Guild Wars 2

Hi. I’ve been having a strange problem for several days now and I looked everywhere with no luck.
I have changed my graphics card from a ATI radeon HD 4870, to an AMD radeon HD 6770. I could run this game beautifully on the 4870, but after switching, I am having terrible frame rates on the 6770, always stuck around 10-15 fps. Nothing I do changes it. No matter what settings I choose, no matter what I do in CCC, I’m still stuck with an awful fps. Is this a known issues with AMD drivers? Any ideas on how to fix this?

P.S. Some people on another board tried arguing that my new GPU is a step down from my old one, and that it’s the cause of my problems. I can run Skyrim, Dishonored, and other games on the highest settings with 30-50 fps (for the most part), so my card’s performance definitely isn’t the issue.

EDIT: I am aware there are many other low fps topics, but I didn’t find anything that helped me with the problem.

The 4870 is faster than the 6770. Bigger numbers doesn’t = better.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18330837

Have u made a complete driver uninstallation before u switched ur gpu? Uninstalling ati drivers, driver sweeper on safe mode for leftovers and finally registry files with ccleaner for example, then installing the newest drivers.

@Swordbreaker: I did my research. For various reasons the 6770 is a step up for me, and the performance on my games is saying the same. GW2 being the only exception to this so far.
@Nyx: Yes, I did. I did a clean uninstall of ATI drivers before installing the new ones. There’s not a trace of ATI drivers left on my system.

It is not a step up. The only way it is better is it has more vram. Check the link.

This may sound silly but could u check ur bios settings and check if ur primary graphic card option is set to pci-express. Also try switching to high performance from power option in control panel

Swordbreaker.2581:

It is not a step up. The only way it is better is it has more vram. Check the link.

If you claim that it is the ONLY thing better about it, you obviously haven’t researched this properly. Memory bandwidth isn’t the only thing that affects a GPU’s performance. I traded off some speed for a load of new features. Is it a theoretical step down? If you don’t consider the features and go by memory bandwidth alone, yes. Is it a step down in practice? Not for me.
Even if we say you are right, and it’s a huge step down, 10-15 fps on the lowest possible settings for this card? No. Just no.

@Nyx, thanks for the suggestions my friend, but none of that helped either.

For the record, I tried various versions of CCC. 12.8. with CAP 3, and just tried out 12.9 beta with CAP1. While 12.9 seems to have given me a boost of about 3 frames, the core problem still remains.

Non of hs suggestions helped because you downgraded your gpu.

Not trying to hijack the thread, but just wanted to throw this out there. I recently removed a HD4870 and installed a HD7850 with no noticeable increase in performance (across multiple games), and just today tried out a HD7770, again with no real increase in performance.

I’m wondering if this “core issue” might be applicable to this machine?

wsiono.2916:

Not trying to hijack the thread, but just wanted to throw this out there. I recently removed a HD4870 and installed a HD7850 with no noticeable increase in performance (across multiple games), and just today tried out a HD7770, again with no real increase in performance.

I’m wondering if this “core issue” might be applicable to this machine?

No, it’s not. The HD7850 = 3 × 4870′s so you’ve most likely got processor bottleneck.

Revelans: You probably should listen to these guy’s & stop trying to justify your bad purchase. You did in fact, downgrade. You may have gained DX11, but you’ve lost a lot of the grunt that the 4870 has, but you already know that.

wsiono.2916:

Not trying to hijack the thread, but just wanted to throw this out there. I recently removed a HD4870 and installed a HD7850 with no noticeable increase in performance (across multiple games), and just today tried out a HD7770, again with no real increase in performance.

I’m wondering if this “core issue” might be applicable to this machine?

Interesting. You are not the first person who says there is no change in performance across GPUs. Though for me the problem is a bit different in the sense that I experienced an unreasonable drop in performance with seemingly no way to influence it through graphics settings.
I have also heard people experiencing this fps drop out of nowhere, without making changed to hardware or software, but the problem resolved itself in a day or two. Not for me though.

Revelans: Please list the rest of your system specs.

Didn’t mention, i’m running a Phenom II x4 955. It doesn’t SEEM to be a processor bottleneck issue, as reducing graphical configurations in-game does yield an increase in FPS in areas regardless of player activity, it seems. I suppose the increase in visual quality could strain the CPU more, as there’s technically more to render?

wsiono.2916:

Didn’t mention, i’m running a Phenom II x4 955. It doesn’t SEEM to be a processor bottleneck issue, as reducing graphical configurations in-game does yield an increase in FPS in areas regardless of player activity, it seems. I suppose the increase in visual quality could strain the CPU more, as there’s technically more to render?

Yes, your processor is a HUUUGE bottleneck, especially in GW2. But your pretty much hijacking this thread.

Asus P6T motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 @2.67GHz
6GB DDR3 ram
600 watt PSU

I could run the game consistently with 40+ fps with the 4870 with native sampling. I can’t get out of 10-15 fps with the 6770 on the lowest possible settings, and fps remains the same no matter what settings I change, while I run other games (Skyrim, Dishonored) at nearly all max settings.

Revelans.1968:

Asus P6T motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 @2.67GHz
6GB DDR3 ram
600 watt PSU

Good cpu/mobo. Any reason why the 920 isn’t running at 4Ghz? My 920 @ stock totally sucks & I’ve almost trippled my FPS with the 920 @ 4.5.

But anyway, why did you buy a new video card if the 4870 was running it beautifully?

Just didn’t get around to oc’ing. Didn’t feel a pressing need. Should probably get on that considering I just got a new cooler.
The 4870 started experiencing overheating issues. I got the 6770 extremely cheap.
I didn’t expect a large performance increase at all, I thought it would be more or less the same, with some improvements here and there. However I managed to bump up nearly all my settings for several games, and even installed the HD texture replacements for Skyrim without any drop in performance. The HD texture pack absolutely killed my 4870.

Well you’ll get a decent boost from DX11 supported games, because the 4870 doesn’t support DX11. But all DX9 games you’ve taken a step backwards:

This will give you a rough idea: Copy/Paste this link, don’t click it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-entry-level-graphics/compare,2876.html?prod⁵²²⁴=on&prod⁵³¹¹=on

Also, don’t compare other games, it just doesn’t work like that. MMO’s are a different ballgame altogether.

Man, how did you get your i7920 to 4.5ghz? That’s really impressive. My 920 is currently at 4ghz stable with an undervolt. Highest I could do was 4.1, but volts had to be ridiculously high.

Yes, I see that most DX9 games have taken 2-5 fps beating on average.
My situation is a bit different though. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that I dropped about 30 fps without being able to influence my fps at all by tweaking settings. There’s no way this game was meant to run at 10 fps on my current card with everything set to low.

BroScientist.9875:

Man, how did you get your i7920 to 4.5ghz? That’s really impressive. My 920 is currently at 4ghz stable with an undervolt. Highest I could do was 4.1, but volts had to be ridiculously high.

1.325v for 4.5Ghz, but we’re moving into summer now so I’ve had to settle for 1.275v 4.4Ghz Took me 2years & I went through more than 12 cpu’s to find it.

Revelans.1968:

Yes, I see that most DX9 games have taken 2-5 fps beating on average.
My situation is a bit different though. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that I dropped about 30 fps without being able to influence my fps at all by tweaking settings. There’s no way this game was meant to run at 10 fps on my current card with everything set to low.

The beating will vary on a game by game basis. I’m not sure how your 4870 was pulling >45fps? I have tested a HD5850 1G @ 1GHZ core & I was pulling 30-50fps on average @ 1080p. Lower in WvW obviously.

Are you getting 10fps in open world with nothing around? If that’s the case, then yeah you may have other issues. Did you check the GPU core clock is increasing under load?

I was getting an average of 40 fps in open world. Sometimes getting down to 30’s and slightly below in events, and up to 45 in other open areas. 30 and under in WvW. That is with native sampling. Supersample absolutely killed me.
Yes, I am currently getting 10-15 (well, I did on CCC 12.8, it’s around 12-18 now on 12.9) in wide open areas. I tried several locations, land, water, jumped from one end of map to another to check if it’s that particular area or not, you name it.
EDIT: Didn’t check the clock, about to do that.
EDIT 2: Checked it. Clock increasing as normal.

Revelans.1968:

I was getting an average of 40 fps in open world. Sometimes getting down to 30’s and slightly below in events, and up to 45 in other open areas. 30 and under in WvW. That is with native sampling. Supersample absolutely killed me.
Yes, I am currently getting 10-15 (well, I did on CCC 12.8, it’s around 12-18 now on 12.9) in wide open areas. I tried several locations, land, water, jumped from one end of map to another to check if it’s that particular area or not, you name it.
EDIT: Didn’t check the clock, about to do that.
EDIT 2: Checked it. Clock increasing as normal.

Well, that’s pretty bad & I’d be leaning towards not just a downgrade, but a massive downgrade. Got another Gpu there you can chuck in to test it just to be sure it’s a bad gpu?

Actually, first thing I’d do would be to check your GPU/Cpu usage. See what’s bottlenecking.

I am not entirely clear on what I’m looking for in the readings so I’ll post a screenshot hopefully giving you the needed info.
I have actually just noticed the GPU usage at 99%…. It was at 67% last time I checked. That can’t be good. I just tried it with Dishonored, and it peaked at 66%.

Revelans.1968:

I am not entirely clear on what I’m looking for in the readings so I’ll post a screenshot hopefully giving you the needed info.
I have actually just noticed the GPU usage at 99%…. It was at 67% last time I checked. That can’t be good. I just tried it with Dishonored, and it peaked at 66%.

Your GPU is maxing, 100% gpu bottleneck at this point. Until you get into heavy WVWVW then it will move to CPU.

But for the most part, your GPU is bottlenecking. Don’t worry about other games, you can’t really compare.

6770 is not going to be a noticeable upgrade from a 4870. You even said you got the 6770 for “cheap” that should have been an indication of that. Do much more research before you make purchases. Your best bet right now is OCing your CPU.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=658&card2=564

Cbuzz.5083:

wsiono.2916:

Not trying to hijack the thread, but just wanted to throw this out there. I recently removed a HD4870 and installed a HD7850 with no noticeable increase in performance (across multiple games), and just today tried out a HD7770, again with no real increase in performance.

I’m wondering if this “core issue” might be applicable to this machine?

No, it’s not. The HD7850 = 3 × 4870′s so you’ve most likely got processor bottleneck.

Revelans: You probably should listen to these guy’s & stop trying to justify your bad purchase. You did in fact, downgrade. You may have gained DX11, but you’ve lost a lot of the grunt that the 4870 has, but you already know that.

This is true. I think a lot of people assume DX11 cards are faster automatically.

DX11 is definitely faster than DX9, but that doesn’t do you any good if the game is written to be DX9.

That leaves only raw horsepower and the 4870 has more.

Gaile indicated GW2 can use DX10, but that’s hard to verify without an explicit option in settings.

I think one issue is that the game is using an old graphics engine. Its a modified version of the original Guild Wars engine, and probably still uses older engine designs. Newer graphics engines are more efficient.

Its actually quite impressive they were able to add so much to the original engine, but the cost might be the higher and unpredictable CPU loads being seen, and under usage of modern GPUs.

Also, the game uses Havok for physics.

Since the game ran pretty well on my machine a few patches ago, I am hoping it will all get fixed. New code might just be a little off for awhile.

Alright. I know you said not to compare, but still, out of the dozen games I ran well (including Tera, another mmo at full settings), this is the only one that’s giving me problems. So what I understand form this is that the game is taking some sort of issue with my card or drivers.
Is there anything that you can think of that might be causing this bottleneck? Is it likely a hardware or software problem from what I told you so far? Or any things I can try for a solution?

AMD/ATI seems to have ‘fallen from grace’. There’s numerous ‘Stickied’ topics across various games with titles like “Attention ATI Users” or “ATI Issues”. Most of it seems to boil down to the drivers being absolute kitten.

Best bet may be to check the AMD/ATI forums to see if it’s a known issue or if people found work-arounds.

You may even need to get more RAM. Right now I’m using 6.1GB of my 12GB of RAM with ~1.7GB of that being GW2.exe.

If you feel like parting with ‘small change’ in terms of computer upgrades, you could try doubling your RAM. UNLESS! you’re using a 32-bit system, which it doesn’t look like since you’re at 65% when at 3.91GB.

Also, how much VRAM is in use while playing the game (ie pressing ‘W’ moves your character). Might be hard if you’re running single-monitor, but things like Fraps might be able to provide an in-game overlay. I’m sitting at 800MB here in Claypool facing the waypoint from the crafting stations.

But I would try getting some ‘gaming’ RAM, try for 12GB. And maybe save up for an Nvidia. It seems ATI cards run best when paired with AMD chips……wonder why that would be smirk

And I see you may look into OCing.

DO NOT USE THE STOCK FAN IF YOU ARE OCing. That fan blows…even at stock speed my i7-920 would reach near 95c when crunching movies in Handbrake. Went liquid and never looked back.

-I base my recommendation on personal experience.