Guild Wars 2

NOTE- this is not the 306.02 beta drivers, it’s the final release.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

^Make sure you download “306.23” if your gpu supports it.

Nvidia did not include any stated performance increases with Guild Wars 2, but like the previous drivers (which also did not include GW2), we may expect some more framerates?

Please post here regarding your performance changes with the new drivers.

Remember when installing, check the “Clean Install” option.

I did a clean install of this build last week, and the only issue I ran into is transparent geometry every so often. Seemed pretty random, no idea what caused the problem.

I rolled back to the latest WHQL certified drivers and this reduced the problem greatly.

This actually came out a few hours ago, it’s not the “306.02 Beta” drivers, this is the final release.

I read through the blog post by Nvidia, they have officially included SLI and 3D vision support for GW2. Not sure how this will affect normal gameplay.

Notsure> It’s because of ambient occlusion, either turn it off in Nvidia Cpanel, or don’t do extreme angless off textures. ;p

What are your current performance results, people? Anybody who was having FPS issues that can now run the game smoothly? Or are these newer drivers still not doing it?

The only diff is probably they are now digitally signed by MS,i think the rest is till pretty much the same.But im gonna try them out later tonight though just for the sake of it.

I would suggest fixing the link to just the search for drivers page. Not everyone uses those OS’s and not everyone who does has 64 bit OS. They may just download without looking and realizing they need to search for there own drivers on nVidia’s site.

I have the blackout/freeze issues, and I can say it did not help at all. Same issues since I bought my new pc (2 days ago now). Game is unplayable.Period. Speccs; Acer Aspire, w7, 64-bit. IntelCorei7 processor 3770, NVIDIA GeForce GT630

These are newer.

306.02 driver branch r304_70-80

306.23 driver branch r304_70-93

Also, I see no performance increase with these drivers. Im still getting crap for fps.

killimandros.5087:

I have the blackout/freeze issues, and I can say it did not help at all. Same issues since I bought my new pc (2 days ago now). Game is unplayable.Period. Speccs; Acer Aspire, w7, 64-bit. IntelCorei7 processor 3770, NVIDIA GeForce GT630

Second number being a 3 on the GeForce is not good. You’d get better performance out of a 460 than that. Turn your settings down.

http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeForce+GT+630/review

There is no difference wether I play on lowest or highest. My game freezes anyway. And seriously. This graph card is new. I can run ALL other games at max with it.

killimandros.5087:

There is no difference wether I play on lowest or highest. My game freezes anyway. And seriously. This graph card is new. I can run ALL other games at max with it.

The 630 is basically a redone 440. That’s why I said a 460 would give you better performance than that. Doesn’t matter if new or not. It’s a card that sells for 60 dollars new ought to tell it’s not really a gaming card.

Listen here. I run this game on my old GT9800 card which is 9 years old with NO freezes/blackouts. I read that rewiev you linked, and I have also read other rewievs, and what you are saying doesnt make sense.This card should be more than enough to handle gw2, on most settings.

killimandros.5087:

Listen here. I run this game on my old GT9800 card which is 9 years old with NO freezes/blackouts. I read that rewiev you linked, and I have also read other rewievs, and what you are saying is not true. Period. This card should be more than enough to handle gw2, on most settings.

This is my own GPU as well, GT9800. Please tell me your other hardware, and also operating system, drivers version, cause i lag and freeze like hell.Help me out here bro…

I am been testing the new drivers and old ones for about 2 hours now. Here is what I’ve noticed. Tested on i5-3570k @ 4.4GHz, 8GB RAM and a GTX670 @ 1155/1588

1. There are some improvements with reflected surfaces/maps i.e. water pounds and puddles, I personally noticed a ~ 8-10fps increase.

2. There are no improvements in crowded areas like cities/banks/WvW, I guess those are more cpu dependent, so will have to wait for Anet to optimise their engine.

3. AA still has no effects on performance.

4. Remember to reset your 3D profiles to prefer max performance after clean reinstall.

I guess the majority of the player who are facing problems are to do with the CPU side of the game.

killimandros.5087:

Listen here. I run this game on my old GT9800 card which is 9 years old with NO freezes/blackouts. I read that rewiev you linked, and I have also read other rewievs, and what you are saying doesnt make sense.This card should be more than enough to handle gw2, on most settings.

Fact is the 630 is a repackaged 440. You can scream about it being new all you want, but it doesn’t change it’s not better than “older” cards. I went from a 460 to your very card and took it back to the store because I had worse —- repeat WORSE performance and went back to the 460. And the guy asked why I was bringing it back, I told him it was just to replace a working 460 and he said “Oh, that was a downgrade. Let me get your money for you.”

LordCaithan.8360:

killimandros.5087:

Listen here. I run this game on my old GT9800 card which is 9 years old with NO freezes/blackouts. I read that rewiev you linked, and I have also read other rewievs, and what you are saying is not true. Period. This card should be more than enough to handle gw2, on most settings.

This is my own GPU as well, GT9800. Please tell me your other hardware, and also operating system, drivers version, cause i lag and freeze like hell.Help me out here bro…

Its a really old rig with this card. OS is even Vista hehe. Bad RAM, first dualcore processors series. I tested this card up against my new card (the one assumably too bad for this game) and it should be much better. Which it isnt. Maybe its the Vista, I dont know really.

stormstrike.9147:

killimandros.5087:

Listen here. I run this game on my old GT9800 card which is 9 years old with NO freezes/blackouts. I read that rewiev you linked, and I have also read other rewievs, and what you are saying doesnt make sense.This card should be more than enough to handle gw2, on most settings.

Fact is the 630 is a repackaged 440. You can scream about it being new all you want, but it doesn’t change it’s not better than “older” cards. I went from a 460 to your very card and took it back to the store because I had worse —- repeat WORSE performance and went back to the 460. And the guy asked why I was bringing it back, I told him it was just to replace a working 460 and he said “Oh, that was a downgrade. Let me get your money for you.”

So I should not expect gw2 to un on this card, even though its newer than the game itself. OK…. Which card should one expect the gamers all over to use in order to run this game? Btw. I am playing Max Payne 3 on it right now…

Just tried them, no significant changes coming from the 306.02 for me.

killimandros.5087:

stormstrike.9147:

killimandros.5087:

Listen here. I run this game on my old GT9800 card which is 9 years old with NO freezes/blackouts. I read that rewiev you linked, and I have also read other rewievs, and what you are saying doesnt make sense.This card should be more than enough to handle gw2, on most settings.

Fact is the 630 is a repackaged 440. You can scream about it being new all you want, but it doesn’t change it’s not better than “older” cards. I went from a 460 to your very card and took it back to the store because I had worse —- repeat WORSE performance and went back to the 460. And the guy asked why I was bringing it back, I told him it was just to replace a working 460 and he said “Oh, that was a downgrade. Let me get your money for you.”

So I should not expect gw2 to un on this card, even though its newer than the game itself. OK…. Which card should one expect the gamers all over to use in order to run this game? Btw. I am playing Max Payne 3 on it right now…

I am not saying GW2 should not run at all on the card. I am saying you would get better performance out of a 460. And if you shop around, you could have probably gotten it around the same price (give or take) now since the 6 series is the current.

Murasaki.4956:

Just tried them, no significant changes coming from the 306.02 for me.

I wouldn’t expect much difference between the last beta drivers and this. They probably don’t change things from last beta builds to release drivers since if they did, it would require another beta build to test any big changes.

@killimandros, also the rest of your specs show that card will be your bottleneck. The CPU with the right card should have this game flying. I don’t see you put the RAM info but with Win7 64, you can throw any amount of RAM you can afford at it. But I hope you have at least 4 gigs (I assume so since most people with a 64 bit OS has at least that much).

A reply from an Nvidia rep about the performance or lack there of in this game with nvidia cards.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4408259&postcount=12

Phaze Delta One.2834:

A reply from an Nvidia rep about the performance or lack there of in this game with nvidia cards.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4408259&postcount=12

Thanks for this. So many people going on about how it’s not the CPU bottlenecking when clearly it is and now with proof. Time to boost my i7930 to 4.0 again. Maybe upgrade.

I forgot to include this in my last post.

http://surveys.nvidia.com/index.jsp?pi=6e7ea6bb4a02641fa8f07694a40f8ac6

It’s a feedback form for their driver team. Any issues you guys are having, please fill it out in as much detail as possible. And lets try to be civil about it, I know there is some frustration, but they are working on it.

Disable AO as everyone was advised in the beta version of these drivers, yet they still shipped with AO enabled and might give glitches. One thing to check it is a glitch guild logo.

As phaze posted, the Nvidia rep clearly stated there is only so much they can do and basically it’s arena’s engine that makes high end specs useless.

There is nothing on the wiki about this major problem, but basically anyone with a high end system suffers from these fps drops.

I am getting really annoyed that about the fact there is none from Arenanet answering what the crack is going on and how they going to fix this. I did not buy a gtx 690 worth 850 pound and a i2600k cpu to find out my machine is still under performing.

There is a huge topic on guru3d about it also, people are going to give up on gw2 already because of this and well…. arenanet has your money already.

Drivers is not solving this (point)

At the Nvidia website , Nvidia states that they didnt have much time to look into this between the latest beta and this new one. So hopefully there is still some room for improvment, driverwise. For me the Problem seen to be the AMD CPU as the other Threads shows.

The Nvidia Rep also made mention of Skyrim and before I read any further, I knew what he was referring to. If anyone played Skyrim at release, you’ll remember how horrible the performance was. Come to find out it was a CPU hog, pretty much like what GW2 is right now. Eventually Bethesda released a patch that fixed the CPU code in the game and increased performance by a crap ton lol. It’s quite possible that ANet could do something similar.

Bethesda didnt include the cpu optimisitations flag ín their source code, or something similiar.. being the game originally coded for consoles.. it was quite a perfomance boost it got.. I dont think something that drastic happened to GW2 code.. but you never know.. fact is.. it can be improved.

stormstrike.9147:

@killimandros, also the rest of your specs show that card will be your bottleneck. The CPU with the right card should have this game flying. I don’t see you put the RAM info but with Win7 64, you can throw any amount of RAM you can afford at it. But I hope you have at least 4 gigs (I assume so since most people with a 64 bit OS has at least that much).

This is the situation now (I have 12g ram though). Got myself a new card. 660 (just testing). Same problems. But, it looks prettier before it freezes…

I’ve been using 295.73 since the beta, and each new driver update/beta have all given less FPS and other problems. I lost 10 fps (in Orr in a big open space, 80 fps down to 65-70 on max settings, apart from shadows and reflection) and Ambient Occlusion bugs out some terrain.

Back to 295.73 it is then

Notsure did you have ambient occlusion on? I put that on with the beta drivers and it kept making lots of things transparent. Turned it off, no more see through hills etc.

Some people are saying turning post-processing effects off also stops the transparency issues.. I can’t confirm it as I’ve already gone back to old drivers.

killimandros.5087:

stormstrike.9147:

@killimandros, also the rest of your specs show that card will be your bottleneck. The CPU with the right card should have this game flying. I don’t see you put the RAM info but with Win7 64, you can throw any amount of RAM you can afford at it. But I hope you have at least 4 gigs (I assume so since most people with a 64 bit OS has at least that much).

This is the situation now (I have 12g ram though). Got myself a new card. 660 (just testing). Same problems. But, it looks prettier before it freezes…

Your machine blows mine away now. And I don’t get this freezing. With what you posted before going by benchmarks:

CPU – You win, I lose. (I have an AMD but want to go Intel but didn’t want to reinstall everything lol)
Amount of RAM – You win, I lose (8 gigs here)
Before only thing that benchmarked better with what we had was old card. Now that you got the 660 – You win, I lose.

Yet I am not getting this freezing issue you are. And I have my settings all up on high. Your rig should be able to handle GW2 with blazing success. Before I would think good success (not great) but now it should be beyond great with your specs.

You mentioned Max Payne 3 but also said other games no issues. Are any of them MMOs?

And sometimes GW2 has weird issues. Weird as in the so-called support page suggestions do not fix the error given. Like I got constant error code 7’s and come to find out all the suggestions didn’t work but simply changing my IP by cloning the MAC address to the router fixed it. I know not your issue but saying this to show I know it can be a bizarre thing that’s not what one would expect. And support guys with tickets never even suggested that.

But can you run a test on your memory sticks? There’s a memory test program out there that’s free to use called MemTest86+. With it being new setup, it’s rare but can happen that a stick just has issues and that would let you know if it is. Or you can use the one built-in with Win7 if you don’t want to download MemTest86+.

One for Win7 is just click the Orb or start button, then in the search type Memory and it will bring it up. (I think it will bring up the memory tester by just typing “mem”).

But why GW2 would act up if memory stick has an issue, would be weird but check to cover the bases.

Tested the memory. No problems detected.

This is the log I got when I crashed on my 630 card btw;

—> Crash <—
Assertion: !m_transTimeout.Root()
File: ..\..\..\Services\StsInetSocket\StsInetSocket.cpp(1894)
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 5192
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00400000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 15502
When: 2012-09-13T13:14:44Z 2012-09-13T15:14:44+02:00
Uptime: 0 days 0:25:59
Flags: 0

—> System <—
Name: xxxxxx
IpAddr: xxxxxxx
Processors: 8 [GenuineIntel:6:10:9]
OSVersion: Windows 6.1 (64 bit)

—> System Memory <—
Physical: 9092MB/12235MB 74%
Paged: 20804MB/24468MB 85%
Virtual: 2459MB/ 4095MB 60%
Load: 25%
CommitTotal: 3664MB
CommitLimit: 24468MB
CommitPeak: 4323MB
SystemCache: 6375MB
HandleCount: 23837
ProcessCount: 76
ThreadCount: 1025

—> Process Memory <—
Private: 990MB
WorkingSet: 794MB
PeakWorkingSet: 1168MB
PageFaults: 3162689

—> Game Context <—
MapId: 94
Flags: 0×2c1
ElapsedTime: 00:23:18

—> World State <—
<WorldState BufferCapacity=“91361280” BufferUsed=“75821532” DrawCalls=“781” Fps=“1” EffectLights=“0” ImageMemory=“3635152” Lights=“26” Materials=“300” OcclusionQueriesOccluded=“0” OcclusionQueriesStalled=“0” OcclusionQueriesUnoccluded=“0” Particles=“3842” Submodels=“778” TextureLoadsPending=“1” TextureMemory=“870831048” Triangles=“332545” VerticesSoftwareTransformed=“0” VideoMemoryTotal=“45544184” CameraPos=“-1508.12, -19885.7, -1206.28” CameraFwd=“0.810574, 0.228187, 0.539353” MapName=“wZY+N.HLDfZ” MapNamespace=“mR47S” MapSector=“IJwR+.HRVWL” MapType=“WvwRedHome” MapFloor=“3” MapId=“94” PlayerFacing=“0.441246, -0.730233, 0.521595” PlayerPos=“-1022.17, -19748.9, -802.164” PlayerVelocity=“0, 0, -0” />

[DbgHelp.dll is C:\Windows\system32\dbghelp.dll]
[DbgHelp.dll version 6.1.7601.17514 (64/32-bit compatible)]

—> ClientContextThreadProc Thread 0xebc <—

—> Error Logs <—
with that name.
Model ‘0×005eff’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00d37f’ from parent bone ‘skillfx’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×005eff’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00d16b’ from parent bone ‘wristl’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×005eff’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00d16b’ from parent bone ‘wristr’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×0108cb’: UnlinkModel called on CModel without LinkComponent
Model ‘0×0071f7’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00e2c5’ from parent bone ‘root’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×0071f7’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00cf5f’ from parent bone ‘root’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×00e2e0’: UnlinkModel called on CModel without LinkComponent
Model ‘0×0071f7’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00e21b’ from parent bone ‘fxwristr’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×0071f7’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00e21b’ from parent bone ‘fxwristl’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×0108b9’: UnlinkModel called on CModel without LinkComponent
Model ‘0×0053f0’: UnlinkModel called on CModel without LinkComponent
Model ‘0×007209’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00d0f8’ from parent bone ‘aura’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×007209’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00ce66’ from parent bone ‘root’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×0052b9’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00ced3’ from parent bone ‘mouth’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×0052bd’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00ced3’ from parent bone ‘mouth’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×0070a3’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00d0f8’ from parent bone ‘aura’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×006630’: UnlinkModel called on CModel without LinkComponent
Model ‘0×005b81’: UnlinkModel called on CModel without LinkComponent
Model ‘0×006eda’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00d28d’ from parent bone ‘root’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×006eda’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00d28d’ from parent bone ‘kneel’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×006eda’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00d28d’ from parent bone ‘kneer’, there’s no bone with that name.

—> DirectX Device Info <—
VendorId = 0×10de
DeviceId = 0×0fc2
Version = 9.18.0013.0479
Description = NVIDIA GeForce GT 630
Compat = 0×00100800
VidMem = 2048 MB

Removed some of the log

I think the problem might be with cpu-gpu sync, the game doesn’t compensate any lack of raw cpu power. If you are running an older generation processor, i.e. core 2 duo, core 2 quad, first gen i7 (920s and 700s) that isn’t heavily OCed, you may see significant bottlenecking despite having the latest graphics cards.

With that said, people with high end systems by today’s standards are also not having the greatest framerates. It is rather odd that identical hardware can produce such massive difference in fps e.g. a guildy with same setup is getting constant 100+ fps while I only get 70 at the same location with same settings.

I am just not sure how much Nvidia drivers can fix in the future as gpu usage both core and memory are quite low. The problem is that it’s much easier to upgrade gpu, where as a cpu upgrade would be much more expensive.

I think Anet might have made a slight blunder with the game files, if it were a normal file system (with ini, exe and cfg files) instead of one big compiled file; the players could have helped them in solving the problem. There might be ways to decompile the main data file, but there really isn’t any incentives to do so.

Well, I have a Core i7 3770 processor, with 12gig ram…cant really see that being a bottleneck…but I might be wrong ofc

I’m still curious if using the launcher option -cuda (nVidia only) can help alleviate some CPU bottlenecks…

where would I find said launcher option?

killimandros.5087:

where would I find said launcher option?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

The command line -cuda was tested on another thread with no apparent improvements to framrates.

You shouldn’t have too much of a problem if you are running latest i7 and video cards, the i7s I’ve mentioned above are the first generation chips.

Reflections are still a huge performance hit. I was testing that in an area where None would use ~55% of the GPU, Sky and Terrain would use ~70% and All ~80%. The difference between them is not worth that kind of performance hit for a slight visual effect.

Core i7-2600K@4.5GHz, 16GB DDR3-1600, GTX 560Ti@1GHz

It’s the engine, it just runs horribly. Like WAR horrible, and there’s probably not much Anet can do to fix it. I think people are just going to have to accept current performance levels, there’s no magic bullet for this one…even turning down effects wont help a whole lot because it’s so CPU dependent. It’s like the engine EQ2 used in some sense..just kitten backwards and not fixable.

killimandros.5087:

There is no difference wether I play on lowest or highest. My game freezes anyway. And seriously. This graph card is new. I can run ALL other games at max with it.

I really hate when people say they can play all games on max with their $60 gpu or 5 year old computer. Most of the time people have no clue on what they are doing.

NO, you cannot run all games on maximum settings. You can run 1080P, 4x AA, 16xAF, extreme LOD, high res textures, supersampling, HDR, etc. on a 630 GT at 60fps? COME ON ALREADY. And your other quote about a 9800 GT being 9 years old is totally wrong too, that card came out in 2008.

This is my rig; Win7, 64-bit
i7 processor 3770
NVIDIA GeForce 660ts
12gb DDR3 mem
2tb hd

Tell me. WHY should I not be able to run games on full settings? WHY should I not be able to play THIS game on full settings?I even grabbed 2 external hd’s just now.

I really REALLY hate it when nosayers just pass by because they wanna say no.
About that 9800 card, I bought it in 2007. Its not 9 years old. Its almost 6. I appologize. Now, please close the door when you leave.

Is your i7 OCed at all? Personally I don’t use supersampling and only have shadows on high. Can only get around 70-75 max.

I think people failed to realise the ‘stress test’ were for server load, but then again at the time, everyone kind of naively believed the ‘finished product’ will be lag free.

I play on lowest settings. Game crashes. I exclude everything. I tick NO on shadows, textures. If I tick more NO’s now, KevinEvo will be back.

Phaze Delta One.2834:

Eventually Bethesda released a patch that fixed the CPU code in the game and increased performance by a crap ton lol.

Which is easy to do when 1) Bethesda started with crap code and 2) they incorporated changes made by the player-base.

-+-

I’m only seeing Kepler users complaining; Fermi and prior users seem to be happy with GW2 performance. Perhaps there are issues with the 600-series cards and this game, especially since nVidia has stated it hasn’t looked at GW2 yet.

Tips for PC noobs:
- Don’t assume. Find facts. Go where they point and if you want help, present the facts. i.e.:
— Look at your CPU utilisation and clock speeds
— Look at your GPU utilisation and clock speeds (how embarrassing if Flash were dropping your GPU speed to 400MHz)
— Look at your pagefile usage if < 4GB RAM
— Look at your resource usage by other processes (I didn’t think a background torrent client would be a problem!)
— Post real FPS and its context; “lags” isn’t specific or measurable (or even the right term)

I agree with the Kepler user thing, to a certain degree. There are AMD users with the exact same issues. There are also users with 4 and 5 series, evem some with 2 series reporting about it. Might be different problem, but Im not sure.

I have a 670 and have zero issues with frame rate. I’m easily above 60FPS on max settings even in WvW – this is since upgrading the CPU to an i7 2600K, mind.

Last week I was running on an i5-2400 and had to turn reflections and shadows off to stay above 40FPS in WvW.