Guild Wars 2

It maybe the client, but I still wouldn’t rule out the card itself. Specifically if people are having the same issues.

The common thing across this thread seems to be the 7770 series cards, correct?
For most, it started recently and one of the latest patches? Was it the March patch, or one of the march patch fixes?

This could have something to do with the CULLING code changes. Which may require more card resources; who knows bringing a issue with the card to light.

From a game client standpoint; I would try the following. Under My Documents should be a “Guild Wars 2” folder. Inside is a file called “local.dat”. Delete that. Then start the game with the “-repair” option. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments
This should ensure the game client is in a non-corrupted state.

Also, install the latest drivers (non-beta) for the card.

The idea here is to remove as many variables as possible. If you can think of anything else to standardize on, it would be a good idea if all tried it.

abomally.2694:

Guns and Giblets.9308:

abomally.2694:

Not necessarily. Different games use different resources in different ways.

Your graphics issue will occur again – it’s only a matter of WHEN it will occur.

What games use similar resources so that we can test this? Concrete examples will be helpful. Otherwise we can’t rule out a fault in GW2.

It’s irrelevant.

Because you say it is?

For example, I run BF3 and Skyrim without any problems on all manner of graphical settings. I used to run GW2 without any errors either. That was six months ago. I came back to the game a couple days ago, and now this problem occurs only in GW2.

Evidently, I have to teach some people HOW to troubleshoot. Fine, here goes:

I stopped reading there. Thanks for the “help,” but I troubleshoot my own tech problems on a regular basis, with regular success. If dealing with the unwashed masses is so difficult for you, don’t bother, especially if you ignore the information they provide.

abomally.2694:

3) I suspect that some of these issues MAY be sound related (doesn’t sound related to your video issue, but it’s worth a try). Try setting all the sound sliders to the middle or lower.
).

i forgot to mention this, no excuses of course, but when the problem was persisting, which it isn’t anymore, i was trying nearly every single solution and this was one of them that i did the same day i installed W8 and a clean reinstall of gw2. I set all of my audio settings to low quality in the options menu, some point in the day the problem disapeared, as i’ve said though im no tech expert and its very hard to point and say that this WAS what stopped the problem from happening….

Kitten.1564:

I am also having a “Like” Issue. I am using a Radeon HD4800 updated drivers. When I log in Every 5 minutes my game will lock up for 10-30 seconds and then run… After 4/5 times of doing this it will have a “Critical Graphics” error and crash. I just bought this game and have only had 20 minutes of played time. Very frustrating.

this does not sound anything at all like the issues everyone else is having in this thread….

Hello Immediately apologize for any errors in the text, but I have to Use Google translator what would you get me something, but he could not translate correctly. I have exactly the same problem as that of EtonMessy.1836 to the last word. my video is XFX 7770 Black Edition. The problem is most often seen in the effect of fire. This conclusion I did after he discovered that if you run in into the cage (CoFp1) then the video card makes strange noises and restart. The same thing happens when the engineer shoots a flamethrower or that are associated with the fire. Played Crysis3 last hour – no problem. I’m sure this is not Rejection videocard. Help and fix this please
windowed mode and downgrade with msi afterburner dont help

p.s.: i understand any answers

Neuroscar.4028:

Well I should note that I’ve tried a few other recent games (Left for Dead 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive) and I’m having the same problem. I suppose it’s safe to assume that the fact that this started happening after I downloaded the patch last night is a coincidence. I’ve tried a ‘Clean Boot’ and tried loading the game that way but still the same problem. Going to try windowed mode now (It’s now doing it in the character selection screen so it’s difficult to even get into the game now).

Edit: Windowed mode gives me same problem.

Windowed mode fixed it for me. No black screens yet while i’m in LA all day, where it usually happened. Your problem might be a bit different and more related to your own hardware if you see the same happening to your other games.

Xystus.3241:

The common thing across this thread seems to be the 7770 series cards, correct?
For most, it started recently and one of the latest patches? Was it the March patch, or one of the march patch fixes?

This could have something to do with the CULLING code changes. Which may require more card resources; who knows bringing a issue with the card to light.

I wouldn’t be surprised since i seen it happen the most when i’m shortly in LA around the mystic forge area. And thus the card somehow can’t handle big numbers of people?

For the time being I have had to stick my settings on the absolute bare minimum in order for it to work on PvE. I only got the game recently and it worked perfectly until around level 20ish which is when I first got it. Been getting it ever since.

I’ve also tried in Windowed mode at a much lower resolution, still happens.

It’s very strange.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

abomally.2694:

Guns and Giblets.9308:

abomally.2694:

Not necessarily. Different games use different resources in different ways.

Your graphics issue will occur again – it’s only a matter of WHEN it will occur.

What games use similar resources so that we can test this? Concrete examples will be helpful. Otherwise we can’t rule out a fault in GW2.

It’s irrelevant.

Because you say it is?

For example, I run BF3 and Skyrim without any problems on all manner of graphical settings. I used to run GW2 without any errors either. That was six months ago. I came back to the game a couple days ago, and now this problem occurs only in GW2.

Evidently, I have to teach some people HOW to troubleshoot. Fine, here goes:

I stopped reading there. Thanks for the “help,” but I troubleshoot my own tech problems on a regular basis, with regular success. If dealing with the unwashed masses is so difficult for you, don’t bother, especially if you ignore the information they provide.

Unwashed? I’m sure they are washed, but I could be wrong.

My apologies to ALL for being harsh.

Unfortunately, I cannot duplicate this problem, so I can only (though I am working blind) provide information based on experience and knowledge of how hardware and software works. This is based on my 30+ years of experience as an electronics and computer technician (yes, I am that old).

Certainly, it would be nice to say “do this or do that and it will fix your problem.”

Sometimes, problems with hardware only crop up under certain, exact conditions. Sure, a graphics card may work properly on the majority of applications and games out there, but develop a problem only when using ONE game or application. It happens. Perhaps there’s a BIOS issue with that particular card.

One utility I like to use (instead of prime 95) is called HeavyLoad:

http://www.jam-software.com/heavyload/

When testing, I run it for about 30 minutes, which is about right for temperatures to stabilize. Will this utility cause the problem to show up? I don’t know but it may be worth testing (in full screen).

Honestly, it seems like this video problem is some type of hardware failure. In actuality (not to be confused with TruTV), there are really very few people with this problem. As I said before, it is a fairly common issue with BGA mounted graphics chips (any BGA chip that undergoes a cycle of heating and cooling really).

Substitution is really the easiest way to troubleshoot modern computer [component] issues. Obviously, most people probably don’t have a duplicate video card laying around to substitute. However, a different or older card will be just as useful in determining what the actual problem is.

THAT is my recommendation for people having this problem. If the problem goes away, it certainly indicates an issue with the original video card (manufacturing defect?).

Good day.

Can’t fault a man and his experience. It may well be my card then. I have an old 9600 GSO? Reckon that’d be a fair card to test on? I haven’t had a single crash for a long time by turning down my settings.

It’s saddening because it’s a pretty decent card and the fact it’s doing this is very annoying.

EtonMessy.1836:

Can’t fault a man and his experience. It may well be my card then. I have an old 9600 GSO? Reckon that’d be a fair card to test on? I haven’t had a single crash for a long time by turning down my settings.

It’s saddening because it’s a pretty decent card and the fact it’s doing this is very annoying.

Definitely try it.

There’s another possibility that I will get back to you with; I’m eating at the moment.

OK back.

I want to discuss power supplies for a little bit.

Hopefully, all of you here with gaming computers are using good, brand name power supplies. First, I will discuss something that most people don’t even look at when deciding which power supply to buy:

Noise. Computers use high-frequency switching power supplies. This is because the components can be smaller due to the high frequency operation – otherwise PC power supplies would be about the size of the towers they fit in.

This high frequency switching generates electronic noise. Although it is filtered to be as minimal as possible; lower quality power supplies generally produce more noise and are often not able to put out the power they are rated for.

This switching noise appears on all of the voltage outputs. The more heavily loaded the power supply is, the larger this noise voltage tends to be. PC problems occur when the noise is a high enough level to affect the hardware (specifically the digital logic in the hardware that determines a logic high/low).

This can cause problems that are nearly impossible to resolve without “scoping” the power supply rails to look at the noise voltage present or changing power supplies.

This isn’t an issue very often, but it is definitely something that should be considered when building a computer.

yes the xfx 7770 card seems to be outnumbering the others in this particular issue, but the fact of the matter is that it is not the only card experiencing this problem, also, if my card only has a problem with one application, it seems like that would be the applications fault, not my cards…however you’d like to look at it though.

I just got this god kitten f—king error again, i went for a solid 3-4 days without it then boom middle of wvw running around following my commander not even in combat just running around doing jack squat it happens

in reply to above post : this is the PSU im using http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139046

I’m considering switching out my DVI cable to an HDMI, i first tried this but was unsuccessful, is there anything special I need to know to do this?

Wasn’t a PSU issue for myself, luckily had a few friends that were willing to let me use their power supplies. Each one reproduced the same issue.

If your having this problem download and run this to stress the video card. http://www.geeks3d.com/20130328/msi-kombustor-2-5-2-gpu-videocard-burn-in-stress-test-utility-benchmark-nvidia-geforce-amd-radeon/
If you do not have the problem running this their nothing wrong with the video card.
If you do have the problem running this down clock the video card a full 15% and run it again. Alot of factory overclocked cards have a problem of not actually having the proper voltage to support the overclock. This is not related to the power supply (if you actually have a proper power supply) and can be fixed by tweaking the volts AT YOUR OWN RISK.

ok well i got an HDMI display working…. as it took so long for my last episode to happen it might be awhile before i report back ( if i go 4 days w/o a disconnect i will update everyone)

Retsuko.2035:

Xystus.3241:

The common thing across this thread seems to be the 7770 series cards, correct?
For most, it started recently and one of the latest patches? Was it the March patch, or one of the march patch fixes?

This could have something to do with the CULLING code changes. Which may require more card resources; who knows bringing a issue with the card to light.

I wouldn’t be surprised since i seen it happen the most when i’m shortly in LA around the mystic forge area. And thus the card somehow can’t handle big numbers of people?

Retsuko.2035,

That is what I am thinking. The CULLING code is supposed to work in WvW. However, it probably is still effecting PvE, just the options to increase number of characters is limited to the initial value. The same code is most likely being run, no matter where you are.

Now, we need to determine if the game itself cannot run on the 7770’s or there maybe a defect the game is bringing to light.

A similar event happened to be during a World of Warcraft patch a few years ago. Everything was running fine, until after a patched and they made some graphics changes. My computer was BSOD constantly in-game. The BSOD was referring to my video RAM and I could run other games just fine.
It ended up being faulty memory on the card; that for whatever reason that update found an issue. Luckily at the time, a friend had a spare card and he gave me and everything was fine again.
Last year, ASUS had a bad run of mobile nVidia 580 cards and they were dying left and right in laptops. I had to send two laptops back for full refunds. I ended up waiting until the 675s came out and got a new laptop with one of those.

“A similar event happened to be during a World of Warcraft patch a few years ago. Everything was running fine, until after a patched and they made some graphics changes. My computer was BSOD constantly in-game. The BSOD was referring to my video RAM and I could run other games just fine.”

Yeah, this is what I’m talking about. I know its a strange failure and that it doesn’t make logical sense; but I have seen some very strange electronics failures that simply defy conventional wisdom.

Maybe this problem is specific to a particular manufacturer, I don’t know. The video card manufacturers get the GPUs and technical information, but they don’t make the GPU chips (in most cases).

So far I haven’t had this issue in the game. My video card is made by Evga. It’s this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130347

I was having the exact problem as described by Etonmessy, and i mean exactly. I have a 680 GTX, and turning the Nvidia power option to “High Performance Preferred” has left me with zero “no video signal” and then reboot crashes for an entire day. This seems to be a common problem with some batches of 680s. If anyone else is about to lose their cool over this problem like I was its a least worth a try.

ok even switching out to a completely different cable and the type of connection (DVI——> HDMI) i still get monitor disconnect, further proving its the horrific client this game has….end of story IMHO.

Sidereal.5963:

I was having the exact problem as described by Etonmessy, and i mean exactly. I have a 680 GTX, and turning the Nvidia power option to “High Performance Preferred” has left me with zero “no video signal” and then reboot crashes for an entire day. This seems to be a common problem with some batches of 680s. If anyone else is about to lose their cool over this problem like I was its a least worth a try.

This is on the right track as I stated here.
If your having this problem download and run this to stress the video card. http://www.geeks3d.com/20130328/msi-kombustor-2-5-2-gpu-videocard-burn-in-stress-test-utility-benchmark-nvidia-geforce-amd-radeon/
If you do not have the problem running this their nothing wrong with the video card.
If you do have the problem running this down clock the video card a full 15% and run it again. Alot of factory overclocked cards have a problem of not actually having the proper voltage to support the overclock. This is not related to the power supply (if you actually have a proper power supply) and can be fixed by tweaking the volts AT YOUR OWN RISK.

the problem is not solved. And is resolved. 7770 video card owners who see the fire close – reboot the computer. Installation windows 8 did not help. While not change the “physics” display of fire, do not get to play comfortably

I just ran the KMark(PhyscX) Test with music enabled option, the GF OC Test (GL4), and least but not last the GPU Burn-In Test where the 3D API was Direct3D 11 & the 3D object was MSI, if these tests weren’t enough proof please feel free to tell me the exact tests to run….temperatures never went above 78 degrees celecius, here is a link to the test http://www.ozone3d.net/msi_kombustor/score_200.php?id=133539

I would say their nothing wrong with the video card and the temps look fine.
I would say it’s on their end. Even though I will now probably get anouther infraction point.

I’ve had this happen to a lot of people who don’t understand newer graphics cards competitors policies….

“You probably have good power supply too – or the problem would likely show at other times when not in GW2.”

Not necessarily true. GW2’s most recent update includes a decrease in the effects of culling, which will increase the load on a graphics card considerably more than it ever did. While this might not be immediately(if at all) noticed on the graphics card itself, the power consumption will go up with the PSU.

I’m leaning toward power supply problem.

You guys aren’t alone. I’m running a brand new system with a radeon xfx 7950. I can only play for about 5 minutes before I get a loss of signal through HDMI and I then have to reset my computer. I`ve tested other games such as dishonored, bioshock infinite running at the highest settings without a hiccup. Not to mention I`ve tried different cables.. different monitors. All drivers are up to date. I ran netflix for 8+ hours to see if this problem just occured naturally.. not a chance. I thought my video card HDMI ports were broken.

After reading this im starting to think my brand new video card isnt the issue. Its the client. I did however just start playing guild wars.. less then a week ago and this problem only began to occur last night.

Ill also mention that I just ran the MSI Kombustor at 1080p open gl for a half hour. No crashes. Ran at 99% GPU load and never went above 65 degrees celcius. I hope they fix the client soon. Because im not almost 100% sure it isnt my machine.

abomally.2694:

I have seen this exact issue many times. It’s obviously a bad video card.

No way that every person on this forum reporting this problem, suddenly has bad video cards. Absolutely no way.

This problem is affecting many players. the issue clearly lies within GW2, it’s not an ATI problem, it’s not an NVIDIA problem, it’s happening to players with both types of cards.

It seems to get progressively worse. It first started out happening maybe once a day. Now it’s happening every few hours.

Hello all, i had the same problem as you guys. It start 1 month ago, 10-15 min playing either a dungeon or pvp or sometime pve and wvw, my gpu crashed. It starts with a driver crash (blackscreen) then recover to the desktop, then i had no signal (must turn off and reset the pc). I have found the solution for my problem, i hope this gonna works for you:

1- clean up your pc, there was alot of dust in my fans and on my gpu and processors. (was crashing with 15 min of gameplay before, now with 45 min)
2- i use min. settings in gw2 (dunno if it really changes something)
3- then i used this software (MSI Afterburner) to underclock my gpu (gtx 285)

original settings underclock settings
core clock: 666 core clock: 571
shader clock: 1512 shader clock: 1296
memory clock: 1242 memory clock: 1149

for the moment with this setting, i had no crash while playing gw2 for 5h. I wish really hard this gonna help you with your problem, i know how it’s frustrating. Btw its the only game that crash my gpu.

link for MSI Afterbuner: http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

Psychomantis.1354:

then i used this software (MSI Afterburner) to underclock my gpu (gtx 285)

I was getting this problem with a XFX R7750, so I went back to my GTX285 (the XFX was a present so i felt more obliged to try it). The GTX runs everything like clockwork and has never crashed on me. Doesn’t overheat. High settings.

You shouldn’t need to underclock a 285, I don’t think.

I also have a Radeon 7770 and I’m having these issues. Has any progress been made? It has happened to me in PVE areas, and also happened to me in heart of the mists and in the middle of a PVP duel.

After a while i probably figured out what the cause is of my monitor shutting down. When it happens, my sound also stops after a few seconds. At first i thought it was my PSU who was a tad too low for my 7770 radeon videocard, but getting a new PSU didn’t change a thing. Most likely, and I’ve been watching the temperatures, it is the CPU getting too hot. Even after blowing, vacuum and what not to clear the fans from dust, it can still get too hot.

GW2 is very CPU heavy, so while playing, the CPU load goes up A LOT at boss fights and inside dungeons. This causes the cpu to rise up in temperature, eventually reaching it’s limit which shuts it down out of safety.

Probably the only solution for me is to renew my motherboard + CPU now…. Because anet won’t be fixing the cpu load on the game.

But I don’t know if that is it for the rest of us. A lot of us are reporting good temps during game play. Also, most of us still have sound playing with the GPU drivers crash.

Never had this problem before but all of a sudden today all hells broke loose not been able to play more than 5 mins without it crashing. can still hear sound etc. I have an Asus monitor and when the crashes occur the screen comes up with a message saying out of range. Have also just blown the dust out of my computer and temps are looking good so I dont really know what else to do. My card is an ATI Radeon 5700 btw.

I have just started having this problem today and my card is the XFX 7770 super overclocked black edition.

Happened once in COF dungeon then restarted and happened again after 5 minutes!

I don’t believe I have updated drivers recently

Anyone found a solution?

Welcome to hell guys, the answer is no.

I hope Anet can look into this asap coz its really becoming an issue. Ive followed all of the procedures, fresh gw2 install, latest drivers, latest profiles, using application settings but still no luck. Getting fustrating now as the game crashed while in the middle of a dragon fight…

abomally.2694:

Guns and Giblets.9308:

abomally.2694:

Not necessarily. Different games use different resources in different ways.

Your graphics issue will occur again – it’s only a matter of WHEN it will occur.

What games use similar resources so that we can test this? Concrete examples will be helpful. Otherwise we can’t rule out a fault in GW2.

It’s irrelevant.

Evidently, I have to teach some people HOW to troubleshoot. Fine, here goes:

Symptom:

The video blanks out (no signal) after a certain period of time has passed. If this was a
driver issue, the driver would crash OR cause strange discolorations on the screen – the video signal would not turn off, leaving no signal to the monitor. That alone indicates one of three things:

1) The video card is bad.

2) The cable from the video card to the monitor is bad.

3) The monitor is bad.

Now, the OP states that lowering the GPU clock speeds allows him to play longer before the problem occurs. That eliminates the cable AND monitor as being related to the problem. Lowering the GPU clock speed has no effect on the cable or the monitor.

When the GPU speed is lowered, this results in the video card operating at a lower temperature. This also means that it takes longer for the video card to reach the temperature where it fails.

You see, the video card is actually failing at a certain temperature – just not a HIGH temperature. This is quite common with BGA (look it up) mounted components (failing video cards, the Xbox360 “red ring of death”, some HP laptops, etc.).

I have seen this exact issue many times. It’s obviously a bad video card.

Good day.

The premise is wrong.

The driver can malfunction and the system still think it’s working properly, so it wouldn’t kill it, nor give any error message. The result would be the driver telling the graphic card to give information to the screen that the screen can’t interpret, hence the “no signal” message. I’ve seen this a lot back in the day of non-user-friendly unix enviroments while trying to figure out the synch of a laptop’s screen on a default driver.

Now, I’m not ruling out It could be a faulty GPU, what I’m saying is It could still be a driver issue, and your null hypothesis is flawed.

Cheers,
Crp

You can get the “no signal” message too when the gpu start using a resolution the screen can’t handle (or the other way)
But i can’t imagine the game trying to change his resolution while playing. Did any of you used alt tab to minimize the game ?
Not sure if you can, but if it is possible, try to run the game in window mode with a lower resolution than the max of the screen. Just to see if you still get the “no signal” message.

A response from Anet would be nice about now. Its really starting to become a problem. All I can say is im glad i have an SSD to boot up quickly otherwise I would have quit by now :P

With every new update comes many players. Many, many players. I have no problems with playing in between the game updates, (new content etc), but.. when they occur, the screen goes to a weird color and sometimes is able to reset it’s self, but 9 times out of 10 it locks up and requires a hard start/ipl/off on. In the past I have reported this and I have done as requested. The suggested fixes do not help, but miraculously all my problems end when the server loads reduce. This has been the case over and over. I read many give the tired answer, “Your system is crap etc..” this is baloney. It runs fine, shows no problems with all tests suggested by Anet etc. I’ve talked with many in the industry (I’m an IT tech for a large company) and they agree it could be as simple as opening up more servers. Ordinarily I would wonder how a screen crash can be linked to server load but all evidence seems to point to them being related. Has anyone else noticed this happening when the server loads are high and very high?

But wait, there’s more.. I’ve read lately that Anet/NcSofts sales have dropped by 35% or more since the previous year. And I further read that the American player base counts for only 1% of their revenue, that Korea is their main market with a 64% share. By now you are saying “yeah so?”. Well if we only represent 1% of their market and they don’t open more servers, is the current state of the game as good as it will get (stability wise)?
I really hope not I used to recommend GW2 to everyone I could, I truly loved GW1. But now I just say I’m taking a break from gaming.. which is a lie but I won’t suggest it and have them be disappointed.

sigh

Added: Are the other servers physical servers or are they layers on the same server? I wonder because it’s been said gw2 uses a modified version of the gw1 engine, and gw1 had districts instead of more servers. If so, this could explain a connection between the issues many have and “server loads”.

The premise is wrong.

The driver can malfunction and the system still think it’s working properly, so it wouldn’t kill it, nor give any error message. The result would be the driver telling the graphic card to give information to the screen that the screen can’t interpret, hence the “no signal” message. I’ve seen this a lot back in the day of non-user-friendly unix enviroments while trying to figure out the synch of a laptop’s screen on a default driver.

Now, I’m not ruling out It could be a faulty GPU, what I’m saying is It could still be a driver issue, and your null hypothesis is flawed.

Cheers,
Crp

Monitors don’t work that way electronically – whether they are analog (CRT) or digital (LCD). I presume by “information” you mean data (sync issues are different but I’ll address that next). The screen will display ANYTHING (data) the graphics card sends to it. Let me try and articulate that a little better:

You have digital data on the DVI output of your graphics card. Each bit can only be high or low. It doesn’t matter what the data bits are – the monitor WILL display it.

Sync issues, on the other hand, are different. CRT monitors (well most anyway) will blank the video if the sync frequency is out of range. This is to protect the CRT, which can be damaged if the sweep circuitry fails. I don’t know of any way to repair burnt phosphor in a CRT.

LCD monitors do the same, although sync being the wrong frequency won’t damage an LCD monitor.

Of course, it could be a driver issue – however, if the hardware is working properly; there is absolutely no reason for it to suddenly “malfunction”. In addition, DirectX is controlling the graphics driver when running GW2 (or any D3D game).

If it is indeed a driver issue, then I would expect that everyone with the same card by the same manufacturer would have the exact same problem. That is obviously not the case.

This problem points to failing or misconfigured (overclocked, etc.) hardware, specifically the GPU.

Edited to add: It’s nearly impossible for me to try and cover every possible aspect regarding this problem without writing a novel. Yes, other component failures such as motherboard and power supply could cause this problem.

I’m sure I forgot to mention something. Either way, I certainly hope the OP and others are able to resolve the problems they are having.

abomally.2694:

Monitors don’t work that way electronically – whether they are analog (CRT) or digital (LCD). I presume by “information” you mean data (sync issues are different but I’ll address that next). The screen will display ANYTHING (data) the graphics card sends to it. Let me try and articulate that a little better:

You have digital data on the DVI output of your graphics card. Each bit can only be high or low. It doesn’t matter what the data bits are – the monitor WILL display it.

Sync issues, on the other hand, are different. CRT monitors (well most anyway) will blank the video if the sync frequency is out of range. This is to protect the CRT, which can be damaged if the sweep circuitry fails. I don’t know of any way to repair burnt phosphor in a CRT.

LCD monitors do the same, although sync being the wrong frequency won’t damage an LCD monitor.

Of course, it could be a driver issue – however, if the hardware is working properly; there is absolutely no reason for it to suddenly “malfunction”. In addition, DirectX is controlling the graphics driver when running GW2 (or any D3D game).

If it is indeed a driver issue, then I would expect that everyone with the same card by the same manufacturer would have the exact same problem. That is obviously not the case.

This problem points to failing or misconfigured (overclocked, etc.) hardware, specifically the GPU.

Edited to add: It’s nearly impossible for me to try and cover every possible aspect regarding this problem without writing a novel. Yes, other component failures such as motherboard and power supply could cause this problem.

I’m sure I forgot to mention something. Either way, I certainly hope the OP and others are able to resolve the problems they are having.

I use “information” as a collection of “data”, though data is just a value and says nothing about the order or the cohesion/coherence of the group. Information, in the other hand, as It’s taught in computer science, Is a sequence of data that can be interpreted as a message, which happens after the myriad of systems the data has to go through that treated It before reaching the monitor, and using information actually gives more information than using solely data. This way I cover RGB data, and clock data as a whole.

Though I admit english semantics may very well be out of my reach, for It’s not my first language, technical and scientific terms should not vary too much.

Anyhow, it’s irrelevant.

In regard of how does a LCD screen work electronically or how it does not, I beg to disagree. I’m afraid LCDs are a bit more complex than just Color Mapping. Granted DVI use a collection of digital data, which are just low and high voltages, but not all the information given to the monitor is plain displayable data, nor always the data is in the range of what a panel can actually display. Some LCD monitors will show the message “input signal out of range”, others just aren’t so friendly. The clock, for example, runs through a dedicated DVI channel, It’s given by the graphic card and the rate is set by the system. A clock failure can mimic the behaviour explained, or give a “mosaic” image. But I agree with you in that is hard to cover all the possibilities.

Tradicionally, TFT LCD panels could be damaged by sync mismanagement: they are sensitive to power sequences during power up and power down periods, and their operational lifetime could be dramatically decreased if this is disregarded. There are hardware built in failsafes that prevent this from happening in the Display Controller, very much à la CRT.

Answering to your edition, while not all the chips have failed, there are a fair amount that have. Moreover, not all the chips are exactly the same in a given architecture: there are hardware revisions and updates that are not notified to the public, remaining the specifications roughly the same. Nonetheless, we know other chips present this sympthoms, all the ones I’ve seen, AMD cards using the AMD driver, and sharing the fact that the issue is limited to this game. I think this is not just random hardware failure, as It has statistical significance.

I think It may be related with how shaders and post-processing effects are implemented.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Crp

W’ell just have to agree to disagree.

I know how monitors (LCD and CRT) and computers work at the component level (electronics tech here for over 30 years). Before I got into the engineering environment, I spent many years repairing consumer electronics (TVs, VCRs, Stereos, CD players, dvd players, camcorders, tape decks, etc.).

Either way, this is most likely a hardware issue.

Take care.

It may very well be an electronic engineer thinking It’s hardware related, and a software engineer thinking It’s software.

At least in my case, time will tell. If It’s hardware related, the issue just can get worse.

Salutes.

I have a theory, the reason this seems to happen when new content comes out could be server related because of the huge demand on the server (s) to download the new update/content. It’s possible they are using the same severs to facilitate the updates as they do for the game. Or it’s causing a bottleneck on their end. Either way it could be related. This would explain why it comes and goes.

Ok ive had about all i can take of this……….FIRST IT IS A GW2 CLIENT ISSUE!!!!!! not ours. The fact of the matter is this issue affects about 2% of the playerbase. keep in mind not all come to these forums. theres also posts of this issue on tech forums from tech guru and numerous other ones. this is not a gpu or a cpu issue… if your card is failing or your cpu is you would have similiar issues with most other games. gw2 isnt the most advanced game on the market cpu or gpu usage wise…..not even close but yet people play these games just fine or even better then gw2. the fact that people play other games well and do not see the temp increases, the artifacting, or video outages for other games clearly puts it on the game.

ive read peoples comments about this and im sorry but a failing card does not just choose which game to not work for! it doesnt work that way if its bad it will effect all games you play somehow and to even give the notion that it could be failing and still only affect this game makes those comments bogus since you clearly dont understand the process of a failing card. ive even seen people post their gpu test results which are good and you still say well it can post a good result and still…..fail……umm nope!!!!!!!!!

now my final thoughts…..anet knows of this issue and have commented numerous times on it……to the point of giving people bogus advice and even having them change things on their computers that should not be changed…..heres a tip…..if your having to go into places in your pc that you have never seen or other tech members advise against just to play this game….its not worth it…..my advice stop changing these things and just wait the storm and see if someday its fixed…….if not theres plenty of other mmos out there to play that us with issues can play with ease……

i didn’t see this thread before i posted mine…

i have same problem too with a 7850, and had the problem before with xf 4850’s and single 4850’s