Guild Wars 2

Alright i started playing Guild Wars 2 yesterday.I run the game completely maxed out at 2560×1440.Most of the time i get a stable 60fps,except certain big fights where the fps drops to 30-40.During the behemoth fight the fps went as low as 22 witch i consider completely unplayable.
Now i noticed that the gpu usage is not at 99% when the fps drops,come of think of it it’s never at 99% witch indicates a cpu bottleneck.
My specs are the following:
i7 3930k@4ghz(not much of an oc but i can’t push it further till i get a new psu)
GTX 680 Lightning@1202Mhz(core)-7308Mhz(memory)
16GB of RAM
I am pretty sure i shouldn’t be getting those frame rates with this system,especially when the graphics don’t even look that good.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FAQ-Frequently-Asked-Questions-Compilation/first#post1095383

Read Part 4.2 onward to understand why.

tl;dr likely CPU bottlenecking.

GW2 has major optimisation issues, the game engine is crap, and runs crap on all machines.

You only chance of getting better FPS is to OC further.

FYI: I run a 750w PSU atm and have no issue with power. The 3930k at the OC i have can ‘spike’ up to 300w draw at 100% usuage but usualy runs stable 100% load at about 250w. At the usuage levels GW2 requirs u wont be drawing anywhere near that much. But obviosly for stability testing u would need to be able to allow for the higher watts.
That said i am planing on upgrading my PSU to 850/860w to gain some head room for future SLI.

Wattage measured using AIDA64.

Why can’t you push it further till you get a new PSU?

The more Vcore u use, the more watts it pulls from the PSu at full load.

let me put it this way, at the OC i have it can ‘peak’ 300W just from the CPU, like i said in my last post.
At stock it should only pull at ‘peak’ around 200w with a typical consumption of around 170w.

Remember the 3930k is a 6 core 12 thread Sandybridge CPU, they are power hogs.

The difference from a 4 to a 4.6 is going to be small, and if hes running a PSU that small he has other things to worry about, and with a rig like that, I would be willing to bet he over bought on the PSU like most people and has more than enough power for it. For a heavy OC on everything that system would run fine on a good 550-600w PSU as at most it’s going to pull 45A off the 12v rail and under 10A each off the other two.

Like Solar said the game runs crappy with whatever hardware you have.
GW2 uses 3 heavy threads so all those extra threads you have on your 3930k won’t help you all that much. GW2 loves raw clocks. I noticed a big difference when I oc’d mine to 4.5ghz.
If your PSU can handle it then I would definitely go for a higher overclock. What cooler are you using?

Stormcrow.7513:

Like Solar said the game runs crappy with whatever hardware you have.
GW2 uses 3 heavy threads so all those extra threads you have on your 3930k won’t help you all that much. GW2 loves raw clocks. I noticed a big difference when I oc’d mine to 4.5ghz.
If your PSU can handle it then I would definitely go for a higher overclock. What cooler are you using?

If his PSU really is that close he could gain the extra headroom by backing off the OC on the 680, which will not even be stressed in stock form as it is.

Hey guys i just came back home.Thanks for all the responses.
I have a 4 year old silverstone 650w psu capable of delivering 54A on a single 12 rail.
My 680 runs on dual 8pin connectors but is overclocked on stock voltage.I also have 16gigs of overclocked RAM and i plan to add 16 more next month.In addition to that i’ve got a corsair h100i,5 led case fans(+2 more on the radiator),an ssd, a blue ray drive,2WD Black HDDs(1TB,2TB) and another 3 2.5" hdds i had lying around.Plus i will be getting a GTX Titan soon.
Not to mention that the capacitors inside the psu have started to age and the fact that it has been through a lot.(suicide i7 920 overclocks among other)
So yeah this psu is barely enough for what i have.
Anyways i guess i am going to have to live with this.I am going to try downsampling the game from 3820×2160 where the cpu barely matters.

I don’t run supersampling anymore and set reflections to Terrrain&Sky. I find that helps with the FPS.
Your H100i will let you OC that CPU to 4.5ghz easily. You can try to do it now or wait until you get a new PSU.
Try inputing your info into this site:
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
That will give you a good idea of where you are as far as power goes. Hopefully you have a good chip and it takes low voltages to maintain a stable 4.5ghz oc.
GW2 is a CPU pig like no other. Even my i7 oc will dip into the high 20’s during giant zergs. They really need to start looking at optimizing the game more(not holding my breath).

Suicide OC’s on the CPU do nothing to the PSU so long as it’s not drawing more power than it can provide. Everything you listed will pull 7.2A on the 3.3v rail, 14.1A on the 5v rail and 45.5A on the 12v rail, which is well less than 600W draw, with the card and CPU OCed. That is also with everything under load, that means 100% CPU, 100% GPU, thrashing (reading and writing) all the HDD’s, all the fans at full speed, and burning a BD at the same time. My system, based off of the draw of everything should pull well into the 500-550W range under full system load, but in gaming, with the CPU and GPU maxed in say ARMA II, I pull about 320-350W from the wall, and that includes the loss from the PSU, and not what the PSU is putting out it self.

Stormcrow.7513:

They really need to start looking at optimizing the game more(not holding my breath).

I wouldn’t either, I see some bug fixes that might fix some FPS issues people have, but the over all performance I don’t see changing, and if it does, it will probably be inside the expansion, I don’t see it happening before then and a rare chance for it to happen even then, though I do hope I am wrong.

TinkTinkPOOF.9201:

Stormcrow.7513:

Like Solar said the game runs crappy with whatever hardware you have.
GW2 uses 3 heavy threads so all those extra threads you have on your 3930k won’t help you all that much. GW2 loves raw clocks. I noticed a big difference when I oc’d mine to 4.5ghz.
If your PSU can handle it then I would definitely go for a higher overclock. What cooler are you using?

If his PSU really is that close he could gain the extra headroom by backing off the OC on the 680, which will not even be stressed in stock form as it is.

My gtx 680 oc will get to 99% usage at times, especially with supersampling :P
It is too bad that there isnt really a computer available(without LH2) that will run the game at 60fps+ during zergs with all the bells and whistles.

SolarNova.1052:

GW2 has major optimisation issues, the game engine is crap, and runs crap on all machines.

You only chance of getting better FPS is to OC further.

What he said. This engine is a POS.