Guild Wars 2

I always visit the same areas in-game whenever testing GW2 performance with new GPUs. One that’s easy to use is at the Black Citadel portal. As soon as I land, I am facing forward towards the city itself. Performance often suffers here.

When I started playing GW2, it was Crossfire 6970s. They were fine overall, but had noticeable loss in Black Citadel, Lion’s Arch etc. Black Citadel was at around 45fps.

Then I moved up to GTX 680s in SLI. An increase in general performance, and Black Citadel came to 55fps.

This year I acquired Crossfire r9 290s and in GW2, they are underwhelming. .
At the trusty Black Citadel spot, FPS drops from capped 60, down to 45-48.

I7 2600k at 4.7ghz
Asus P67 deluxe
R9 290 crossfire
30" 2560×1600
SSD drives
etc.etc.

In game settings are on the attachment.

Additionally when panning the camera in places like Lion’s Arch (and very few players or people around), I get slight stutters, bringing the frames down to 54/55 briefly. Meanwhile the VRAM usage of the cards is at 1290mb(and they support 4GB).
As far as I am concerned, there’s no reason for any bottleneck there.

I’m perplexed at
A) Why I do not cap 60 in these old testing spots
B ) That it seems to be degraded when using AMD cards.
C) The VRAM stutter during pan.

I’ve just purchased a 4k monitor and concerned that if these cards suffer at 1600p, then 2160p is just that much worse in these particular game area.s

Any one else using these cards and notice similar?

It’s probably more your 2600K at this point then anything else. I run 280x’s and and 4790K (4.6ghz) and pretty much max out in all areas of the game (60hz vsync).

Also, when you upgraded to dual 290’s did you make sure your PSU has enough wattage to support the higher draw?

Going from a GTX680 to a R9 290 is an additional 105w per card.

The CPU has been the same with the three different GPU setups. I could understand if in those specific scenarios, that the rendering was CPU intensive, however to my knowledge they are not(unless it’s a code issue). What’s on screen is little NPC/character, and mainly just geometry/textures.

It also doesn’t explain the 10fps loss with newer more powerful cards.

Yes the PSU is fine.

You don’t list what PSU you are using, nor its wattage. Nor what AMD Driver version you are using. I know 14.9 is available now, but 14.4 version 2 seems to still work best IMHO.

Its possible the 290’s are over heating, have you verified their temps? You also didnt list what design you went with on those cards (Asus, Gigabyte…ect) nor the cooling method for them either (DCU II, Tripple/Double…ect).

and are you using the CF Bridge or not?

290 cfx is overkill for this game even maxed out at 1600p but try going into the amd control panel/overdrive and set power control/limit to +50%. This will allow the cards to use more power when needed and seems to help smooth them out. Also keep an eye on temps as they do like to throttle when they heat up and two can heat a small room

sirsquishy.8531:

You don’t list what PSU you are using, nor its wattage. Nor what AMD Driver version you are using. I know 14.9 is available now, but 14.4 version 2 seems to still work best IMHO.

Its possible the 290’s are over heating, have you verified their temps? You also didnt list what design you went with on those cards (Asus, Gigabyte…ect) nor the cooling method for them either (DCU II, Tripple/Double…ect).

and are you using the CF Bridge or not?

Zeus ZM1200 PSU. I run 14.6 drivers (intentionally).
290s temps are 60-65
These cards do not use a bridge connector.

Nick.8256:

290 cfx is overkill for this game even maxed out at 1600p but try going into the amd control panel/overdrive and set power control/limit to +50%. This will allow the cards to use more power when needed and seems to help smooth them out. Also keep an eye on temps as they do like to throttle when they heat up and two can heat a small room

I did run a quick voltage/powerlimit test and it made no difference – and really it shouldn’t. If the cards have enough grunt and provide 60fps solid in 90% of the game world, then it’s down to what’s happening behind the scenes at these locations.

I just hoped maybe it was a known issue.

To be honest any performance issues with this game are usually on the cpu side/engine limitations. The game loves cpu but the engine cannot take full advantage of what is available. On my current 4970k@4.7 it will max out at 50% on all 8 threads when it’s clear it starves for more (my gpu usage actually plummets when my fps do).
One great tweak that I find helps smooth out many cpu heavy games is killing core parking. I have not tested on windows 8 but on 7 it does wonders.
Check out the vid for an easy way to kill it and you can google core parking for more info/happy stories

Hollywood.2407:

sirsquishy.8531:

You don’t list what PSU you are using, nor its wattage. Nor what AMD Driver version you are using. I know 14.9 is available now, but 14.4 version 2 seems to still work best IMHO.

Its possible the 290’s are over heating, have you verified their temps? You also didnt list what design you went with on those cards (Asus, Gigabyte…ect) nor the cooling method for them either (DCU II, Tripple/Double…ect).

and are you using the CF Bridge or not?

Zeus ZM1200 PSU. I run 14.6 drivers (intentionally).
290s temps are 60-65
These cards do not use a bridge connector.

Nick.8256:

290 cfx is overkill for this game even maxed out at 1600p but try going into the amd control panel/overdrive and set power control/limit to +50%. This will allow the cards to use more power when needed and seems to help smooth them out. Also keep an eye on temps as they do like to throttle when they heat up and two can heat a small room

I did run a quick voltage/powerlimit test and it made no difference – and really it shouldn’t. If the cards have enough grunt and provide 60fps solid in 90% of the game world, then it’s down to what’s happening behind the scenes at these locations.

I just hoped maybe it was a known issue.

Are you just not using the bridge, or do your 290’s not even have the bridge connectors. My 280x has the bridge connections so thats why I am asking.

I was thinking about your 2600K and the CF setup, each card should be at 8×8x on version 2. I wonder what would happen if you moved the CF Traffic to the bridge instead of across the 8x PCIE lanes.

cause those 290’s do have the power to saturate the bandwidth available on a PCIE 8x version 2 connection.

If the cards do not have the pin out for the Bridge, you might just be looking at a CPU upgrade (probably more for the PCIE Version 3 spec then the CPU performance increase)

Nick.8256:

To be honest any performance issues with this game are usually on the cpu side/engine limitations. The game loves cpu but the engine cannot take full advantage of what is available. On my current 4970k@4.7 it will max out at 50% on all 8 threads when it’s clear it starves for more (my gpu usage actually plummets when my fps do).
One great tweak that I find helps smooth out many cpu heavy games is killing core parking. I have not tested on windows 8 but on 7 it does wonders.
Check out the vid for an easy way to kill it and you can google core parking for more info/happy stories

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3u9eiskM4

Yes, like a lot of MMO, it’s CPU intensive. The confusing thing is why in a scene where there’s little NPC/PC activity(the big wham bam CPU killer in these games), is the scene where I get these bad dips in frames?

Thanks, I don’t have any core parking happening.
I checked GPU load in these spots (and most others). It’s full whack at 99% each …. that’s quite surprising. Why on Earth does it need that? There’s far more demanding games that don’t rely on the GPU that much.

I also disabled Crossfire. In the majority of areas, a single card gets about 45fps. In the bad areas, it drops to 28.

sirsquishy.8531:

Hollywood.2407:

sirsquishy.8531:

You don’t list what PSU you are using, nor its wattage. Nor what AMD Driver version you are using. I know 14.9 is available now, but 14.4 version 2 seems to still work best IMHO.

Its possible the 290’s are over heating, have you verified their temps? You also didnt list what design you went with on those cards (Asus, Gigabyte…ect) nor the cooling method for them either (DCU II, Tripple/Double…ect).

and are you using the CF Bridge or not?

Zeus ZM1200 PSU. I run 14.6 drivers (intentionally).
290s temps are 60-65
These cards do not use a bridge connector.

Nick.8256:

290 cfx is overkill for this game even maxed out at 1600p but try going into the amd control panel/overdrive and set power control/limit to +50%. This will allow the cards to use more power when needed and seems to help smooth them out. Also keep an eye on temps as they do like to throttle when they heat up and two can heat a small room

I did run a quick voltage/powerlimit test and it made no difference – and really it shouldn’t. If the cards have enough grunt and provide 60fps solid in 90% of the game world, then it’s down to what’s happening behind the scenes at these locations.

I just hoped maybe it was a known issue.

Are you just not using the bridge, or do your 290’s not even have the bridge connectors. My 280x has the bridge connections so thats why I am asking.

I was thinking about your 2600K and the CF setup, each card should be at 8×8x on version 2. I wonder what would happen if you moved the CF Traffic to the bridge instead of across the 8x PCIE lanes.

cause those 290’s do have the power to saturate the bandwidth available on a PCIE 8x version 2 connection.

If the cards do not have the pin out for the Bridge, you might just be looking at a CPU upgrade (probably more for the PCIE Version 3 spec then the CPU performance increase)

Yes, there’s no bridge connector – they’re designed not to use them as they talk to one another over the PCIE. As for saturation, they are at 8x 2.0 and I haven’t had any issues on that front. I question whether the small % of throughput gained from using native 3.0, actually offloads any stress from the CPU.

Certainly something to consider, but I won’t be upgrading a system just for GW2