Guild Wars 2

First, specs of computers I’ll be referring to in my post. For the sake of consistency, I chose the default “best appearance” mode (I believe it’s high in everything but not ultra) for all the platforms. The only difference between the platforms is the resolution.

My Desktop (2560×1080)
Core i7 3770k @ 4.4 ghz (I’ve also tried stock)
RadeonHD 7970 @ 1125/1575 (I’ve also tried stock)
8 GB DDR3 RAM

My Laptop (1366×768)
Core i5-3210M (stock)
Nvidia GTX 660M (stock)
8 GB DDR3 RAM

Girlfriend’s Laptop (1920×1080)
Core i5-4200M (stock)
Nvidia GTX 765M (stock)
8 GB DDR3 RAM

I played GW2 at launch for a few months but stopped playing for nearly a year until recently. At launch, I didn’t have super stellar performance, but I didn’t mind since I ran it maxed out at 5760×1080. I don’t recall it ever dipping below 25 fps and if it did – it was rare. Most of the time it was easily over 30 in the crowded cities / WvW etc.

After starting again recently, I noticed that although I cut my resolution in half (2560×1080 now), I’m dipping into the 20s frequently. I essentially bottom out at 20 fps in Lion’s Arch, Divinity’s Reach, etc. Sometimes I even seen teens popping up. I don’t recall the cities being so laggy. It also happens in random places (i.e. it happens in Orr and some other places where it’s not ‘crowded’ or super involved). Although a little puzzled, I dismissed it for a little while. That is, until my gf fired up the game.

Sitting next to me, her relatively weaker laptop got twice the fps of my desktop in Divinity’s Reach. Stunned, I fired up my laptop and while it’s not as strong as her laptop, it got reasonably good fps in Dvinity’s Reach (30+).

I’ve tried:
- Changing graphics quality. Honestly, even at the lowest settings I get maybe 30 fps in Divinity’s Reach.
- Core parking, no change.
- Changing clocks back to stock on my CPU/GPU, no change.
- Uninstalled/Cleaned out GPU drivers and reinstalled them, no change.
- **Disabled Hyperthreading on my cpu… this actually skyrocketed my fps to 50-60+ in Divinity’s Reach. I was excited that I found a fix. However, upon the most recent GW2 update and a Window’s Update, it’s reverted back to the old crappy FPS… At this point, disabling hyperthreading yields no change.
- Running other games. I’m running BF4 at ultra with no issues and no other games give me any issues.

I’m out of ideas short of a completely fresh install (Windows and/or GW2…). Not really sure what else I can try next or if anyone’s run into this before.

The problem isn’t on your end, the issue is that gw2 is optimized poorly. Your fps is typical. The game tends to be cpu limited since its essentially a single threaded game. For modern cpus this is a issue since they all have multi cores. Something which gw2 doesn’t really take advantage of.

So I wouldn’t worry about doing a fresh install, updates etc. Because its not your pc causing the issue.

Few things to try. Disable best texture filtering. Of all the in game settings it does the least visually and for some reason gives me a 20fps frame hit at stand still and 30+ frame hit when moving. I kept overlooking it because its an option that usually gives me 0 frame hit in other games and so avoided disabling it for a long time. Another thing to try is removing any frame limits you have set. For some reason frame limiter bugs out occasionally and when set to 60 will artificially limit my frames to 32 exactly.

Secondly, Aza i was convinced this game was poorly CPU optimized but i’m wondering if theirs actually a widespread persistent bug because yesterday after a random reformat and install(i’ve done many since owning guild wars with no benefit in the past) and now i’m getting 40+ frames in zergs at max settings when i couldn’t keep 7 fps at medium a week ago.
I’m using a phenom II as well which is commonly accepted on this forum as insufficient for running this game at max settings compared to AMD FX processors which are commonly accepted as inferior by a wide margin to I7s in game. Somehow my computer is doing it which proves its possible. What worries me though is i’m still seeing lots of people with this issue and i’m afaid whatever luck i may have stumbled on will run out.

Aza.2105:

The problem isn’t on your end, the issue is that gw2 is optimized poorly. Your fps is typical. The game tends to be cpu limited since its essentially a single threaded game. For modern cpus this is a issue since they all have multi cores. Something which gw2 doesn’t really take advantage of.

So I wouldn’t worry about doing a fresh install, updates etc. Because its not your pc causing the issue.

Did you even read his post? His FPS went DOWN since he cut his resolution in half from 5760×1080.