Guild Wars 2

So here are the important specs for my laptop.

-i7-2960XM @ 2.7Ghz (3.7Ghz Turbo Mode)
-Nvidia GeForce 580m
-Bigfoot Networks Killer 1103 N wifi card
-16GB DDR3 @ 1600

I’m currently using the 314.22 drivers which are the latest to be released I believe other than the beta ones. I’ve tried Razer’s Gameboost program which doesn’t help much. I am rendering at 1080p, however even with the settings set to best performance, I run at 15-20 fps. With everything set to maximum performance, I get the same fps rate which puzzles me somewhat. My HDD has 0% fragmentation on it so with all this being taken into account the game should perform flawlessly. I’m running Crysis, Grid, Borderlands 2, and other games at high settings with much better FPS than GW2 is giving me. Now some games are running at 720p, and I have tried lowering the resolution for GW2, but the fps still remains the same. Can anyone provide some input as to what may improve my frame rates?

Thanks!

I have the same problem. My system is high end and this game jumps around in fps. In cities I get 34-46 fps, everywhere else I get 58 – 63. Recently some other players have noticed a frame rate drop since the updates last week. When I’m in the new Southsun Cove I have jumps of frame rates from 60 to 21 fps. I don’t know why this game isn’t optimized, but one thing in common with people complaining of frame rate is that they have a Nvidia card. Really wish they could fix this problem. I tried what is suggested in the forum to help with Nvidia cards, and it only makes a difference of like 3 FPS. Hopefully the developers are aware of this and fixing it. I don’t like it when FPS drop below 45 in a modern game.

Specs
AMD 8350 @ 4.2 Ghz
16 GB RAM @1866
GTX 680 /w 4 GB RAM
Windows 7 64-bit
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD

I also experience drops in cities and other areas. Overall worse than, let’s say 2 weeks ago.

AMD Phenom X4 @3.6 ghz
8 GB DDR3 @ 1600
NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB
Windows 7 64bit

The update two weeks ago has made frame rate drops worse than it was. At least I was getting over 30 fps before, now it goes down to 21. Why don’t the developers work on this. Like before I think it’s the Nvidia cards. Although on the Nvidia website it says that it supports this game.

The game itself is badly optimize in both CPU and GPU. Everyone in here ran ultra high end PC setup know this.

Anet would work together with amd and nvidia about this issue, I think it would help.

HugoCosta.6735:

Anet would work together with amd and nvidia about this issue, I think it would help.

This has nothing to do with amd/nvidia this is purely at Anet’s end… Been months and still this pile of kitten.

I don’t know why, but everyone who played the the game in their old pc were really happy playing with no low fps issue, however, when these people changed their old pc’s to a better one, the game really didn’t see this with good eyes, this game has something really strange with it.

And Anet don’t say nothing about this.

It’s sad because mmorpgs have a long life, but when people upgrade to a better computer it’s going to make many players upset the longer they put off fixing the problem. They’ve got to be aware of it, but I never hear anything from Arenanet on whether they are going to fix the problem or are working on it. When Nvidia had issued with Tomb Raider they fixed it fast. They also fixed Assassin’s Creed 3, Arkhem City, Far Cry 3, and Bioshock Infinite among others within weeks of their release. Comon Arenanet listen to you PC enthusiasts with powerful machines, you know they are willing to put down money for a beefy machine, so they’re more likely to buy gems and make purchases in the store. I’ve been holding off on buying anything with this game because I noticed the frame rate issue from the start. I like to play my games at 60fps or higher on 1080p maxed out.

All games you guys have been stating are different games.. they use gpu and kitten when you are comparing this game to any other make sure they are mmo’s for the love of god it’s 2013 know the difference.

muslumgurseks.4951:

All games you guys have been stating are different games.. they use gpu and kitten when you are comparing this game to any other make sure they are mmo’s for the love of god it’s 2013 know the difference.

Let me compare other mmorpgs I play. DC Universe Online runs at constant 30fps because that is where they lock it. Neverwinter online runs at 60 fps except for Protectors Enclave which the developers are working on. Dragon’s Prophet I have everything cranked up and runs at 60 fps. So lets go to 2013. Bioshock, Tomb Raider run as 60 fps everything cranked. Older games that have better graphics than GW2 Skyrim 60 fps, and Far Cry 3 54 to 60 fps, and Assassin’s Creed 3 at constant 60 fps on my system. To go back further Crysis 2, Arkham City, Deus Ex: Human Evolution, and civilization V(which does take hefty hardware to run max) all are at 60 fps maxed out. The Witcher 2 everything but Ubersampling are on and it runs at constant 60fps. I don’t know if you work for Arenanet and are trying to make players shut up about an issue high end systems are facing, or if your just a troll. Either way you are a kitten and maybe you should join 2013. If you have a low end system then of course it’ll run the game smoothly for you, but those of us who have money and are willing to build a high end machine are disappointed.

The game has bad optimization in place. Turning my camera will sometimes give a “stutter” feeling. Staring at smoke or such will cause a dramatic drop. WvW is the only place I can accept anything below 30 fps which does happen at times. (20 the least.)

The game needs work for sure.

I have the same issues. I shoudl be able to run the game fine but even at lower graphical settings I still get low frame rates and a lot of stuttering. Especially when there’s a lot of skills and action going on (which is a lot of the time and don’t even ask my about big events like dragons as it’s basically a slideshow and sucks any fun out of those events) and it’s gotten to the point where I’m starting to lose hope and wonder if I should bother. The last “optimization” in the recent update did squat to help anything and might have made it worse and it’s been like nine months since the game has come out and it still runs like crap.

I run with quite low end computer and lowest graphics yet the frames im getting after recent patch makes it totally unenjoyable 2 play anymore.. before that i didnt really ever had any problems with frames.. well except in wv3

Unfortunately the truth is that Anet haven’t really properly discussed this issue with us so we’re likely not to get anything done about it. Our only hope is that enough people make these threads and as have them be as large as possible to forge them into giving us some sort of indication they’re even doing anything at all about it.

hmm i’m still running around 70 fps, but then and again i’m using a 7870 ati card so maybe it’s a driver thing? I’m also running this on a desktop.

Where in game are u getting these low FPS figures ?

Depending on where u r in game it ‘might’ be the CPU holding u back as it wont being running at 3.7ghz playing GW2, it will be running around 3.4ghz. Mobile CPU’s cant run at their max turbo clock when using all cores.
IIRC the 2960XM runs at its max of 3.7ghz on 1 core use, 3.6ghz on 2 core use, 3.5ghz on 3 core use, and 3.4ghz on 4 core use.

This theory will only work if ur in a part of GW2 that has relativly high CPU usuage, if ur in PvE (not in a city) and u still get low FPS then its indeed somthing esle.

I had 40-60fps before May (started in april). I’ve thrown every gpu tweak to the card (radeon 7850) and have a quad core intel cpu. This game has room for optimization. There is a reason why people get 1-5 fps at major events like dragons.

I’m in the beginning forest area. I don’t do PvP so taking that out of the equation, I can’t begin to understand why the game runs so poorly. Even Aion runs better and that’s using Crytek’s engine. The game’s using Dx9 so that also makes me wonder what’s going on.

Let everyone know to keep writing on this thread to let Arenanet know that they know that higher end systems have frame rate issues due to the game not being optimized. I won’t buy any Gems until it’s fixed.

Someone suggested Aion on one of the threads about people with good systems having low FPS. I’m liking Aion so far, constant 60 fps, not at good graphics as gw2 but it uses the Cryengine. It has pop up graphics, like many MMORPGs. I’m a close beta tester for Dragon’s Prophet and I’m liking it better than GW2. I lke DC Universe Online better than both of Dragon’s Prophet and GW2. I actually pay for it and I’m willing to pay for any game that is enjoyable enough, and has high frame rate. So far only DCUO is the only game I’m willing to pay. To people that tried DCUO and didn’t like it, get a PS3 controll and download a program that reads the controller input and try to play it. Plays a lot better.

DCUO locks it’s FPS at 30 if I’m not mistaken. Making it impossible to ever play at a “choppy” rate.

AION is ..ok, i used ot play it when it 1st arrived, got the collectors edition and all, however i quit after the carebare patch was brought through, and to my knowledge its still present, one of AION’s great apeals to people at the start was open world pvp, that no longer exists at levels below 40.
imo Tera is a much better. If ur ok with AION’s art style then Tera should suite u fine. The only main difference is the combat style. Tera is all manual targeting semi action combat, its not tab targeting. So if ur looking for another relaxing skilless tab target mmo like WoW, GW2, AION etc.. Tera wont be for u.
However If u like the sound of it, well Tera is now F2P, so go try it out. Make sure if u try out Tera to keep a character going till ur atleast level 30, the 1st 18 or so levels can seem rather lackluster but once u start facing BAM’s (big a*s monsters) and get into dungeons, things take of.

Aevic.9675:

DCUO locks it’s FPS at 30 if I’m not mistaken. Making it impossible to ever play at a “choppy” rate.

Yes DCUO does lock the 30 FPS. But I think after a resent update they may have upped that a little. Because, I’m getting real smoother graphics now. Not 60 fps smooth, but constant.

I actually made a video recording of this “bad optimization” with the current patch in the worst possible Situation: WvW Zergs (not the biggest ones around here, but sufficient in size i would say): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y60lzf-BGo

Without the Recording the FPS is usually around 12 fps higher in the same situations, which is still quite low for the system specs.

What i noticed with this patch:
Pre-patch i could gain around 5fps by lowering the shader and shadow details in zerg situation. No, neither the gpu nor the cpu were at 100% usage at that point, but the gpu usage ironically happened to increase after lowering those settings. This seems no longer possible with the current patch (at least on my machine).
I guess a part of the calculations of the shaders and shadows were (or are?) done on one or more already cpu intensive threads which are blocking the GPU from working with it’s full potential.

I can’t even finish a Sanctum Race without lagging out and missing/going over the ledge. This is so kittens …. Only thing keeping me going in this game is the community …

Disable reflections and Shadows, problem solved.

HD6850, FX6300 (4.5GHz) and 8GB of RAM and I get constant 60 FPS (80 in a lot of places) in the open world and 30+ in WvW with everything set to the highest values with the exception of Reflections and Shadows (which is on Low).

I just read some of what this forum post has said in other people’s messages .Turning off shadows really worked wonders for my FPS in lion’s arch. ._.

As for you OP, I’m not sure what could be crippling your system. I only know that so far it’s just single threaded performance for us AMD users that don’t see as good of performance

I’m having FPS issues since the build on 2nd July. I’m not sure if this will help but turning off reflections also helped but I still get a slideshow in LA. Here’s the thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Looking-to-increase-FPS

CrazyD.5046:

muslumgurseks.4951:

All games you guys have been stating are different games.. they use gpu and kitten when you are comparing this game to any other make sure they are mmo’s for the love of god it’s 2013 know the difference.

Let me compare other mmorpgs I play. DC Universe Online runs at constant 30fps because that is where they lock it. Neverwinter online runs at 60 fps except for Protectors Enclave which the developers are working on. Dragon’s Prophet I have everything cranked up and runs at 60 fps. So lets go to 2013. Bioshock, Tomb Raider run as 60 fps everything cranked. Older games that have better graphics than GW2 Skyrim 60 fps, and Far Cry 3 54 to 60 fps, and Assassin’s Creed 3 at constant 60 fps on my system. To go back further Crysis 2, Arkham City, Deus Ex: Human Evolution, and civilization V(which does take hefty hardware to run max) all are at 60 fps maxed out. The Witcher 2 everything but Ubersampling are on and it runs at constant 60fps. I don’t know if you work for Arenanet and are trying to make players shut up about an issue high end systems are facing, or if your just a troll. Either way you are a kitten bag and maybe you should join 2013. If you have a low end system then of course it’ll run the game smoothly for you, but those of us who have money and are willing to build a high end machine are disappointed.

Would I be working for Anet and kitten on their coding in every single occasion? your computer is a desktop where the OP’s machine is a laptop and if you knew anything about them they are weaker than desktops in every possible ways. You own a quite good system which doesnt mean its the best and yes everyone else is expecting better results and they are right this is what I have been saying since the BWE’s Game’s coding is kitten it doesnt even use GPU without FXAA+Supersample & High Res Textures.

Besides all the games that OP was comparing to the GW2 was GPU bound games not CPU and most of the games that you mentioned are also GPU bound ones or not even close to Gw2 looking MMOs.

I play with everything high/ultra with supersampling and Sweet FX(no FXAA). The big performance hit is reflections. I turn reflections off completely. When Anet gets the time to fix the Umbra occlusion regarding reflections that are permanently being rendered beneath the ground I am certain that we will see a 20% broad scale increase in performance.

You just have to fiddle with the graphic settings to get good performance. Don’t use those presets. I’m running with everything on highest(even supersampling) with shadows, reflections, and all the check boxes at the bottom turned off. Vsync makes everything feel sluggish and best texture filtering kills your performance. I get 50+ FPS everywhere I go. I set the WvW settings to highest quantity and low quality and most zerg fights give me around 20-30 FPS. Extra large zergs on both sides fighting will get me 10FPS.

I’m running i5 760, 4 gigs ram, radeon 5850 all at stock clock speeds with SweetFX.

Question: since the 02 July patch, has anyone found that their FPS have dropped? Or is it just me?

Its not just you, mine runs at around 50-60fps most of the time, on mostly medium settings, but then drops drastically, usually into single figures, when other people are on my screen, or a fight breaks out, and WvW world is pretty much a no no.
Before that patch, I was getting 20fps at worst during combat or in WvW.

I am having a similar problem. I posted on a seperate thread. I just recently purchase a Nvidia 770 4GB video card and got zero performance increase, and this is at a relatively low 1680×1050 resolution:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/New-video-card-no-impovement-Please-help/first#post2422868

Maybe I should have just purchased a better CPU instead and spent the rest on gems in-game, had I known…..grr. What is funny is that I can change the shadows and rendering from medium to high or supersampling and see no drop, but I cannot seem to get my fps over 20-30fps in certain areas. I will try to turning off the shaders and shadows all together tonight.

What kind of CPU should I be looking at to get a constant 45fps or better with my current specs and resolution?

The usual go-to is an i7 2770k, though it probably can still be overloaded by some stuff (not sure how much turning down graphics settings would help but it’d be worth a shot).

In WvW sieges, I’m not sure there is a CPU on the market that can run a constant 45 fps on any resolution.

Holy Whirlwind.2067:

I am having a similar problem. I posted on a seperate thread. I just recently purchase a Nvidia 770 4GB video card and got zero performance increase, and this is at a relatively low 1680×1050 resolution:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/New-video-card-no-impovement-Please-help/first#post2422868

Maybe I should have just purchased a better CPU instead and spent the rest on gems in-game, had I known…..grr. What is funny is that I can change the shadows and rendering from medium to high or supersampling and see no drop, but I cannot seem to get my fps over 20-30fps in certain areas. I will try to turning off the shaders and shadows all together tonight.

What kind of CPU should I be looking at to get a constant 45fps or better with my current specs and resolution?

You’ll want to overclock your CPU to get close to being able to do that. Since you have an 1155 motherboard, we’ll just say Haswell isn’t worth upgrading to. So this leaves the i5 3570K or the i7 3770K. The i7 is just a hyperthreaded version of the i5 giving you an additional 4 virtual cores which helps with truly multi-threaded tasks, like audio and video encoding. It’ll also help if you stream your gaming sessions, but if you just game, might as well stick with the i5 and overclock it to 4.5Ghz.

Even at 4.5Ghz on the latest hardware, you won’t see 45 FPS in places like large battles in WvW and large dynamic events. The game’s engine floods the CPU with stuff to do and top end hardware can’t keep up. The higher the overclock, the better the frame rate, but most people have said 4.5Ghz is the sweet spot for large WvW battles and large dynamic events where the CPU is really bottlenecking the game’s performance.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265, thanks for the great insight. Would the i7 be helpful if I’m running raidcall or mumble and GW2stuff in the background or i5 is still enough? I assume the K models allow for more overclocking if I recall correct?

Because right now going from a 3550 to a 3570 would not be a big gain unless the K model is the key to getting as much out of overclocking as possible. Are any of the graphics options CPU dependant or heavy (so that I can turn them down)?

Holy Whirlwind.2067:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265, thanks for the great insight. Would the i7 be helpful if I’m running raidcall or mumble and GW2stuff in the background or i5 is still enough? I assume the K models allow for more overclocking if I recall correct?

Because right now going from a 3550 to a 3570 would not be a big gain unless the K model is the key to getting as much out of overclocking as possible. Are any of the graphics options CPU dependant or heavy (so that I can turn them down)?

For smaller applications like that I don’t see them consuming much CPU, so the i5 would be plenty.

You are correct with your assumption that the ‘K’ models allow for higher overclocks. This is because of their unlocked multiplier that Intel so kindly let us have (wish they did this on most/all of their processors like AMD does). Gripes aside, the gain would be minimal without overclocking, only .1Ghz. However, assuming you overclock the 3570K to 4.5Ghz, the extra .8Ghz is a pretty significant difference. This would be about a 20% increase in frequency over your current processor.

I’m assuming the areas you mentioned above where you got your lower FPS are in large dynamic events and WvW battles, right? If its just during normal play, there might be something else wrong with your computer. I’m assuming you see 60 FPS in open world PvE.

Do remember that even non k edition intel CPU’s can Overclock to some degree. Try overkittening ur current CPU first. Max out the multiplier to see how far u can go on that, then start fidling with the base clock.
At the very least u should be able to get 3.9ghz from the multiplier, and if u spend some time tweeking the base clock u should be able to reach 4ghz. You shouldnt need to fiddle with the voltages at these low OC’s.

Anyway try that first before upgrading to a K version. 3.7ghz to 4ghz shuld show some improvment, even more so if ur CPU does not actually run at 3,7ghz when all 4 cores are in use, which i think is the case (u might actualy be at 3.6ghz with all 4cores going)