Guild Wars 2

So finally got my Intel system setup and running last night and I found the following (I feel Unusual) issues;

1. GW2 does not hyper thread, But when Hyper Threading is turned on, the game CRAWLS Graphically

2. when HT is enabled, my GPU has 0% utilization, yet when its disabled it will spike UP to 75% (HD7790)

3. GW2 does not do any better on Dual Socket systems (8 Cores/16Threads-with HT). With 1 or 2 CPU’s socketed the FPS does not change, nor the performance around/near populated areas. I expected more out of the additional physical cores (rather then Logical). I can verify that with both CPU’s that GW2 spawns across all of the cores, same with a single CPU, Just no performance gain.

This was just a test setup, Borrowed a servers from my datacenter and ‘played around’ to see if I wanted to invest in a new desktop setup for WvW. So far from what I’m seeing the cost is not worth it for GW2 as the performance is TERRIBLE with top of the line hardware, as it is.

FPS never dropped below 20, with or with out HT enabled (no GPU offload, when HT Enabled). When the GPU Offload works I get 45FPS when in populated areas (WvW is still sub 20) and up to 120 for spikes. Its the SAME on my AMD system!

Bottom line; I get better performance out of my Denab AMD PhenomII x4 830 then I do out of this Intel setup (close to a i7-2600K specs). Even though the Intel setup is worlds ahead of the AMD one. Just makes no sense.

System specs;
Dell R720
Dual E5-2650
32G DDR3-1600Mhz ECC Ram (4×8GB)
2x 650G SAS 15K Raid1
HD7790 – PCI-E 16x 2.1(3.0 Card)

sirsquishy.8531:

1. GW2 does not hyper thread, But when Hyper Threading is turned on, the game CRAWLS Graphically

Very few programs use HT properly, this should come as no surprise to you. The other points about GPU/CPU utilization are valid.

Hecuter.6274:

sirsquishy.8531:

1. GW2 does not hyper thread, But when Hyper Threading is turned on, the game CRAWLS Graphically

Very few programs use HT properly, this should come as no surprise to you. The other points about GPU/CPU utilization are valid.

It doesn’t, I wasn’t sure if GW2 used HT or if it was an error in my Config. But the fact that when HT is enabled the game crawls is a surprise. I have never seen an application screw up that badly with HT enabled. Applications that don’t use HT, or don’t use it well, usually ignore HT all together.

I haven’t had issues running the game with HT on. Slightly different scenario, though, since I don’t actually have enough physical cores to cover the game+other processes.

Hyperthreading is free, programs don’t need to be “coded” to use it. It’s also NOT what most laypeople think it is. It is merely a way to improve the performance of an Intel CPU core (more so with the Core iX series than the Pentium 4) slightly, 10-20% in most cases. It does this by faking out the OS into thinking every real core is actually two.

Modern x86 CPUs (going back to the original Pentium) are superscalar, meaning they can execute more than one instruction at a time. It can do this because A) they are designed to have duplicate execution units such as adders, multipliers, address units, etc. and B) by looking at the next X instructions it’s about to execute the instruction scheduler tries to identify instructions that are unrelated to one another and assign them to maximize the use of all the execution units. Problem is it can’t always find sets of unrelated instructions so not all the execution units are running at capacity. Example: take A+B=C followed by C*D=F, you can’t multiply C and D until A is added to B and stored in C. However if it was A+B=C followed by D*E=F then A and B can be added the same time D is multiplied by E.

This is where HT comes in. By faking the OS into thinking that there is a 2nd core, it assigns another thread to the same core. This gives the instruction scheduler a greater pool of instruction it can look through and find code that can be executed at the same time. This then improves the overall performance over simply having the OS multitask the two threads on the single core (alternately letting each run for a bit of time).

One analogy I use is to think of a CPU as a bank will tellers, each teller representing a core and customers as threads to run. Customers queue up and go to the first available teller when one becomes available. HT in this case would be if each teller has two workstations and while they are waiting for the bank’s computer to finish and print the receipt for the first customer the teller can start the transaction of the next customer. They aren’t as efficient as two tellers but are more efficient then one waiting for the receipt to print.

Now HT has a downside, the two threads share the same small high speed memory cache in the core. This increases the likelihood that the memory the core is seeking to read, either instruction or data is not there so it has to be loaded or reloaded from the slower and larger cache at the next level. The core is forced to pause when this happens. This means sometimes cores with HT perform worse with some programs when HT is on than off. Most of the time it’s a net positive with it on.

As to why the OP sees what he is seeing, no idea. But it’s not because the game doesn’t recognize HT.

Sirsquishy for past few months I’ve been complaining about performance issues but no one from Anet seems to care about the issues in general. No point in a high end machine while playing this game because it doesn’t help. They need new coders or something to fix the performance issues because it has been 6months+ with issues and these current employees seem to not know how to fix them. I haven’t seen ONE decent performance increase/fix yet it seems with every patch more performance issues arise.

CrazyDuck.4610:

Sirsquishy for past few months I’ve been complaining about performance issues but no one from Anet seems to care about the issues in general. No point in a high end machine while playing this game because it doesn’t help.

I know. I normally run AMD (for the cost/performance), but since im starting to get more and more into WvW I had to test with Intel to see if the cost to build was going to be worth it. and the anwer is not at this time :-)

Not when my current AMD system runs at or a tiny bit better then my Intel test box.

It might “help” but I have a top of the line machine and with max settings can still hit under 10FPS. I actually can’t play in max settings WvW, how sad is that….

GTX690/16gig ram/I7 over 4ghz overclocked

The part that confuses me is why you’re using two Intel Xeon 8 core processors, extremely high end for server capability, for Guild Wars 2. That is beyond me.

Although for the purposes of experimenting, it looks like it could be… entertaining.

I’m guessing you are seeing a Video Card Driver issue with the HT enabled, nothing to do with GW2 other than the video calls it is making to the driver (that may be causing the driver to have an issue with HT enabled).

Avelos.6798:

The part that confuses me is why you’re using two Intel Xeon 8 core processors, extremely high end for server capability, for Guild Wars 2. That is beyond me.

Although for the purposes of experimenting, it looks like it could be… entertaining.

It’s due to the fact I have access to said hardware, and I do not want to put 1500 into a new desktop if its not going to make a HUGE difference for this game.

So yea, experimenting is what this is all about. Just happens that the box I pulled has 2 sockets populated (gotta love virtual environments with DRS, make for pulling servers out that much easier).

sirsquishy.8531:

Avelos.6798:

The part that confuses me is why you’re using two Intel Xeon 8 core processors, extremely high end for server capability, for Guild Wars 2. That is beyond me.

Although for the purposes of experimenting, it looks like it could be… entertaining.

It’s due to the fact I have access to said hardware, and I do not want to put 1500 into a new desktop if its not going to make a HUGE difference for this game.

So yea, experimenting is what this is all about. Just happens that the box I pulled has 2 sockets populated (gotta love virtual environments with DRS, make for pulling servers out that much easier).

I actually think you’d have better luck with an i7 6 core processor. Maybe an i7 4930K. 500-600 bucks for an i7 that is able to rip through a lot.

I have seen some issues with people having various hyperthreading and multicore problems in some programs, some claim that “unparking” the cores actually will help improve certain issues such as stuttering and other FPS related issues. Windows 7 by default will not allow all cores and threads to run simultaneously, even if you have your power settings set to full performance, the cores will go off and on according to usage, but unparking the cores lets them be on all at once. If you go into resource monitor you can see if your cores are parked and see the activity flip flopping between threads and cores while parking and unparking the cores.

Results seem to be mixed, some people saying that it does absolutely nothing, others saying it improves by various degrees. I have tried it and not noticed any improvement, in any programs, but i also haven’t had any serious FPS issues in any programs.

Avelos.6798:

sirsquishy.8531:

Avelos.6798:

The part that confuses me is why you’re using two Intel Xeon 8 core processors, extremely high end for server capability, for Guild Wars 2. That is beyond me.

Although for the purposes of experimenting, it looks like it could be… entertaining.

It’s due to the fact I have access to said hardware, and I do not want to put 1500 into a new desktop if its not going to make a HUGE difference for this game.

So yea, experimenting is what this is all about. Just happens that the box I pulled has 2 sockets populated (gotta love virtual environments with DRS, make for pulling servers out that much easier).

I actually think you’d have better luck with an i7 6 core processor. Maybe an i7 4930K. 500-600 bucks for an i7 that is able to rip through a lot.

You do realize a E5-2650 is 8cores + HT (16 theads), so having 2 of them is 16 cores, and/or 32 threads (though HT enabled seems to screw with the video drivers for some reason)

Seedless Strawberry.6174:

I have seen some issues with people having various hyperthreading and multicore problems in some programs, some claim that “unparking” the cores actually will help improve certain issues such as stuttering and other FPS related issues. Windows 7 by default will not allow all cores and threads to run simultaneously, even if you have your power settings set to full performance, the cores will go off and on according to usage, but unparking the cores lets them be on all at once. If you go into resource monitor you can see if your cores are parked and see the activity flip flopping between threads and cores while parking and unparking the cores.

Results seem to be mixed, some people saying that it does absolutely nothing, others saying it improves by various degrees. I have tried it and not noticed any improvement, in any programs, but i also haven’t had any serious FPS issues in any programs.

yea I confirmed it again last night, with the E5 series anyway, when HT is enabled the GPU has 0% used (via GPU-Z), when HT is disabled, my GPU will jump up to 75%.

its odd, but it could be the xeon architecture doing it.

sirsquishy.8531:

You do realize a E5-2650 is 8cores + HT (16 theads), so having 2 of them is 16 cores, and/or 32 threads (though HT enabled seems to screw with the video drivers for some reason)

Yes. I looked it up on the Ark.intel website otherwise I would maybe not have known that it was an intel Xeon to begin with. It’s an 8 core clocked at 2.0 GHz with a turbo ceiling of 2.8.
More cores won’t mean more power, well, beyond four cores anyway. If those cores were clocked at a 3.2 GHz then it would maybe perform better. But I don’t have to say much to say how unnecessary 16 cores with another 16 threads would be for a gaming platform.

it run better whit HT on