had some great performance for 2 of the stress tests where I got 50+fps on auto detect settings (mostly medium, some low or off) if nothing was going on, 30-40 running around fighting.
The other stress tests had low performance (note I didn’t change any drivers etc during the stress test period).

Hope Anet can sort out the problems, having a blast with parts of the game I can experience

Your rig is extremely outdated and not suited for modern gaming. Your performance likely isn’t going to get any better with future updates.

Xceptional.7985:

Dubious.7403:

Swordbreaker.2581:

Dubious.7403:

Xceptional.7985:

You forgot to mention your specs

What good would that do?
Obviously the problem is not with his computer, nor with anyone else experiencing this low fps issue with a system that passes the minimum requirements.

This is Anet’s problem, not our systems.

Ya whats a PCs specs have to do with performance of a game youre trying to run on it. /s

At this time it means jack squat, simply because ALOT of other people, me included, are also experiencing these problems. Anet even replied one my emails stating there’s a problem and they’re working on it.

If his problem will continue after Anet fix their shi t, then and only then will his specs mean something.

It’s a relavant question.
There are loads of people with pc’s below or with barely the minimum requirements making threads about bad performance.

If you will bother reading most of the posts, including the 10 pages long thread about FPS problems, you will see most people began complaining about FPS issues after the September 7 patch.

And as for people who are ‘with just barely minimum requirements’ – They still MEET the requirements as posted by Arena Net. Doesn’t matter by how much. They don’t expect to run the game on highest settings and with an amazing 120 fps.

They all pretty much said they used to run the game on a steady 30 fps prior to Friday’s patch, and that they would like things to go back to the way they were.

As to my system, it is far beyond the minimum requirements. I used to run the game on a steady 45-70 fps on medium- high settings. Now it doesn’t go above 10. I had the exact same problems during the beta events and stress tests. When the game launched the problem pretty much solved itself.
During a month long correspondence with Anet they had NO IDEA what was the cause of the problem, and were just thrilled when it solved itself.

Now the problem is back, and in much, much larger proportions and they do NOT know how to deal with it, just like they didn’t know how to deal with it a month ago.

Want proof I’m not talking shi t?

“We are currently looking into performance and low framerate issues that some players are experiencing despite having a system that exceeds the minimum requirements (http://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1119). If this is affecting you, we would like to recommend the following suggestions: "

This is a response I got from Anet today. So please, for the love of God, stop defending Anet. You, and none of the other suck ups on these forums were paid to be their attorneys.

We’re complaining because we paid over 60 bucks on a game that’s barely even working. We’re allowed to do so, because it just might help solve this problem a tad faster if the Anet team sees how important this is.

So next time if you plan on blaming our systems stop for a moment and think, and then crawl back to the hole you came from.

Thank you

Im usin Phenom IIx4 955 BE @ 3,9 Ghz, 8GB ddr3 Corsair Vengeance@1600Mhz, Evga Gtx 560 ti FPB @1gb and the auto detect sets all to high so .. my guess its that i can run the game at smooth frames … im gettin like 50 – 60 fps questing , 25 -35 fps during events but it still doesnt feel right … ive tweaked the setting a little post processing on low cose on high it just gives an annoying blur and set the shadows to low and now i can get 80 + fps questing and 35 – 60 fps on events. I havent try WvsW yet .. but my opinion its that the game engine needs a little more improvment and we need some Certified drivers from Nvidia.. Have a nice day all

Minalt.6089:

Wow me and OP have nearly the same setup. Except I’m Gtx260 and Windows XP. But yes I have the same problem. But I have a question for you. Does the client give you a hardware detected issue? Because for me it says I have under a 2.0ghz processor but I have the same as you. Also what drivers are you using for your motherboard or intel.

Your processor supports a technology called Intel Speed Step, this slows the processor down to use less power and to keep the processor cooler. When an application starts to require more power the processor automatically speeds up to accommodate this. However when your game launches its probably not currently needing much cpu power as its just starting up hence why you get the error message.

There are multiple ways to disable this technology and force your pc to perform at its maximum speed no matter what.

You can usually disable this option in the BIOS which is the best solution to confirm it gets disabled properly. You can also tell windows to run in performance mode (this disables energy saving features such as intel speed step) by checking out your power management options in the control panel.

I wonder where is the random troll that will blame this on your PC instead of blaming Anet.

odinist.2147:

Was pointed to this: http://ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

Will try it when I get home from work later.

This achieves absolutely nothing.

Everyone in this thread is running very old hardware, including Nova. You cannot expect to run modern games well on 5 year old processors and 4+ year old video cards.

Glow.4159:

Tullamore.3928:

Have had terrible fps since launch.

Snip

Had some great performance for 2 of the stress tests where I got 50+fps on auto detect settings (mostly medium, some low or off) if nothing was going on, 30-40 running around fighting.
The other stress tests had low performance (note I didn’t change any drivers etc during the stress test period).

Your rig is extremely outdated and not suited for modern gaming. Your performance likely isn’t going to get any better with future updates.

Note the part where I said I had good performance (relatively) for 2 of the stress tests.
I know my rig is old. But the game can run perfectly fine on it if it is optimised properly.

Edit: plus I’m wary of upgrading the card in case I still get poor performance due to other compatability/optimisation issues with the rest of my PC setup.

Glow.4159:

Everyone in this thread is running very old hardware, including Nova. You cannot expect to run modern games well on 5 year old processors and 4+ year old video cards.

If it meets or passes minimum requirements your claim is invalid.

Your hardware is fine, the graphics card is the only concern in my opinion its borderline on the minimum side, but In my opinion I would hold off on any upgrade or new pc’s and wait to see how the following updates go.

Dubious.7403:

Glow.4159:

Everyone in this thread is running very old hardware, including Nova. You cannot expect to run modern games well on 5 year old processors and 4+ year old video cards.

If it meets or passes minimum requirements your claim is invalid.

No, it isn’t. Minimum requirements are there to show what it will take to get the game to actually start. In no way do minimum requirements relate to running the game optimally.

Gw2 runs faster for me after the patch so im not convinced that their complaints are any more than a placebo. Also a large majority of people having fps issues have video cards with 512mb or 1gb of vram, when the game easily runs over 1gb on my video cards.

i appreciate the advice but how would i go about doing this exactly? i know its a lot to type up but i doubt im the only one suffering these problems

LOL… this is total nonsense… I got core 2 duo, 8g RAM ,GTX560TI end i get 3-7 frps in Lions arch …seriously .. i do 60 frps in AION max setings in 500 zergs so dont tell me my PC is to old beside there is people with match better PC here that having same problems…. seriously.. btw i did change my graphics card with my 5 year old 2, 8800 gtx SLI end guess what.. i got 1 frps drop.. thas all… bottom line .. game is purely optimized… eeeek beautiful game but unplayable……..

But if your system exceeds the recommended requirements it shouldn’t still run bad. WvW runs awful on my system. Its not the best but its better then the required system specs.—————————

Your cpu maybe throttling… Id try tool named Throttle Stop to see if that makes any difference and make sure your pc is on high performance power state

Glow.4159:

Dubious.7403:

Glow.4159:

Everyone in this thread is running very old hardware, including Nova. You cannot expect to run modern games well on 5 year old processors and 4+ year old video cards.

If it meets or passes minimum requirements your claim is invalid.

No, it isn’t. Minimum requirements are there to show what it will take to get the game to actually start. In no way do minimum requirements relate to running the game optimally.

The game is not working on my i7-720qm, ati 5850, 6gb ram rig.
It does not work on my cousin’s i7-2600, ati 6870, 8gb ram rig.
It works perfectly fine on my friends 5 years old laptop with a 256mb Geforce 9300 graphics card except in WvW.

You sir are correct, the problem is indeed with people’s rigs and not Arena Net’s problem.

Seriously, you people have nothing better to do than troll the forums and defend Anet like they’re paying you to do it.

Dubious.7403:

Glow.4159:

Dubious.7403:

Glow.4159:

Everyone in this thread is running very old hardware, including Nova. You cannot expect to run modern games well on 5 year old processors and 4+ year old video cards.

If it meets or passes minimum requirements your claim is invalid.

No, it isn’t. Minimum requirements are there to show what it will take to get the game to actually start. In no way do minimum requirements relate to running the game optimally.

The game is not working on my i7-720qm, ati 5850, 6gb ram rig.
It does not work on my cousin’s i7-2600, ati 6870, 8gb ram rig.
It works perfectly fine on my friends 5 years old laptop with a 256mb Geforce 9300 graphics card except in WvW.

You sir are correct, the problem is indeed with people’s rigs and not Arena Net’s problem.

Seriously, you people have nothing better to do than troll the forums and defend Anet like they’re paying you to do it.

The game works with my i5 laptop intel 3000hd laptop, it works with my friends i7 gtx 580 and my i7 2600k amd 6870. The issue has to be with your drivers or your setup.

Swordbreaker.2581:

Gw2 runs faster for me after the patch so im not convinced that their complaints are any more than a placebo. Also a large majority of people having fps issues have video cards with 512mb or 1gb of vram, when the game easily runs over 1gb on my video cards.

Did you even bother reading my post?

Anet has acknowledged the problem!!! The amount of complaints has risen since Friday’s patch.
Stop letting people think the problem is with their rig. If the game worked fine for two weeks, no reason as to why it shouldn’t keep running like it has.

As I’ve said before, IF the problem continues after Anet fix their problems, only then will your advice be of any worth.

djaswal.4206:

Dubious.7403:

Glow.4159:

Dubious.7403:

Glow.4159:

Everyone in this thread is running very old hardware, including Nova. You cannot expect to run modern games well on 5 year old processors and 4+ year old video cards.

If it meets or passes minimum requirements your claim is invalid.

No, it isn’t. Minimum requirements are there to show what it will take to get the game to actually start. In no way do minimum requirements relate to running the game optimally.

The game is not working on my i7-720qm, ati 5850, 6gb ram rig.
It does not work on my cousin’s i7-2600, ati 6870, 8gb ram rig.
It works perfectly fine on my friends 5 years old laptop with a 256mb Geforce 9300 graphics card except in WvW.

You sir are correct, the problem is indeed with people’s rigs and not Arena Net’s problem.

Seriously, you people have nothing better to do than troll the forums and defend Anet like they’re paying you to do it.

The game works with my i5 laptop intel 3000hd laptop, it works with my friends i7 gtx 580 and my i7 2600k amd 6870. The issue has to be with your drivers or your setup.

Right. It worked fine for two weeks, then after a patch it stops working.
The problem is with my setup.
My drivers are up-to-date and run every other game with minimum effort. Other MMOs included.

This is Anet’s response to a tickets I sent. The reply is merely 10 hours old:

We are currently looking into performance and low framerate issues that some players are experiencing despite having a system that exceeds the minimum requirements (http://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1119). If this is affecting you, we would like to recommend the following suggestions:

Still think the problem is with my setup?

Hey guys I play guild wars 2 on high, pulling like 120 frames per second for like 3-10 minutes, then randomly my screen gets green lines, the game freezes, and it starts back up 20-30 seconds later with only 10-20 fps… Whats wrong with my graphics card

Its a gtx 660 Ti
and i have a intel 5 series 3500k

:p Ill remember that

please fix this i had about 90fps,now 10-15

seems like 2 days ago WvW was playable and today the frame rates are lower not sure whats going on.

Hi all thanks for looking.

Running around server i get anywhere from 20-35 fps, in WvsWvsW it drops to as low as 2-3 fps with zerg groups and fort attacks. I am more than happy for it to stay at about 25 permanently. If i can get more then great but it is not required me to play the game and enjoy myself.

2-3 fps is not acceptable.

If i have to throw money at the situation then i am happy to do that but before i go throwing money away please someone tell me this.

Is this Arenanets fault or mine?

If it is mine then please tell me what i need to go and get please

Specs :

Intel® Celeron® CPU E3400 @ 2.60 GHz 2.60 GHz
2.00gb ram
32bit operating system
Running on Vista
Nvidia Geforce GTS 250 (drivers up to date with current version)

When i first purchased the game the launcher said i had incorrect hardware installed so i updated my Gfx card and upon doing that the warning symbol has not come up.

Finally please only post if you have something constructive to say and please don’t tell me to go and buy £200 parts when £100 parts will be sufficient. I’ve got money spare but not money to burn.

Thanks !!!!

Are you sure it’s not overheating?

The game glitching and slowing down followed by a frozen screen sounds a lot like the video card exceeding its temperature limits and then crashing. Windows can (usually) restart the driver to recover from this, but it takes some time… potentially 20-30 seconds if a game was running.

Does this happen with the framerate limiter enabled?

Well your a celeron e3400 is not gonna let you play with 25fps in WvWvW not even after a million years of optimization… You might not wanna hear this but its time you do a proper platform upgrade with atleast intel i3/amd fx4100 even then you will be having problems since the game isnt fully optimized. So your best bet is to wait for the optimization to get better before you go for an upgrade so you wont be wasting your money on parts that wont let you play or will be an overkill…

I lost 20 fps in LA and generally anywhere with a high density of players such as WvW where as before I had zero performance loss around players which was quite impressive.

Honestly. You’re quite lucky if you’re getting an average of 20-35FPS with those specs in PVE. I’ve got a significantly better rig than you do and I’m getting an average of 17.

Don’t spend your money yet. You’re better off waiting to see IF the horrific FPS issues with this game are resolved by ANet.

I was planning on using my poor GW2 performance as an excuse to buy a new PC. That was until I saw a poster in another thread here list almost identical specs of the system I was planning on upgrading to. That poster was seeing an avg of 25-30 FPS. The game is very much to blame for the poor performance. I would suggest waiting to see if the developers fix the problem. If not you can feel free to run the gauntlet with your wallet and see how things go.

Personally, I’ll just stop playing. My PC runs every other game I own just fine. When it becomes truly outdated another 1-2 years from now, I’ll buy a new one and then maybe I’ll revisit GW2.

For somebody who basically completely computer illiterate how much would it be to upgrade to the 2 suggested things above?

This wouldn’t involve a replacing everything would it or just this one part?

I know how to play games and listen to the wife drivel on about handbags, not pc tech stuff.

drop all you graphic specs, you machine is very low spec.With a Celeron CPU ( this type of CPU does not have a maths co-processor, this means all operations have to be done in the core processor, this makes them very slow for gaming) your always going to struggle with that system. upgrading it to me seems pointless, it needs a complete rebuild if you want to do any serious gaming.

in the meantime

I would start on the lowest video setting and work your way up till you find what works best.

Since the game’s launch on 08/25 it has worked great and ran smoothly until today, 09/09. I’ve made no changes to my system but I like many others are experiencing a terrible FPS drop. My system exceeds the minimum requirements and ran fine for two weeks this tells me that it is not my system at fault but something going on Anet’s side.

Have reduced everything to minimum, nothing more i can do bar turning the thing off.

I’m happy with the 15-20, at least i can see what i am doing, but i bought this game solely on the basis i can play PVP yet it turns out i can’t do that.

How much do run of the mill with nothing spectacular but competent rigs cost nowadays? What parts of my current machine could i salvage to save on cost?

I will wait for the optimization to come first however if it never comes I wouldn’t be surprised. Game companies generally “forget” about their titles post release and i don’t expect this to be any different.

Thanks for your replies so far guys, much help xx

Need to go to bed as well, will revisit tomorrow

Despite having quite high fps in game (usually 60+) I have noticed a problem with the game appearing to stutter or skip frames quite a lot, which causes it to look and feel a lot slower than it should. I noticed this happens especially when turning the camera around.

I am running on maxed settings with supersampling on native and v-sync turned off but have tried messing around with the settings and nothing seems to really help. Is anyone else having this problem?

My computer specs are as follows:

i5 2500k
Radeon HD 7870
8Gb RAM
500GB HDD

I understand your frustration but just to reiterate, don’t go spending any money yet man.
From someone who’s been suffering from, studying this issue since the release date the only surefire way of getting good FPS is to own a Desktop Based i7 (read, not a laptop) preferably current generation 3770k or superior.

The powerful i7 is the only thing that people having a good game experience seem to have in common. GPU doesn’t seem to matter to any great extent. RAM is more or less not a factor. The only thing that changes the game experience from bad/mediocre to good is the CPU and that will require you to pay around $1000+ for a whole new system.

It’s simply not worth it, nor is it fair that you should be expected to own a system like this to play the game. When there are people with laptop i7 processors and desktop based i3-i5s who are getting <30 FPS in PVE it’s the game with the problem, not your computer.

The issue is stability, and that’s for ANet to work out. Admittedly your system is old but you should be able to achieve a playable game with low settings. That has not been provided for you. You shouldn’t be expected to spend more money on hardware to get a stable low spec game experience.

HAH, i’m getting 2-3 fps too on a Core2Duo E6850 @3.5GHZ +GTX 470 (but on my i3 is the same).
This game’s character rendering is just so bad.
I just died 2 times in WvWvW against invisible enemies. I was 2v1 against an invader, and then i started getting damage from nobody. Then I died.
And then, ONLY then, my comp loaded the enemies that killed me. They were 5.

That sucked so bad that I left WvWvW.
I was so happy in playing GW, and have waited for this game so long.. i’m so disappointed.

I dont notice intense stuttering but i find that the when looking around and moving the camera it seems sluggish even though my fps is 50-60 +

I had this happen a lot until I turned the shadows and reflections down. Even when the framerate was quite good on average, it was varying way too much and would sometimes dip near single digits regardless of what was actually visible on the screen.

Seemed to happen more when there was heavy action going on somewhere nearby, even if I couldn’t see it.

I suspected the video card was just running out of memory with shadows maxed, but even with shadows & reflections turned down the framerate’s quite unstable — I’m getting roughly 50-60 FPS average in many areas, but even with the camera looking down at the ground the framerate still randomly dips every couple of seconds.

Hardware:

Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.6 GHz (yeah, old but generally fast enough with the OC)
4 GB RAM
GeForce GTX 560 Ti (306.02 beta drivers)
GW2 & Win 7 64 on a 128GB SSD