Guild Wars 2

i understand this is a very prevalent problem for a large portion of the community and that a.net is working hard to improve it bit by bit (as i have seen some small fps improvements). but does anyone know what the exact problem is? is it that certain graphics cards aren’t compatible with the game? or will it be easily fixed once a new driver is released for each respective card? just very confused and wondering if anyone knows the solution process or the complexities behind the process and can shine some light on it.

my general specs are:

core i7 processor
8gigs ram
amd hd mobility radeon 6970 2gigs
up to date drivers on everything

one of my friends is running the same specs except with an nvidea and runs with no lag. i’m guessing amd vs nvidea is the issue here?

Rig:
CPU: AMD phenom II x6 1090T (overclocked to 3.5ghz)
GPU: ATI 6870 915Mhz
Ram: 8 gig ddr3
Psu: 600watt
mobo: asrock extreme4 (amd version)

Welcome to the club…

That’s not a good guess. If you read through the posts, you can find the same number of nVidia people having the problem as you find AMD people. I’m running an i7, 6GB Ram, and a Radeon HD 6870 and am not having any issues with keeping my framerate capped at 60 (with VSync on).

Since you have a laptop, there may be some power settings that might be causing your issues. Double check that your system is set for “High Performace” to keep the OS from throttling your CPU/GPU speeds to save power. You might also want to double-check your power profile to make sure that your laptop doesn’t think it’s running on batteries. (my old laptop had a habit of pretending to be on battery power even when it was plugged into its docking station. curiously, if it was undocked but plugged into the wall, it was fine.)

after seeing the long thread about this, and gathering data, it seems that only a certain subset of GPUs are affected, and its mostly the new Nvidia 600 series and the AMD 6000 and 7000 series GPUs. I took some performance impact on my rig(2 Nvidia GTX460 1GB), but not much, yet the temps reflect that its running much harder than the percentage used shows(GPU and CPU never go above 60% used). I suspect bad GPU calls and a code error somewhere are to blame.

mathisk.6427:

That’s not a good guess. If you read through the posts, you can find the same number of nVidia people having the problem as you find AMD people. I’m running an i7, 6GB Ram, and a Radeon HD 6870 and am not having any issues with keeping my framerate capped at 60 (with VSync on).

Since you have a laptop, there may be some power settings that might be causing your issues. Double check that your system is set for “High Performace” to keep the OS from throttling your CPU/GPU speeds to save power. You might also want to double-check your power profile to make sure that your laptop doesn’t think it’s running on batteries. (my old laptop had a habit of pretending to be on battery power even when it was plugged into its docking station. curiously, if it was undocked but plugged into the wall, it was fine.)

Do you know what PSU u have?

I have a Corsair 650 Watt PSU in my desktop PC.

and a few more specifics:
CPU: Core i7 920, 2.7GHz
mobo: Intel DX58SO
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 FLEX edition, 900 MHz GPU, 1050 MHz VRAM
Driver Version: 12.6

mathisk.6427:

I have a Corsair 650 Watt PSU in my desktop PC.

Then I’m sure that I do not have a PSU bottleneck, Pewwww what a relief.

Thank you for the feedback. I tried several of the techniques suggested from overclocking, checking the battery profile, to high priority settings in the task manager but to no avail. But it seems like the problems lie in a very focused set of GPU’s as chubbysumo mentioned above, so i’m sure the a team will fix it soon or collaborate with amd / nvidea in making a compatible driver.

What mobile i7 is that Pete?

Peter.1640:

i understand this is a very prevalent problem for a large portion of the community and that a.net is working hard to improve it bit by bit (as i have seen some small fps improvements). but does anyone know what the exact problem is? is it that certain graphics cards aren’t compatible with the game? or will it be easily fixed once a new driver is released for each respective card? just very confused and wondering if anyone knows the solution process or the complexities behind the process and can shine some light on it.

my general specs are:

core i7 processor
8gigs ram
amd hd mobility radeon 6970 2gigs
up to date drivers on everything

one of my friends is running the same specs except with an nvidea and runs with no lag. i’m guessing amd vs nvidea is the issue here?

No, the issue isn’t amd vs nvidia. If anything, Nvidia cards seem to have more problems with gw2.

The problem is most likely your laptop CPU. Laptop i7 means nothing when it comes to gaming performance.

dont forget the lack of a good profile for SLI/Crossfire

Well I’m glad it’s not just me. I have an XFX 7870 with the AMD FX-8150 for cpu, and was starting to get paranoid that my cpu was bottlenecking. People like to jump the gun on AMD’s bulldozer chips being a weak link, but come on I can run much more intensive games and double the FPS I’m getting in GW2.

Mine doesn’t seem to be as bad as some, but I’m usually right around 40-50 fps, with drops as low as mid-upper 20’s. The interesting thing is it is exactly the same with stock or overclocked cpu and video card. No change whatsoever. That makes me think software. Can’t wait to get this game pumping the fps higher. Curious to see about your tests with the drivers…

Anjrew.5931:,
I’ve had same issues with OC or not having no effect on FPS. It’s barely tasking my GFX card at <55% GPU utilization per core, so that generally leads me to believe driver refinements are what will fix this problem.

GPU – EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 Classified
OC’d to 700 MHz cores, 1900MHz memory

296.10- 30-35 fps in general spikes to 40s
301.24- 33-36 fps in general spikes to 42s
301.42- 33-36 fps in general spikes to 42s
304.48- 34-42 fps in general spikes to 50s
306.02- 35-46 fps in general spikes to 54s Still not super but the best I tested

I recommend downloading the latest Beta drivers for you NVIDIA cards, not necessarily availiable from NVIDIA site but the most recent ones can be found easily on the EVGA website — http://www.evga.com/support/download/

Other tips for NVIDIA driver settings:

• Make your CPU the PhysX primary processor
• If you have the option, change Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum
  Preformance (not Adaptive)
• I have a multi-GPU FSAA enabled (so will be SLI mode no matter other settings)
  and achieved better results with Multi-GPU rendering mode set to
  NVIDIA recommended (vs AFR 1 or AFR 2)
• Vertical sync and Triple-buffering Enabled

These adjustments helped my fps up 4-6+ easy.

Every system is different, but these would be the things I would look at tweaking first.

Hope this helps

AMD Bulldozer sucks in this game:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-7.html

The GPU utilization is low because the CPU is the bottleneck and the GPU has to wait for the CPU to finish it’s tasks.

I know it’s hard to admit that you made a mistake by getting AMD CPU this generation but if you ever want to have smooth GW2 experience you have to go Intel.

It’s not hard to admit. I see the data and have almost the exact results. It still plays great and I have no issues. At least I know exactly what to change on my PC for better gaming performance. Cheers to a processor/mb upgrade in the near future.

I don’t think it’s as simple as saying Nvidia 600 series have problems. Mine doesn’t – EVGA 670 and the lowest FPS I’ve seen (using fraps to monitor) was mid 40s in a big WvW battle.

The rest of the time it’s flying in the 80s / 90s / 100s depending on environment on autodetect.

i got a solid 60fps on a 460tx 1gb
i get around 30-40 on a 7850 even though its a much more powerful card…

same settings on both and no aa forced on either

This game is terribly coded.

Phenom II X4 3.8GHz
HD 6870 1Gb (newest driver)
Windows 7 64bit
Everything else standard

Game runs very smooth (60-80fps) comparison to Stress Tests and BWE1-3. Anet did a great job on optimization before release.

CptBadger.5918:

This game is terribly coded.

Sorry, Rift is terribly coded. They did a good job with this game.

It’s pretty obvious where their focus was. Getting the low-med hardware running well.

Arena Net said as bunch around the the first BWE. However they did promise to get high-end hardware running well by the time it launched as well. They have yet to deliver on this one. It’s pretty evident in the way Umbra 3 behaves with Kepler cards. You CPU hits a wall? Your frames will drop. It’s unavoidable in such a huge MMO. But if you have a kepler card you are going to lose even more frames because your card is going to downclock itself too.

They did a good job ? You gotta be joking.

Please explaing to me, how barely achieving 30 frames per second in Lion’s Arch or Black Citadel at LOWEST POSSIBLE SETTINGS with 2 x Radeon 6870 (Crossfired), Phenom X6 @ 4 Ghz, 16 GB of RAM is a “job well done” on their part ?

And don’t get me started about WvW.

What are you smoking ?

@Varna: Could you please go in more details ? You seem to know what you’re talking about.

Well, for an “MMO”, they did a good job. Of course they will go further with optimization, so things will get even better. MMOs are a different beast than regular single player games (I know you didn’t compare them, but many people do). I’ve played a couple popular western MMOs (WoW, Rift, TOR) and Anet did a great job optimizing this game comparison to the ones above (except WoW because of its age).

Anyhow, I have these specs below:

Phenom II X4 3.8Ghz
HD 6870 1Gb (newest drivers)
Windows 7 64bit
Game on “High” settings running at 60-80 FPS everywhere except WvW (~20-80 FPS).

Sounds to me like your PC or setup (software or hardware wise) is the problem. 1st thing I would do is start with the crossfire setup. Some games are picky about 2 VGA cards. Then I would play with your drivers. Anyhow, good luck.

I’m not that knowledgeable, I’m most recycling second hand information from Guru3D. I have been rather obsessed with getting this game to run well since it’s the only thing I’m playing at the moment.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4408566&postcount=95

“With respect to Guild Wars 2, unfortunately I do not think we will see performance improvements any time soon from Nvidia driver releases.

The largest cause for performance loss in GW2 on Kepler hardware is related to an interaction between the Umbra 3 Middleware and the design of GPU Boost.

I filed a report on this with Nvidia, but it is doubtful to me that they will reconsider how GPU Boost is implemented. It’s exceedingly frustrating that Fermi hardware nets more performance in this specific scenario due to the ability to set a static clock, unaffected by turbo boost.

As I wrote in the other thread, when Umbra 3 pegs the CPU due to calculating occlusion culling (many player meshes onscreen in wvwvw) GPU Boost detects low utilization and drops the ROP domain clock on the Kepler.

This change results in an -additional- FPS drop at a time when a higher ROP domain clockspeed is needed to maintain consistent FPS.

The only way I can see getting around this is to allow end users to override GPU Boost, which Nvidia said will never happen. Frustrating! "

Update on my “tweaking”

Any other AMD-8150 users out there… make certain your mobo is latest bios…. some new ones came out recently… also make sure your mobo OS drivers have been updated as well… same thing, new ones out last few months. I get 15-25% better GPU utilization now and better framerates…

Varna is correct… there are these underlying hardware driver “issues” that will take time to hash out… whether that will happen in the next 6 months, tough question to answer.

That in addition to tweaks with the GW2 coding… will see the results … give it 6 months… then re-evaluate… with all the recent MMO’s out; they have all had these issues… unless they were made for Pentuim 2’s like hmmm… what was that horrible game thats been around forever and still stinks… oh yeah… WoW… Kung-Fu Panda hax — roflmao

Peter.1640:

i understand this is a very prevalent problem for a large portion of the community and that a.net is working hard to improve it bit by bit (as i have seen some small fps improvements). but does anyone know what the exact problem is? is it that certain graphics cards aren’t compatible with the game? or will it be easily fixed once a new driver is released for each respective card? just very confused and wondering if anyone knows the solution process or the complexities behind the process and can shine some light on it.

my general specs are:

core i7 processor
8gigs ram
amd hd mobility radeon 6970 2gigs
up to date drivers on everything

one of my friends is running the same specs except with an nvidea and runs with no lag. i’m guessing amd vs nvidea is the issue here?

You have a mobility radeon with a GPU core to memory bandwidth of 115.2GB/s – you are bottleknecked and your GPU is sitting waiting. People really need to stop saying they have a high end machine when clearly they don’t.

My 2xGTX580 in SLI has 384GB/s GPU core to memory bandwidth almost 4 times your bandwidth and I get 100fps PVE 60 fps WvW full details + shadows ultra. So do the math – people need to research and learn more before they purchase and stop buying mobile machines for playing games on high end.

Plus – who on earth would buy am AMD processor in the last 2 years? I’m no fan boy I’ve owned an AMD CPU in the past but people really need to do their research regarding performance.

And when you say prevalent? you mean over ONE MILLION people play this game and there would be lucky to be a hundred people with genuine high end machine issues in the forums?

You know 100* 100/1000000 = 0.01% ?

Edit: change bits to Bytes

Nvidia has 306.23 drivers out now

hi, i recently bought a new computer, for the purposes of playing gw2 on high quality but for some reason when i max out quality settings my FPS drop below 10. Does this have anything to do with me using a n300 usb dongle on my computer. Here are the specs of my computer please let me know whether its the usb dongle or my tower.

AsRock Z77- Pro3 intel Z77
1155/4xDDR3/SATA3/USB3/HDMI/GLAN/RAID ATX Motherboard
Intel BX80637153570 i5-3570 3.4/3.8GHZ LGA1155 IVY Bridge
Boxed CPU Cores 4/6MB
Kingston HyperX 8g Kit(4Gx2) DDR3 1600
Seagate 3.5 Barracuda 2TB ST2000DM001 SATA3 7200rpm
64MB Cache Hard Disk
Thermaltake TR – 700PCAU TR2 700Watt. 80+Bronze PSU
Antec DF-85 Dark fleet Gaming Case No PSU
Gigabyte 2gb GTX660Ti PCI-E VGA card

mar.7103:

Anyhow, I have these specs below:

Phenom II X4 3.8Ghz
HD 6870 1Gb (newest drivers)
Windows 7 64bit
Game on “High” settings running at 60-80 FPS everywhere except WvW (~20-80 FPS).

Sounds to me like your PC or setup (software or hardware wise) is the problem. 1st thing I would do is start with the crossfire setup. Some games are picky about 2 VGA cards. Then I would play with your drivers. Anyhow, good luck.

60 FPS everywhere ? Even in Lion’s Arch or Black Citadel ? Could you please FRAPS it and post it ?

Also, my drivers are fine. Everything is updated, including the CAP profile.
If I disable Crossfire, my framerate plummets even further so it’s not the case. My PSU is perfectly fine too.

It’s just shoddy coding.

Varna.5162:

The only way I can see getting around this is to allow end users to override GPU Boost, which Nvidia said will never happen. Frustrating! "

Well, but I have 2 AMD cards, not sure what kind of technology they use, but the game runs terrible for what it looks.

What is really odd is that I have pretty much exactly the same spec as the OP but I am not seeing the same problems :/

My Specs : Intel Core i7-2670 2.2Ghz x2
8GB RAM
ATI Mob Radeon 6970 2GB RAM
Catalyst 12.6
Windows 7 64-bit

Running everything on the highest settings (except Best Texture Filtering) and lowest FPS is 35 so far.

I use Game Booster and keep my system lean but maybe this means the cause of the problem is not so simple?

I sympathise with others having issues as I have been through it many times before

Me and my friend (With a different setup: Nvidia card and Intel CPU) have no problems whatsoever except the occasional lag drop. GW2 runs much better than it previously did in beta. It is on your side…not coding considering people are running the game fine.

I don’t know if my computer counts as a high end or whatever, but my specs are;

Intel core i5 750 @2.67 GHz
16gb’s of ddr3
Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 Toxic

I suppose it’s decent, but still. The amount of lag I get in GW2 is outrageous. If I am to compare the specs of GW2 and say, BF3 they are as follows:

GW2:
Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Better
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
2 GB RAM
25 GB available HDD space
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)

BF3 Recommended Specs:
Windows 7 64-bit
Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
4GB RAM
DirectX 11 Nvidia or AMD ATI card, Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 or ATI Radeon 6950.
Graphics card memory: 1 GB
15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version

I for one don’t see how with my specs I can play BF3 on close to highest settings with a fps of over 45, whereas I play GW2 on basically lowest settings with spikes all the way down to 9 Fps.
Don’t know if driver or me beingkitten and not getting how specs works.

mar.7103:

It is on your side…not coding considering people are running the game fine.

EVERYTIME, in ANY MMO, where there are people with high-end rigs complaining about poor framerates (RIFT, Age Of Conan, SWTOR, etc, etc), there is ALWAYS this magic phrase.

Sometimes it’s even used by developers (say hi to James Ohlen).

“IT IS YOUR RIG”

So it seems to me, that 95% of PC owners have trouble with their hardware. Even though we all run PROPERLY OPTIMIZED games just fine.

Battlefield 3 ? Runs great.
Deus EX ? Pretty flawless.
Grand Theft Auto IV ? Not so much.
Brink ? Not so much either.
Shogun 2 ? Same story.

All very different breed than GW2, but I hope you get the point.

It can’t be the rigs, I’ve seen ppl with a 6950 2gb and a I7 2700K having just 20~30 fps.

CptBadger.5918:

mar.7103:

It is on your side…not coding considering people are running the game fine.

EVERYTIME, in ANY MMO, where there are people with high-end rigs complaining about poor framerates (RIFT, Age Of Conan, SWTOR, etc, etc), there is ALWAYS this magic phrase.

Sometimes it’s even used by developers (say hi to James Ohlen).

“IT IS YOUR RIG”

So it seems to me, that 95% of PC owners have trouble with their hardware. Even though we all run PROPERLY OPTIMIZED games just fine.

Battlefield 3 ? Runs great.
Deus EX ? Pretty flawless.
Grand Theft Auto IV ? Not so much.
Brink ? Not so much either.
Shogun 2 ? Same story.

All very different breed than GW2, but I hope you get the point.

Apple vs Oranges again.

I think the problem would be game engines and how it render things. For the most games you have listed BF3 and GTA IV would come close to any MMOs since the environment are dynamic or open world. Other games are static or the assets are fixed.

Well let’s compare BF3 (64 max players) vs GW2 World vs World ( 300 ++ players). Imagine 300 players in one location your CPU/GPU needs to render everything (Models, animation, effects etc) vs BF3 which only have 64 players at max at which current gen cpu/gpu handles fairly well. I think that’s why they reduced the the distance you render object to somewhat 100-200 meters?

Now if you compare it to ex Deus Ex most of the time the only dynamic objects you see are the NPC (probably less than 10 attacking you) and some environmental objects ,that’s why you’re getting stellar performance.

^ But then why are the requirements so much lower than say bf3? If this game requires a better processer than a intel i5 750, and a better graphics card than a sapphire radeon hd 6950 toxic, it should say so on the box, which it doesn’t, this is what’s on the box:

Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Better
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
2 GB RAM
25 GB available HDD space
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)

And with the amount of lag I get with my setup(10-15 fps in towns, I never dared trying wvw) I can’t imagine the slideshow someone would get with the specs listed in the requirements.

hi, i recently bought a new computer, for the purposes of playing gw2 on high quality but for some reason when i max out quality settings my FPS drop below 10. Does this have anything to do with me using a n300 usb dongle on my computer. Here are the specs of my computer also when i play diablo 3, lol and other games my settings are maxed and everything is fine but wif gw2 my graphics seem poorer compared to ppl with not as good computers as me also my fps when go over 10
AsRock Z77- Pro3 intel Z77
1155/4xDDR3/SATA3/USB3/HDMI/GLAN/RAID ATX Motherboard
Intel BX80637153570 i5-3570 3.4/3.8GHZ LGA1155 IVY Bridge
Boxed CPU Cores 4/6MB
Kingston HyperX 8g Kit(4Gx2) DDR3 1600
Seagate 3.5 Barracuda 2TB ST2000DM001 SATA3 7200rpm
64MB Cache Hard Disk
Thermaltake TR – 700PCAU TR2 700Watt. 80+Bronze PSU
Antec DF-85 Dark fleet Gaming Case No PSU
Gigabyte 2gb GTX660Ti PCI-E VGA card

CptBadger.5918:

So it seems to me, that 95% of PC owners have trouble with their hardware.

Frankly, you don’t have nearly enough data to arrive at that conclusion and assumptions help noone. What you are perceiving is the “vocal minority”.

Reporting low FPS without specific performance measurements isn’t actionable.

hi all, i have same problem, my confing is:
cpu:i5 750
gpu: radeon 5750 driver catalyst 12.8
ram: 4gb
OS: win 7
MB : asus maximus III formula
psu: 600 W
directX 11

i try low and hight details but i have ever 10 fps in almost all zone. it is very bad because my friend with an old dual core he run the game ever with 30 fps. im very angry! there is a solution?

@Alabasterjones
That’s why it’s called minimum. Most of the problems you see here are probably user settings. You must also take accounts that everyone is not playing on the same resolution.

@xXxSAGExXx.
Try toning down your settings. Specially if you’re in WvW or Large Events.

@stilness
It would think your computer could easilly do better than 10 FPS. It kind of sounds like something is forcing your GPU to run at a much lower clockspeed than normal. Do you have any programs running in the background? Something like a streaming media player? For example, if you have Hardware Accelleration turned on for youtube videos, it can force the GPU clock down to 300 or 400 MHz, instead of its normal gaming/performance speed.

It’s easiest to check this if you have dual monitors, but you can do it on one monitor. You just need a utility like “MSI Afterburner” ( think it’s called that) or the Catalyse Control Center that comes with the ATI drivers, and go to the “Performance” or “Overclocking” tab. It should show you your GPU clock speed. The catch, on single monitor computers, is that the GPU clock can change based on what program has focus, so switching away from GW2 can change the clock speed.

@Alpha, then answer why I have 15 fps on absolute highest settings, and 15 fps on absolute lowest settings.

@Alabasterjones
What resolution are you playing in? and what location do you usually hang out to get 15fps? I have a slower machine than yours and getting 20 fps~25 fps at lions arch (1920×1080 reso, E6300 + 560ti) what version of cata are you using? Have you tried 12.8? or 12.9 beta? perform a clean install for gpu drivers.

My graphics card is a GTX 470. I was running the game beautifully on all high setting for over a week now. When I logged off last night it was fine.
Nothing changed, there was no updates to the pc. The game just suddenly became unplayable for me today.
No matter what I do or try, I am unable to get above 15 fps. All areas had the same issue. I tested my computer completely… there is nothing wrong with it, and I obviously don’t need to upgrade. I still had 5-15 fps with all settings on low.

I hope that this issue gets enough attention. I really miss the game. :*( I had new friends going to joining up soon .. who will not be now that I am unable to play. ;_;
Hoping for an update of any kind.

Alabasterjones.7045:

@Alpha, then answer why I have 15 fps on absolute highest settings, and 15 fps on absolute lowest settings.

There’s no way you should have 15 FPS. Have you looked at your GPU clockspeed when GW2 is running? It really sounds like something is throttling it.

@Noctura
If you didn’t change anything, have you tried having the Windows Restore feature reset your computer to the last restore point? On my old computer, Windows would periodically screw up its drivers and wreck the graphics performance and network connectivity. The only way I could fix it was to restore the computer to the last restore point. Nearly all the time, windows would say that it couldn’t restore anything because nothing had changed, but just going through the motions would fix something that would get the computer working properly again.

I’ll try the restore point option and let you know if it does anything.

Nothing else is messing up or working poorly. Just GW2. The only game I want to play right now.

That actually made it much worse. The fps is now at 2 and doesn’t move up or down at all…

This isn’t my computer. :/

@Noctura
How far back did you go when you chose the restore point? The intent was to go back to the closest restore point to today, or just before the unexplained drop in FPS. If you went back further than that, then try restoring a again at the closest restore point to today or the change in FPS.

If that is the point you chose, then maybe check the Window’s driver settings and see if they’ve changed. Selecting any restore point shouldn’t have affected your computer’s performance unless it undid a driver update or some settings changes.