Guild Wars 2

This is going to be an earful, so here goes. I’m posting this in hope of an official response from Arenanet. At this point id probably give an arm and a leg for any contact from them, that being said, here is my issue.

I Have a very new PC, Its an alien ware and should run Gw2 fine. My specs are as follows:

Intel i7 (3rd generation) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
8gb dual channel 1600mhz ddr3 ram
Nvidia GTX 660 1.5GB DDR5 Graphics card
Alienware x51 motherboard
2tb Ata 3 hard drive
23 inch 1080p Dell monitor W/ Dvi-D as my output source.

Ive spent days now browsing the forums and practing my Googlekittenlooking for a solution to this. I’ve come up dry. I’ve supported an in game report on this issue as well so here goes.

I launch GW2 and it runs fine. better than fine. Im getting between 60-75 FPS with everything maxed in starting areas for both sylvari and Humans, And steadying 60+ even in the human city ( cannot recall the name) I did a few "random events with 25-30 other players all casting together and never saw my FPS drop below 48, which was lowest, and averaged about 55-60 even during that. My issue is roughly 20-30 minutes into the game, I will get either a black screen of death (game freezes/locks up and have to reboot the client or my pc) or more commonly (every time i’ve played so far) my FPS is fine for the first 20-30 minutes and all of a sudden i get a brief like 1/2 to 1 second black screen or screen flash and my fps crashes to between 14-25 and stays there for the rest of the time i play. for example : if its at say 18 FPs even in an event of 30 people casting it does not fall below 18, and stays at 18 even after the event during regular play. zone changes, teleporting ( quick travel) does not matter, nothing does. It just Sticks at 18-25 after the Previously mentioned “screen flash” Its not my CPU or GPU temps which are fine and at completely normal levels. I have the newest Nvidia graphics drivers ( Feb. 18th release) as well as Intel drivers and all others are up to date as well. This issue is extremely frustrating and i’m not sure what to do. I’m practically begging for a response from arenanet as i write this. just for more info, I’m getting 90 fps in WoW on ultra in 25 man groups and multiple hardware tests have shown its not my PC. Also settings changes do not effect FPS at all (even if changed to low). Any and all advice is much appreciated.

Could be a PSU problem, What PSU do u have?

EDIT: Just read that it whas an alien ware, nvm mind about the psu. Could it be a faulty part inside the pc? Im just speculating. I’d sugest sending in a ticket or u could try posting here: www.tomshardware.co.uk

I have the same problem with 660. What changes is that in the last 2 weeks my computer is reseting after the black screen.

try using msi afterburner to run your gpu fan at 100% when gaming, see if that helps, if not downclock the card and test, I have seen alot of 600 series cards(and even 500 series) that where clocked to high to be stable with their pcb design.

I have also seen alot of cards from amd and nVidia that overheat causing driver rests(what i think is going on with your system) due to the fan profile being for silence rather then keeping the whole card cool……the vrm’s overheat more then the cores on current cards….

also, you should clock that cpu to at least 4.5ghz to get gw2 to stay abouve 30fps.

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

try using msi afterburner to run your gpu fan at 100% when gaming, see if that helps, if not downclock the card and test, I have seen alot of 600 series cards(and even 500 series) that where clocked to high to be stable with their pcb design.

I have also seen alot of cards from amd and nVidia that overheat causing driver rests(what i think is going on with your system) due to the fan profile being for silence rather then keeping the whole card cool……the vrm’s overheat more then the cores on current cards….

also, you should clock that cpu to at least 4.5ghz to get gw2 to stay abouve 30fps.

Its the non-K version of the CPU, so I’m not sure if he could get that high very easily.

Non k versions have a limited mjultiplier but u should still be able to get a 400mhz OC . I think maybe 43x ..i cant recall of hand what the 3770 limits the multi to. But u can still OC it..just not as far as a K version.

What ever ur max turbo frequency is ..i think its 3.9ghz ..u can get an additional 4 on the multipler on all sandybridge and ivybridge non k cpu’s ..so 4.3ghz in the OP’s case. If u increase the BCLK aswell to somthing like 105 u can get 4.515ghz (105 × 43 = 4515).

Indeed it can overclock to arrond 4.4 4.5 it is good enough for Ivy CPUs anyway, but is just not as easy as overclocking the K series, just google arround the web and check some forums to make yourself a good idea about what to do.
But honestly i don’t think that will solve ur issue, u should contact alienware, cuz most likelly u are facing a hardware issue, u will also void the warranty of ur system (if still on warranty) by overclocking, so u wouldn’t recomend that, if u are facing a noticleable FPS drops is due a hadware/sofware issue, overclokcing will help a little bit if u are lucky but won’t get ur PC back to it’s normal performance.
I also wouldn’t expect a fix from arenanet or something like that cuz there is a 99.9% chance the problem is on ur side, so there is nothing they can really do.
Side note: don’t buy alienware desktop or laptops, they pretty much lack of quality control on their hardware as much as dell does, as a gamer u wan’t to build ur own system using high quality components (unlike alienware), and is way cheaper.

Are you using windows 32 bit?
That would be a problem then and I found “fix” for me. Never had crash again after it.

@ darkestshadow.8207

your PSU, watts, brand?

did you try this?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Black-Screen-Issue-Nvidia/first#post3964

otherwise, given your description, it sound like an issue with airflow in your pc and/or problems with thermal paste.

you should run a some burn-in tests
personally i prefer using MSI Kombustor for FPU-testing:
http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-search.php?search_term=Kombustor&x=0&y=0

for the i7 i prefer IntelBurnTest:
http://www.xgamingstudio.com/forum/showthread.php?9-RELEASE-IntelBurnTest-v2-54

and if you want to log during the burn-in tests I recommend HwInfo: http://www.hwinfo.com

Thanks for everybody helped me, I fixed the problem. In EVGA Precision I set the “power target” to 90%.

Rocha.5297:

Thanks for everybody helped me, I fixed the problem. In EVGA Precision I set the “power target” to 90%.

Please tell me if it works for you. I have the same card.

“Please tell me if it works for you. I have the same card.” It works.