Guild Wars 2

When on desktop or browsing web i usually get around 2% cpu usage, but bam, when i open guildwars (including just the launcher) i get up to 99% cpu usage. i also have issues in game with low fps in some areas, but if im lucky i can get up to 30fps, this occurs on auto detect settings. when i put it on best performance it still runs very low fps, about 20-25. on wvw i get 7fps walking around and in battles get 2fps. i live in Australia, so some of the lag might be just because of location, but thaat shouldnt be destroying my fps. i dont want to spend money on a cpu and realizing it was something else. any help is appreciated.

im running a gtx 560 non ti
intel core 2 quad (2.50ghz)
4gb of ram
not sure about mobo, but its from the hp pavilion p6080a (really hoping this isnt the problem.)
nothing overclocked and all running on latest drivers

im thinking i might update my mobo and cpu as its seems a bit outdated by now.
i have a mate who’s running a cpu with 1.90 ghz and gtx 350, who gets up to 54 fps on settings the same as im running now. so it seems odd that im just manging to get over 20 fps on lowest graphics. system restored about a week before gw2 release, and not many programs installed.

oh, and my gpu runs at 54 % on auto detect settings.

Old processor. My old Q6600 does exactly the same thing. Which is why I only use it for testing nowdays, it’s just to old to run a brand new MMo engine.

Upgrade mobo and CPU and you’ll have great performance.

However, there have been issues with GW2 and the nVidia cards – I don’t know if they’re resolved yet or if there are any reliable fixes. The 560 should get about what I’m getting – ~50-60fps in world with all settings highest. However, I’ve heard that people are not getting expected performance with the nVidia cards in particular.

If you’ve never upgraded your PSU, make sure to check that out, too.

I have the same video card, i5 3570k @ 3.40 ghz, 16 GB DDR3 1333Mhz. Using Gigabyte Z77-D3H mobo. 850w PSU.

Upgraded from Quad 2 Core processor, with 4GB DDR2.

Did not see any performance increase at all. On auto-detect, which is high. i get below 30 FPS almost when the area has no traffic (im alone) when there is some inkling of people it drops to at most 15 FPS and in WvW and large DEs i get 5 FPS tops. Turn it to Best Performance, and i still get the same FPS issues, no increase whatsoever.

So im pretty sure its not my hardware’s fault, considering that back when i was using my Quad 2 Core, with 4 GB RAM, i was getting the same FPS rates as after i upgraded.

Also, usually i do not need to overclock my CPU to play on max settings, but because of the abysmal experience i was having, i decided to overclock mine to 4.40Ghz and increase the VCore to 1.375, and put a fan facing my tower. Instead of giving me more performance, the game instead became worse and largely unplayable (5 FPS everywhere). So i had to restore it back to default settings.

I have an i5 2500k at stock speeds, 8gb DDR3 1600mhz ram, Asrock exteme 3 gen 3 mobo, and an HiS 6950 HD 2gb graphics card. 750w psu

I sit at 60 fps on maximum settings, native render sampling however. In WvW I do drop down to about 20-30 when there is between 50-100 people on my screen but it’s still smooth. Some areas that are really busy in the pve world I can drop down to 40-50 range.

You guys are using Nvidia gpus, maybe it’s their drivers.. which I know is crazy talk but it is possible.

I believe the programmers from ANet really need to sit down and work it out with the guys at nVidia on this. Because atm the problematic game is GW2 for me, so it is hardly a hardware or driver fault totally.

Isn’t high CPU usage is what everyone want? I would advise you to change your mobo because I had exactly the same problem with you but then everything is smooth now after I changed my legacy INTEL mobo. The next thing you need to be concerned about will be how to sustain with all the heat this game offers to your components. Hope it helps.

That my friend is a sign of a bottleneck, your cpu seems to be having a hard time feeding your Gpu…

Reize.2176:

I have the same video card, i5 3570k @ 3.40 ghz, 16 GB DDR3 1333Mhz. Using Gigabyte Z77-D3H mobo. 850w PSU.

Upgraded from Quad 2 Core processor, with 4GB DDR2.

Did not see any performance increase at all. On auto-detect, which is high. i get below 30 FPS almost when the area has no traffic (im alone) when there is some inkling of people it drops to at most 15 FPS and in WvW and large DEs i get 5 FPS tops. Turn it to Best Performance, and i still get the same FPS issues, no increase whatsoever.

So im pretty sure its not my hardware’s fault, considering that back when i was using my Quad 2 Core, with 4 GB RAM, i was getting the same FPS rates as after i upgraded.

This is what I worry about.

If im not seeing 100% cpu load, on my older cpu (and im only seeing 0% GPU load in WvW battles), why would a FASTER cpu improve things? Maybe if my CPU was capping out at 100%, but its never going higher than 70% load on any 1 core.

Something else seems to be causing the “bottleneck”. Something else is maxed out at 100% and not allowing the CPU or GPU from performing at 100% when needed.

If you read a lot of these forums most folks agree that games do not generally peg the CPU to 100% when running full load.

Reize.2176, you have a great CPU/GPU, have you checked their temperatures during game play? It could even be the 850w PSU is faulty. How does the system benchmark using passmark for example? And how’s the memory looking during gameplay?

A Core 2 Quad is enough for this game; you do not NEED an i5+.

It is more about clock cycles (MHz/GHz) and core efficiency than the number of cores, etc. Since C2Qs are still very efficient, if you could overclock that C2Q over 3.0GHz you’d see a substantial improvement, and the more the merrier. However, if you can’t overclock on that motherboard and want performance improvements, you’re looking at purchasing either a cheap LGA 775 board that can overclock, or just coughing up the money for a newer i5/i7 setup, but then you’d also need new RAM (requires DDR3).

Currently my gaming rig runs a Q9400 @ 3.60GHz (2.66 stock), 8GB DDR2 @ 900MHz, a Radeon 7870 (1150/1400), and has adequate frame rate in GW2. I didn’t see much improvement in GW2 when I upgraded from my 4890 to the 7870 (and that’s a huge upgrade) – some, but not as much as one would expect. Battlefield 3 – now that’s a different story. That game is way more GPU-bound than this one will ever be, though. I can run any game that I’ve tried on my system at the highest settings (for GW2 I run @ 1080p/60 with AA and Distance Blur off*, High Shadows, and Native Render Mode) and in no way feel that my C2Q is “outdated.”

*I turn AA distance blur off as a personal preference; it doesn’t seem to affect frame rate either way (I despise FXAA and Distance Blur for the same reason: blurriness). The only thing that really seemed to negatively affect frame rate was selecting Ultra shadows.

Cbuzz.5083:

Old processor. My old Q6600 does exactly the same thing. Which is why I only use it for testing nowdays, it’s just to old to run a brand new MMo engine.

I also have a Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz and the game is performing well with 30-50 fps in PVE, everything set to max except for shadows on high, so I wouldn’t say the problem is the CPU.

Swedemon.4670:

If you read a lot of these forums most folks agree that games do not generally peg the CPU to 100% when running full load.

Reize.2176, you have a great CPU/GPU, have you checked their temperatures during game play? It could even be the 850w PSU is faulty. How does the system benchmark using passmark for example? And how’s the memory looking during gameplay?

My 850w PSU is brand new and barely 4 months old. I did a full upgrade of my 4 yr old computer in several stages. From a 650w to 850w, Quad 2 Core to i5 3570k, 9800GTX to 560 GTX, 4 GB DDR2 to 16 GB DDR3 and a 5400 RPM HDD to a 7200 RPM HDD.

Didnt see any performance increases…still felt the same, and this is when im talking about low settings, my old system became 100% unplayable at High settings while my current system was capable of giving the same performance as Low when set to High (Auto-detect).

Internal Temperatures are fine, they are almost the same as when i play any other game. Memory consumption is not much different then when on my desktop with nothing on. Benchmarking, well i dont really benchmark, but i can play Crysis 2 at 50-60 FPS.

@Reize: run a benchmark anyway (eg. http://downloads.guru3d.com/3DMark-11-Basic-Edition-download-2650.html), that’ll give us an idea of whether it’s a system or GW2 issue. Yours looks like one of the very few cases where FPS don’t match the specs.

deltaconnected.4058:

@Reize: run a benchmark anyway (eg. http://downloads.guru3d.com/3DMark-11-Basic-Edition-download-2650.html), that’ll give us an idea of whether it’s a system or GW2 issue. Yours looks like one of the very few cases where FPS don’t match the specs.

Did the benchmark and it appears the score on my system was one bar lower than the majority.

But then again, one bar lower can’t really explain the reason why its performing so badly.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4481134

My Benchmark results

Okay, been playing for a while….

This is how it usually goes. Log in, 50 FPS flat. Enter the game, i get 50-60 FPS in a PvE area with occasional player here and there. This is where it starts to get worse. If i leave the game running and pretty much just hang around the area doing events, killing mobs, harvesting and stuff, my FPS starts slowly declining to 40, then 30 until it hits rock bottom around 15 FPS for no good reason.

Anyone got any idea what the hell is wrong? I’ve been playing other games like Skyrim and Crysis 2 on max to test out my system and nothing’s wrong on those 2.

3dmark score is a bit low for that rig. But I’ve never seen GW2 fps degrade with time like that.

It you run the game with the -perf you can monitor memory usage and fps. You might try -nosound setting to see if Audio is the cause.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

Just for the record, my cpu usage is almost always at max between 95 and 100% whereas when i play for instance, the new Sleeping Dogs game on med settings my cpu doesn’t go higher than 50~70%.

Your physics score does seem rather low for that CPU. Based on other results, a stock 3570k should be ~6.5k ish.

Run something like HWiNFO64 and make sure that min/max/avg for Clock Modulation (under CPU) is 100%. Other than that, all I can suggest is temps (which you say are normal), disabling C-states (including C1E) and SpeedStep in BIOS, and changing Windows’ power plan to high performance.

HWinfo is showing me some throttling, when im not on GW2 or on something else, my CPU is running normally throttling between 1.6 and 3.8Ghz. Once i run GW2, it starts throttling down to 800 Mhz.

I opened up my casing and lo and behold….the heatsink wasnt running….kitten

Dunno how you managed good temperatures without a fan plugged in, but glad you figured it out

Thanks for all your help, delta, apparently when u asked about Temp and i checked, the reason why sensors were saying it was normal was because it was throttling back and forth to limit heat. Became suspicious when even after disabling C states the throttling still happened so i thought it really had to be a heat issue, cracked open and found the heatsink fan was caught in its own power supply wire :\

To all the guys who are having similar problems u might want to do a physical check on this.

Good catch, and even better that you found the issue before you suffered hardware damage from extended heat exposure.

+1 for thermal junction throttling!

Since this isn’t really improving I’m going to resurrect the issue of the stress the game puts on the CPU. If you look at these benchmarks:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Guild-Wars-2-Benchmarked.81604.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Ivy-Bridge-Guide-for-Gamers.81855.0.html

The CPU scaling is impressive but given the overall performance it’s a massive bottleneck. What we need is simply better performance on the lower end of CPUs, especially considering the advertised minimum requirements.

yea, but the sad part, is that my system should be able to, and WAS able to run this game on "ultra" settings at 90+ FPS at launch at 1920x1080(native scaling). At one point about 3 weeks ago, my FPS was stuck at 15 no matter what settings I changed(even resolution didnt matter), and now, its back up to around 45ish in towns and WvWvW. What I was seeing is that the GPUs and CPU were producing the same amount of heat as if they were run at 100%, even tho they were showing 20% usage or less. This told me that there was some bad code, and stuff kept getting processed and handled by the CPU and GPU, and then gets discarded(so called "bad GPU/CPU calls"). Since bad calls are not read by your GPU as "used" time, your GPU and CPU usage says extraordinarily low while its workload is actually high, and your game performance suffers.

And before you ask it, here is my 3dmark score on Basic 720p(i have a purchased liscense because its a good troubleshooting tool for bad overclocks, since some don’t show with simple stress programs). As of this result, I had my GPUs both at 730mhz core and 1850 mem. I can, if I so choose, get them both to 900(good binning) core and 2100 mem@ 1.096v. I also have the C3 revision of the 945, but because I really have no need, i have it sitting at its stock 3.0ghz.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4617216
Im tempted to post the 900 core results, it makes a HUGE difference, but they both get really freaking hot(95C and 97C with A/C or cold air vented right into them and good air flow). Will post the 900 core run in a bit, gotta go get some more dryer vent hose to direct outside air(44F) into my case thru a close window.

Chubbysumo.4736:

This told me that there was some bad code, and stuff kept getting processed and handled by the CPU and GPU, and then gets discarded(so called “bad GPU/CPU calls”). Since bad calls are not read by your GPU as “used” time, your GPU and CPU usage says extraordinarily low while its workload is actually high, and your game performance suffers.

Where did u read this or is this a conclusion by yourself? To make it short, NO thats not how hardware performance counters in your CPU/GPU work at all. There are no “bad” calls that stress your CPU/GPU that the hardware counters wont measure. So either your measuring software is bad or your workload to heat-production conclusion don’t hold.

I’m a programmer and after reading: “(so called “bad GPU/CPU calls)” i nearly spit my coffee :p This is complete “Bollocks” in this context.

If i had to guess i could speculate that u mean cache or pipeline “trashing”, which means filling data/buffers only to “throw” them away if the code branches unpredicted. The problem is all this “trashing” still uses CPU/GPU cycles, that can be measured by internal counters or simply timed using the various CPU timers.

The old C2D/C2Q/C2E cpu’s have a real hard time with modern mmo’s. Specialy GW2 which is so cpu bound.

Even if you are not seeing 100% cpu load, that does not mean your cpu is not slowing your system down. The way old cpu’s process data compared to new cpu’s means that they may not be fully loaded, but they still process the information slower than a new cpu.
Any old cpu that tries running GW2 and has over say ..70% usuage ..or there abouts, is bottlenecked. This can be proven further more by looking at GPU usage ..if your fps is under your vsync (60fps usualy) and your gpu usuage is UNDER 99%, that means its being slowed down by somthing, and in 90% of cases thats your cpu.

You can help reduce this bottleneck with overclocks, but it will still end up being bottlenecked in the end becouse the architecture of the old cpu’s just cant cope.

My last computer was a C2E (QX6850) which was OC’d from 3ghz to 3.66ghz (couldnt go any higher due to crappy Motherboard and cooling). Going from that to my current rig, using the same graphics card, i saw a MASSIVE improvment in fps in MMO’s (not in GW2 i got new comp b4 that).

So in the end ..yes your high cpu usuage is normal for your cpu, yes you can help increase fps with overclocking, but only marginaly. yes you need to upgrade. Recommend a i5 3ghz+ rig to play comfortably. (note my idea and another persons idea on comfortably may be different)

What Andy said. First time I heard about these “bad” calls too lol.

As for why you don’t see 100% total CPU load, look at my screenshot.
Add up the usage for all the threads and it will equal the total for GW2.exe. Notice the thread that’s using a little less than 25% – that is your bottleneck. Because of concurrency it’s impossible to run a thread on more than 1 core at a single point in time, meaning that there will always be one thread that’s using x%, where x = 100/#-of-cores, physical + virtual (think of this more as an upper-bound, as each millisecond in a Wait state doesn’t count towards usage).

The speed of that loop, whether it’s doing the drawing calls or preparing necessary data for another thread to do them, is inversely related to your in-game FPS. More uops per cycle (5ish for bulldozer vs 8ish for sandy) and higher frequency will both give linear increases until the GPU or memory becomes the bottleneck.

@deltaconnected.4058

Hey the ingame display looks like the EVGA precision thinggy, how did u enable the CPU stats? I only get GPU data displayed.

thats probably msi afterburners cpu stats

HWiNFO64. Run in sensor mode, configure, and when you click on the entries there’s RIVA Tuner OSD. Play around with the settings til you find something you like.

(Things are read top-down and added to the end of a line, label will be whatever the first element on the line is set to – i renamed it to CORE#)

ah, hadn’t realised HWinfo had added the RT osd server

SolarNova.1052:

The old C2D/C2Q/C2E cpu’s have a real hard time with modern mmo’s. Specialy GW2 which is so cpu bound.

Even if you are not seeing 100% cpu load, that does not mean your cpu is not slowing your system down. The way old cpu’s process data compared to new cpu’s means that they may not be fully loaded, but they still process the information slower than a new cpu.
Any old cpu that tries running GW2 and has over say ..70% usuage ..or there abouts, is bottlenecked. This can be proven further more by looking at GPU usage ..if your fps is under your vsync (60fps usualy) and your gpu usuage is UNDER 99%, that means its being slowed down by somthing, and in 90% of cases thats your cpu.

You can help reduce this bottleneck with overclocks, but it will still end up being bottlenecked in the end becouse the architecture of the old cpu’s just cant cope.

My last computer was a C2E (QX6850) which was OC’d from 3ghz to 3.66ghz (couldnt go any higher due to crappy Motherboard and cooling). Going from that to my current rig, using the same graphics card, i saw a MASSIVE improvment in fps in MMO’s (not in GW2 i got new comp b4 that).

So in the end ..yes your high cpu usuage is normal for your cpu, yes you can help increase fps with overclocking, but only marginaly. yes you need to upgrade. Recommend a i5 3ghz+ rig to play comfortably. (note my idea and another persons idea on comfortably may be different)

Since im a bit cheap, do you know anything about the upcoming AMD processors, the piledrivers? i saw that they were selling one at 3.8GHZ for $130+. sounds a lot more worth for my money

If you have no money to spend, you get what you can afford.
If you do have money to spend, stay far and away from AMD.

I dont know anything baout AMD’s upcoming CPU’s tbh. BUT unless they come up with somthing dramically different and better than what they currently have. I still say you should go with intel.
You can get a OC’able intel i5 for around £175 or a non K version for around £150.
Add on the price for a budget motherboard around £85 , 8gb ram for around £35, and a cooler maybe £35 to £50 ..and your sorted for some where in the region of £300 to £350 which isnt bad really.

SolarNova.1052:

The old C2D/C2Q/C2E cpu’s have a real hard time with modern mmo’s. Specialy GW2 which is so cpu bound.

Even if you are not seeing 100% cpu load, that does not mean your cpu is not slowing your system down. The way old cpu’s process data compared to new cpu’s means that they may not be fully loaded, but they still process the information slower than a new cpu.
Any old cpu that tries running GW2 and has over say ..70% usuage ..or there abouts, is bottlenecked. This can be proven further more by looking at GPU usage ..if your fps is under your vsync (60fps usualy) and your gpu usuage is UNDER 99%, that means its being slowed down by somthing, and in 90% of cases thats your cpu.

Bad code will also cause GPU and CPU stalling, which appears to be what you are referring to.

The game was not CPU bound a month and half ago on a wide variety of hardware, including those “too old for MMO” CPUs.

The latest mini-patch seems to have fixed a lot of the issue, which sort of proves it was the code all along, at least on some hardware like mine. I barely even noticed the download, so it must have been code only.

For me, my frame rates are now back well over 100FPS, and CPU usage has dropped tremendously over the last patch.

Much nicer looking, nicer sounding, and smoother running game now.

I’m almost afraid to say that, but for the last half hour anyway, looks improved.

I would be interested in hearing from people with older hardware.

GW2 was and is still CPU bound in heavy populated areas. We never had big problems in solo story or sparsely populated areas, since lunch. The main issue most players have are WvW or large world-boss encounters. I for once did not notice any significant change since lunch, which matches what several benchmark sites tested over the last 2 months.

In WvW in a huge zerg, even with a 4GHz i7 u don’t get stable 60FPS, most players “try” to reach around 30FPS so they can play. I have like 5-10FPS if i “try” to play near a zerg that smashes on doors and like 15-25FPS otherwise, while i get 100 FPS in solo PvE.

The thing is “normal” PvE was always playable for most players, WvW and big events are the problem and in those areas the performance is the same since lunch, while adding the “invisible army” bug.

So far the only “known” way to play WvW with acceptable framerates, is to buy those i5/7-k models and overclock those, which is kinda sad since it adds a steep $ investment to play WvW, if u not already own such a CPU.

PS: My FPS are with a E8500 at 4.3GHz

wvw and big events and places where hundreds of players are packed in one small spot creates lag and loss of fps in Every mmo.Gw2 is no exception and i think you people wanting lag free gameplay in a situation like this is rather unrealistic.Offcourse you have high fps when you play solo,and it plummets like hell in mass pvp situations.just imagine Any Singleplayer game with high graphics you know of,and imagine it being played with hundreds of players in the same spot,would it lag or not ?