Guild Wars 2

Hi, i started WvW recently and i have some fps issue. I run gw2 with a intel i5 3570k 4,7ghz as Cpu, a Geforce gtx 670 as a graphic card and i got 16gb of ram.

My fps shut down to 15-30 when i am in a big zerg (Same with dragon event) with all the graphic maxed and i really wanna improve it but i don’t know if i should switch to a i7 or get a second 670 (Or switch to two gtx770)….

All my friends are telling me that a i5 is enough for gaming but i am not really sure…

Sorry for my English by the way.

Whichever one shows the highest usage during low FPS is the one that should be replaced, but it’s likely the processor.

GW2 will not make much use of the extra threads on the i7, GW2 likes high clocked CPU’s with around 4 threads, so best thing for improvement would be to OC your current CPU. Your friends, on a general scale are right, however, they did not ask or know about the given game you are wanting to improve. Every game has different requirements, and GW2 hits the CPU hard. In most single monitor setups, a 670 will do fine, as of late my 670 will run at 98% with around 138fps, with a 4.5GHz OCed i5 2500k, however hit some large zergs and this frame rate will drop, not because of GPU power, as I drop GPU usage at these times, often times to 60-70%, CPU usage as a whole only goes up a little, however there is a single thread that gets maxed out and becomes the bottle neck. That is the problem GW2 has right now, and it’s a problem with the game engine, so don’t expect it to change. You have a OCable CPU, you should get a good cooler and try your hand at OCing a bit.

Why the kitten should upgrade his comp ARENA NET needs to optimize this game 1 year passed and no optimization I have a amd fx 6300 4.0 ghz ati 5770 1g ddr 5 256 bit 8g ram ddr 3 1600 and i play almost everything on high (shadows medium) with 30 fps is not fair at all ( sorry for my english)

Upgrading wont help. You will have to lower your clients settings. I know people may not like to hear it but it’s the truth.

Start by lowering and or disabling both shadows and reflections. Also be sure not to use vsync, use a frame limit instead. After those play with your character limit and character quality settings. Highest/highest with shadows will bring any amount of hardware on the planet to a halt. it’s just the way it is.

Test what I’ve suggested and worst case performance should jump noticeably.

Pushing that i5 a bit more couldnt hurt but even my previous 2600k tanked at high clock speed (5Ghz on water) My HPTC is running a 2500k (4.6) and GTX670 using the settings I mentioned and it does fairly well at 1080p.

That game just doesn’t scale well with hardware increases past a certain point. Max settings and comfortable frame rates just won’t happen as of today. I wouldn’t spend another dime on that machine unless of course you play games outside of GW2. You could throw multiple Gtx titans and a 3960x it… and it would barely run any faster than what you have now at the same settings/resolution.

Upgrades from your current spec will show little improvment.

Change ur WvW culling options .

Set character limit to highest and texture limit to medium or Low.

Even a rig like my own u can only expect the minimum fps to it low 20’s.
And the price difference between a rig like urs and mine is huge, all that for 5 fps isnt worth it.

A single 780 can handle a massive resolution of 3200×1800 with max grpahics setitng including Supersampling. So u dont need more than 1 780 for GW2.
CPU wise u cant get much better than 3930k atm (from an overall performance standpoint unless u go mad and get extree editions for an extra 100mhz) and for pure single thread performance a 4770k at the same clock (which is hard due to heat) would only be slightly better than a 3930k for gaming.

So if ur running a 3770k,4770k, 2600k,2700k, 3930k, top end 600 series , 770 or 780 ..or even a titan. You cant do any better.
if ur running a i5 u could gain a little performanee going to an i7, but it wouldnt be worth it just for GW2.

Stress.2436:

Why the kitten should upgrade his comp ARENA NET needs to optimize this game 1 year passed and no optimization I have a amd fx 6300 4.0 ghz ati 5770 1g ddr 5 256 bit 8g ram ddr 3 1600 and i play almost everything on high (shadows medium) with 30 fps is not fair at all ( sorry for my english)

^^ THIS IS THE MESSAGE ^^ no need for upgrade on a poor optimized beta game !

kitten your killing me… I am also playing counter strike but there no need to improve for this game.
So if i understood, the best upgrade i could do (Even if it wont do a big difference) would be a intel i7 4770k well OC ?
I already have a good cooling there no worry for the heat.

But you guys are telling that there is no build who can run gw2 all maxed in a massive zerg with at least 35-40fps? The graphic are an important part of this game, it sad if i have to lower it.

As another example I am currently running

i5 3570k 3.4ghz
AMD Sapphire 7870 XT 2gb
8gb ram

My CPU is currently overclocked to 4.7 stable and it still runs at 100% load when WvW or in LA. There is nothing that I play currently that brings my CPU to 100% except GW2.

FPS in LA is erratic at best, sometimes dropping as low as 8. But usually running between 21 -35. It looks choppy 75% of the time in LA. My settings are all high with FXAA on.

You can throw money at this game all you want, but you will not get good FPS in high pop areas.

EDIT: I should add that with this set up and most settings to medium (animations high, LOD high, character models high and FXAA on) I run 30-45 FPS in LA. This does drop in large DEs.

Towelie.4637:

kitten your killing me… I am also playing counter strike but there no need to improve for this game.
So if i understood, the best upgrade i could do (Even if it wont do a big difference) would be a intel i7 4770k well OC ?
I already have a good cooling there no worry for the heat.

But you guys are telling that there is no build who can run gw2 all maxed in a massive zerg with at least 35-40fps? The graphic are an important part of this game, it sad if i have to lower it.

Upgraded graphics will do you no good and upgraded CPU will only help marginally.

FPS games have a different standard in terms of frame rate, one based in history that they are used almost exclusively as benchmarking software for video cards so AMD and nVidia devote a lot of time and effort into making sure those games perform as well as possible. Same goes with the big name graphic engine makers like Unreal, Source, id Tech 5, etc. FPS games are their bread and butter so they concentrate on performance for FPS style games. They can be modified for MMO gaming but it’s a lot like attaching a tow hitch to a Corvette, not quite the right tool for the intended job.

An i5 will max out in WvW and LA, yes. So an i7 will show a little performance increase as it wont max out the entire CPU thanks to HT.
However in the casses were a single thread maxes out and slows the rest of the processes (which happens alot) an i7 wont help.
Ocing does help a little, but eventualy u hit a point where even if u have a OC’d i7, the game engine itself cant run any faster, so u wont have a maxedo ut thread or maxed out overall usuage, but you will have maxed out the game engine itself. This happens alot for myself, where i see no CPU thread maxed out and yet the game chugs along under 60fps.

Ill give u a bit of good news though. All games that start development and/or use game engines developed from mid 2014 onwards ‘should’ be 8 core/thread optimised.
Why? becouse the new consols (PS3 and Xbone) use 8 core cpu’s. Each core is very weak on their own, thus thread optimisation is a MUST for any games released for these consols. And as we know, many games nowerdays are consol ports. It also means the newer game engines will also be thread optimised and so any MMO that uses such a engine will run alot better than GW2’s shoddy excuse for a game engine.

Well that’ll be true with big name game engines. However if you still roll your own as ArenaNet did, all bets are off.

Hum thanks for the answer, it isn’t what i wanted to hear but at least i know the truth. I hope they will fix that so we can fully enjoy the game.

hope for Optimization, but.. one year ago..

if you change i7 cpu, it is nothing to change about the performance ( GW2)
it enhance a little fps only. may be 3-5

I’m using this, and still lag from time to time. GW2 is ofc installed on SSD.
Not need all this info, but did copy paste it from my guildsite, sorry for that.

Monitor – DELL U2711 ULTRASHARP 27" (2560×1440)
Graphicscard – 2 x ASUS GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB PhysX CUDA
Mainboard – ASUS RAMPAGE IV EXTREME, Socket-2011
CPU – Intel Core i7-3970X Extreme
CPU cooler – NZXT Kraken X60 All-in-One 280mm
Harddrive 1 – 2 x Intel® 335 SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA3.0 w/kit 20nm, RAID 0
Harddrive 2 – 2 x Western Digital VelociRaptor® 600GB RAID 0
Harddrive 3 – 2 x Seagate Barracuda XT 7200.12 2TB
Memory – Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR3 32GB 1866MHz
Powersupply – Corsair AX 1200i, 1200W PSU, Modular
Mouse – Razer Mamba 4G Wireless Gaming Mouse
Micepad – Razer Goliathus Alpha mouse pad – Speed
Keyboard – Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E.7 keyboard – Nordic
Tower – Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower
Sound – Logitech Z-906 5.1 THX, DTS and Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro Limited Edition

Wow that crazy, and what is the lowest fps you got ?

My “open letter” got taken down, as I figured it would but perhaps it will make some noise at Anet offices.

Oculatus your system is the bomb lol. I would love to know your FPS in LA and have you OC that 3970x to what frequency?

There is some bad server lag right now and has nothing to do with client issues as far as I can tell. It is unplayable right now

I cant help but think that system is a ‘i wish i had this system’ not a ‘i actally have this system’ becouse it really doesnt make sense unless ur swimming in money.

3960x and the 3970x are totaly ott and unneccery. 3930k is just as good for half he price.
2 Titans…, 2 780’s just as good, half the price.
32gb RAM, wasted unless ur a heavy heavy heavy multitasker, renderer.
The mad catz strike 7 is an incredibly pricey, over enginneered, NON mechanical LCd keyboard. An enthusiats gamer with a system like that would have a mechanical keyboard.
All that money in that rig and its on a AIO water cooler. .really ? That system should be under a custom loop.

If u really do have that system then great good for you…really i mean it. But kitten thats alot of burnt cash there :P
The money saved from getitng 2 780’s instead of 2 titans, a 3930k instead of a 3970x, and a mechanical keyboard instead of the strike 7 .. could easily payed for a custom water loop so u could OC and obliterate the performance of that listed system. 2 780’s on a custom loop OC wipes the floor with 2 air cooled titans, same goes for a 3930k vs a 3970x on a AIO cooler.

Anyway yea.. offtopic but i had to say somthing, the money in that rig could do soo much more.

I was researching this topic today.

I have been out of game for quite a few months for this same reason; bad performance and there seems to be no plans or mention of it improving.

Some people on reddit have posted monster specs (Titan graphics cards and the like) and still get dropped to 15-20 frames.

Does A-Net have any plans to fix this? I haven’t seen an official response in about a year. I plan on upgrading my PC and was hoping to get back in to this with smooth gameplay and being able to see what I am doing without the slide show.

Sorry for the rant, but it has been quite some time. I enjoy the game, but I just can’t enjoy those big events with bad performance.

What Graphics driver are you running? if its Beta? i suggest Rolling to a more stable version. i have had issues with some of the Beta drivers. Optimize your pc, Run in classic mode while gaming could help remove some of the pressure on your CPU.

The game does need some major optimization server end, High end PC’s are struggling making lower spec Pc’s virtually a pipe dream, Think of the potential Players you’d gain aNet.

Lag happens, even on lower spec games, the issue could totally be the servers aNets end.

gw2 has the typical problem most games have. they didn’t want to invest heavily into the engine so they used a few shortcuts most programmers take when creating a proof of concept. not supporting 64bit is a big timesaver if you don’t have to get all your thirdparty stuff running and tested for two architectures. that’s why gw2 only uses a small part of the memory any halfway modern system (say <5 years) offers.

using one thread for nearly all the heavy lifting is also easier, they don’t have to think about thread synchronization that much. personally I dislike programming multithreaded because it takes a lot of time to get it right and bugfixing is a pita. I guess they thought so as well, which is why all our nice little multicore cpu’s are just wasted. at my work at least stability/correctness is more important than speed – but in gamedevelopment not using the hardware to it’s full potential looks extremely unprofessional.

tl;dr: the devs were lazy/incompetent or didn’t get enough funding – usually the latter – to do things properly. now we’ll never get it fixed, as this is the way of quick&dirty, once done nobody pays to redo it.

SolarNova.1052:

I cant help but think that system is a ‘i wish i had this system’ not a ‘i actally have this system’ becouse it really doesnt make sense unless ur swimming in money.

3960x and the 3970x are totaly ott and unneccery. 3930k is just as good for half he price.
2 Titans…, 2 780’s just as good, half the price.
32gb RAM, wasted unless ur a heavy heavy heavy multitasker, renderer.
The mad catz strike 7 is an incredibly pricey, over enginneered, NON mechanical LCd keyboard. An enthusiats gamer with a system like that would have a mechanical keyboard.
All that money in that rig and its on a AIO water cooler. .really ? That system should be under a custom loop.

If u really do have that system then great good for you…really i mean it. But kitten thats alot of burnt cash there :P
The money saved from getitng 2 780’s instead of 2 titans, a 3930k instead of a 3970x, and a mechanical keyboard instead of the strike 7 .. could easily payed for a custom water loop so u could OC and obliterate the performance of that listed system. 2 780’s on a custom loop OC wipes the floor with 2 air cooled titans, same goes for a 3930k vs a 3970x on a AIO cooler.

Anyway yea.. offtopic but i had to say somthing, the money in that rig could do soo much more.

Yes the system is a “bit” over the top for GW2, but new games are being released, games like B4. But on the other hand, I work as a IT-Manager and Design Engineer at a boat construction yard, and because I am a single parent for 3 kids, I often work home, and need top-notch equipment home as well, that’s why I buy a new computer every year, and company pays. And I use alot of heavy programs, Inventor, Ansys, 3DS Max and Photoshop.
Yes there is ofc cheaper options with almost the same performance, but as long as I don’t pay myself, I don’t really care.

Towelie.4637:

Wow that crazy, and what is the lowest fps you got ?

I have not done any test yet, and I finished the system like 1 week ago

Stormcrow.7513:

Oculatus your system is the bomb lol. I would love to know your FPS in LA and have you OC that 3970x to what frequency?

No I have done no OC yet, no need yet

this game is still in beta

Oculatus.7536

Yes the system is a “bit” over the top for GW2, but new games are being released, games like B4. But on the other hand, I work as a IT-Manager and Design Engineer at a boat construction yard, and because I am a single parent for 3 kids, I often work home, and need top-notch equipment home as well, that’s why I buy a new computer every year, and company pays. And I use alot of heavy programs, Inventor, Ansys, 3DS Max and Photoshop.
Yes there is ofc cheaper options with almost the same performance, but as long as I don’t pay myself, I don’t really care.

Ah ok, a system like that using the programs you use and ofc it being payed for by a 3rd party ..it makes more sense. Even so, if i were you i still woulda got them to pay for a custom water loop :P Even if it meant just changing down to a 3930k. Just one ofthe changes, like the CPU ..or the GPU’s would have given enough money back to pay for the water loop. No harm done though if ur running at stock for computing purposes mainly.

SolarNova.1052:

Ah ok, a system like that using the programs you use and ofc it being payed for by a 3rd party ..it makes more sense. Even so, if i were you i still woulda got them to pay for a custom water loop :P Even if it meant just changing down to a 3930k. Just one ofthe changes, like the CPU ..or the GPU’s would have given enough money back to pay for the water loop. No harm done though if ur running at stock for computing purposes mainly.

I have sent a mail to a company who specializes in water-cooling, and told them to put together the best possible system for my GPU’s and CPU, so hopefully they will respond soon. I’m very busy at work, so I hope they can come up with a decent system for me.
At work I use a HP Z800 Workstation which cost double of my homecomputer, but on heavy calculations in Ansys my homesystem is faster somehow, so I believe I pay a lot for the name

Oculatus.7536:

SolarNova.1052:

Ah ok, a system like that using the programs you use and ofc it being payed for by a 3rd party ..it makes more sense. Even so, if i were you i still woulda got them to pay for a custom water loop :P Even if it meant just changing down to a 3930k. Just one ofthe changes, like the CPU ..or the GPU’s would have given enough money back to pay for the water loop. No harm done though if ur running at stock for computing purposes mainly.

I have sent a mail to a company who specializes in water-cooling, and told them to put together the best possible system for my GPU’s and CPU, so hopefully they will respond soon. I’m very busy at work, so I hope they can come up with a decent system for me.
At work I use a HP Z800 Workstation which cost double of my homecomputer, but on heavy calculations in Ansys my homesystem is faster somehow, so I believe I pay a lot for the name

You can not compare the cost of a custom home system over a workstation, you don’t pay for the name with a workstation or server, you pay for support and uptime, you are also comparing a system with a desktop gaming card vs a workstation with a Quadro or FirePro card, depending on the card, these can run well over $2k alone, and when it comes to rendering and professional programs, these cards will wipe the floor with a “gamer” GPU. The price for these cards also comes from support offered and very refined drivers, last thing you want to do is be hours or days into a render of some sort and have an error etc, time is money.

God Of Fissures.8627:

this game is still in beta

Is it ?

If you are running on a Mac.

In an attempt to bring all FPS threads into one, here are (I think all) of the ones I could find in a quick search- they were on another thread that I guess got erased:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Dear-Anet-a-comment-on-FPS-issues

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Terrible-FPS-on-Guild-Wars-2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Low-Fps-16

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Low-FPS-and-nVidia-employee-response

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Question-about-FPS-on-M11x

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Low-FPS-now-used-to-be-high

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/My-solution-to-increasingly-bad-FPS

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/OMG-Performance-is-down-to-3-FPS

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Poor-performance-STILL

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Culling-PVE-settings

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-Stuttering-1

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/fps-went-down-from-40-to-less-than-20

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Terrible-FPS-Drops-Since-August-13th-Patch

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Large-FPS-Drops-and-Performance-Problems

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-drops-No-reason-On-both-settings

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-Smash-on-2nd-Start-Up

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Decent-PC-low-fps-i-m-out-of-ideas

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1652315/low-fps-issues-gw2.html

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84908-major-fps-issues/

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84778-figuring-out-gw2-lag-issues/

http://www.computerforum.com/219414-low-fps-guild-wars-2-a.html

Yes that thread got deleted lol.

I realise I’ve replied to a number of FPS threads now, but I do feel this one needs an answer. Would anyone at Anet be available for comment? I, personally, am into the third month of FPS woes without anything on the horizon in terms of a fix of some kind.

Many thanks.

All I know is that I’ve been playing GW2 since my birthday (June 8th) of this year and had no FPS issues until last week suddenly. I was in an invasion, game crashed my PC. Rebooted PC & game. Non-stop horrid FPS that drops between 10-4 from then on. My browser was also effected making Youtube suddenly impossible to watch. This leads me to believe that it’s not my system. I tried a couple fixes with no results.

Because of this, I’m sadly forced to postpone playing until there’s some solution.

Official statement claiming performance is being worked on: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-Performance-Never-Rarely-Addressed/first#post2716646

Espionage.3685:

Official statement claiming performance is being worked on: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-Performance-Never-Rarely-Addressed/first#post2716646

“Claiming” being the key word. With all the broken promises, I now take ANet’s “claims” and “promises” with a grain of salt.

Any update on performance patches?

Supposedly there is some kind of culling fix in the works to be released soon.

Won’t change FPS for anything except zergs.

By ‘culling fix’ they likely mean they are changing the level of culling for each of the settings u can choose from (very low to highest). That isnt a fix :P

Its optimization issue, you should ask optimization patches from Arenanet.

I7 or 2nd GPU will give you little to no FPS increase. Dont waste your money. Try to OC your CPU but be careful!

Even 4th gen I7 4770k cant handle game. Its %100 optimization issue. Every1 have problem in high populated areas.

Finally, the first anet answer for the fps issue… My cpu is OC to 4,7 and still get kitten very well by the game.
I really hope they will find a solution soon, cant wait to go back in WvW without having to low almost every setting.

Well, I’m running the game with the -forwardrenderer switch and it has helped. Unfortunately, the downside is you don’t get any shadows and some graphic effects look a little odd. I posted a video on how this game performed twelve months ago; the difference is rather striking.