Guild Wars 2

Gw2 doesn’t currently, actively, support 4k. Meaning your User Interface/chat will be very small even on the largest settings. It’s not terrible at 1440p.

As for performance. That’s mainly dictated by your CPU.

Post your system specs and I can give you better insight as for what to expect.

Healix.5819:

Crevox.5806:

Disabling SLI had no difference on FPS besides shifting the GPU usage all onto one GPU. Bus speed of the GPU is normal.

GW2 does a lot of back and forth with the GPU. This isn’t something you’ll notice in most other games, but when the bandwidth of your GPU is being limited, it’ll effectively half your FPS. This can be caused by putting the GPU in the wrong type of slot or simply not seating it properly. In GPU-Z, the optimal bus interface is going to be PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x16 3.0.

At 1920×1080 outside of the zerg, you should easily be able to get 80+ FPS on high settings in the core game, 120+ overclocked. Ensure shadowplay isn’t recording in the background and if you’re Windows 10, the same for the Xbox app recorder. Check your processes for anything else wasting the CPU and exclude GW2 in any anti-virus software. Rename Gw2-64.exe to Gw2.exe, simply for detection software.

All solid advice. And to reiterate his first point, you’re looking for this while Gw2 is running

When installing this new monitor..Did you make sure you plugged it into your GPU and not your motherboard?

For starters

Just took that today. With my weak setup(mostly GPU).

No one in this whole thread should be performing worse than me, and that’s while (trying to) record at 63FPS(reduced frame-time)

If something is wrong, it’s not “just gw”, it’s a software conflict or a mass bloatware problem.

Curious, how many processes running while playing?

I can personally tell you that software is very susceptible to overclocking.

Though, Gw2 has gave me no problems with high CPU/GPU clocks compared to other games.

GTA-V being the most picky.

Some settings are far more intensive/inefficient, per CPU cycle, than the enhancement of visuals is worth.

i.e. Reflections- Reflections add very little to the scene( I prefer the water without them) imo. Also, they have a huge drawback to the way GW2 builds its world.

Every map(with traversable bodies of water) has a giant, constantly reflecting, body of water under it.

If they want to make a pond or lake, they dip the terrain level below sea level.

So even if you can’t see water, with reflections all the way up, it’s eating your CPU cycles.

Do you have GPU-Z? Check to make sure your PCI-E bus is actually kicking in to 3.0x

It’s been a common problem in the past.

Should look like this

If something is wrong with that, it’ll most likely be running x1 speeds.

No hostility intended..I’m just saying, with hardware as powerful as yours, if it was a “just gw2 problem” everyone running a <$1500 PC would be here with issues like yours.

From what I can tell, the performance you get in Gw2 is abysmal compared to your specs.

Since there’s no deluge of posts like that I can only conclude it’s a conflict and/or sub-optimal setting on your PC.

The important bit of information these guys need is this red box

Serenity.6135:

I don’t know what is happening … I keep getting some error message about my firewall , disconnects, and difficulty with logging.

Going to need MUCH more info. Like your server, what country you’re in, up/download speeds, other devices on network, firewall settings(allow Gw2.exe?).

I could go on but that should generally cover it.

Reply if you need some tips on setting it up. MSI and RT aren’t the most user friendly, one-click set up programs around.

But it’s by far the most robust combination if you want hardware monitoring and video capture/pre-record.

It’s the CPU I was more worried about and you’re right at the limits of thermal throttles.

GPU can withstand more heat but 85C is way too hot IMO.

Clean that puppy out.

All of those games are pretty light compared to GW2, besides Tera and Blade and Soul.

But that could still be the case. Gw2 heats up my CPU more than TW3 or GTAV, for example.

Download Speccy and let it run for a bit when you play. Take a screen shot of the temps after a few minutes and up to at least 10 minutes if you can.
Provide results and we can confirm or move to a new prognoses.

It’s not “just gw2”. My hardware in far inferior to yours(see below) but I’m walking around the beta area with +50fps on high/ultra.

Just need to know how to streamline a PC to play single thread/render heavy MMOs.

Sounds like Thermal Throttling to me, assuming it’s a laptop, since it has a mobile card.

Have you looked at your temperatures lately? Opened it up and cleaned it in the past 6 months?

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

that will not be possible with this game and the new cpus coming out !! these are the reasons why https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/no-new-system-specs-Path-of-fire-no-buy/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Minimum-System-Requirements-Clarification/first#post6675879

and I got both a I-7 and waiting for the new thread ripper to come out myself . even tho I can not use them for this game to get the best bleeding edge use and feel I like

I went back and got a cheep I-5 core intel over clocked it with a gfx 960 card . and called it a day fully knowing after this and the 200+ posts in the last few weeks about this .

I will never ever be able to use 4K or max out the game with using all hardware fully . but at least other games that are coming out now I will be ready for them and the games like wow that have already done the system upgrades to their old games

There’s been many lighting/shadow/texture detail enhancements.

They’re just not HUGE changes and not very well documented, as most players don’t care about the new alpha blended floating point christmas bulbs on the trees. (there’s a huge nostalgia kick)

When they revamp the entire system with better graphics, physics, movement tracking.

They’ll call it Gw3.

Geforce experience. Have shadowplay on? Kill it.

Make a clean gw2.exe profile in Experience client. You should see better results.

Edit: also, something with the Xbox apps on windows 10 seem to interfere with some applications. I can’t remember the details.

I stopped that silly stuff on install.

Same here.
Sucks when you have a really long password.

Oh I see! Can’t get ingame atm but is their an option to “Disable Hints and Tips” or something similar?

Seems like I remembered one…

Well..It’s either do the beginner mission just to unlock masteries(not sure what mission it was) or request anet redesign a bunch of code for one persons outlier situation, a situation that should change organically on its own in little time.

That site is pretty much trash, along with Game Debate.
And those minimum requirements are a laugh.

I don’t think anyone can give you a definite answer, yet, if you can play it(let alone enjoyably) on that system.

My guess is, based off not hearing anything about new groundbreaking effects or super high resolution textures, you’ll do ok.

Expect around the same performance you get in Tarir but also expect many bugs/glitches/technical oversights in the first few months of launch.

That’s pretty much expected when you have a sudden burst of particles that are supersampled.

Color samples are taken at several instances inside the pixel (not just at the center as normal), and an average color value is calculated. This is achieved by rendering the image at a much higher resolution than the one being displayed, then shrinking it to the desired size, using the extra pixels for calculation. The result is a downsampled image with smoother transitions from one line of pixels to another along the edges of objects.

The in-game supersampling option is pretty heavy compared to other AA methods. You should have an option to set Adaptive Supersampling in your graphics card control panel, it’s much lighter on resources.

64bit only Operating systems? That’s an interesting(and welcome) move.

Though I feel that will stop more people from playing the game than stating a hilariously low minimum CPU requirement.

I played GW1 on an AMD Athlon II 635 X4 and it wasn’t terrific even then.

And that Processor is about twice as capable than the Athlon 64 x2.

Are you talking about Mastery Points?

…Might want to do some wiki searching on the issue. You should be spending those points.

Windows 10 Auto-updating in the background? I know performance goes down the tube on my nephews laptop and you can’t really tell what’s going on until you restart it and you’re prompted with “Windows is preparing updates”.

Cleaned the PC recently? Check temps on your GPU and CPU. Usually you can just pop the side off and if your Heatsink fins and fan blades aren’t completely clogged/dusted over, that shouldn’t be the issue.

You can’t lock it to a custom FPS without a third party application(not sure if Nvidia CP or CCC has those options).

I personally have Riva Tuner+MSI Afterburner installed which can lock the FPS at anything you want, on any game you want. Plus so much more.

I’d like to see the graphical differences with UI on/off. That’s an interesting symptom I’ve never seen with GW2.

Not sure what you mean by “pixelated” in those screens. I see low resolution textures though.

Healix is right, that is an odd aspect ratio…I’m hoping you cropped that screen to that size and that’s not the custom resolution you’re playing in.

The ASUS VG248QE 24 Monitor is a 1080p 144hz monitor. I’m guessing, if you’re using a sub-standard resolution to gain FPS, you’re actually hurting yourself.

Should always leave your monitor on its native resolution.(1920×1080)

It can be an issue. Many time’s I’ve seen reports just like this, with other Triple A games running fine. Plus the games it mentioned are all fairly light on resources. Division is pretty highly instanced with most interactions pre-scripted. Overwatch just isn’t heavy on GPUs at all with its low resolution textures, flat shaders and basic animations.

Download GPU-Z if you don’t have it already.

Fire up GPU-Z and then GW2, keep an eye on your Bus Interface link speeds. the far right should read x16 3.0 or something is wrong with the connection between your GPU and motherboard.

Seeing as it’s happening on PS2 I’m leaning towards this being the culprit.

It’s been quite common over the years.

Ashantara.8731:

Wow! Can this be done with the 64-bit client of GW2 as well?

Yes it can. The 64bit client beta tests is what made me switch from SweetFX(my version didn’t support 64 bit) to ReShade.

Ashantara.8731:

If so, PLEASE let me download your preset! <3

Unlike SweetFX, I’ve never tried to share ReShade presets and am rather unsure of what you’d need. I’m assuming it would be a copy of my MasterEffect.h file
and the ReShade.fx file.

The majority of my changes for Gw2 are done purely through the MasterEffect.h table, which is just a text document.

Have a pretty old 27" monitor and ReShade looks amazing with the right settings.

Here’s an album of Southsun and Orr

And one of my favorite screenshots I’ve taken

Prime95 is a CPU stress test, Furmark is a GPU stress test.

They’re handy to tell if your overclocks/power delivery/temperatures are stable

Need more info as well: CPU model, GPU, Power Supply.

Asumir.1978:

The density is caused by a history of crashing whenever an update happens. ‘Please’ is not going to excuse your name-calling.

If your PC crashes because of Gw2 Updates, many more would crash as well. It would be a widely spread report of crashing (Like the recent major patch had)

Asumir.1978:

As for opening this thing, I need someone who knows how. It’s not just a matter of a screwdriver.

It literally is just a matter of a screwdriver, often time just thumb screws.

Then to know what to look for, obstruct your CPU fan so it cant spin backwards and blow it out with compressed air. Repeat on GPU.

Make sure you have all streaming options turned off in your Nvidia Control Panel.
There’s a few more settings people have mentioned but it’s been ages since I used an Nvidia GPU.

Also don’t use autodetect or pre-set graphics options. There’s a few settings, like Shadows, Reflections, and Character Model Limits, that are either poorly optimized(Reflections and, to a lesser extent, shadows) or just heavy on draw calls(character model limits) which is going to be his main bottleneck in that rig.

Jhoul.6923:

Sorry for the duplicate, ANET should address this soon, since more and more clients will move to 4k as time passes by.

If by “time” you mean years and years, when CPUs are strong enough to keep up decent FPS in 4k. Then yes, more people will.

At the moment, a large majority of the player base can’t keep “Decent” fps with decent settings at 1080p.

Loli Ruri.8307:

You could try running the game in -cuda mode. Give it a try, hopefully it works and offloads the game workload to the GPU.

That’s been a non-functioning command line argument for a long time though.

-cuda

Moonstarmac is correct, it sounds to me like a GPU link speed problem.

Since I just recently linked the screenshot, it should look something like this

loseridoit.2756:

ummm, you should list your ssd….. not all ssd are good. Some are utter garbage like kingston now 300

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

LoserIdiot is right, I was a victim of that SSD but it didnt negatively impact my GW2 FPS at all. Maybe a half second to a second more in load times, depending on the zone.

Salival.6917:

I have bit better machine then you OP I7 / gf 980 16 gb ram … and i struggle to maintain 40 fps… spmetimes its unplayeble (5 fps ) Dunno if its Gw2 problem or Win10 .. Config in game i use dosnt matter from Lowest to Ultra nothing changes i really have no idea.

What gen i7? The first gens with their weaker IPC and slower Core Clocks? Struggling to maintain 40 sounds about right if so.

Though 5fps does make me think of another problem. Are they quick dips to 5FPS or do they stay around there in certain areas?

Might want to download GPU-Z, start up GW2 and then GPU-Z and take a screenshot like this

And monitor the temps of your 980.

Both replies are solid advice to the same culprit, GPU Bus Link Speed. It’s a rather common and tricky to pinpoint as to why Gw2 triggers it so hard.

Another suggestion: Judging by the size of your scroll bar on the Processes tab, I’m going to assume you have a ton of processes going. Both user and unneeded OS applications.

Look to trim that down if it’s much over 70. Black Viper is the place to go, but read carefully.

Been using MSI AB for years, never had a problem with it and GW2 and still haven’t seen one.

I think the problem lies deeper as well.

AllDatAngst.4208:

so I had it replaced and brought it home- And immediately discovered that my FPS for GW2 had bottomed out.

Other games seem to be running fine. I’m running Windows 7, Intel Core i7-4790k CPU / 4 GHz.

Sounds a lot to me like the GPU Link Speed bug. The shop you took your PC probably bumped your GPU while installing a new fan/heatsink and altered the connection between the PCI-E slot and the GPU.

Download GPU-Z and then start it up while GW2 is running. Make sure Gw2 isn’t minimized and look for the “Bus Interface” Text field: As shown here

If that reads as x1 or x4 instead of x16 or x8. That’s definitely the problem.

Since you took your PC in to someone to change a fan, I’m not real comfortable suggesting you take your GPU out and put it back in the slot. But that would fix it.

Gator.5729:

Being that there are more people without FPS issues, what do you propose that Anet fixes?

Anet needs to fix some players reading comprehension. It’s been stated many times, even in this very thread, that Nvidia driver auto-updates are USUALLY a problem.

Then here’s all these people with Win10+nvidia GPUs complaining about performance.

And then there’s some that don’t list PC specs even after you ask them…

Techsupport is a mess.

First off we need system specs. CPU,GPU, RAM, OS.

Has their been any Automatic GPU Updates? This is a common problem with Win10 and Nvidia cards especially.

Provide this information and it will be much easier to diagnose probably causes.

Charrbeque.8729:

My issue with low FPS is that it isn’t the same everywhere in the game. I could be running around Straights of Devistation and get 50+ FPS, but when in Rata Sum near the bank I get around 18-20. Standing in front of SAB right now I get around 15FPS and that’s just standing there doing nothing.

Welcome to the world of real time rendering! Running around straits is very light on rendering compared to the entrance of SAB with 20-100 people running around the vicinity. Play Character Models and NPCs are the most resource intensive things to render ingame

Charrbeque.8729:

The framerate issue seems to be map-wide, as in, you don’t need to have all the special effects and players in front of you on screen for your framerate to drop. 50 players could be on 1 side of the map and you could be clear across on the other side with nobody around and nothing special happening and your FPS won’t be as good as it should be.

For example, around SAB there are tons of special effects from the decorations, player texture, back skins, weapon skins, etc. and my framerate is bad. I go down to the bank/trading post area below and there are only a few players in the area but my framerate only goes up maybe 2-4 FPS.

This is more of an issue with Culling. Just because you dont see them doesn’t mean they still aren’t getting rendered. This is affected mostly by LOD Distance.
(Fyi, water reflections never get culled, even if you cant see water on the map)

Charrbeque.8729:

I also proved it to my uncle. In Metrica Province he was getting 90+ FPS. I told him “check your framerate while standing in front of SAB in Rata Sum”. His FPS dropped down to 30 or less. That’s how friggen bad this issue is.

As explained above, perfectly typical in this game. Not a “problem” anyone here can solve. But this part is odd…

Charrbeque.8729:

GPU-Z seems to show my graphics card is running a few degrees cooler with just the desktop and nothing else. Before I was getting around 40-42 degrees Celsius with the game running or just the desktop.

Your GPU is the same temperature after idling on the desktop for 5-10 mins as it is after playing for +15 mins? That is not a good sign at all. You could have the worlds best production watercooling system and not see load temperatures anywhere that close to idle temps.

What’s your system specifications?

I’ve lost count of the unstable Nvidia driver releases since Win10 came out.

Now that all this stuff is getting automatically installed for most users on win10, you’d think they would do a little more QA.

Id first start by lowering Reflections, I keep them on none.

Reflections are HIGHLY inefficient in their implementation: Under every map(save a few like HoTM and Mistlock) is a giant body of water. It’s there so when they want to make a lake or large body of water, they dip the terrain level into the water level.

The problem is that the water is constantly reflecting everything, even when you cant see any water.

Next up: What’s your CPU?

Gw2 is much more reliant on your CPUs single core/threaded strength than it is on GPU rendering ability.

If you have an AMD CPU..you’re probably out of luck unless you can Overclock it a hefty amount.

Edit: Also, you have lots of stuff running. Skype, TS3 and Chrome? Definitely eating away your CPU cylces.

Sounds like the PCI-E x1/x4 powersaving bug.

I suggest downloading GPU-Z and taking a screenshot like this

I’m betting when your FPS is low its because your Bus Interface is sticking in the powersaving PCI-E x1/x4 mode when it should go x16.

If it does show x1/x4, reseat your GPU and make sure its seated firmly.

Ansau is correct.

Agreed with the two above, except I’d go as far as to state that the Evo 212 is an EXCELLENT air cooler, especially for the price. There’s very few who out-perform it and none who do for under $70 last I knew.

Since that CPU is pushing 3 years old I would also put money on the heatsink fins being filled with dust and/or the thermal paste being dried up and not conducting heat anymore.

MSI and ASUS is known to make quality coolers, the rest of the card is largely the same.

What’s your CPU, though? Gw2 is MUCH more reliant on CPU single core strength than anything with a GPU.

Infact, if your current GPU is moderately recent and mid-grade or above, you’re probably fine with it.

So to recap: What’s your current PC specifications? CPU,GPU, RAM and Operating System.