Guild Wars 2

I have been having FPS issues with Guild wars 2 since launch and have been waiting for a performance fix by Anet or Nvidia.

MY system specs

*I7 3770k @ 4.2 GHz (CPU)
*GTX 680 Twin Frozr iii (GPU)
*Asus Maximus V Z77 (Mobo)
*16-GB G.Skill Trident X @ 2400Mhz (RAM)
*Corsair TX750W (PSU)
*Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

The game run mostly fine in pve but when in cities or some dungeons my fps can go as low as 20. WvW is the worst my Frame rate last night was at 15-20fps during a battle which is just unplayable.

All temps are fine GPU temps around 45c and CPU temps around 40-45c when these issues occur.

I have noticed that when my frame rate decreases my Gpu usage is at around 20% which could indicate a CPU bottleneck, however my CPU is only sitting at 35% usage.

Am not having issues with any other game just Guild Wars 2 and my driver version is (306.97)

Any suggestions/help would be appreciated thanks…..

This is normal buddy,nothing you can do about it,all if not most people suffer from lower fps then expected when having a rather high end spec system.we need to deal with it untill arenanet fix the culling issue,wich is most likely the cause.

35% cpu usuage ..4 cores 8threads ..that works out roughly 2.8threads used.

IIRC GW2 uses 2.5 max .. the other 0.2 is likely other system processes. There for it is concievable that your CPU is concidered to be maxed out. You can check this by trying a higher OC ..problem is your using a ivybridge cpu so chances are you wont get much higher than 4.3ghz on air cooling.

Im not syaing your CPU is the ‘problem’ ..that titles lies with the GW2 game engine ..which is not efficient enough at high loads like WvWvW ..however this can be offset by a powerull CPU ..the faster your cpu the better your fps.

As I am a crayon-eater, I am not an expert on the subject and not going to pretend to be one* on the forums, but what I do know; I am going to have to agree with Ceadmon in regards to [occlusion] culling may be one of the symptoms for lower than expected FPS, possibly other technical problems as well.

From what i have read in the forum and, although few, screen captures it appears to be anomalies with how — when — objects are rendered on screen from the camera’s POV. Given that player’s system specs is the “variable” , for some players this may be noticeable for other not so much.

From my understanding OpenGL utilizes more hardware (e.g. Graphics Card / GPU); Unfortunately GW2 does not use or support OpenGL, AN GE and or Umbra lean more towards software, possibly why GW2 is so “CPU intensive”. While speculative on my part, not knowing the specifics, if occlusion culling is implemented incorrectly can be computationally excessive.

If correct and ArenaNet is addressing this, give it some time with a few update/patches.

.* I’m not going to do the math, but I’ll draw you a picture, maybe.

hi we have similar specs but my vid card is only a gtx 560, my fps in wvwvw is 40 and world map its 60-70+, LA is 40 fps.

try this go to nvidia settings and set vsync and triple buffering on, on game settings set resolution to window full screen and uncheck vsync.

if that doesnt help then its ur video card thats not optimized yet for gw2 =( i feel for you =(

ive read from other forums regarding optimization issues with gtx 660-80 cards so you just have to wait for a patch

SolarNova.1052:

IIRC GW2 uses 2.5 max .. the other 0.2 is likely other system processes. There for it is concievable that your CPU is concidered to be maxed out. You can check this by trying a higher OC ..problem is your using a ivybridge cpu so chances are you wont get much higher than 4.3ghz on air cooling.

There is a better way to check than OCing. Use the program ‘ProcessExplorer’ you can inspect gw2.exe threads and see how much CPU% each thread uses. It uses about 50 threads, but only 3 of them are actually using CPU resources for most of the time. Likely one of the thread is will at full CPU% for the core its working on.

I didnt wanna get into how a CPU manages threads and all but… his cpu has 8 threads that can run ‘at the same time’ . .GW2 if what you say is acurate has a total of about 50 threads that need running.
These 50 threads are then processed at a maximum of 8 per cycle at the same time (in laymens terms). But ofcourse there will be proceses that absolutly NEED to be running all the time, and thats likely those 3 you say. And if one or more of those 3 is maxing out then there you go

Just expanding on what we both said btw ..not arguing

Im no programmer or IT tech but what i supose Anet needs to do is split those 3 or so processes down some more so that they can be spread out over more threads/cycles thus increasing performance.

@Nova

The op does not have 8 threads that can run at the same time because he only have 4 cores. 4 core = 4 real threads. 4 core with hyper threading = 8 logical threads. Hyper threading is an Intel hack to keep the pipeline busy, by stuffing two threads in one core. It has a very little benefit when the application is properly coded. In fact, it might make things worse since there is an extra problem of a race condition for competing for precious resources.

You have to realize game logic is not easy to break up. Especially for a games like Guild Wars 2. Too many things depend on each other which means breaking up logic into separate cores is a real challenge. Simple things such as block, walking, and other stuff. If developers do randomly separate things, then developers run the risk of wasting cycles due to communication between cores.

I would guess, what you would find, is that GW 2, no matter how many threads it might have, has only one or two performance critical threads.

For example in some applications I have worked on, there’s a lot of threads that wake up and run only periodically.

Based on that guess, a follow up guess would be that CPU clock speed, would be the limiter if GPU is fast enough. A possible re-design of the game could maybe split that into more threads, but it’s anybody’s guess if that would help performance (and that’s three guesses, making my whole post highly speculative.)

michaeljhuman.3940:

I would guess, what you would find, is that GW 2, no matter how many threads it might have, has only one or two performance critical threads.

For example in some applications I have worked on, there’s a lot of threads that wake up and run only periodically.

Based on that guess, a follow up guess would be that CPU clock speed, would be the limiter if GPU is fast enough. A possible re-design of the game could maybe split that into more threads, but it’s anybody’s guess if that would help performance (and that’s three guesses, making my whole post highly speculative.)

I’m not sure about it only having a few performance critical threads in use, I think its more of an optimization issue in that the older GW engine just wasn’t designed for all the new goodies they stuffed into it when they did redesign it :/, and then forgot to optimize it much afterwards. All in all it really comes down to is poor optimization and utilization of a PCs resources both my CPU and GPU are not at full load when playing unless in a crowded area, which even then you shouldn’t see Huge FPS hits, since then the GPU and CPU loads increase.

So you’d think that it would then keep up FPS wise in that respect, but this is not the case. Again this comes back to it being poorly optimized and not using a systems resources correctly. My system like many others are more then capable of playing most games at high settings yet in GW2, which is using an older engine with a few upgrades/changes we have some pretty severe FPS issues.

Quik question on that screenie Alteris.

Do you have Vsync enabled ? ..if you do ..do you have your monitor settings set to 50hz by any chance. I only ask becouse that image just hapens to be dead on 50 fps in a rather calm area of the game. The only other reason for <60 fps with <99% GPU usuage would be CPU bottlenecking which is odd in an area like that ..obviosly being an AMD cpu ‘could’ the reason.
Just checking anyway

SolarNova.1052:

Quik question on that screenie Alteris.

Do you have Vsync enabled ? ..if you do ..do you have your monitor settings set to 50hz by any chance. I only ask becouse that image just hapens to be dead on 50 fps in a rather calm area of the game. The only other reason for <60 fps with <99% GPU usuage would be CPU bottlenecking which is odd in an area like that ..obviosly being an AMD cpu ‘could’ the reason.
Just checking anyway

Yes it is Vsync’d, how ever its the games “default” which it places it at when you change a resolution, if I set it to my normal 60Hz that’s what I’d be getting, and before I took that shot I did a 360 and everywhere I stopped I got that 50 FPS you see in the screenshot. Only time my CPU bottlenecks is in Big events like killing dragons etc when I see my FPS hit around 20ish or so. I play windowed 1680×1050 btw. Still this game needs some optimizations to say the least, I mean I can play Skyrim at 1080p maxed out minus shadows and AA AAs never good on FPS >.>. lolz

Running 2 GTX580’s SLI and not seeing any problems (200 FPS) with the setting in the picture below. Using latest Nvidia WHQL drivers.

Not having seen the code, and not being an expert in the field of game programming, I would never claim to know enough to say the game is poorly optimized. A lot of people say that, but where’s their proof?

I realize they compare GW2 to other games, and wonder why the fps is lower than they expect on high end GPUs, including multi-GPU setups.

I wonder the same thing. But I don’t pretend to have the answers.

I find it interesting that’s low fps is not necessarily population dependent. Some areas have low fps as has been mentioned before. My only theory is that the CPU is being used to do a lot of calculations in these areas.

michaeljhuman.3940:

…. A possible re-design of the game could maybe split that into more threads, but it’s anybody’s guess if that would help performance (and that’s three guesses, making my whole post highly speculative.)

Guess what this immediately brought to mind (pic below)… glad I am running SSD RAID to load this hog.
Can rest assured if the code also looks like this you are probably right.

Foonus.8149:

Running 2 GTX580’s SLI and not seeing any problems (200 FPS) with the setting in the picture below. Using latest Nvidia WHQL drivers.

Lol…200 fps screenshot from anywhere.
Go into a bigger WvW fight with your 580 SLI and look again your “200” fps.

BlooodX.8025:

Foonus.8149:

Running 2 GTX580’s SLI and not seeing any problems (200 FPS) with the setting in the picture below. Using latest Nvidia WHQL drivers.

Lol…200 fps screenshot from anywhere.
Go into a bigger WvW fight with your 580 SLI and look again your “200” fps.

Exactly! did you notice that the shot was cut up aswell ? give us a shot that’s someplace like LA near the TP or anywhere PvE thats moderately populated and show us a Full screen shot with that FPS or close to it, cause I’m not buying that your getting 200+ FPS just off the shot your giving us. >.> That’s my 2 cents worth.

BlooodX.8025:

Foonus.8149:

Running 2 GTX580’s SLI and not seeing any problems (200 FPS) with the setting in the picture below. Using latest Nvidia WHQL drivers.

Lol…200 fps screenshot from anywhere.
Go into a bigger WvW fight with your 580 SLI and look again your “200” fps.

Seems to be many trolls and whiners on this forum… Hopefully you don’t drive these devs out of the industry like whiners did to Biowares… Lets see your 1080P 200FPS from anywhere, including the loading screen. I posted that pic of settings for the user with problems so he could try to copy them (mainly render sampling) but of course some kid has to go and start hateing.
FPS has never been a problem, and as observed most of the complaints are from users crippling themselves to 60 fps anyways.
Regardless, onto something constructive.

PvP Lag however has… and same deal goes with the networking as for the .dat file size itself.. literally everything is poorly optimized.

Even a noob using common sense would realize you can split that .dat file into multiples, one main that every player uses all the time, and then separate ones to be loaded depending on what area (or pvp) they may or may not be doing.

Same goes here in the post below, you literally connect to their laggiest server right off the hop, and are forced to stay connected to it until it lags you right out of the pvp.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Server-Latency-and-Game-Disconnects-proof-its-server-side/first#post493005

As other users have already stated in this post, optimizations are desperately overdue.

Foonus.8149:

…
Lets see your 1080P 200FPS from anywhere, including the loading screen.
…

:D

I can reach easily 200+ fps in many places with high settings / 1080p with my 2500k@4500ghz + 670 SLI.

Look at my last post in Low FPS topic (page 29) and take a screenshot in Lion’s Arch center as I did and post it here or there.

Let’s see your 200 fps in this “pve city”.

BlooodX.8025:

Foonus.8149:

…
Lets see your 1080P 200FPS from anywhere, including the loading screen.
…

:D

I can reach easily 200+ fps in many places with high settings / 1080p in GW2 with my 2500k@4500ghz + 670 SLI.

Look at my last post in Low FPS topic (page 29) and take a screenshot in Lion’s Arch center as I did and post it here or there.

Let’s see your 200 fps in this “pve city”.

I’m still not seeing your 200 FPS screenshot. Enough of the pissing contest and trolling. give it up already. This is a technical forum to help the users and the developers, not to get off on yourself. The smileys don’t make it any less annoying.

Nvidia gtx 590

Lions Arch 25-40fps
Exploring outside towns 60 fps sometimes fps drop to 15 or less
WvW 10-20fps
When opening friendlist 10-17fps when closing friendlist 60fps

Much High end grafic cards have problems with this game no idea about low end.
I should be able to play this game without a problem.
Yesterday at WvW i even wasnt able to use skills only thing i could do was dying without fighting back and wasnt even able to see enemy’s party members and Allies.

Foonus.8149:

I’m still not seeing your 200 FPS screenshot. Enough of the pissing contest and trolling.

Here is a screenshot from me. I took it 2 min ago.
205 fps wow…

But it means nothing, if I can’t reach 30+ minimum fps in WvW fights.

So now let’s see your Lion’s Arch center screenshot with your great fps (200?), “trollhunter”…

lol, Again that’s not a populated area PvE or not, not to mention your right next to the boundry of a zone, Hence the portal ? so ofc your FPS is ganna skyrocket. Try LA TP area and lets see how you fair there :P.

I’m only using 1 of my GTX 680 and I am getting steady 60FPS 90% of the time. Your vdeo card is probably dropping into 2D or Idle clock most of the time, set a profile for GW2.exe and set the power management to full performance.

Kill “awesomium_process.exe” in the task manager, a built-in web browser process spawned by GW2, and see if that increases your performance. (It did for me.)
Doing that even enabled anti-aliasing, which didn’t work previously. :-p I mean real AA, not the crappy built-in FXAA.

Alteris.1528:

…lol, Again that’s not a populated area PvE … Try LA TP area and lets see how you fair there…

If you wrote this to me. – Than you did not read or understand what I tried to say in my last 3 comment. :p
(And I write again: look at my last comment in “Low FPS” topic with my Lion’ Arch screenshot. :p)