Guild Wars 2

I’ll just firstly start off by saying I have no proof at all of whether this is true or not. Just some speculation on my part if anything.

This thread here seemed to of discussed it a bit in the past: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/optimize-the-game-for-AMD-cpu/first#post437417

Here’s a pretty known blog that describes the problem too: http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49

Now, onto actual discussion. A possible reason for AMD hardware having lower-than-expected performance could possibly stem from ArenaNet’s choice of a compiler for GW2. To put it briefly, Intel’s compiler works great for optimized code, on Intel processors, but does some rather shady things on non-Intel processors (such as AMD) that yield lower performance than possible.

Here is some results of someone doing some CPU spoofing to get some different results in World of Warcraft: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4079871855

As I mentioned, I have no idea if this is entirely true or not, but a good way to test I guess is to basically… spoof your processor from one vendor to another. The easiest and most sane way I can think of to do this safely would be to use a Virtual Machine (as the WoW link mentions).

I would be very interested in seeing any results from people willing to give it a shot May even give it a shot myself in the near future.

Edit:
Some quick research shows that Gw2.exe is compiled with Visual C++. I’m not too sure how detailed the programs I’m using to check this are, but from my understanding, developers can choose to either use Microsoft’s compiler, or a different one (like Intel’s) while using VC++.

Edit: Running a “strings -a Gw2.exe” on a Linux machine doesn’t seem to yield anything Intel-specific. Kind of leaning more towards GW2 being compiled with Microsoft’s compiler, which is good

Possible but I think the issues lies in AMD’s weak single core performance.
Impossible to know for sure but I have read about CPUID spoofs before running in VMWare. Interesting stuff.

Um AMD is far from weak. I have a quad core AMD PHenom II and it’s fast as …. with everything but when it comes to GW2 there is latency and lag and low fps. So there may be something to the thought of it being the compiler.
But that being said, C++ compiler via VC shouldn’t be affected by the processor. It’s probably more go to do with how the CPU reads the code and processes it and it so happens that VC is the one it’s using so the fault would naturally fall on VC where the actual prob may lie with the code itself. If the code is optimized for intel processors then yes AMD may have some latency issues. But Anet should have informed users of such. And if that is truly the case then the Anet devs need to go back into the code and revise it for all processors or have a separate client for AMD users as they do with Apple users. This may seem like gobblety kitten to everyone but the devs know what I’m talking about.

It is weak in comparison to Intel’s i5 line of quads.

Fastest X4 vs slowest Sandy Bridge quad, 3.7GHz Phenom II 980BE Vs 3.1GHz I5-2400.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/362?vs=363

I’m not being pro Intel just presenting the facts when one manufacturer’s top end is 20-30% slower than another’s slowest (or one of the slowest that wasn’t a “low power” model), 2 generation old quad core, the first manufacturer’s CPU is “weak”.

Of course once you factor in price for performance then AMD is more reasonable but you can not say that in straight up performance across multiple benchmarks that AMD is competitive with Intel’s current offering. The era where AMD pwnd Intel went away when the Pentium D did in 2006.

I guess when it comes to processors, you really do get what you pay for.

Behellagh.1468:

It is weak in comparison to Intel’s i5 line of quads.

Fastest X4 vs slowest Sandy Bridge quad, 3.7GHz Phenom II 980BE Vs 3.1GHz I5-2400.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/362?vs=363

At least half of those tests are/could be using Intel’s compiler… So that’s a fine example of some distorted results.

Anything using PhysX is void since it’s compiled with Intel’s compiler. May or may not include 3DMark depending on how they tested:
http://community.futuremark.com/forum/showthread.php?127473-3D-Mark-Vantage-BIASED-CPU-TESTS

SYSMark has been reported in the past and recently to not be entirely fair:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/06/21/1958226/amd-rejects-sysmark-benchmark
http://sharikou.blogspot.com.es/2009/12/ftc-accuses-intel-of-rigging-benchmarks.html

World of Warcraft and StarCraft II are also said to use Intel’s compiler:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4079871855
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1638585/6300-3225.html

Cinebench, another known-offender:
http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14916

Don’t really feel like researching the other tests, but I really doubt the legitimacy of that comparison. I could run faster than my car if I decide to put a restraint on it’s speed :p

Regardless, this thread wasn’t about comparing processors, it was simply to discuss GW2’s compiler choice, and from what I’ve seen, it seems pretty unbiased. Only way to be absolutely sure I guess is to do some CPU spoofing though, or maybe an ArenaNet dev could chime in.

You are starting to go all tin-foil hat here Espionage.

The whole Intel AMD debacle was years ago and only had to do with specialized math library routines like FFTs which I’m sure the WoW or WinRAR isn’t using and isn’t the reason behind the 40-50% performance difference in those two benchmarks. And WoW doesn’t use PhysX at all.

You’re grasping at straws here.