Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure what to make of this, but it’s just throwing me for a loop. I got a new video card today, and for some reason my FPS dropped dramatically.

My previous setup:
core 2 quad q6600
HD 5850
8GB RAM

I ran medium settings on this setup and recall getting 30+ fps most of the time. It ran pretty great in PvE, but I got pretty crappy FPS in heated WvW combat. Before getting my new card, I made note of my cpu usage while playing GW2. It was around 66%. I expected this to go up with my new card, and was hoping I wouldn’t run into problems in that regard.

New Setup:
Same CPU & RAM
HD 7970

I uninstalled everything Catalyst related, swapped the cards, and installed a fresh copy of the Catalyst 12.8 drivers, restarted, etc. I fire up GW2 to take it for a spin, and find I’m getting far WORSE FPS on the same, medium settings.

Running the Best Performance preset, I’m getting 10-15 fps…. Best Quality, 5-7 fps.

I figure my CPU must be capping out, but find the usage sitting at 25%. Then I start worrying that the card is defective, but it seems to run other games fine, certainly not with the extremely low FPS I’m seeing in GW2.

I’ve been trying to figure out what could be going on, but nothing’s working yet. I couldn’t spot any similar situations searching the forums either, not that abysmal at least. I have to imagine the fact that my cpu usage is way down is the reason, but am clueless as to what could cause that.

Anyone have any thoughts on what could be going on, or what I should try?

Appreciate the help!

Its a known issue and Arenanet is working on it. We just have to wait for some kind of update from them. They are pretty hush hush about the situation which is unfortunate. Because silence kills games.

Hmm. I’ve seen people reporting low fps with the card, but they’re typically seeing 30-40 and expecting much higher, not 10 fps. Wonder if that difference is due to my cpu.

I just swapped in my old card again and found I actually get 45-60 in PvE with it, well then.

Any idea if this is an issue specific to the HD 7970, or a specific subset of cards? I may just send it back and get a different one. I’ve had the worst luck with AMD cards…..

q6600 obviously had its moments, its time to move on.
WvW is taxing heavily on processor front. I’ve had trouble with i3-2100 and changed to Xeon E3-1230v2, now live happily ever after (?)

Your cpu is just too underpowered im afraid for this game. The 7970 is a really powerful gpu but its performance is being really bottlenecked by the processor.

Current gen GPU + Old CPU = VERY poor FPS.

The old Q6600 has no chance of feeding a 7970 enough data to keep it even remotely busy. Way to old/slow. I wouldn’t be surprised if your GPU usage was 10-20% most of the time.

Cbuzz.5083:

Current gen GPU + Old CPU = VERY poor FPS.

The old Q6600 has no chance of feeding a 7970 enough data to keep it even remotely busy. Way to old/slow. I wouldn’t be surprised if your GPU usage was 10-20% most of the time.

My GPU usage was 99%, CPU usage was 25%. That’s what’s baffling me. The FPS also seems fantastic in other games at max settings. If my CPU were the bottleneck, wouldn’t it be pushing 99% usage?

Chrystolis.7349:

Cbuzz.5083:

Current gen GPU + Old CPU = VERY poor FPS.

The old Q6600 has no chance of feeding a 7970 enough data to keep it even remotely busy. Way to old/slow. I wouldn’t be surprised if your GPU usage was 10-20% most of the time.

My GPU usage was 99%, CPU usage was 25%. That’s what’s baffling me. The FPS also seems fantastic in other games at max settings. If my CPU were the bottleneck, wouldn’t it be pushing 99% usage?

Your gpu usage is 99% in GW2 with a Q6600+HD7970? I find that hard to believe.

100% GPU sounds like it’s running on PCIE-1×. Or the 100% desktop bug is back in AMD.

Cbuzz.5083:

Chrystolis.7349:

Cbuzz.5083:

Current gen GPU + Old CPU = VERY poor FPS.

The old Q6600 has no chance of feeding a 7970 enough data to keep it even remotely busy. Way to old/slow. I wouldn’t be surprised if your GPU usage was 10-20% most of the time.

My GPU usage was 99%, CPU usage was 25%. That’s what’s baffling me. The FPS also seems fantastic in other games at max settings. If my CPU were the bottleneck, wouldn’t it be pushing 99% usage?

Your gpu usage is 99% in GW2 with a Q6600+HD7970? I find that hard to believe.

So do I, though that’s what it was reading. I have no clue what the deal was, but am scrapping it and returning the card. I’d been flirting with the idea of building a new rig, but decided to give just the vid card a shot and see how that went. I may return to that idea, or just stick with what I have now, since it’s not that bad despite being an oldish card.

Thanks for the help though.

1. Keep new card, replace mobo and CPU.

2. Return card, replace mobo and CPU.

Depends on your budget.

The card you have now is fine. If you go with #2, you should get 50-60fps on highest settings in GW2 – assuming you get a decent new CPU.

Like someone else said, make sure it’s in the right PCIe slot.

But, for the cost of the 7970 you could buy a new mobo + cpu and even throw in a CPU cooler and overclock. And probably still have money for a new case. And you’d see a LOT more improvement.

Gotta love all those improvised computer technicians repeating the same thing on each thread saying the CPU bottleneck the video card.

To OP, best you can do is wait for Anet to patch the game to improve performance and wait for AMD to release newer drivers.

Natas.1306:

Gotta love all those improvised computer technicians repeating the same thing on each thread saying the CPU bottleneck the video card.

To OP, best you can do is wait for Anet to patch the game to improve performance and wait for AMD to release newer drivers.

Ha Ha Ha, gotta love these guy’s who think a patch is going to increase performance by 1000%. Good luck with that…

Op’s system is very unbalanced, if you don’t know that then you really are a noob.

OP, does your motherboard have a PCI-E x16 slot?

It sounds to me like you’ve put a high end card on a motherboard that doesn’t have the capability to support it.