Guild Wars 2

So I just got done with a nice budget upgrade overhaul, kicking out my aging intel q6600 for a FX6300 with 8 gigs of 1866 memory running at 936mhz. It is joining some previous upgrades I had done in the past which were a nvidia 460GTX (EVGA SC) and Samsung’s more recent EVO SSD drive.

Now while I saw a lot of performance increases, esp in gw2, lions arch still caused my system to bow down in submission, forcing me to keep video settings low and still handing me under 30 FPS. At this point I figured I may have reached the limit of my gtx 460. Since model details contributed the largest fps increase I figured I was either peaking the number of polygons or my texture memory. So when monitoring my cpu and gpu loads I was left scratching my head as I was seeing plenty of performance to spare. Here is a nice snap shot of what was happening when looking out of the bank in LA.

http://abload.de/img/gw2loaddub7t.jpg

GW2 is awesomely utilizing all 6 of my cores and not a single one is peaking. GPU load is a mear %46 and video memory usage is 600 megs and slowly rising, but is no where near the 1 gig limit.

So I am stumped… why am I sitting here looking at 20fps? (It isn’t always 20fps when moving around.. just some angles in LA).

Sousui.1635:

So I just got done with a nice budget upgrade overhaul, kicking out my aging intel q6600 for a FX6300 with 8 gigs of 1866 memory running at 936mhz. It is joining some previous upgrades I had done in the past which were a nvidia 460GTX (EVGA SC) and Samsung’s more recent EVO SSD drive.

Now while I saw a lot of performance increases, esp in gw2, lions arch still caused my system to bow down in submission, forcing me to keep video settings low and still handing me under 30 FPS. At this point I figured I may have reached the limit of my gtx 460. Since model details contributed the largest fps increase I figured I was either peaking the number of polygons or my texture memory. So when monitoring my cpu and gpu loads I was left scratching my head as I was seeing plenty of performance to spare. Here is a nice snap shot of what was happening when looking out of the bank in LA.

http://abload.de/img/gw2loaddub7t.jpg

GW2 is awesomely utilizing all 6 of my cores and not a single one is peaking. GPU load is a mear %46 and video memory usage is 600 megs and slowly rising, but is no where near the 1 gig limit.

So I am stumped… why am I sitting here looking at 20fps? (It isn’t always 20fps when moving around.. just some angles in LA).

your Bottleneck is your CPU, look at task manager CPU Tasker #2, its at 80-90%.
GW2 is still single threaded, your GPU cannot keep up with your CPU. Turn down all effects that are CPU bound and youll see your FPS get better (not by much).

Uhhhh,

1. gw2 has active threads on all 6 cores, that is pretty far from a single threaded game.

1. math fail, %80 =\= %100, gw2 is not topping out on any cores.

Sousui.1635:

Uhhhh,

1. gw2 has active threads on all 6 cores, that is pretty far from a single threaded game.

1. math fail, %80 =\= %100, gw2 is not topping out on any cores.

GW2 has about 50 Threads in all, but only 1 main thread that actually runs the game. If you open your CPU details in Prefmon you will see how many gw2 threads there are, and you will see that the main thread lives on a single core and is the one that is pushing that #2 core to about 80%.

that IS your bottleneck.

sirsquishy.8531:

Sousui.1635:

Uhhhh,

1. gw2 has active threads on all 6 cores, that is pretty far from a single threaded game.

1. math fail, %80 =\= %100, gw2 is not topping out on any cores.

GW2 has about 50 Threads in all, but only 1 main thread that actually runs the game. If you open your CPU details in Prefmon you will see how many gw2 threads there are, and you will see that the main thread lives on a single core and is the one that is pushing that #2 core to about 80%.

that IS your bottleneck.

If he only wants to instigate because he thinks his budget hardware is top of the line “better be able to run EVERYTHING”, just ignore.

sobe.4157:

sirsquishy.8531:

Sousui.1635:

Uhhhh,

1. gw2 has active threads on all 6 cores, that is pretty far from a single threaded game.

1. math fail, %80 =\= %100, gw2 is not topping out on any cores.

GW2 has about 50 Threads in all, but only 1 main thread that actually runs the game. If you open your CPU details in Prefmon you will see how many gw2 threads there are, and you will see that the main thread lives on a single core and is the one that is pushing that #2 core to about 80%.

that IS your bottleneck.

If he only wants to instigate because he thinks his budget hardware is top of the line “better be able to run EVERYTHING”, just ignore.

I know, but still. He asked and needed to know that his FX6300 is the reason his system is choking so bad. He will need to disable most of the CPU bound effects in the game, and possibly Look at over clocking that CPU to get better FPS then he is getting now.

Its really a shame that FX uses cannot disable that 2nd Core in each ‘pod’ on those chips. Granted it would be a Tripple Core down from a 6 core CPU. But I think there would be a 10-20% Performance gain out of it. That is the only reason I have not yet upgraded my wifes PhenomII x6 to a FX8350 yet, waiting for some way to control the Pod’s.

This game is unoptimized simple as that.

Sir squishy, don’t confuse fx cores as hyper threading, each core executes commands, they just share the floating point processor. We know that per core the and is slightly behind Intel, but no ones really demonstrated how much a shared FP unit effects things. Now a bottleneck is when one piece of hardware is maxed out allowing no further gains in performance across the board. Please tell me how you came to the conclusion that %80 is maxed out.

It not that the game is not optimized it’s just not for AMD processors for the price of the top AMD you can get an I5. I run an I5 and a cheapo $100 NVIDIA card and get up to 70 FPS and 30+ in LA and WvW.

lol, you’re cute this game is terribley unoptimized its been proven time and time again why is there no direct x 10/11 support why does it not balance cores/threads properly why does it not take full advantage of SLI/crossfire why do people with system like mine or better or a bit worse have nothing but fps issues thankfully for me its DECENT but no where near where it should be especially for my setup.

Sousui.1635:

Sir squishy, don’t confuse fx cores as hyper threading, each core executes commands, they just share the floating point processor. We know that per core the and is slightly behind Intel, but no ones really demonstrated how much a shared FP unit effects things. Now a bottleneck is when one piece of hardware is maxed out allowing no further gains in performance across the board. Please tell me how you came to the conclusion that %80 is maxed out.

I didnt mention HT at all here. Each ‘Pod’ has to 2 physical cores. Both cores share the I/O pipe, L1,L2, and L3 cache. Microsoft has been able to patch windows so that threads will hit each POD first before jumping back to Core 1,3,5,7..ect. Because it has been identified that the FX (Bulldozer) has issues with threading when applications thread to logical Core 0 and 1 before hitting 2 and 3.

His issue is that the FX6300 is a budget/medium grade CPU. GW2 is still single threaded (the main thread will spawn worker processes when it needs to, but the main thread determines how fast and smooth the game is going to run). The main thread for his system was hitting the 2nd core on his 6 core system at 80-90%. THAT IS A BOTTLENECK.

I am sorry you cannot understand the basic concepts here. There are PLENTY of forum posts elsewhere that exactly explain how FX chips are designed, how they differ from their Intel i-Series counter parts, and why they are NOT THAT GOOD as single threading when compared to modern Phenom II and Intel i-Series CPUs.

Ah, well now I know what that amd patch does. Didn’t think the order of the pods mattered, they share resources and the FP unit but other then that they were equal. I’m still not sure how you guys consider %80 a bottleneck when I can easily peg both pods at %100 which means I have %20 of the CPU sitting idle that no one can answer.

Intel i3 3220 probably get’s better FPS than AMD FX 6300. Bottleneck=AMD FX 6300.
I can tell you that if you changed your CPU to intel i5 3570K or something around there, your FPS would double. If not double, then considerably higher.

When it’s not a CPU bound game, AMD FX 6300 is decent.

Sousui.1635:

Ah, well now I know what that amd patch does. Didn’t think the order of the pods mattered, they share resources and the FP unit but other then that they were equal. I’m still not sure how you guys consider %80 a bottleneck when I can easily peg both pods at %100 which means I have %20 of the CPU sitting idle that no one can answer.

Its because you are not listening. GW2 is a SINGLE THREADED game that spawns ‘worker’ threads. As long as the game’s MAIN PROCESS is single threaded, that 80% IS YOUR BOTTLE NECK.

There is no way around that fact.

Avelos.6798:

Intel i3 3220 probably get’s better FPS than AMD FX 6300.

Realistically, they trade blows. In general, I’d recommend the 6300 over an i3, even for GW2. That being said, it’s generally not that hard to fit an i5 into the budget.

Fermi.2409:

Avelos.6798:

Intel i3 3220 probably get’s better FPS than AMD FX 6300.

Realistically, they trade blows. In general, I’d recommend the 6300 over an i3, even for GW2. That being said, it’s generally not that hard to fit an i5 into the budget.

But then there’s the experimenting in getting the i3 to 4.2 GHz, then the FX 6300 sits back down lmao

Sousui.1635:

Ah, well now I know what that amd patch does. Didn’t think the order of the pods mattered, they share resources and the FP unit but other then that they were equal. I’m still not sure how you guys consider %80 a bottleneck when I can easily peg both pods at %100 which means I have %20 of the CPU sitting idle that no one can answer.

someone doesn’t really get how PC hardware works

Sousui.1635:

Ah, well now I know what that amd patch does. Didn’t think the order of the pods mattered, they share resources and the FP unit but other then that they were equal. I’m still not sure how you guys consider %80 a bottleneck when I can easily peg both pods at %100 which means I have %20 of the CPU sitting idle that no one can answer.

You will almost never see a single thread get to 100%, because a process is eating up a whole thread worth of clock cycles does not mean it will always be on the same thread, the OS manages this and often times moves processes from thread to thread, to more even out the load across the cores. If you look in perfmon and check out the threads being used, you can see the process using a whole cores worth of clock cycles, that right there, will be the bottleneck. Also, even if a process is very highly threaded, but ONE of those threads bottlenecks, the rest still has to wait on it. The other posters are correct, your CPU is bottlenecking the system, end of story.

Bread, I have a bachelors in CS and have gotten my A++ long ago, I am not saying I’m not missing something here, but I do know my way around a computer or 2.

Avelos, I think I’ve still got the i3 beat. I was also able to clock my 6300 at 4.1g (its turbo speed) without even touching the voltage. I could push for more but didn’t see enough of a performance jump in 600mhz to warrant messing around with more heat and voltage settings to push another 600. I’m too impatient to sit around for a couple hours and stare at prime screens. -_-

Fermi, going to the i5 would have costed about $140 more ($440 vs $300), I probably wouldn’t have gotten as nice a motherboard and put out of budget.

As sobe was so expertly wrong, I am quit happy with my 6300, it is a significant jump from my q6600 which started to become unplayable in GW2 (lowest player model for any zerg fight) and AC4 really WAS unplayable at 1080p. I am just confused cause in the past… a bottleneck was when either your gpu was either to overwhelmed and couldn’t keep up, texture memory was over flowing, not enough memory, or your cpu (or main thread in this case) pegs the core at %100 limiting what the program can do any further. With guild wars 2 thread sitting comfortably at %80 with no spiking, it seemed like it wasn’t the issue.

Tink, thanks, I’ll take a look at those closer.

Sorry to tell you but CPU is the limiter for guild wars 2. Even the best of intel processors don’t maintain amazing fps at all times. AMD can’t get anywhere near them unless it’s unders pecial circumstances. But if you’re happy with your AMD FX 6300 then that’s fine.

Avelos.6798:

Even the best of intel processors don’t maintain amazing fps at all times. .

Indeed. My i5 at 4.8 takes a hit in zergs, normal game play, with most things maxed, I can get 100+ fps, but large clashes in WvW and I can drop to 30 really fast. Never been so low that it was unplayable, other than skill lag but that is a whole other issue.

All we can do is hope and dream GW2 gets an expansion and they do a big change to the game engine with it, other wise we might see a fps here or there from patches and some server side lag addressed, but that’s about it.

49% across 6 cores or approximately 3 cores worth of actual CPU load and that’s normal. Why is it so difficult to understand that the game only produces around 3 cores worth of CPU load?

Oh and the same thread doesn’t have to keep running on the same core so just because one core gets used a lot, doesn’t mean one thread decided to camp there. For individual thread load use Process Explorer from Microsoft, bring up the properties for gw2.exe when it’s running, click on the thread tab and sort by CPU %. You will see no thread goes past 1/number of cores in CPU %. That’s the single core limiting factor people talk about.

Behellagh.1468:

49% across 6 cores or approximately 3 cores worth of actual CPU load and that’s normal. Why is it so difficult to understand that the game only produces around 3 cores worth of CPU load?

Oh and the same thread doesn’t have to keep running on the same core so just because one core gets used a lot, doesn’t mean one thread decided to camp there. For individual thread load use Process Explorer from Microsoft, bring up the properties for gw2.exe when it’s running, click on the thread tab and sort by CPU %. You will see no thread goes past 1/number of cores in CPU %. That’s the single core limiting factor people talk about.

^ This 100x’s

While that is true, i have had casses in major ‘patch’ events, like the old Karka invasion, where my CPU has hit over 50% total usuage, thats effectivly 6 cores of load. These are the times where a few people have come onto these forums askign why their i5 is pegged at 100% load, and its these very rare circumstances where the i7’s show a little of their power, being that they are 4core 8 thread CPU’s.

(not argueing for or against anything, just stating somthing )

Yes but you are running a tiny God so naturally your rig is an outlier. For mere mortals however the rule of thumb is pretty consistent, more than two, rarely above three cores of load.

Sousui.1635:

Fermi, going to the i5 would have costed about $140 more ($440 vs $300), I probably wouldn’t have gotten as nice a motherboard and put out of budget.

No idea where you were buying from, but even for Mobo+CPU+RAM you can do an i3 for like $210-230 or an i5 for around $280-300.

Fermi.2409:

Sousui.1635:

Fermi, going to the i5 would have costed about $140 more ($440 vs $300), I probably wouldn’t have gotten as nice a motherboard and put out of budget.

No idea where you were buying from, but even for Mobo+CPU+RAM you can do an i3 for like $210-230 or an i5 for around $280-300.

sounds like he was looking at the i5-4670K for that price range. Mine cost me 219 + 175 for the Motherboard.

Indeed, but there are still other options to consider, which is always smart to do.

Also, you don’t nearly need to spend that much on a mobo. You can get something pretty decent in the 120-130 range.