Guild Wars 2

Off the top of my head, C:\Program Files has specific restrictions on it that can make installing/changing/updating files written to it a hassle.

A lot of programs install elsewhere to avoid those issues.

Experience: software developer who got fed up and installed things to the user directory.

Well guys, I think I’ve reached the end of what I can do.

I pulled my 6990 and plugged it into a second computer, still getting the x1 / x8 speeds. Cleaned it thoroughly and plugged it back into my computer, same speeds.

However, I took a 6570 that was in the second computer (which read at x16 2.0) and plugged it into the slot my 6990 was in. Voila! x16 speeds according at GPU-Z.

Both were using the same drivers, it’s got to be a hardware problem. I’ll look into my options for either getting it repaired (it’s way out of warranty by now) or look into new cards. I’m thinking maybe it’s time to try Nvidia?

Thanks again to everyone for your help and advice!

Well, small update that I don’t think changed anything.

I updated my BIOS drivers, since a later version had come out that added support to 4th gen Intel processors, so makes sense that I need that since I’ve got a 4670k.

While thinking of BIOS drivers, I took a look at my GPU drivers and used atiflash to examine them. The master gpu looked fine, but the slave gpu had unknown spi and other not too good looking messages.

Thinking ok, that’s got to be the problem, I spent a long time trying to flash the 880MHz version of the 6990 BIOS. I had lots of failures, no boots, and a success-ish (gpu-z said it was at 880, but when testing the card wouldn’t go above 250).

Finally I got both the master and the slave gpus showing proper BIOS in atiflash using the default 830MHz BIOS I downloaded from techpowerup.

Possibly Important Update!

After looking at the gpus’ BIOS, I realized that my main/master and secondary/slave readings I posted before were backwards. The master is running at PCI-E x1 2.0 and the slave is running at x8.

There’s also some wierd number differences in the shaders property of GPU-Z. Here are the screenshots of the two gpus:

Master: http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/14/07/03/70k.png
Slave: http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/14/07/03/e0k.png

I’m feeling confident that if I can somehow get the master to run at x8 or x16, I’ll see the proper performance for my card.

Thanks again to everyone for your advice!

sirsquishy.8531:

do you have ANY other PCI-E slots populated?!

Nope, though I know what you’re talking about. Sadly there aren’t any other cards that would affect its performance, just the 6990.

On a (I have no clue but possibly) related note, when I try to flip the 6990 BIOS switch, I don’t get any monitor output from the card. It’s currently sitting at BIOS 1 (830MHz), and I don’t get anything from BIOS 2 (880MHz).

My motherboard freezes at code 62 “Installation of the PCH Runtime Services” when BIOS 2 is set on the 6990.

Thanks for the advice guys.

@Brutality

I’ve already tried messing with shadows and reflections after reading up on them, it was the first thing I tried. Granted, I did see a performance gain of 5-8fps, but that was a gain from 15-20fps to begin with. I’ve also done all those CCC optimizations.

@sirsquishy

That makes sense, and the card should be running at x16 2.0. It’s in the top slot and I’ve verified in my mobo manual that that is the x16 lane.

It would make sense to me if both GPUs on the card were running at x8 2.0, but they’re running at x8 and x1 respectively. Plus the GPU-Z screenshots I’ve seen around the web for the 6990 have displayed x16 2.0.

@Nutjob

While granted I haven’t monitored memory usage, I’ve got 8gigs of Corsair Dominator Platinum, and they’re beautiful. Plus I’m still encountering fps issues outside of GW2 in Furmark, which I’m using to run gpu tests.

Yea, I knew about the fullscreen issue with Crossfire, I’m running at 1920×1080 fullscreen. I just got done with re-seating and cleaning the graphics card (and making sure it was in the 16x top slot). No change.

In GPU-Z, when I toggle through the two gpus, one says it is running at x8 2.0 and the other says it is running at x1 2.0. Doing the gpu-z render test doesn’t change their state.

Even if there’s not a huge difference from x8 to x16, if that second gpu is running at x1, that’s got to be a pretty noticeable difference. It would also explain why my card is running as well in performance tests and other games. I thought it was just getting old…

Edit: Updated my drivers from 13.12 to 14.4 with no change. I also went into the BIOS and it says all three channels are x16? That doesn’t match the manual, but it confirms that the card is running at x8. Changing it from Auto to Gen1/Gen2/Gen3 doesn’t move the speed, and I also tried disabling a power save feature for PCIe in the BIOS

Thanks for the reply!

I noticed that in CPU-Z my cpu clock is fluctuating rapidly between 3400-3800 MHz, so there may be some optimization or turbo boost issues there. I’m looking for a cpu monitoring program to run in game so I can check its usage.

Dust isn’t an issue in any of the case fans, but I cleaned them just to be sure.

While doing more monitoring from my card though, I found something strange. It’s got two gpus and the first one is maxed out at 99% (stable temps) but the second one is only doing 10-18% load. I don’t know if this is something that AMD does with Crossfire, or if Guild Wars 2 isn’t using it correctly.

And… well look at that. It’s running at x8 though it should be x16. I’m 90% sure it’s in the x16 slot on my motherboard, I’ll have to figure out what’s going on there.

Edit: By the way, my motherboard is an ASUS Maximus VI Formula

For the past week and a half I’ve been having some pretty noticeable FPS issues. Normally I run the game at medium-high settings with around 50fps. Lately it’s been more like 20-30fps at best.

Today, in an instance staring at a corner at the lowest possible settings I get a max of 22fps, and normal gameplay is 8-12fps, 4-6fps during combat. Here are my system specs:

i5-4670K @ 3.4 GHz (haven’t gotten around to overclocking it, it’s still pretty new)
AMD 6990 @ 910 MHz / 1500 MHz
Samsung 840 Pro SSD
Windows 8.1 64-bit

I haven’t done the hours of testing yet, but at first glance my card didn’t seem to go above 60% and my cpu was around 30-40% max usage, not running other programs.

I get that there are a lot of players on, though I would assume the low fps is some graphic issue and not lag/connectivity issues. Has anyone else with similar specs had issues in the past few weeks with their fps?

That, or maybe I’ve missed some common knowledge optimizations that I’ve been looking for?