Guild Wars 2

So just built a new system and was testing some crossfire action, I actually get better performance with a single card, no surprise, but I’ve been running GPU-Z while WvWvW and notice a very strange pattern. This happens in single card mode or crossfire.

The more people there are the less my GPU works, which results in a lower framerate. Less people, the higher the GPU load goes up, thus great framerates, it makes no sense but I have the proof.

My GPU goes down to 50% usage when it needs it most. CPU seems to be about the same 65-75%.

Please, more people collect data and determine if this is true or not?

my spec (no cpu oc)
3570k 3.5ghz
ddr3
ssd
2×6850s (12.8)

In this example I have crossfire enabled, but its relavent with a single card.

Just me
82% GPU + 39% GPU performance with no players on the screen
http://imgur.com/q3fRt
http://imgur.com/o1B9R

lots of people and action, should see the highest GPU action
>45% + 0% GPU performance
http://imgur.com/eJIHN
http://imgur.com/1Zgw4

Less people, the higher the GPU load goes up, thus great framerates, it makes no sense

It makes sense:

Low frame rate → GPU processing less frames per second → low GPU usage → CPU not fast enough → GPU idle, waiting for CPU

CPU ~45% load means → core0 90-100% usage and core1,core2,etc.. only 0-10% usage because they are waiting for core0.

Conclusion:

low framerates = core0 is not fast enough so the other CPU cores and the GPU are waiting for the finalization of core0 tasks.

michael.6875:

Less people, the higher the GPU load goes up, thus great framerates, it makes no sense

It makes sense:

Low frame rate -> GPU processing less frames per second -> low GPU usage -> CPU not fast enough -> GPU idle, waiting for CPU

CPU ~45% load means -> core0 90-100% usage and core1,core2,etc.. only 0-10% usage because they are waiting for core0.

Conclusion:

low framerates = core0 is not fast enough so the other CPU cores and the GPU are waiting for the finalization of core0 tasks.

AMEN Brother. This also applies to pretty much every other FPS thread on here.

CPU not fast enough? Ha, no that is not the bottle neck, if this theory was true then bench marking you would see a similar result, the GPU would drop in load while the CPU bogged down. In fact you don’t. Try it, 3dmark.

The CPU is significantly faster than the GPU, the GPU is ALWAYS the bottlekneck. Unless of course you do have a inferior cpu.

zerph.1482:

The CPU is significantly faster than the GPU, the GPU is ALWAYS the bottlekneck. Unless of course you do have a inferior cpu.

What? So we simply ignore all GW2 benchmarks and general game engine design of the last 15 years? A game “can” be CPU or GPU limited or even both/none at the same time. This depends on several factors and while most games are GPU limited, GW2 in a WvW scenario is CPU limited in a extreme way. Most GPU’s even go into lower power save states in those GW2 situations, since the CPU can’t “deliver” the GPU data fast enough.

Also comparing a CPU with a GPU is like comparing a car to a ship.

PS: Try use http://www.hwinfo.com/ , in combination with the rivatuner OSD display and make sure hyperthreading is disabled. This will show better whats going on in WvW vs PvE.

You also must consider the bandwidth available between the CPU, GPU, etc. for your system. The GPU will only work at a level it needs to. If the data it receives is far less than it’s capable of handling, you will see a lessening of load. Heed the information of other’s responses.

@OP

how much FPS is that cpu giving you in a massive WvW fight anyways..
I am thinking about upgrading.
Running phenom II @4ghz atm with hd6870 x 2 atm
i am getting about 11 FPS in a MASSIVE WvW

Another way to prove its the CPU is to OC it.

Now i know its an Ivybridge you have so you cant go crazy with the OC’s unlike a sandybridge ..but you should still be bale to get to 4ghz without much trouble ..and if you have a top end air cooler or mid to top end water cooler, you should be able to get to 4.3ghz.
Then try GW2 WvWvW again ..i promise you will ge better fps.

Now ‘should’ this be needed …no. Is it needed ..yes.
You never know ..people have said in previose revisions of GW2 that hey have got better performance. ..so Anet may well bring out a patch down the line that increases performance

BUT there will always be a limitation to what the game engine can handle. Its not easy to make an engine for a mmo, that can handle over 50 people on the same screen all shooting of special effects and particles, without significant performance loss.

Well i just bought the game and installed it and the auto settings are making my GPU run at 100% in a basicly empty area,just made a thread hoping to get soem answers as its not a normal thing for my system to be struggling on auto setting on any game as i play most my games in high-ultra so im confused,even on low its struggling

everything is just smoke ’n mirrors unless you show some proof, be it support printout or CPU-Z report.

Its actually quite simple, especially if you have recently read the stuff the actual programmers have posted recently about how the system works.

To sum it up in a very simple fashion:

When a player shows up on your screen, your game first gets notified of the player positioning. THEN it requests the assets for that player. (things like armor, look, race, etc).

1 person on your screen, very small amount of assets need to be obtained before your GPU can go to work rendering them on the screen

50 people on the screen, and now not only is your CPU having to control ALL the requests for assets for these players, but your GPU cant actually do much until it GETS all the assets for these players.

Your GPU is literally having to wait, while it does nothing, for data. Sometimes this delay can be caused from a CPU bottleneck. In this case, its more of an issue of how the game engine handles int I/O of data needed to GET to your GPU. There are just too many hurdles the data has to go through before it actually gets to your GPU.

Sure, a super fast CPU can help a bit (ie: 4ghz i7 machines can run at 35 fps with 60 people on the screen.), but that is FAR from how fast it SHOULD be running (ie: 4ghz i7 machines SHOULD be able to run at a solid 60 fps or more, but are bottlenecked by the games engine and how it handles the back and forth of sending game asset data.)

Until the devs find a better way for the game to handle the back and forth of player data within the game engine itself, there isnt much we can do to get the TRUE performance many of our systems are capable of. Unfortunately, even the devs stated,
“The fix is likely to be large-ish in scope” which means dont expect anything for several months or more.

Exactly Gadzooks ..nicely put.

hardware can help overcome engine limitations. Most of the time engine limitations aren ot delt with BUT if they are ..it takes a while.

So your choiceis ..more hardware power ..or put up with it and wait.

SolarNova.1052:

… Its not easy to make an engine for a mmo, that can handle over 50 people on the same screen all shooting of special effects and particles, without significant performance loss.

Did you ever play Dark Age of Camelot during its peak (subscriptions and play time)? Those RvR battles were MASSIVE (3 realms, 50+ players from each, easily) and I cannot recall a single time when my computer couldn’t handle it.

I realize that the graphical requirements of the game/time were less intensive, but so was the capability of the hardware supporting it.

I’d like to see, at a minimum, GW2 on par with that.

Apparently GW2 uses the old GW1 game engine ..though heavily modified. And the old engine was never intended to be used with massive player vs player battles.

Now if it was built from scratch and designed iwth these huge battlesi mind ..im sure it coulda been better. But to save time and money they used the old engine.. and that has its drawbacks ..as we now see.

Gibbel.5734:

@OP

how much FPS is that cpu giving you in a massive WvW fight anyways..
I am thinking about upgrading.
Running phenom II @4ghz atm with hd6870 x 2 atm
i am getting about 11 FPS in a MASSIVE WvW

WvWvW battles
20FPS in crossfire mode and 10-15 in single card mode.
small wvwvw
30-60

PVE
60-100

For massive WvWvW battles, my FPS results do not change when toggling “best performance”, vs “high performance”.

My point on this thread is, despite upgraded hardware since the CPU and GPU are not being pushed during massive WvWvW it does not matter what you upgrade, your effectively going to net similar results because something is F with the client.

If you go get the best GPU out there you’ll see a moderate gain because it’s performance under 45% load will be better than an older card at 45% load. I’ve been gaming a long time and have never seen something like this, the only reason a GPU is under performing is if you have it configured in a mobo with lower bandwidth to the CPU/Memory, aka older version of pcie. In my case, I am running pcie 3.0 and it’s max rate so I have plenty of bandwith from the CPU/Memory to the GPU. As I can prove with industry standard benchmarking.

The whole theory of “the client is waiting for player to render”. This may be true if they throttle the client performance until all information is received from the server.

The bottomline, DEVs, why is this happening?

I still would like to see other people back this claim up, please go download GPU-Z and run some monitors and gather more stats.

Well, searching around google this is very common and there has been no addressed explanation.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/57348-low-gpu-usage-causes-extremely-low-fpsgeforcegt-220/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/SLI-Low-GPU-Usage/first#post52416

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1714108

So suck it up I guess.

My point on this thread is, despite upgraded hardware since the CPU and GPU are not being pushed

I think you didnt understand previous explanations. Its wrong to use the the “average” CPU load to draw the conclusion that the game is not CPU bound. You must monitorize the load of each core individually. In this case you will see a core with a high CPU usage (the bottleneck task). Not all tasks can be parallelized (= all cores at 100% cpu usage), some tasks must wait for other tasks, this is the reason one core has high usage and other cores low usage, so the Average CPU usage seems not high.

This is the answer of Arenanet developers (reddit post):

[–]ArenaNetPatrickLArenaNet Programmer

The client is generally CPU bound, so more + faster cores will contribute to better performance. There are exceptions (high-end CPU paired with a low-end GPU, scenes with sub-optimal culling results, etc…), and this is something we are also working to address.