The specs blew the min requirements for this game out of the water but for whatever reason i’m only getting between 2-10 fps in a combat area, nothing massive like WvW, just random events. About 15-25 fps standing around with nothing around me, this is all on the LOWEST settings.
I was wondering if there was anything I could to to increase my FPS. Thanks in advance.
A8-5550M is a fairly slow CPU and while the game is multithreaded, it still relies on a primary thread or two so a slow single core performance translates into slow GW2 performance.
Umm… A guy comes to help and tells you the state this game is at and you shrug him off by telling not to judge your system?
Anyway, what Behellagh said is right, this game is tremendously reliant on the CPU grunt, to a degree that not even the strongest of them can handle what it requires. That said I don’t think your system should dip down to 2 fps anyhow. I had an Intel system with weaker CPU than yours and my lowest in the biggest zergs were 5-7 fps. People do say though that the minimums of an Intel are higher than those of an AMD, but 2 fps seems quite extreme. Have you downloaded the latest drivers? Have you checked your CPU temperatures, its clock speed, usage % and the same things for your GPU? If those seem to be correct and your usage % is getting near 100 on any of the cores, then I’m afraid there’s not much to be done.
The specs blew the min requirements for this game out of the water but for whatever reason i’m only getting between 2-10 fps in a combat area, nothing massive like WvW, just random events. About 15-25 fps standing around with nothing around me, this is all on the LOWEST settings.
I was wondering if there was anything I could to to increase my FPS. Thanks in advance.
Its a mix of 2 things;
1. your CPU, AMD nortiously fails at this game when it comes to performance. Just how it is
2. Laptop’s GPU drivers need to be updated.
There are 2 fixes for your issue;
Fix1, Download and install K10Stat, and use that tool to Overclock and under volt your CPU. The best thing to do is peg your CPU at the ‘boost’ speed, and drop the Boost Voltage down by 0.5v. Then Run Prime95 for a couple hours to make sure you don’t hardlock/reboot and that your temps stay at or below 70c’s
Fix2 – Look for modded AMD Beta 14.2 ver6 Drivers. Reboot using F8 and disable Driver Signing, then install the modded Drivers. – This gave me a 50-60% FPS boost on my HD6770M in my DV6.
Other then buying Intel, thats all you can do to get better performance on the APU’s.
AMD mobile processors are notorious for producing lots of heat compared to intel. Which is why they have the funky power states in the first place. Make sure your computer isn’t thermal throttling.
As for your actual chip, the richland apus are actually a step backwards from the k series architecture (athlon 64×2s) due to the setup of 2 cores sharing 1 FPU which means it’s effectively a 2 core cpu despite what amd marketing says.
Windows does have some issues with spreading out the threads appropriately on amd cpus. If all your threads are on the first two cores then you are essentially running a single core processor. Others have disabled 1 core per module and seen some performance increases on amd cpus
As for the graphics chip, despite being gcn based, it is still and integrated graphics chip which means it runs on the ddr3 system memory, the performance will be hindered by the lack of bandwidth and low memory clocks compared the dedicated gddr5 memory
Also your comparison link is…distorted. The Athlon 64 x2 series ran for a very long time (2005-2009) with major changes in architecture (k8-k10) and models (5). We don’t really know what anet really means when they say Athlon 64 x2. The last chip called the kuma was based on the k10 (same as the vaunted phenom II black) and was miles ahead of the 2005 manchester chip (which started the Athlon 64 x2 series) and is still a pretty decent chip to this day. One could still make an argument that the k10 kuma chips are still slightly better at single thread operations than the latest mobile apus due to higher base clock speeds and better architecture compatibility with windows.
Here is a screenshot of my Laptop when it had the APU in it. This is a 1.8Ghz stock CPU over clocked to 2.8Ghz, with the GPU Core clocked from 600mhz to 740Mhz. Resolution is 1600×900. When in Full screen with the applications closed, the FPS will peak at about 68FPS here.
The Screenshot is posted mainly to show ‘my’ config for pegging the APU at a higher speed.
Here is a screenshot of my Laptop when it had the APU in it. This is a 1.8Ghz stock CPU over clocked to 2.8Ghz, with the GPU Core clocked from 600mhz to 740Mhz. Resolution is 1600×900. When in Full screen with the applications closed, the FPS will peak at about 68FPS here.
The Screenshot is posted mainly to show ‘my’ config for pegging the APU at a higher speed.
Your apu was a Llano chip which still had the k10 cores and architecture. The Trinity series (and later richland) replaced the k10 cores with bulldozer, piledriver, and now Steamroller modules in the Kaveri chips. Arguably the llano apu was better at single thread processing (when overclocked) than the later versions but at the cost of higher power usage and less efficient multithreading.
Here is a screenshot of my Laptop when it had the APU in it. This is a 1.8Ghz stock CPU over clocked to 2.8Ghz, with the GPU Core clocked from 600mhz to 740Mhz. Resolution is 1600×900. When in Full screen with the applications closed, the FPS will peak at about 68FPS here.
The Screenshot is posted mainly to show ‘my’ config for pegging the APU at a higher speed.
Your apu was a Llano chip which still had the k10 cores and architecture. The Trinity series (and later richland) replaced the k10 cores with bulldozer, piledriver, and now Steamroller modules in the Kaveri chips. Arguably the llano apu was better at single thread processing (when overclocked) than the later versions but at the cost of higher power usage and less efficient multithreading.
Doesnt matter, the APU’s have core leveling issues due to the single core boost system AMD runs with that crap.
If you want the best performance out of your APU, you need to disable Boost (or for a laptop Lock the CPU at the Boost speed…or higher), Set the APU to a locked higher speed (on State 1 and 2, leave the rest of the states alone) then disable core parking.
That has done WONDERS for all my APU’s that I have tweaked.
Sorry, I really wasn’t bashing your CPU as much as trying to state a inherent problem with this game. The A8-5550M is a dual module/quad thread CPU that if processing 4 threads can dip the clock only to 2.1 GHz, which is very low for CPU architecture that wants a very high clock rate simply to keep up with Intel.
locx is right, since it’s a laptop it is very heat sensitive which could throttle both the CPU and GPU clock speeds. Those numbers you are seeing are quite low if you are running the graphic settings at minimal and your display is only 1366×768.
sirsquishy is also right that AMD systems tend to be set up to prefer lower power usage over high performance. For my AMD if I set my power config to high performance it disables any kind of clock speed reduction or core parking. But you better have it plugged in and running off the adapter as well as making sure it’s being properly cooled. You would be surprised how many systems, include desktops, get thermally throttled because a family of dust bunnies moved in.
That’s the truth. With normal clock rates, my laptop would get 4-6hours on battery. Over clock and pushed to its teeth, it would get 45mins TOPS on its battery.
And APU’s get throttled at 83c-85c. So if your CPU is getting anywhere near those temps you need to think about cooling and keeping your vents clear and clean.
As for the bulldozer based CPUs (2 cores per module), those have a large design issue that cannot easily be fixed. While they do multi-thread extremely well, single threading on them just sucks. The way to fix it is disable the 2nd core per module (This cannot be done on Laptops FYI), Over clock the chip to at least its Boost speed, then disable Core parking. And even then, the single core/thread performance still sucks!
For GW2, my i3-2120 outperformed the FX8350. And I’m still sick about it.
- 15.6" AMD Richland A8-5550M 4GB 500GB HDD
- AMD Radeon HD 8550G DVDRW HDMI Win 8
There’s your problem.
You have slow CPU with integrated GPU and they both battle for the same memory bandwidth. In worst case your cheapo laptop has only one memory stick resulting in 64-bit memory bus. For the price of that laptop you could have assembled something like 3x faster desktop PC.
ArenaNet has too low minimum specs for GW2 unless their specs mean that the game will fail to start up on slower computer.
