Guild Wars 2

Hello there, I have been running GW2 quite smoothly once it came out, and when I recently got back into the game, I noticed bad framerates issues. I do not understand why this happens, but it mostly happens in WvW and Lion’s Arch. I updated my driver’s on the graphic’s card, unpacked my cpu’s cores, have a decent air flow on my computer but still have the same, low fps in theese areas.

My specs are :

AMD Fx 8120 3.1 ghz( I usually run it on Turbo Mode)
GeForce 550Ti OC
6GB Ram

The problem is your CPU. it has 8 cores and each of them is quite weak individually. This game requires some hefty amount of per core power. Your graphics card is more than fine, but your fps is limited in CPU intensive tasks, which is running many different moving things on screen simultaneously. WvW and LA are the places where this happens the most.

To make it a little easier, change these options in your graphic settings: Antialiasing to none, Reflections to Terrain & sky or none, Shadows to low or none and Postprocessing to low or none (I keep it on low because I actually like it more than low). Next step would be getting a more single-thread powerful CPU. Intels are doing better in this category right now.

I actualy unpacked cores as I mentioned, plus, this should never be a issue in games. I mean really, I have played Battlefield 3&4, Skyrim, Crysis 3 and had very nice fps with decent visuals, why should I actually upgrade my cpu to play a game like that??

It is really annoying that GW2 doesn’t use multiple threads for better optimisation, especially when this includes huge WvW fights and really crowded areas…..

Plus, I have been looking on the forums and encounter people with High end I7’s cpu’s that also have the same issue, and plus there is a program where you can see if your cpu bottlenecks your gpu and it doesn’t….

you have to understand that those games are single player games or their multiplayer modes don’t allow as many players at once as GW2, which makes them more GPU bound than CPU bound (which is always the case in FPS games vs MMO’s).

Yes it is annoying that a CPU dependent game doesn’t utilize your CPU well. All we can do about it tho is lower some of the settings and overclock our CPU’s and wait for ANet to come up with a better solution.

Now for the worst part: There isn’t a single CPU on the market that won’t be bottlenecked in GW2. Not even the most powerful. Let that sink in a bit.
If you overclocked a 4670K or 4770K or something similar with liquid nitrogen cooling to 6-8GHz you could probably get smooth gameplay in big WvW fights, but that wouldn’t be real solution. Now with best cooling methods people get 4,8-5,0 GHz overclocks which gives them 20-25 fps in the biggest fights.

As for the program, I don’t know which one it is or how it works, if it really calculates your usage real-time while playing, but my guess is that it’s looking at the game requirements that are made normal PvE gameplay in mind.

Right now I have GTX 660 and Q6600 CPU. I’m actually monitoring the GPU usage at the moment and only once it hit 99% when all settings where maxed, including supersampling. When rendering is native and other setting are maxed or close I’m getting 40-60% usage. Still my fps is below 20, actually below 15 in LA for most times. What does that leave you with?

Whatever…It is just sad….In any cpu-based games I was running it fine and somehow,after a mysterious patch or tweak, gw2 forces me to upgrade my CPU to have CHANCE to get a little bit better frames per second….

I hear you, it should not be this way, I’d think technology in so far ahead already that it should be able to make 150 players run in the same place possible. This is one reason I bought a 4670K (I was due to an upgrade already tho, my previous CPU was from ’07)

Thanasis.1875:

Whatever…It is just sad….In any cpu-based games I was running it fine and somehow,after a mysterious patch or tweak, gw2 forces me to upgrade my CPU to have CHANCE to get a little bit better frames per second….

U dont have a change even after upgrade….or perhaps IF u Invest 5k euros for dual i7 extreme setup u can run it with reasonable FPS..

Well, is there any way to make my fps tolerable?I mean seriously I spent some money on this rig to play games, have played the most cpu and gpu demanding games and cannot run a ******** GW2?Is this real??

i was running smoothly, about 45fps as an all around average, went on holiday last 3 weeks, came back and now its dropped to 7-15fps, i havent even had the computer on!

games unplayable at the moment

Anyway, conclusion is, I won’t change my CPU just because ArenaNet forces me to. I am not an AMD fanboy, neither an Intel hater, but theese CPU’s should have very little differences in gaming, either if it’s CPU based or GPU based. What matters is that this game isn’t built properly for an AMD CPU and this causes the AMD CPU’s to fall back in performance, forcing player to upgrade their CPU, even if it was not needed.

Thanasis.1875:

Well, is there any way to make my fps tolerable?I mean seriously I spent some money on this rig to play games, have played the most cpu and gpu demanding games and cannot run a ******** GW2?Is this real??

YUP its real, ive spend about 1300e maybe more for my i7-4770k+r9 290(both OC to maximium with air cooling) setup and cant maintain reasonable FPS on wvw…

Next upgrade i can Make is Invest 1,5k euros for i7 extreme cpu and motherboard…..which OFC is noway vice since performance gain would BE like max. 15% at best in some programs..

I will probably try to get temperatures just a little bit lower, is there an on-screen program that shows your CPU and gpu usage, as well temperatures?I would like to know if there is any other out there to run some tests

You shouldn’t change your hardware just because of a 1 program, unless that program is something that you really need and have to run, that’s for granted. Also, as Jake pointed out, some players have been getting some unusual performance drops lately that were fixed also out of the blue. You could just wait and see if the fps gets a tad better, but like I said, it will never, especially on that CPU, reach a level of absolutely flawless fluid motion. (unless ANet changes their code, of course).

@Makke: Actually that wouldn’t bring you any performance upgrade, unless you could overclock it higher. This game only utilizes 3 cores heavily so adding more cores wouldn’t help. In fact, i7-E actually has lower single thread performance IIRC, so you would get even lower fps.

Thanasis.1875:

I will probably try to get temperatures just a little bit lower, is there an on-screen program that shows your CPU and gpu usage, as well temperatures?I would like to know if there is any other out there to run some tests

I don’t know of a single program that does that but you can try these:
RealTemp or CoreTemp for CPU temps
GPU-Z for GPU temps and usage
Windows Task Manager gives you an idea of CPU usage

You just need to find a balance between fps and visual quality these are my in game setting:

Full Screen: 1680 × 1050
Refresh Rate: Default
Frame Limiter: Unlimited
Interface Size: Normal
Animation: High
Antialiasing: FXAA
Environment: High
OD distance: High
Reflections: Terrain & Sky
Textures: High
Render Sampling: Native
Shadows: Low
Shaders: High
Post Processing: High
Character Model Limit: Medium
Character Model Quality: Medium
Best Texture Filtering: Unchecked
Depth Blur: Checked
Effects LOD: Checked
High-Res Character Textures: Unchecked
Vertical Sync: Unchecked
FPS In Lions Arch 35 to 45 depending on where my character is
FPS in explorable areas 65 to 80 and sometimes as high as 90 but that’s rare not sure why. In WvW I rarely drop below 30fps which is playable levels

System specs:
I5 3570k running at 3.8GHz not over clocked
16 gigs ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 not over clocked with up to date drives
Samsung SSD 840 series 120 gig drive
Windows home premium 64 bit OS with security essentials
Only have Window and GuildWar2 installed on SSD everything else is installed on standard 1TB drive, also don’t run much in background fairly Clean install of Windows, will run TS or Vent in background, never craptastic Skype.

So, besides upgrading my cpu, there is nothing I can do to fix the issue??I run my 8120FX on Turbo Mode, have OC’d GPU, all on fine temperatures and still get bad framerates with low/medium settings?Not to mention that in the past I never had similar problems, fps was dropping a bit, yeah, but not that big like now

Not really, except what has been said before. Tweak the in-game graphic options I listed to you and wait. There could be a bug in the game right now which is drawing performance from many players. There might be a sudden bump up in the fps some time near future, but still, WvW and LA are not gonna be 60+ fps when many players are online at the same time.

Now I just noticed that you haven’t given us any actual numbers. What do you consider decent fps? What numbers are you getting now? it’s subjective, i do notice difference in 30 and 60 but being with a low-end machine for so long 30 is pretty smooth to me, whereas some people just can’t watch at anything lower than 45.

I get 30-60 in normal areas and dungeons, but in WvW and LA I get about 15 or less average…

The first thing you need to do is realize the limitations of the AMD FX CPUs and why they are just not good for GW2.

The FX Series have 1 Module per 2 CPUs, and in that Module is 1 I/O Path, 1 L1, L2, and L3 cache that is shared between BOTH Cores in that module.

Where as Intel has separated each core out into its own set of resources, nothing shared but the Memory Controller (IIRC).

GW2 is SINGLE THREADED. That Single Thread will spawn 30+ helper threads to offload SMALL jobs. But the CORE FUNCTION of the application is SINGLE THREADED. That is why AMD takes a HUGE hit here over Intel.

One thing you can do to help increase the performance is to disable the 2nd Core per Module in your BIOS, or Install the Win7 FX Patch that will tell windows how to schedule the threads across your CPU correctly. <- THIS has fixed alot of FX related issues with regards to HUGE performance hits.

NOW, that being said, NO CPU can handle GW2 on Ultra with more then 24 Players on the screen in full Combat. The MAX FPS you can get there is like 24. So double/triple that Number for your champ farms, World Boss Trains, and WvWvW and you are 15-18FPS with the best of the best CPUs. Its just how the game is designed.

To combat that you MUST overclock your CPU. Your FX8120 can be pushed to 4.1Ghz with air, 4.8Ghz with Water (from what I have been reading), by Upping your vCore and the Multiplier. Some say the OEM heat sink and fan will do 3.8Ghz safely, but anymore then that and you need an aftermarket Cooler (I would suggest water for AMD since those things pull ALOT more power when they are over clocked). I am not going to tell you how to overclock nor what Coolers to buy, do your own research there. But that is the ONLY way to get decent performance out of this game, to Overclock.

Even my i5-4670K takes a HUGE beating to this Game. Default Clock under heavy action my FPS is 15-18. OC to 4.5/4.6 20-22, OC to 5.1~ 24-25-26~. (Fully Queued World Boss Map last night, 8FPS at MAW with my 5.1ghz Clock, FYI…that’s 79 other players if I’m correct)

Its just how the game is threaded/coded. So you have to work around that fact if you want better performance.

Else just put GW2 away and play something else.