Guild Wars 2

Hi all!

I’ve been reading for the last 3 weeks all sorts of forums related and not to GW2. I’ll explain briefly. I have the following system:

- CPU = AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 803Mhz
– GPU = GTX 650 Asus 1Gb
– 8Gb Ram
– Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64
– Western digital = I’m not sure really what model but pretty old (maybe 5 years) 250Gb space disk

The dilema is that im getting around 15 to 25 FPS in the game and I i’m not sure why. Is it possible due to old HD? or is it the actual processor thats doing bottleneck to the GPU? I’m willing to spend money on a new Motherboard + CPU not sure what to get to be honest if you have any suggestions im all ears. And regarding the Hard Drive I dont see on any threads anything related to FPS due to Hard Drive, but I can imagine that an old one could actually affect perfromance and im thinking of buying an SSD. Please let me know your opinion.

My only target is for the PvE game to work around 50Fps average and WvW to run at least at 20Fps if possible.

BTW: I have done every possible software related thing. Update drivers, tweak Nvidia settings, etc. At the moment im getting on medium settings 15 to 20 Fps in Dungeons. And it doesn’t improve if a lower done to minimum.

Please HELP!

If u’v done everythin u can software wise including the monitoring of CPU and GPU temps and usuage then its highly likely to be a CPU bottleneck. DO check ur ingame settings though and make sure ur do NOT have reflections set to ‘all’ ..its a killer.

Since it seems like ur ready to upgrade take a look at the following and get the best u can on that list(ignore Xeon chips). Try to get a CPU thats OC’able whether it be AMD or Intel since GW2 does see significant performance gains from CPU overclocks. You will ocourse need a corresponding motherboard for the chipset ..i sugest Asus or Gigabyte.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

GPU wise u should be ok to keep the 650 if ur ok with running on medium settings.
HDD and SSD wise i sugest if ur tight on cash u dont get a SSD and instead sink that saved money into the CPU.

For GW2 the best CPU’s to get for performance r the 3570k (4cores 4 threads) and 3770k (4cores 8 threads), which one u should get will depend on if u need/want hyperthreading for the extra virtual cores (threads). For GW2 though there is only a slight difference in performance. You would then need to OverClock to around 4.5ghz (will requir a good aftermarket air cooler). That will keep GW2 above 30fps even in the most dire situations asuming ur graphcis card doesnt max out, and should average 60 fps in most areas ..again asuming ur graphics card keeps up with what ever settings u decide on.

I think your Rig is probably OK Hardware wise for now. But its possible your Motherboard is enforcing the cStates for the CPU (hence why you have it listed at 803Mhz when that CPU should be running at 3.3Ghz.

I would start there, and try and ‘lock’ the CPUs Clock at 3.3Ghz. Download CPU-Z and verify the clock speeds(they will update as the system puts load). If your lucky and your Motherboard’s Bios offers Overclocking utility, you can force the pStates and lock the Clock of the CPU from dropping below 3.3Ghz. This should help tremendously.

I wouldn’t over clock the CPU (Force it above 3.3ghz) until you can verify the CPU is actually running properly(a damaged Core will cause the CPU to run at a slower Clock rate then its supposed to run. I had this happen on one of my APUs recently)

but your CPU should be able to turbo boost 1 core at a time to 3.7Ghz. You might want to see if your BIOS can disable that to sustain the 3.3Ghz Clock.

conexit.1320:

Hi all!

I’ve been reading for the last 3 weeks all sorts of forums related and not to GW2. I’ll explain briefly. I have the following system:

- CPU = AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 803Mhz
– GPU = GTX 650 Asus 1Gb
– 8Gb Ram
– Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64
– Western digital = I’m not sure really what model but pretty old (maybe 5 years) 250Gb space disk

The dilema is that im getting around 15 to 25 FPS in the game and I i’m not sure why. Is it possible due to old HD? or is it the actual processor thats doing bottleneck to the GPU? I’m willing to spend money on a new Motherboard + CPU not sure what to get to be honest if you have any suggestions im all ears. And regarding the Hard Drive I dont see on any threads anything related to FPS due to Hard Drive, but I can imagine that an old one could actually affect perfromance and im thinking of buying an SSD. Please let me know your opinion.

My only target is for the PvE game to work around 50Fps average and WvW to run at least at 20Fps if possible.

BTW: I have done every possible software related thing. Update drivers, tweak Nvidia settings, etc. At the moment im getting on medium settings 15 to 20 Fps in Dungeons. And it doesn’t improve if a lower done to minimum.

Please HELP!

Hi SolarNova

Thanks for the response I’ve been around the market and I do think that the price for the i7 3770K is more than reasonable and I was about to purchase it only fact is the motherboard as the one I had my eyes on (due to the price of course) was the ASUS P8Z77-V LX. Anything to say against it? Or is it more than fair? About the Overclocking I have never done it before (I have seen lots of videos and read many threads) and I’m wary to do it if i’m honest would it improve the performance by a lot?

Regarding the SSD I will probably get one anyway because as I said my old HD is quite old so it’s time anyway to upgrade.

Any suggestions on the Motherboard as this is my biggest doubt.

Download HDTUNE (Search Google) and run the application then look at the health tab. This will tell you what to expect from your current HDD. Yellow and Red Bars are bad, and anything over 25k SMART power on hours is bad as well.

SSD’s are nice, real nice, but they are also expensive. Today I wouldn’t buy anything less then 120GB on a Vertex4.

conexit.1320:

Hi SolarNova

Thanks for the response I’ve been around the market and I do think that the price for the i7 3770K is more than reasonable and I was about to purchase it only fact is the motherboard as the one I had my eyes on (due to the price of course) was the ASUS P8Z77-V LX. Anything to say against it? Or is it more than fair? About the Overclocking I have never done it before (I have seen lots of videos and read many threads) and I’m wary to do it if i’m honest would it improve the performance by a lot?

Regarding the SSD I will probably get one anyway because as I said my old HD is quite old so it’s time anyway to upgrade.

Any suggestions on the Motherboard as this is my biggest doubt.

Hi Sir Squishy

I haven’t given it much thought to be honest as I always had in my head it was dynamic and went up as needed. I have CPUz running now and will open the game on High, Med and Low and to a screen of them with the CPUz on and see whats what.

Regarding the Motherboard I have it’s an AS Rock N68C-S UCC

sirsquishy.8531:

I think your Rig is probably OK Hardware wise for now. But its possible your Motherboard is enforcing the cStates for the CPU (hence why you have it listed at 803Mhz when that CPU should be running at 3.3Ghz.

I would start there, and try and ‘lock’ the CPUs Clock at 3.3Ghz. Download CPU-Z and verify the clock speeds(they will update as the system puts load). If your lucky and your Motherboard’s Bios offers Overclocking utility, you can force the pStates and lock the Clock of the CPU from dropping below 3.3Ghz. This should help tremendously.

I wouldn’t over clock the CPU (Force it above 3.3ghz) until you can verify the CPU is actually running properly(a damaged Core will cause the CPU to run at a slower Clock rate then its supposed to run. I had this happen on one of my APUs recently)

but your CPU should be able to turbo boost 1 core at a time to 3.7Ghz. You might want to see if your BIOS can disable that to sustain the 3.3Ghz Clock.

am3/am3+ chips wont run at lower clocks due to bad cores, you will just get crashing.

what he needs to do is go into bios and disable cool and quiet (CnQ) as to turbo, turbo can actually turbo 1/2 your cores or all of them depending on the board(my old gigabyte board turbo all 6 cores of my 1055t…it was great!!!)

with an 1100t he has an unlocked chip, so he should have a pretty easy time overclocking it, many of them on decent air hit 4+ghz.

his best bet for help would be to head over to overclockers.net or xtremesystems, as a last resort he could pop on my forums at ashentech.com, its not as active as it once was but, we will do our best to help those who ask for it.

Hi again Sir Squishy

im running HD Tune atm an it lets me diagnose my external HD but it doesn’t let me do my internal. It’s a WDC WD2500JS-60NCB1 and on the Disk monitor it read Max Transfer data in “Read” 190Mb/s that comparing with SSD of 3Gb/s…. Is shamefull…. at the least so I do think an upgrade is fair. I have my eyes on 240GB OCZ Vertex Plus Solid State Drive SSD 2.5" SATA II

May be a temperature issue, i have a system with a similar processor it get arround 60s during PVE/sPVP and about 15 at the worst case scenario in WvW, most battles over 30 it is perfectly playable. check ur CPU temperatures while running the game also the clocks download HWinfo64, run the game along in windowed mode let it run for 5 min then post take screenshots of the HWinfo readings and post em here. A SSD won’t help u a bit whith this issue tho, i have one of the fastest on the market and the game runs perrty similar to a standard HDD, it makes the loading times at least 4x faster tho which is amazing, but the FPS are about the same

Hi Everyone!
I have some news. I basicly went to bios and the motherboard has an tion for directly imputing OC preset in it (very usefull as I have little practice knowledge on the subject) I change it to 35% and took of the Cool and quiet option as well (thanks a lot Jazhara!) and restarted. Didn’t want to work for a couple of minutes but after that started fine and open Gw and im getting on high around 30 to 40 Fps an incredible performance. Anyway i’m still going to purchase the 3770K and please let me know if you have any preference on motherboard or you think the one I mention earlier will do fine.

Kind Regards and Cheers for the help. This pc will probably go to my girlfriend so she’s over the moon with the improvement!!

Hey sry for the delayed response iv been beta testing some new online games so been away fomr GW2.

Anyway Motherboard wise the one u stated is a good board. Asus and Gigabyte boards, even their lowest, r respectable. Bu their mid range boards, which usualy cost around $120 or above, are really good. I use a mid range LGA 2011 board myself and it Overclocks briliantly, granted ull be getitng a LGA 1155 but point still stands
You dont really wanan start goign after the $180+ boards becouse they really are dsigned for the really high end Overclcoks and have features for manual voltage monitoring and other tweeks, aswel las extra slots and space for Quad SLI.

Make sure u have the money to get a good cooler. I recommend top end air cooling (~$80) unless u have enough money to get a H100 water cooler (~$110) or better (like custom loops (many $$$’s)

check frostytech’s top 5 list for an idea whats best and what to expect for coolers, they have lists for amd and intel.

I also like asrock boards for amd and intel, good solid boards with good support.

avoid MSI, even their “military grade” stuff has pretty poor rep in most enthusiast communities, for good reason…..they fail far more then even biostar boards(biostars also decent mind you, not like they where a decade ago……)

really As I have told a few other people test other games you play, if they run fine, DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR WHOLE RIG FOR GW2, I have seen 3 friends upgrade their systems spending close to or over a grand each to gain perf in this game, and it netted them less them less then 20fps at the low end, and the most one saw was a 35fps boost at the high end…..this includes going from an old athlon II chip at 3.6 to a 3770k with a 5890(kept same videocard, its way overkill for this game), he also put in an ssd and 4 raptors(10k rpm 600gb models in raid0 on a perc 6/gbps raid card….google it…they run over 250usd…his has 512mb cache)

needless to say, every other game ran noticeably better, but gw2……he still is kittened off at me (he got it because of me…and is mad it runs so poorly), his main regrets are his system ran all his other games, including ps2 just fine……sure he gained fps and load times are alot lower but……..at a cost……

again, my advice, if your other games run well, dont spend more money to get this game working better, a new cpu cooler and a small OC is fine, but spending hundreds or thousands to try and get gw2 to run “like butter” is wasted money honestly…..and note: this game runs fine for me, I would like to see more stable fps in de’s and wvwvw but……well, theres a reason Im playing other games more and waiting on anet to “fix their kitten”

Indeed if ur FPS in WvW for example is between 15 and 25 fps i would probably put up with it instead of upgrading becouse even though u may see the average WvW FPS hover around 45fps in mid sized battles after an upgrade, u will still drop to around 30fps in the largest of battles.
If however ur constantly running sub 15 fps in WvW then u would see a significant gain upgrading so long as u upgrade correctly and take the time to OC. But again ..dont expect solid 60 fps…nothing can do that for GW2 atm ..not untill GW2 splits its main thread up across more cpu threads.

I also think anet could get some boost on modern cpu’s if they gave us a 64bit compile with avx and fma code paths.

I think they also need to try out intels threading tools….not intels compiler as its a bias pos….but their other tools could possibly be of some help….

even the best cpu isnt going to give you a solid 60fps in wvwvw or large DE’s, I have seen sub zero cooled intel chips at 5ghz that couldnt push this game or a few others properly(the others due to even worse coding then gw2 if you can believe it), that guys got a hell of a rig, vapochill unit with water on the chipset/vrm/fet areas…..its insanely overclocked……..

I do hope eventually that they get this game optimized for modern systems….dx11, proper threading, 64bit client……2012/2013 and we are still forced to suffer with dx9 and 32bit……bangs head into desk

I have started a petition on the support of dx10/11 https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/petition-for-dx10-11-support/first#post1723716 PLZ add your support to it

Currently the game runs on an antiquated DX9 engine that is limiting the game in a few aspects.

TLDR:
There are performance increases to be had by using a newer DX10 and/or DX11 based engine that Guild Wars 2 runs on. This change would be a start for relieving the CPU bottleneck that people encounter in crowded areas of the game. In addition to the performance increases, we would see more stunning visuals.

Full Version:
While the game runs well in certain parts of the world, other parts of the world are seeing performance degrade. By moving to a new engine based on either DX10 or DX11, the engine can take advantage of some of the new features that are included in these new iterations of DirectX. There are optimizations in DX10 and DX11 compared to the legacy functions of DX9 that are improved upon, thus alleviating some of the CPU use. One of the reasons DX11 was created was to help developers utilize multiple CPU cores more efficiently. This should help the cores that are bogged down with work to have less work to do but still achieve the same result.

Currently Guild Wars 2 heavily uses 3 cores, but in the past few years we have seen an increase in the number of cores a CPU has because CPU makers have yet to find an efficient way to get past the 4 Ghz speed barrier. Speeds beyond this limit generate too much heat for some systems and stability issues are created. Naturally CPU makers have continued to improve upon their designs, but had to do so horizontally (more CPU cores) instead of vertically (higher frequency speed). Many of you may have experienced a decrease in game performance when participating in large dynamic events, such as the dragon events, or participate in large world versus world battles with close to one-hundred people participating. In those specific times of the game, more likely than not, your CPU is simply not fast enough to compute all the actions happening on the screen which results in the decreased performance you may see. By expanding Guilds Wars 2 to use the available CPU compute power more efficiently, the game can take a step towards being a more mature game that will stand the test of time.

In addition to having the game run more efficiently and provide a smoother experience, the game would look even more stunning, graphically, than it already does. This is because of some of the more advanced feature sets that were created for DX10 and DX11 could be used in conjunction with the art style of Guild Wars 2. Overall, we would get a richer experience from Guild Wars 2 and truly make it the game everyone wants to play.

TLDR:
There are performance increases to be had by using a newer DX10 and/or DX11 based engine that Guild Wars 2 runs on. This change would be a start for relieving the CPU bottleneck that people encounter in crowded areas of the game. In addition to the performance increases, we would see more stunning visuals.

The following link shows what the Steam Community (a large portion of the PC gaming community) is using in terms of hardware as of February 2013. One particular graph shows that over half of the Steam Community are using a DX11 compatible graphics card and over a third is using a DX10 compatible graphics card.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Thank you for your support, and I hope to see you in game!

if you are interested in the issue i have started a petition in the forums this is a link to the direct forum petition

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/petition-for-dx10-11-support/first#post1723716
which is only way to do so according to arenanet GM’s confirmed by email. I also want to mention they promised dx10 then dx11 support ( this was beta / pre beta ) on release yet left us with dx9 and well we are paying the price for it now with the issues we have now with resource usage mainly cpu due to antiquated dx9 / gw1 engine the engine / dx9 were never meant to do what they are forcing it to do on modern hardware that performs poorly on the older software / engine / dx9.

This is proof why dx10/11 would bring a huge performance increase / efficiency

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1001/
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31520674&postcount=28

I also want to say dx10 GPU’s ( graphics cards take advantage of a lot of the optimizations of dx11 but wont have ability to run all the extra pretty stuff it adds.

What this meens is it gets the added efficieny that dx11 adds ( better resource usage efficiency ) meening less cpu usage and more fps stability while also reducing all around overhead usage resource wise which meens an increase in performance across board.

I will say a lot of the issue you are having is because they are forcing a dx11 gpu (graphics card ) ( it impacts dx10 cards also but not near as bad )to run dx9 which cuts performance in 1/2 and aslo dx9 offloads a lot of stuff GPU (graphics card ) is suppose to do onto the CPU which adds to the issues aka insane CPU usage and remember the game is very tri core dependant and is performance sensitive on those 3 cores so the added load from running dx9 adds more overhead impacting all around performance of game / fps / and often network due to overload of those 3 perf sensitive cores in otherwards game doesn’t know what to do then has a conniption fit and you know what the outcome is you have experienced it.