Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I would like to share my strange performance issues in Guild Wars 2 with you. Lately I’ve noticed that the performance is good when I just start playing (starting in a zone, not the Citadel). For example, I started exploring the zone Snowden Drifts and at first the performance was good, with the fps averaging between 50 and 70. After finishing a part of my personal story I returned to the Black Citadel and there I have a performance that averages between 20 and 30 frames per second, which is normal for my system. But after that I returned to the zone Snowden Drifts and to my surprise the performance stayed between 20 and 30 fps, in the exact same spots I had visited before. So it seems that once I visit the Black Citadel the fps stays low on my system, which is rather odd to say the least. After logging out in Snowden Drifts and starting the client again it returned to normal.

My system specifications are as follows:

Mainboard: MSI P7N SLI Platinum http://eu.msi.com/product/mb/P7N-SLI-Platinum---P7N-Zilent.html
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 http://ark.intel.com/products/33924/Intel-Core2-Quad-Processor-Q9550-
I realize that this CPU is not amazing for today’s standards but up until now it has performed admirably.
Graphics card: MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II (factory OC)
Graphics driver: NVIDIA latest official release, 306.24
Memory: 4 times 2048 MBytes, Kingston HyperX Dual Channel DDR2 (PC2-6400)
Again, not amazing but it should still do the job, for now.
The game is installed on an SSD drive, in this case: OCZ Vertex II 120 GB, S-ATA II / 300

To conclude, I fully realize that my current system is very average for today’s standards, I don’t expect stellar performance from it within Guild Wars 2. But from what I’ve seen so far there’s also something wrong with the game. How else could I have great performance at first in a particular zone and then bad performance in the same zone after visiting the Black Citadel.

Thank you for your attention, I’m eager to see your responses.

It seems that I wasn’t the only one who noticed this strange issue, see also this post on the GW2 technical forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-issue-when-looking-at-a-certain-part-of-the-Black-Citadel

Anyone else who also noticed this?

I’ve seen before where vsync sticks at 30fps to try and reduce screen teaing, even when 60fps is possible.

Although, this might not be the issue I guess cycling the vsync option is worth a shot

Refraction.1892:

I’ve seen before where vsync sticks at 30fps to try and reduce screen teaing, even when 60fps is possible.

Although, this might not be the issue I guess cycling the vsync option is worth a shot

This is not the issue I’m encountering but I am aware of the issue you describe, personally I think it has to do with the option “Frame Limiter” when it is set to 60. I did not enable this option and the same goes for the option Vertical Sync, which I also do not use. By the way, one should only use the option “Frame Limiter” if you have an insanely fast PC to prevent possible overheating. Even then, it would make more sense if you could set it higher, like 100, and yes only when it works as intended.

I have also similar issue.
Beware, this only happens in/after visiting Black Citadel. I can play for hours with avg 50-60 fps as long as I stay out of the Black Citadel. If I go in, fps drops below 30, i think average is 10-15 fps. When I leave Black Citadel to any other zone (Norn, Human….) it stays as it was in BC until I preform restart of the game.
I also noticed that if I walk through BC and don’t have floor (any kind of) in my view fps goes to normal, but as soon as I look little lower so I can see floor fps goes to 10-15.
Maybe there is in floor textures in BC something that ATI can’t process as it should?

I have the same problem when visiting Black Citadel .. my FPS goes down to below 10 and it becomes very hard to navigate inside the black citadel because everythings lags.

I have a pretty good computer.

Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07Ghz(8 CPUs), ~3.1Ghz
12 288 MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti – 4050 MB (driver version 9.18.13.623)

Gaming experience really sucks in the Black Citadel.

Never experienced such issues with World Of Warcraft.

Sveno.7281:

I have the same problem when visiting Black Citadel .. my FPS goes down to below 10 and it becomes very hard to navigate inside the black citadel because everythings lags.

I have a pretty good computer.

Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07Ghz(8 CPUs), ~3.1Ghz
12 288 MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti – 4050 MB (driver version 9.18.13.623)

Gaming experience really sucks in the Black Citadel.

Never experienced such issues with World Of Warcraft.

The CPU you have in your PC combined with the GTX 560 Ti should give you a much higher performance in the Black Citadel, even for me it averages between 20 and 30, it just doesn’t go up again once I leave there.
I’m guessing that your performance must be somewhere between 60 and 100 in the zones and that it only drops below 60 in the big cities (excluding the Black Citadel then) and in WvWvW (basically all big fights, wherever they may happen). Am I right in this assumption? I’m taking into account that the engine that’s used for Guild Wars 2 seems to very heavily depend on the CPU.

There definitely seems to be something wrong design wise with the Black Citadel, if only we as a player base could pinpoint it to something more concrete.

Miggel.2841:

Hello,

I would like to share my strange performance issues in Guild Wars 2 with you. Lately I’ve noticed that the performance is good when I just start playing (starting in a zone, not the Citadel). For example, I started exploring the zone Snowden Drifts and at first the performance was good, with the fps averaging between 50 and 70. After finishing a part of my personal story I returned to the Black Citadel and there I have a performance that averages between 20 and 25 frames per second, which is normal for my system. But after that I returned to the zone Snowden Drifts and to my surprise the performance stayed between 20 and 25 fps, in the exact same spots I had visited before. So it seems that once I visit the Black Citadel the fps stays low on my system, which is rather odd to say the least. After logging out in Snowden Drifts and starting the client again it returned to normal.

My system specifications are as follows:

Mainboard: MSI P7N SLI Platinum http://eu.msi.com/product/mb/P7N-SLI-Platinum---P7N-Zilent.html
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 http://ark.intel.com/products/33924/Intel-Core2-Quad-Processor-Q9550-
I realize that this CPU is not amazing for today’s standards but up until now it has performed admirably.
Graphics card: MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II (factory OC)
Graphics driver: NVIDIA latest official release, 306.24
Memory: 4 times 2048 MBytes, Kingston HyperX Dual Channel DDR2 (PC2-6400)
Again, not amazing but it should still do the job, for now.
The game is installed on an SSD drive, in this case: OCZ Vertex II 120 GB, S-ATA II / 300

To conclude, I fully realize that my current system is very average for today’s standards, I don’t expect stellar performance from it within Guild Wars 2. But from what I’ve seen so far there’s also something wrong with the game. How else could I have great performance at first in a particular zone and then bad performance in the same zone after visiting the Black Citadel.

Thank you for your attention, I’m eager to see your responses.

I think there’s a memory leek of some sort in GW2, when I die, or that low red HP effect pops up on the edges of the screen, my fps drops to half and it stays like that till I alt tab to windows and then alt tab to game again.

Running the game in 1080p 60h on a:

i7 2600k OC@ 4.5ghz (temps around 60c in full load)
EVGA GTX690 (temps also around 60c full load)
Corsair AX1200w psu