Guild Wars 2

As title says,
I built a new PC to play videogames, I can run most titles smoothly, for example my computer runs BF3/4 at Ultra Settings at 60+ FPS. On GW2, doesn’t matter the display settings, I can barely reach 30FPS and it’s full of stutter and lag also when standing still.

All my drivers are updated, I’m on W8.1 and the machine is fresh new from yesterday.

Specs:

Processor: Intel i5-4570 @ 3.20GHz
Memory: 8GB
Video: MSI GeForce GTX 760 OC Edition with 2GB of memory
HD: 256gb SSD
Power Supply: BeSilent 500W

Now, I can understand the game is an MMORPG and so full of moving elements and stuff to load, but it feels really bad. It stutters all the time like if it’s loading some textures or something and when it doesn’t (rarely), you can feel these micro-stutters caused by the connection/lag.

I tried lowering all the settings, tried to play with nVidia Control Panel, tried lot of advises found on the forums but nothing, it’s unplayable to me.

Any advise?

while you indeed have a very nice PC, GW2 just cannot be run on ultra settings with any currently available HW and have decent FPS performance.

You should consider turning down the following settings

Reflections – sky or off
Sampling – native
Shadows – Low or Off
Post processing effects – Low or off
Character Limit – Medium or Low
Character quality – High or medium

Now the 30FPS lock you seem to have while adjusting settings, seems to me that your PCI-E link speed is locked at 1×. You can verify this with GPU-Z and look at the Bandwidth Speed (Example – PCI-E 16x v3 @ 16x v2).

If it is not linked at 16x youll want to make sure your GPU is installed in the PCI-E slot closest to your CPU, and that your PSU meets the requirements for the GPU. I dont know what brand ‘beslient’ is for a PSU, but if its not rated at 80+ Gold/Bronze, there is no guarantee that its pushing a min required 320W for your system.

Thanks a lot for your help.

The GPU is running on x16 v3.0 PCI-E – lowering the details doesn’t change anything, I also tried putting everything low. The PSU is 80+ Bronze.

Yesterday I entered the game and for a few moments it was running really smooth at 60+ FPS, after a few seconds it started loading and stuttering again, so this is weird

I tried starting and restarting the game and seems like sometimes the game starts smooth, others not.

Ok, I can confirm it now after trying again: once I start the game it’s super smooth at 60+, after a bit I play it starts stuttering and lagging. There is something happening after a bit which destroys the performance…

have you tried simply reinstalling the game or at least repairing the game client?

Reinstalling means I have to download it again? How can I repair the client?

If your willing we can try to repair the client.

On your desktop right click your GW2 shortcut and go to properties.

*A box will pop up and you will see a box field next to Target:
*Mine looks like this Target: “D:\Game Files\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe”
*So it should look like this in the end “D:\Game Files\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -repair

Simply add -repair to the end of this target path and click apply then ok and try launching the client. It will begin to repair and will close itself out when it’s finished.

Remember to remove the -repair from the Target field within the shortcut properties afterwords when it’s done.

You can also take an extra step (if repair does not change anything) and delete the Local.dat file. This file contains your graphics/audio settings locally and will reset it to default.

To do so simply hit WinKey+R to bring up the run box.
Then it will bring up a list of folders -> Go into the Guild Wars 2 folder.
Then locate the Local.dat file and just simply delete it.

Relaunch GW2.

And if none of this works and you continue to only get around 30 FPS. I would suggest updating your DirectX runtimes.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35

This will provide updates to DirectX 9.0c which is what GW2 uses (WHY ANET???, Why code your game on old outdated technology?)

If this game was only more optimized….reflections are broke as hell btw.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Reflections-setting this is a good thread to read upon that problem.

AWSHOM.7819:

Ok, I can confirm it now after trying again: once I start the game it’s super smooth at 60+, after a bit I play it starts stuttering and lagging. There is something happening after a bit which destroys the performance…

sounds like it could be thermal throttling. Check your temps on your cpu/gpu

dodgycookies.4562:

AWSHOM.7819:

Ok, I can confirm it now after trying again: once I start the game it’s super smooth at 60+, after a bit I play it starts stuttering and lagging. There is something happening after a bit which destroys the performance…

sounds like it could be thermal throttling. Check your temps on your cpu/gpu

You were totally right.

After all the software tweaks I tried to give a look at the hardware and noticed that the CPU fan was not spinning AT ALL! Never happened something like this to me, I had to unplug and replug it into the motherboard, now I can hear it spinning mostly from the noise (it’s the original from Intel, very noisy).
I already ordered a better and silent fan, btw game now runs perfectly smooth with max settings and it’s a pleasure to play!

Thanks a lot for all the help guys, cheers!