Guild Wars 2

Just curious why GW2 is so CPU intensive. Will there be any change to this?

Bad game design. Its a problem with the engine, so I doubt they can do anything about it.

See Part 4.11 of this thread to see the developer’s explanation and comments

this ones easy.

somebody had dreams of a console port for gw2.

now, I know somebody is about to say im full of it.

look at the evidence the xbox 360 has a tricore cpu, the games optimized for 3 heavy threads, the xbox 360 has dx9 level gfx chip, gw2 is dx9, despite all the talk years ago of the game coming out for dx10 or even 11…..

somebody also saw dollar signs at the idea of selling the game to XP users, so dx9 was a bonus there as well…..

the games not gonna see a console port in its current state, the cpu’s of todays consoles CANT RUN THIS GAME…..no bloody way…….if a 4.5ghz cpu from amd or intel cant guarntee stable 30fps for people…no way a 3.2ghz tricore powerpc chips gonna give you playable fps in events or wvwvw…..

they need to go back to source and rebuild teh core of the client to not only use more cores but to use them more efficiently …..I dont know what kind of systems they used for internal testing but whatever it was….clearly its at a level of power no home pc has yet….

I dont know what kind of systems they used for internal testing but whatever it was…

Anet uses their own proprietary software. There is a video discussing what they used for client/server data sheets.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/180776/Video_Guild_Wars_2s_programming_tricks_revealed.php#.URg3MKU0V8F

Often proprietary software takes time to not only develop but to correctly implement. There are a ton of issues with GW2 and I can only hope that the last 4 months or more have been allocated towards making the game run the way it was meant to be.

The game is currently unplayable in WvW zergs and dragon events unless you have a 4.4+ghz cpu. Having that clock speed is attainable only via overclocking.

This is unacceptable for any title.

well said Stormcrow, yet again, its clear to me and many others that this game was developed with dreams of a console port……..that died due to the horrible perf on even the best systems of today….systems many times more powerful then the xbox360 or ps3.

I’ve taken the time to watch the game as it runs in Windows 7 using a CPU and GPU monitoring gadget.

It’s very true the game is heavily CPU bound but I believe there’s some misconceptions here.

Just as a note, my GPU is a Geforce GTX 560M.

First, it’s not about the Ghz of your CPU necessarily. I run a laptop with a 2nd gen Intel I7 that clocks at 2.0Ghz which can turbo up to 2.9. Lion’s Arch runs well anywhere from 30-50 fps. Anywhere else in PvE I’m getting between 60-100fps (I runs FRAPS to monitor frame rate) However, going into very heavy WvW combat (50+ people on the screen with tons of animations) I’ll go down to 20s or even the high teens in frame rate.

The game utilizes all cores quite well – the gadget monitor I use shows all the cores being used rather equally most times. I don’t see one core or thread maxing out without the others essentially doing the same.

The only curious thing that the GPU does is during VERY heavy WvW fighting the utilization drops VERY low – down as low as 15% while my CPU can peg very high (80% or higher)

Now, keep in mind, I’m not capping all my graphic stats. I think it’s plain silly to so since you can get very high graphics without turning everything on/maxed. I’d rather have very fluid frame rates than unnecessary ‘bells and whistles’ that’ll cut your frame rate in half or even lower.

My stats:

Animation: High
Anti-Aliasing: None
Environment: High
LOD Distance: Low
Reflections: None
Textures: High
Render Sampling: Native
Shadows: None
Shaders: Medium
Post-Processing: Low

Best Texture Filtering: Checked
Depth Blur: Checked
High-Res Character Textures: Checked

Shadows and Reflections will KILL your frame rate as will Render Sampling turned up – All 3 of these are unnecessary to me and I just turn them off.

Stormcrow.7513:

The game is currently unplayable in WvW zergs and dragon events unless you have a 4.4+ghz cpu. Having that clock speed is attainable only via overclocking.

This is unacceptable for any title.

This is just flat untrue. There are many many people that play the game in both scenarios with decent to fluid frame rates and don’t have an insanely overclocked CPU like you stated – I run with quite a few in my guild and my own laptop doesn’t do too bad in the latter situation at all and it takes a ton of people on my screen to make my system crawl in WvW.

Stormcrow.7513:

The game is currently unplayable in WvW zergs and dragon events unless you have a 4.4+ghz cpu. Having that clock speed is attainable only via overclocking.

This is unacceptable for any title.

Well just lower the graphics if that is the case. Since my new computer, i don’t have any lag in a dragon event. I’ve also started WvW and it’s pretty nice. i’m not dropping below 40 fps. And my cpu is only 4.0 ghz without overclocking. But yeah if you take all the time the highest settings as default reference, nobody can ever play this game at a correct speed. Lower your standards, and the game will run smooth like butter.

Any game that has to deal with rendering interactive objects and large numbers of players will be CPU bound, in the end.

That won’t change unless there’s a shift in GPU technology.

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Any game that has to deal with rendering interactive objects and large numbers of players will be CPU bound, in the end.

That won’t change unless there’s a shift in GPU technology.

That is blatantly false. Provided decently optimized shaders and not counting for postprocessing effects, the only thing limiting the rendering speed of a scene is the vertex and polygon count. The CPU interaction here is minimal, little more than an operator transferring calls to the GPU.

Depending on the middleware they used on the game, the CPU may be more taxed. By having to process physics, animation, collision and reflections the CPU can quickly become overburdened when too many calculations are required at once. This can be remedied by using adequate middleware (Nvidia’s physicsX instead of havok for example) that offloads these tasks to the GPU, and/or by using good occlusion techniques.
Of course with today’s quad core CPUs being so common, they can set one or two cores to process these tasks and have the rest free to transfer API calls.

The CPU should never be a limitation, if it is there is a severe design blunder.

Speaking of which, I just bought the game and came here to inquire about the game installer setting my CPU and GPU to max performance power state, causing my temps to go up and the fans to become noisy. This is ridiculous considering the download is going to take at least 4-5 hours.
I any case, I had never heard of any performance problem until now and the Youtube videos I’ve seen appeared very smooth and fluid but If the game has performance issues that is a definite showstopper for me.

IvanHoe.3468:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Any game that has to deal with rendering interactive objects and large numbers of players will be CPU bound, in the end.

That won’t change unless there’s a shift in GPU technology.

That is blatantly false. Provided decently optimized shaders and not counting for postprocessing effects, the only thing limiting the rendering speed of a scene is the vertex and polygon count. The CPU interaction here is minimal, little more than an operator transferring calls to the GPU.

Depending on the middleware they used on the game, the CPU may be more taxed. By having to process physics, animation, collision and reflections the CPU can quickly become overburdened when too many calculations are required at once. This can be remedied by using adequate middleware (Nvidia’s physicsX instead of havok for example) that offloads these tasks to the GPU, and/or by using good occlusion techniques.
Of course with today’s quad core CPUs being so common, they can set one or two cores to process these tasks and have the rest free to transfer API calls.

The CPU should never be a limitation, if it is there is a severe design blunder.

Speaking of which, I just bought the game and came here to inquire about the game installer setting my CPU and GPU to max performance power state, causing my temps to go up and the fans to become noisy. This is ridiculous considering the download is going to take at least 4-5 hours.
I any case, I had never heard of any performance problem until now and the Youtube videos I’ve seen appeared very smooth and fluid but If the game has performance issues that is a definite showstopper for me.

You should take a look around these forums, there are some definite optimization problems with the current game. Be prepared to get lower than expected FPS in LA (main town) and chaotic battles in WvW (100+ man fights).

hoegarden.4287:

Stormcrow.7513:

The game is currently unplayable in WvW zergs and dragon events unless you have a 4.4+ghz cpu. Having that clock speed is attainable only via overclocking.

This is unacceptable for any title.

Well just lower the graphics if that is the case. Since my new computer, i don’t have any lag in a dragon event. I’ve also started WvW and it’s pretty nice. i’m not dropping below 40 fps. And my cpu is only 4.0 ghz without overclocking. But yeah if you take all the time the highest settings as default reference, nobody can ever play this game at a correct speed. Lower your standards, and the game will run smooth like butter.

Lowering graphics is irrelevant. I use a GTX 680 OC and even with subsampling and all low settings the WvW zergs and dragon events are not usually 30fps+. This has nothing to do with GPU at all it is all CPU.
Lowering my standards for a AAA title that encourages large scale events basically shows how flawed the game is.
I have 0 complaints when it comes to PVE performance but the zergfest which is GW2 is broken.
It seems that Anet doesn’t care either since there has been 0 updates for this issue and 0 response from this company which is supposed to show great customer relations with its community.
It feels like Anet is simply waiting for the tick/tock cycle to continue to “patch” these issues via new cpu purchases.

saddly, we are nearing the end of IPC (per core per clock perf boosts), theres a reason amd is moving away from that, and intel is following, because they are hitting a wall, why do you think the perf generation to generation has been jumping less and less the last few years?

when you build a game to be portable to console without considering the conciquinces……when you dont test on hardware your planning to support(average windows XP system) you run into these kind of problems…

I just imagian that if gw2 had been built specifically for the modern pc, dx11 support( that worked on dx9 and 10 cards on systems running vista/7) with quad/hex/octa core support, it would run one hell of alot better……..
the fact is, anet probably dont care, and wont till it hits their bottom line…..then they will care….its why nobody I know will buy gems till they fix their kitten.

Optimize the physics. While you’re at it, optimize the environment controls. I would like to keep what I have while having less grass swaying in the northwestern parts of Wv3. Then call it a day.