Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone, I have a tech support question I’m hoping you can help me with. I wasn’t satisfied with my computer’s performance in guild wars 2, so I decided to upgrade my CPU. I just finished replacing my intel G860 with a brand new intel i5-3470. Now when I run guild wars 2, my frame rates are much worse than they were before the upgrade. Previously, I could get 10-20 fps on medium setting in the middle of lion’s arch; now I get about 5-10 fps on the lowest settings.
Nothing else about my computer has changed. The other components I use are:
OS: Windows 8
Motherboard: Asrock H77 Pro4-M
GPU: Radeon 6850
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 × 4GB)
Hard Drive: WD5000AAKS
As far as I can tell, my computer has fully recognized my new processor, reporting the proper name, 4 cores, and 3.2 GHz maximum speed. So I can’t figure out why my performance is so bad in the first place, let alone how it got worse with a processor that is more than twice as fast. As a test, I booted up assassin’s creed 3 and quite good performance- 30 fps on max settings. So this is definitely a problem specific to guild wars 2. Can anyone offer any insight that might help me solve my computer troubles? Thanks.

Edit: My motherboard is an H77 Pro4-M, not an H77M

Did you do a fresh install of windows and all your games/programs?

I recently swapped out my motherboard and added a 2nd video card, and although it booted up and seemed to run fine without a fresh windows install, problems starting popping up.

I wiped and went from scratch, and everything is lovely now.

Well I will try to reinstall guild wars 2, but I can’t see why it would be a problem with windows if all my other programs run fine. Unlike in your situation, I haven’t changed my motherboard or even graphics card.

Check make sure ur IGP is not being used instead of ur 6850.

That’s a good suggestion. I already have my monitor plugged into my GPU’s output port, is there something else I might need to do to make sure that Guild Wars is not using my CPU’s integrated graphics?

Check your HyperThreading settings and turn it off
Disable Core Parking and unpark the cores
Check your pc power settings in control panel and remove the CPU usage limitations
Try out gw.exe command line argument to force to gpu instead of cpu

“Hyper Threading, on or off?”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Hyper-Threading-on-or-off

“Disable CPU Core Parking Utility”
http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/Disable-CPU-Core-Parking-Utility

“What is CPU Parking (aka core parking, or CPU parking)?” – more info and another utility
http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

-umbra gpu
“alot of the issues with perf on this game seem to be related to anets use of umbra and how it was orignally ment to work on gpu but umbra fornicated the canine and blamed it on Intel/AMD/nVidia saying it was their gpu drivers to blame for the problems….so umbra is running on the cpu…..you can force gpu mode with -umbra gpu” -Jazhara Knightmage.4389
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments#-umbra_gpu

Anodyne.5497:

Hi everyone, I have a tech support question I’m hoping you can help me with. I wasn’t satisfied with my computer’s performance in guild wars 2, so I decided to upgrade my CPU. I just finished replacing my intel G860 with a brand new intel i5-3470. Now when I run guild wars 2, my frame rates are much worse than they were before the upgrade. Previously, I could get 10-20 fps on medium setting in the middle of lion’s arch; now I get about 5-10 fps on the lowest settings.
Nothing else about my computer has changed. The other components I use are:
OS: Windows 8
Motherboard: Asrock H77M
GPU: Radeon 6850
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 × 4GB)
Hard Drive: WD5000AAKS
As far as I can tell, my computer has fully recognized my new processor, reporting the proper name, 4 cores, and 3.2 GHz maximum speed. So I can’t figure out why my performance is so bad in the first place, let alone how it got worse with a processor that is more than twice as fast. As a test, I booted up assassin’s creed 3 and quite good performance- 30 fps on max settings. So this is definitely a problem specific to guild wars 2. Can anyone offer any insight that might help me solve my computer troubles? Thanks.

We have exactly the same problem:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Low-fps-it-s-really-painful/first#post1975219

As you can see, as you, I had good moments with my old pc too, however, when I upgraded to something better, the result? I’ll tell you, it’s painful play with 10 fps or less.

My game was fine, I could play with no problem, now I only have headache, walk in black citadel is a pain, there is the worst place for, my fps there is 4~6.

I tried everything you can think. They changed something in the game and hope they are working to fix it.

Oh man, I really would be happy if someone from the staff could say something about this issue.

I’m really sad with this =//

Most probably, your Intel HD Graphics is being used instead of your actual GPU. iX processors tend to be smartcat and do that

Yeah, I would check to make sure the discrete graphics module is being used rather than the embedded graphics module from Intel. The Catalyst Control Center should be able to assist you with this methinks.

I cant check myself as my CPU doesnt have a IGP, but see if u can force it to be disabled in the BIOS, other than that i have heared that a simple 5% OC on ur GPU can force it to kick in earlier allowing ‘some’ games to stop using the IGP.

Use some monitoring software to check that ur GPU usuage is and if its being utilized.

Sorry for the lack of attention, but re-downloading guild wars 2 took a couple days. At any rate, I can confirm that my dedicated graphics card is definitely being used instead of my IGPU. In fact, the GPU-Z tells me that 100% of my GPU is being used to run guild wars 2. But does that seem right? I would have thought that a Radeon 6850 could handle guild wars 2 at minimum settings. And why would it have gotten worse with a new CPU?
With the -umbra gpu command, I don’t see any increase in performance in guild wars 2. However I did notice that the GPU is only taxed to 100% while I’m playing guild wars 2; when the game is in the background with -umbra gpu my graphics card is not working hard.
Thanks for your help so far everyone, would you mind continuing to help me figure this out?

Ok check to see if ur PCI-E lane is running at atleast 2.0 at X16.

if u got a new mothebroard and/or took out the grpahics card and put it into a different PCI-E slot, u may be running at 2.0 @1x speed or 4x Speed which will allow the GPU to run at 100% but severely hamper its performance.

That solved it. Due to space restrictions, I had the graphics card plugged into the slower PCI-e port. When I managed to plug it into the faster port, I notice a huge difference, and the game ran perfectly even at maximum settings. I’ll have to do some rearranging of my computer parts to get it to work like that permanently, but thats a small price to pay for the increase in performance. Thanks a lot for all your help.

StinVec: THANK YOU for the information on core parking. Using the 2nd utility in your post, LA went from a bouncy 11FPS, AA off/shadows low to 21-30FPS AA on/shadows high. Steady 35FPS AA off/Shadows low.

Poor laptop will probably blow a gasket but GW2 looks even purtier.

OP, hope you can solve your problem. <- You solved it, congrats!

Acodyne obviosly i dont know what the inside of ur case looks like or what space problem u have specificaly but if by any chance ur having space issues due to a stand alone soundcard, u will likely find that the PCI-E x1 sound cards (the ones with the really small PCI-E slot) can actually fit in the larger PCI-E x8 lanes also.

I for one know that when i get my Asus Xonar D2X i will have to use a PCI-E x8 slot and not one of the 2 native PCI-E x1’s becouse if i do i wont be able to SLI, which i plan to do at the same time when i upgrade.(hoping to get 2x GTX 780’s (not Titans)) The sound card would be to close to the X16 slots to allow for a double slot card to be there.

It was a wirelss card, not a sound card, but yeah, that was exactly the problem. I didn’t know that a PCI-e 1X card could fit into a 16X slot, that that does make everything a lot easier. Thanks again for your help!

No problem.

Enjoy

MeanPi.6025:

StinVec: THANK YOU for the information on core parking. Using the 2nd utility in your post, LA went from a bouncy 11FPS, AA off/shadows low to 21-30FPS AA on/shadows high. Steady 35FPS AA off/Shadows low.

Poor laptop will probably blow a gasket but GW2 looks even purtier.

OP, hope you can solve your problem. <- You solved it, congrats!

:) I’m glad it has helped you to get better performance.