Guild Wars 2

I have:
AMD Radeon HD 7700 series graphics card.

When I play with in-game settings set to auto-detect:
the game looks great and plays for a while. when there are too many effects on the screen (fire) the screen goes black, but the sound continues. The game will not return.

When I play with in-game settings in minimal:
the game looks ok and works fine. crashed never occur after days and hours of playing.

When I play with the in-game settings on maximum:
the game looks amazing and runs fine. then with too many effects it crashes.

My ATI settings are all default to allow for the game to use it’s settings.

I have done the following troubleshooting:
-repair data archive. same results on normal or higher settings.
-deleted local gw2 cache and deleted .dat file. currently reinstalling.
-made sure I have the latest DirectX and graphics card drivers. did a clean installation of both.
-ran scans, etc, on harddrive. no malicious items detected and no defragment recommended (did one anyway)

While the graphics card is not top tier high end, since I got it last summer Ive been able to run the game a full / ultra settings and still keep above 60fps, which has been working out well for me. CPU and GPU temps are fine, with no alerts or alarms going off. Since the Marionette update, I’ve been experiencing black screen crashes.

Symptoms of the crash:
Sound goes “BZZZRT” and the monitor goes black.
All sound normally continues. I can still hear the game and those talking on Teamspeak in real time. I can even reply for a short while.
In game my character still auto-attacks (confirmed with another desktop/account in same house) It does not log me until I force restart.

VERY RARELY when this happens it will stay black for a moment then come back. When this happens the graphics look crisper and sharper, losing their depth and fuzziness. Before is normal and after it’s “white outline city”. IF this occurs, I can play with any graphics settings and the game no longer crashes at all during that gameplay session. As soon as the program is closed and reopened we’re back at step one.

After the repair and reinstall finish I’ll post my findings. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help correct this.

after repair and full install auto-detect settings produced the same results. I did a “clear the harpies” event in Fireheart Rise without any issues playing my mesmer. I went north to do a vet event, a flame legion soldier that uses a flame thrower attack. Game crashed again black screen, same as before.

tried turning all the settings up to full and turned the anti-aliasing off in-game. so far it’s been doing fine in fire-heavy champ/turret fights…

yes I can.

4.20 GHz quad core processor (AMD FX 4170)
12 GB Ram
Windows 7.1 x64

I am using a router / modem combo. We have multiple computers accessing the internet regularly and 2 desktops running GW2 at once, and have been since GW1 without issues.

I tried disconnecting and going through the modem directly. Same result on auto-detect and max settings. If I disable anti-aliasing in game and have all other settings on high or max it seems to be going alright. Right now my in-game settings through router are:

Animation: high
Antialiasing: None
Envorinment: high
LOD Distance: High
Reflections: All
Rextures: High
Render: Native
Shadows: High
Shaders: High
Post: High
Character limit: low
Character quality: high
all 5 final checks are “yes”, full screen 1920×1080 default refresh rate without any limiters or third party apps running.

Ashley Segovia

The (k) on Intel CPU’s does NOT indicate it has Turbo Boost, it indicates it has a ‘fully’ unlocked multiplier to allow user Overclocking. Turbo boost is available on nearly all current Intel and AMD CPU’s and is HIGHLEY unlikely to cause the CPU be unstable.

Additionally, in most cases Turbo boost will actually DECREASE the frequency as more load is put on the CPU, not increase it. I.E 4 core CPU with 1 core fully loaded will run at say 3.5ghz, but as more cores get used Turbo Boost will LOWER the clock rate down to say 3.2ghz. Since GW2 uses more than 1 core, the CPU is likely running near or at its lowest base clock.

The FX 4170 runs at 4.3ghz , that is until 2 or more cores are in use, then it runs at 4.2.

Went through those settings. Found the maximum defaulted at 100%. I set it to 99%. I turned antialiasing in game back to FXAA. so far so good..

was going fine. prep for the marionette event and a random engineer started spamming flamethrower skills. Immediate crash.

Still no resolution on this. I can only run the game at minimum settings. Everything else seems to crash the game.

Usually if you are experiencing problems like this, it means that your graphics card is overheating (and it’s automatically shutting itself down to avoid crashing the whole computer). Use a heat detection software like Speedfan and see what temperature your GPU is getting to before it blacks out/crashes.

If the GPU is crashing at temperatures below 80 degrees Celsius, you may be able to alleviate the problem by cleaning it of dust, manually boosting the fan speed using Speedfan, or replacing the thermal paste on the card (although the last is fairly hands-on and may not be something you’re capable of doing). Ultimately, such signs usually indicate that the card is on its way out and you should start shopping for a replacement.

Normally I would agree with you. I cleaned out the case of any dust, reset the video card, and I do have fan speed monitors running. The temp on the graphics card never gets high enough to indicate a crash.

What’s more is that this problem only occurs with Guild Wars. I can run HD video no problem, play other games at full settings with no problems, and I do a lot of video editing (which uses a ton of my graphics resources). None of these activities causes the same problem.