Guild Wars 2

From what I have observed so far, the biggest hit on FPS is most def shader/animation, when there is a smoke/mortars/whatever AoE, the FPS drops a lot, when I set shader/animation to low the drops are not that bad, but you can feel them.

Running GTX 460 1GB, i5 2400.

I solved the low FPS in cities(LA mostly) by setting reflections to NONE.
WvW also benefited a little.

AshleySegovia.3948:

Hey guys, I know I’ve said this before but hang tight. This is something that we are still currently looking intokitten this is something that is difficult to reproduce in order to narrow down conditions that cause severely low FPS, intermittent or sustained. We are unable to diagnose what is wrong with everybody’s PC and in many cases these can be factors that are out of our control (drivers, hardware issues, not meeting the minimum requirements, etc.).

We are still tracking down common driver issues and hardware problems and weeding out the differences between things that are our problem vs. a system related issue.

Again, thanks for your patience and we continue to look into this issue.

Thanks for the post. I’ll be happy to volunteer in any mass testing if you need data points!

Hickeroar.9734:

Can you guys get the profiling working properly so we can at least give you profiles of what’s happening on our machines? I’m sure there’s a lot of usefulness to be had there.

This.

Short of sending my computer to Anet, im more than happy to volunteer to have you run something that monitors the game performance on my system. I can see the numbers myself, but that doesnt seem to help anet much in fixing it.

@michaeljhuman………yeah,they are “looking into it” for multiple months now.Their performance was absolute garbage in Beta and it still is.

“looking into it”.God i’am so sick and tired of this.“looking into it”,when it comes from a developer usually means “We have no friggin idea what the problem is and we will probably never get it fixed”.

Seems they don’t know their own engine.

Always easy to assume, from the outside, they are incompetent idiots. When you work as a software dev, you realize there are hard problems, tight deadlines and many distractions

In my experience, most developers really care that people are having problems and doing their best

I know they are an easy target, and I don’t like to go for the easy target, but sometimes management is responsible for value calls, and the priority calls are being made outside the dev team

First of all before i got the game I ran a can you run it check (see why u no work.jpg) to make sure i wasn’t spending money for a game not to work. Trusting this i then bought the game, however it ran perfectly once or twice then went extremely slow and then okay again but now won’t play right and I am getting painfully low FPS.

Here is my specs

Operating System
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP1

CPU
Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.10GHz 9 °C
Penryn 45nm Technology

RAM
4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 332MHz (5-5-5-15)

Motherboard
Acer Aspire 6920 (U2E1) 51 °C

Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1280×76860Hz) GNR MONITOR (1280x102460Hz)
512MB GeForce 9500M GS (Acer Incorporated [ALI]) 59 °C

Hard Drives
298GB Western Digital WDC WD3200BEVT-22ZCT0 ATA Device (SATA) 50 °C

Optical Drives
MATkittenA BD-CMB UJ-120 ATA Device

Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

Additional graphics card details

GPU NB9P-GV
Device ID 10DE-0405
Revision A2
Subvendor Acer Incorporated [ALI] (1025)
Current Performance Level Level 3
Current GPU Clock 475 MHz
Current Memory Clock 400 MHz
Current Shader Clock 950 MHz
Voltage 1.200 V
Technology 80 nm
Die Size 169 nm²
Transistors 289 M
Release Date Feb 01, 2008
DirectX Support 10.0
DirectX Shader Model 4.0
OpenGL Support 3.0
Bus Interface PCI Express x16
Temperature 59 °C
Driver nvlddmkm.sys
Driver version 9.18.13.0623
ForceWare version 306.23
BIOS Version 60.84.69.00.36
ROPs 8
Shaders 32 unified
Physical Memory 512 MB
Virtual Memory 1792 MB
Bus Width 128 Bit

I have no idea on how to fix the issue and cannot currently play the game right on the FPS i am getting, hope someone can help! p.s i did run a quick search on the forum and could only find posts where the hardware wasn’t really up to spec, if there is a post then sorry! Could you link me to it! Many thanks Jammy

Thanks in advance.

No,you got a low end system that barely meets the minimum requirements,when this happens,you are bound to get extremely low fps,and this isnt even due to the rather unoptimized engine,but just you barely passing minimum.

Right so i take it canyourunit isn’t good at it’s job then, i thought it was trusted!

Well,it isnt really accurate but it does give you a impression of what you are to expect,and in this case the tool wasn’t far off.Usually when a game says you reach minimun requirements its usally means you have to down the graphics to low to have a playable fps.basically..it just means you are able to play the game.

Btw the green bar goes all the way to the far right end maybe that isn’t clear on the screen shot. il repost a screen shot

Yes,but you should look at the minimum req specs,and your specs.

Look man, you tried the website and it was wrong. You come here and ask us and we’re now wrong because you are arguing for the website that ended up being wrong? So wtf do you want? Us to lie to you? Fine. Yes your system is reallllllllly high end. O m g. I want it.

http://tinypic.com/r/2r27rm0/6 Hope that clarify’s the problem

Sorry to say that those types of programs are never really that accurat from my experiance.
you best bet is to prowl the web for people with specs simular to your own and see what they get in a game before buy said game.

You rig im afraid is old and low end. It will nto play GW2 very well. Not only is your CPua major bottleneck, but your GPU is also very old and wont be helping ether. hell £1000 current laptops have a hard time with GW2, so i really cant reccomend enough that you get yourself a Desktop PC

Not at all, just wanted to know if

1) can i trust this website in future ( I take it not)
2) is there anything i can do now
3) the image was misleading wanted to make sure it was clear.

No need to be sarcastic really?

Solar, thanks thats all i needed! My laptop was a grand actually haha, new that is i’ll order a new pc tomorrow! anything you’d recommend ?

Hi Jammy,

The specifications tested against “can you run it” are for the Minimum Requirements for the game to run. You laptop just makes it in there with 2.1GHz when the absolute minimum is 2.0GHz. Along with the 9500M GS graphics which is both on the minimum side and a mobile graphics processor. I wouldn’t expect much FPS off the current specification, but that depends on what you classify as “low fps” and what you consider to be “good fps”. For me I consider good fps to be 60+ FPS anything less I personally consider low.

From your DXDIAG there seems to be an issue with your memory running @ 332MHz (DDR – Double Data Rate = 664MHz) the timings are 5-5-5-15 which are pretty loose for DDR2 667MHz memory unless its actually meant to be DDR2-800 or 1066MHz memory in which case the memory seems to be throttled or underclocked somehow.

Laptops also normally use power profiles that adjust the overall performance of the laptop to suit battery life and/or power consumption. This generally means things like slowing down your CPU, graphics processor or even switching the dedicated graphics card completely off to use other less power hungry methods.

Windows does allow you to adjust these power profiles in the control panel, by default there should be a profile pre-made to allow you to switch to “Perfomance” profile which makes sure your hardware is running at full speed.

Edit: please not that “Can you run it” only have the minimum requirements for GW2 on their website and therefor can only to test to make sure your pc passes the minimum requirements, if you look at the graph again it clearly states you pass the minimum but does not compare your pc against the “Recommended” requirements. Anyone running this test that meets the Minimum requirements will see a full green bar, It may seem confusing to some but the length of the green bar doesn’t determine the perfomance of the computer, there is only 2 outcomes with
the GW2 “CYRI Test” those are: Below minimum or Above minimum

Thanks nitro, ill be sure to try that before i buy a new PC. The thing that stumped me that was it ran fine, then stopped working. Low = 15 fps. I’ll try that then!..

Thanks again both of you, restored my hope of there being helpful people on the internet!

Hmm well i wont go into specifics but you can put yourself a rig together for around £600 that would play GW2 with acceptable frame rates but if you have £1000 to spend then get yourself a
2500k cpu atleast
you can ether buy a cheap 560ti gpu and wait for the 700 series ot come out ..or bite the bullet and get a 670 and put up with the current issues the 600 series has with GW2.
The rest of the computer is built around that ..So a 650w or 750w powersupply, a mothebroard.. 16gb ram. maybe a 128gb SSD.. you’ll need a case ofcourse and any other periphirals you dont already have i.e cd rom ..keyboard etc.

my adivce to you when building a computer ..take your time.. i spent 2 months researching to get my rig sorted. granted it took that long becouse i was still saving ..but i would still give yourself a couple weeks to get the answeres you need and find the best deals.

Just to give you an idea ..the rig in my sig cost me around £1200 when i got it, for the CPU,Cooler,Case,RAM, MoBo, SSD, and Powersuply ..the rest of the parts i already had.

Im afraid i cant help you wiht laptops if you want one of those. i stear clear of them when it comes ot gaming.

Excellent, i know it doesn’t matter, but why would it work well on a few occasions so i could play it, but then doesn’t. Quite intrigued haha.

Well those occasions,, was it working well for like 1 minute then went to pot ..or was it a whole play seession that was running fine .. then when you went back the next day it wasnt ?

there could be numerous reasons for noticing a drop in your FPS, Anet are constantly changing the game to try to make it better for everyone, this could mean things go good or bad for some as they try to find the best methods. Things like your Internet speed, stability and/or usage can affect your FPS, other things such as changing your monitors resolution and/or its refresh rate could add more strain on the graphics processor. Other background processes could be running such as antivirus software, windows update, itunes, etc.

One thing I came across in the game is that Shaders, Shadows, and Reflections all have a big effect on FPS so I personally choose to have those three settings on their lowest option, some even can be disabled. I chose to disable the ones that I could.

It worked for aslong as i played, it possibly 3/4 hours. I shut down to go to sleep then i play again and it was slow again, then i’d try again that same night after restarting and it would play fine again? That help ?

If your laptop is overheating then it could be that the cpu thermal protection is activating and throttling the processor to prevent overheating causing severe damage. This could produce the symptoms that you are describing.

Are you able to monitor your laptops CPU and GPU temperatures?

Well to be honest no matter the cause you laptop is still not good enough for GW2

BUT what your experiancing could be due to a problem with your laptop ..if restarting it helped then maybe you could try formating your drive and reinstalling your operating system …. you may have a virus or corrupted system files that is causing you computer to slow down after extensive use.
That or it could be overheating.

Monitoring software would help detect overheating and tell us you gpu and cpu suage during gameplay.

Jammy I also noticed from your screenshot of the “Can you run it” test that you seem to have a secondary monitor plugged in to your laptop. Did you happen to experience the low FPS issues after connecting the additional monitor?

By adding an additional monitor you increase your GPU’s resource usage and increase your overall resolution putting more strain on your graphics card whilst ingame.

@Rolo
Yeah and with that you’re just consuming more and more Watts. And guess what? Higher voltage will make your hardware just heat, as I said. Wrong formula, but correct statement.

Blahblah anyway I’m just not answering to this anymore, I just said that getting higher voltage won’t get any help to the hardware such as a “cleaner wave shape” because the “wave shape” is clean enough, and won’t make ANY difference in performance, apart from cases in which the voltage was too low compared to the needed power. And still I state that there’s no reason to state that hardware designers are giving such a lower voltage to require an overvolt. Physics is just outside the discussion. Getting higher voltage won’t fix anything, as it didn’t when I tried it.
Probably, it worked for you alone, because your actual card was in need of an overvolt.
So please stop posting placebo effect fixes that require overvolting before somebody makes the wrong move and fries his hardware.

@AshleySegovia: My PC’s CPU is in the minimum requirements and is getting 8 fps in WvW (With a GTX470).
If you can’t track the problem on your hardware (I can’t imagine how, as almost everyone is getting FPS issues and I’ve got 5 computers with different hardwares and none of them can run this game without performance issues) can we help you using our computers?

AshleySegovia.3948:

We are still tracking down common driver issues and hardware problems and weeding out the differences between things that are our problem vs. a system related issue.

Well, I’m pretty sure that you are not allowed to come in here and say something like:

“Well, I’m terribly sorry but I must admit that our minimal system requirements are a LIE. Yes, our MMO is not the worst out there, but it’s still completely unoptimized. Now that the game went live, our developer team got cut short, so we won’t be able to rewrite the 3D engine anytime soon and we will just hope the problem goes away in a year or two, when people buy new hardware.

Please don’t expect any sort of improvement anytime soon. Maybe in a year.

We screwed up the code, screwed up the polycount and screwed up the netcode so as a result it’s pretty much impossible to get any PLAYABLE framerates (in WvW and towns) even on the most expensive rigs there are."

Yes. We are all pretty much aware that you will never, ever speak the truth (nothing personal ofc Ashley, company policies, yadda yadda), because the truth is NEVER a part of any real money making business.

That being said, your “we know it’s on our end” shift to “it’s PARTIALLY on our end” is VERY disturbing.

ALSO (yes, I’m quite serious here) I think it’s time to get some INTERNATIONAL LAWS in place (lol) concerning so called “minimal system requirements”. Those prerequistite should be:

“This system can run the game at 30+ FPS, AT ANY GIVEN TIME at the lowest possible detail settings” (this should be translated to a law gibberish language).

You don’t think that’s a little over the top?

Also, what we don’t need, usually, is more laws. We have MORE than enough laws, don’t we?

Also, as we have no idea how they determined the minimum reqs. So how can we say if it’s intentionally misleading ( like you imply IMO)

MK FPS always below 20
I have tried updating my driver…. Reformatted my pc a couple of times and updated all my windows…. and nothing seems help…. anyone got any idea what’s wrong with my computer….. any help will be appreciated

This is my computer spec:
Processor: i5 cpu @3.20 GHZ
memory: 4GB
graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

Have you tried turning down shadows,shaders and reflections?

i set it to best performance… everything is at its lowest setting….. And i found that best performance and auto detect generate the same FPS

Pentium G630 2.7GHZ, 2Cores
4GB DDR3
1TB Seagate
8800GT 512MBS
Windows 7 64 bit

Now my question to you is should I upgrade:
8800GT 512 MBS to Radeon 6770 1GB
OR
Pentium G630 2.7GHZ, 2Cores to AMD FX 4100 Unlocked Quad Core Processor, 3.6GHz and Gigabyte 970a-d3 AM3+ Motherboard

Which will get me better FPS right now im thinking more towards CPU, im on all lowest settings and getting from 15-30fps

Btw that area only? can you attach your dxdiag or game advisor text file?

What i5 is that?

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.120503-2030)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: H55-USB3
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5 CPU 650 @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3960MB RAM
Page File: 3521MB used, 4395MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 32bit Unicode

-

Nope in all area

Core™ i5 + GW2 = Not so good.

i5’s are nice, but when you run this game on an i7 there’s a huge difference. i5’s are basically good CPUs but meant more for a budget system. (a lot of people think they’re super-high end CPUs because they came out ‘after’ the i7’s, which is untrue.

If your motherboard and wallet support it, switch over to an i7.

ArenaNET says the game is no longer CPU bound, but that is not entirely true — it still relies heavily on the CPU, just not as much. Video cards do in fact get to work more now that the game has been released, but a nice CPU will make this game run a LOT smoother.

Crawford.4135:

Core™ i5 + GW2 = Not so good.

i5’s are nice, but when you run this game on an i7 there’s a huge difference. i5’s are basically good CPUs but meant more for a budget system. (a lot of people think they’re super-high end CPUs because they came out ‘after’ the i7’s, which is untrue.

If your motherboard and wallet support it, switch over to an i7.

ArenaNET says the game is no longer CPU bound, but that is not entirely true — it still relies heavily on the CPU, just not as much. Video cards do in fact get to work more now that the game has been released, but a nice CPU will make this game run a LOT smoother.

I think you should never generalize i5. An i5 3570/3570k would be able to run gw2 on high settings just pair it with a decent gpu card.

Alpha Dragon.4576:

Crawford.4135:

Core™ i5 + GW2 = Not so good.

i5’s are nice, but when you run this game on an i7 there’s a huge difference. i5’s are basically good CPUs but meant more for a budget system. (a lot of people think they’re super-high end CPUs because they came out ‘after’ the i7’s, which is untrue.

If your motherboard and wallet support it, switch over to an i7.

ArenaNET says the game is no longer CPU bound, but that is not entirely true — it still relies heavily on the CPU, just not as much. Video cards do in fact get to work more now that the game has been released, but a nice CPU will make this game run a LOT smoother.

I think you should never generalize i5. An i5 3570/3570k would be able to run gw2 on high settings just pair it with a decent gpu card.

Understood, but giving up some L2/L3 cache for a gaming system is something I would never do.

Unfortunately none of your components are very strong. Upgrading either one will probably result in a 0% performance increase.

If you do upgrade, do not get an Amd system (see GW2 & AMD thread). You’ll need to go Quad i5/7 if you want a quality gaming experience.

I wouldn’t worry about L2/L3 cache afaik it’s the CPU architecture that matters. Just check any forum if you’re only into gaming and on a budget everyone would tell to get i5 3570/3570k + z77 board.

On topic.
Can you attach the whole dxdiag?

Larger cache may give you better performance in some things, but I doubt it’s more than a single-digit increase.

My DxDiag.txt

Thanks for the help in advance

Things you can try:

1. Update to Service Pack 1.
2. Go to control Panel → Power option → Set to High Perf
3. Go to Nvidia Control Panel → Check for Manage 3D settings→ Power Management → set to preferred Maximum perf.

I don’t get this game. When i started i had like50-60 pretty much everywhere even crowded places. Now i barely have 40 and 15 fps when theres to many people.

jammyeagle.5694:

Not at all, just wanted to know if

1) can i trust this website in future ( I take it not)
2) is there anything i can do now
3) the image was misleading wanted to make sure it was clear.

No need to be sarcastic really?

Yes you can trust the website. It didn’t give you any misinformation. YOU interpreted it wrong.

All that website does is objectively compare the game’s official minimum requirements and your computer’s hardware specs. It doesn’t make any guarantees as to how the game will run on your computer.

There’s nothing you can do now other than getting a decent computer.

CptBadger.5918:

AshleySegovia.3948:

We are still tracking down common driver issues and hardware problems and weeding out the differences between things that are our problem vs. a system related issue.

Well, I’m pretty sure that you are not allowed to come in here and say something like:

“Well, I’m terribly sorry but I must admit that our minimal system requirements are a LIE. Yes, our MMO is not the worst out there, but it’s still completely unoptimized. Now that the game went live, our developer team got cut short, so we won’t be able to rewrite the 3D engine anytime soon and we will just hope the problem goes away in a year or two, when people buy new hardware.

Please don’t expect any sort of improvement anytime soon. Maybe in a year.

We screwed up the code, screwed up the polycount and screwed up the netcode so as a result it’s pretty much impossible to get any PLAYABLE framerates (in WvW and towns) even on the most expensive rigs there are."

Yes. We are all pretty much aware that you will never, ever speak the truth (nothing personal ofc Ashley, company policies, yadda yadda), because the truth is NEVER a part of any real money making business.

That being said, your “we know it’s on our end” shift to “it’s PARTIALLY on our end” is VERY disturbing.

ALSO (yes, I’m quite serious here) I think it’s time to get some INTERNATIONAL LAWS in place (lol) concerning so called “minimal system requirements”. Those prerequistite should be:

“This system can run the game at 30+ FPS, AT ANY GIVEN TIME at the lowest possible detail settings” (this should be translated to a law gibberish language).

I agree. There has to be some standard that guarantees that the requirements that a company specifies for his product are REAL and correspond to a minimum specific and MEASURABLE performance.

Crawford.4135:

Core™ i5 + GW2 = Not so good.

i5’s are nice, but when you run this game on an i7 there’s a huge difference. i5’s are basically good CPUs but meant more for a budget system. (a lot of people think they’re super-high end CPUs because they came out ‘after’ the i7’s, which is untrue.

If your motherboard and wallet support it, switch over to an i7.

ArenaNET says the game is no longer CPU bound, but that is not entirely true — it still relies heavily on the CPU, just not as much. Video cards do in fact get to work more now that the game has been released, but a nice CPU will make this game run a LOT smoother.

This is just a ton of missinformation, there seems to be quite a lot on this forum. I play the game on a mobile i3 (which is weaker then a desktop one) and get around 40 FPS now on most settings on high and a FullHD resolution. All of the i series are very powerful, including the i3s, i7 is really just over the top for most people, and the i5 is a pretty sweet processor. Don’t understimate it. I did get a lot less FPS before the last patch.