Guild Wars 2

On my system, I just figured I could run at near-highest settings without any issue whatsoever. This, isn’t nearly as true however.

I believe I’ve found a perfect match of settings that also give me pretty decent performance on my system.

My system specs can be seen here: http://valid.canardpc.com/2647942
And detailed GPU specs can be seen here: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/8c8ew/
And in-game settings for GW2: http://puu.sh/1McVC.jpg

My Processor is overclocked to 3.6GHz at Triple-Core. I can unlock my processor to a Quad-Core, but only can take the speed to 3.3GHz. With this in mind, GW2 seems more singlethreaded (based on what others say), and does perform better at 3.6GHz.

I also have done various tweaks to my system, which may or may not really help, but here they are:

- Disabled DynamicTicks (bcdedit command; Windows
- Disabled Processor Core Sleeping (the exact term escapes me currently)
- Disabled Paging File (8GB of RAM is fine for me to do this)
- Disabled AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management; Hard Drive)
- Various fsutil Tweaks (disable 8dot3, etc.)
- Disabled Processor Power Management (from BIOS)

I have also gone out of my way to disable most forms of security on Windows 8 (no Defender, no DEP, no Security Center, etc.), and run no security suite. I don’t recommend doing this.

FPS when general PvE is fine, most of the time around 50-60 FPS. FPS during combat in WvWvW is around 20-30.

My system is not something I would consider high-end, but I’m pretty pleased with the performance and graphics quality I’m able to acquire. Perhaps it’ll change in-time though.

For in-game settings, I would highly suggest you take a look at changing Reflections and Shadows firstly. Shadows at Medium don’t change the quality “that” significantly, and may be worth the performance benefit over Ultra. Reflections are somewhat nice, especially in the Water. But after changing the setting to None, my performance skyrocketed in some areas, even if Water wasn’t visible (really Water is the only thing I notice being affected). If you can live with Reflections, the performance gain should be significant.

Rendering Sampling doesn’t seem to affect performance that much for me at all in most areas, but I notice larger performance hits in other areas. Running it at Native should really be fine, especially if your looking for more performance. I personally don’t notice that much of a quality difference between Native and Supersample.

Any other setting didn’t really affect performance that significantly in my case.

See this about the page file:

http://www.howtogeek.com/126430/htg-explains-what-is-the-windows-page-file-and-should-you-disable-it/

There are rootkits and trojans out for Windows 8, so be advised that even Windows Security can’t help against some things.

The CPU itself does core sleeping, it’s not something someone can edit easily:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1754019

The latest feature tool from Hitatchi can be found here: (for disabling AAM)

http://www.hgst.com/support/index-files/simpletech-legacy-downloads#FeatureTool

if you still have Windows XP or older, I suggest keeping 8dot3 on. If you have COMODO Internet Security, you don’t really need UAC on, as it has its own UAC system (Since it still is made for XP as well.)

Iyeru.5240:

The CPU itself does core sleeping, it’s not something someone can edit easily

I can’t recall the exact option I mean, but it can be modified via Registry (the key to edit is something like “ValueMin” and “ValueMax”; you change one to the same as the other)

Espionage.3685:

Iyeru.5240:

The CPU itself does core sleeping, it’s not something someone can edit easily

I can’t recall the exact option I mean, but it can be modified via Registry (the key to edit is something like “ValueMin” and “ValueMax”; you change one to the same as the other)

Got it, the term I was referring to is “Core Parking”
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=159864

Espionage.3685:

Espionage.3685:

Iyeru.5240:

The CPU itself does core sleeping, it’s not something someone can edit easily

I can’t recall the exact option I mean, but it can be modified via Registry (the key to edit is something like “ValueMin” and “ValueMax”; you change one to the same as the other)

Got it, the term I was referring to is “Core Parking”
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=159864

AMD doesn’t have that. Windows does though. Intel has it in the CPU though iirc. My cores are all enabled though, and the BIOS takes care of that on my motherboard.