Guild Wars 2

Espionage.3685:

GW2 from what I noticed doesn’t use a large amount of VRAM. I think even at 5040×900 and Supersampling I wasn’t able to come close to 1GB usage…

At 2560×1440 it averages around 1.8 GB of VRAM, which means that 2 GB is a good target for most people. 1 GB is not even enough for 1920×1080.

Draco.2806:

Because you’re lucky.

There are tons of people with completely overkill rigs that still barely average 40 FPS on a good day. People with 32Gb of RAM. People with twin overclocked GPUs. People with cutting-edge i7s.

Luck has nothing to do with it. My system runs fine because it’s spec’d correctly and I am careful about component selection. It’s easy to assemble a PC by buying random parts – that doesn’t mean that most people know the best way to do it. Believe it or not, the brand and revision of your motherboard, memory, CPU and GPU can have an effect on your system’s performance, as well as the software configuration…so rattling off spec sheets means little. The systems I build always perform better than “run of the mill” systems with similar spec sheets.

You’re just lucky. Your rig isn’t some divine gift. If anything, investing in large amounts of VRAM and high-end CPU are both wide-spread rookie mistakes.

I NEVER experience a game-busting slowdown when there’s suddenly a horde of players on screen. WvW runs like butter for me. But it’s not because my system is optimal, it’s because I’m lucky…right.

The only rookie mistake here is getting into this debate with me and not knowing when to call it quits. We’re just going in circles now.

Your ideas about memory bandwidth fall flat when turning down textures, shaders, shadows, resolution and, in fact, ALL settings to lowest OR highest doesn’t impact performance AT ALL in most circumstances. That’s been my experience, and experience of most people with decent rigs.

In one case you’re proclaiming how “bandwidth is everything not capacity” and now you’re denouncing bandwidth. Not sure what to make of that.

GW2 isn’t a looker, either. It uses next to no resources at all, and it definitely shouldn’t considering it’s tech and fidelity would be laughed off back in 2006.

The engine is throttled. It’s BAD. It should be sent back to the drawing board.

The actual graphics produced by GW2 are not bad at all. They are nice in general, and among the best by MMO standards. You’re obviously not playing this game at a high resolution with maxed-out effects.

When I play this game, it’s almost like watching a CG movie. Everything looks so nice, so detailed and it really helps draw you in. You’ll actually enjoy “vista hopping” just to see the nice views. In WvW last night I had to do a double-take because the mountain range looked so real, even with the way it reflected into the nearby lake.

Game was pushing a steady 60 FPS too. Must be my luck.

Draco.2806:

That would be me. I use 2Gb RAM and I do not experience any swapping issues. The game doesn’t need any more. It’s very obvious when the engine reads from disc, and it’s never the source of bad performance.

It’s not always obvious, that’s why resource monitor provides a tool to graph “hard faults”. Next time you play the game, or even when you use your comp in general, enable that tool and pay attention to the hard faults/sec metric. If it’s zero, you’re good, if it’s not then your system doesn’t have enough RAM.

It’s what the problem is though. Low framerate. Not swapping.

That may be your problem, but it’s not the only possible problem. What I explained is a phenomenon that many people attribute to an underpowered CPU or GPU when in reality it’s not enough RAM.

32Mb maximum at high resolution and high shadows and super-sampling AA for the output frame (total overkill for most systems), plus 2 to 3 pre-rendered “frames” without any of these if the GPU power allows. So, to be incredibly generous, that’s 64Mb.

See, now you’re making concessions about screen resolution. I play at 2560×1440 on a single display; multi-display systems can have even higher resolutions. If you’re at 1920×1080 you’re no longer on the high end, you’re in the mid range.

Supersampling multiplies the resolution of the frame by your selected multiplier. If you choose 4x as your anti-aliasing level, then you’re using 4x more memory per frame PLUS you need VRAM to perform the resampling operation itself, where the frame is sampled to the output resolution. Multiple copies of the same frame may exist in the memory.

Bottom line – 1920×1080 with maxed-out settings needs more than 1 GB of VRAM, about 2 GB would be ideal for THAT resolution.

I don’t know where you get these ideas from. The bulk of GPU memory has always been used for storing textures/shaders. Rendered frames can’t possibly require 2Gb worth of space. Does your desktop wallpaper require 2Gb worth of space to render? Of course not.

Just a few posts ago you believed that VRAM was included as part of the total system memory available to the program…and now you’re suddenly the expert? Why even mention the desktop? We’re talking about 3D gaming as it pertains to GW2.

Why are you in denial? Whether or not you can afford a better card doesn’t change the fact that YOU WOULD benefit from a higher end card with more than 1 GB of VRAM. You’re obviously one of those people who looks at price first and then tries to rationalize paying less for a sub-optimal system by convincing yourself that you don’t really need anything offered on the higher end products.

High resolutions don’t require more memory, they require more bandwidth. It’s the textures and assets that need a lot of RAM/VRAM space. GW2 doesn’t use that much.

It’s not one or the other, it’s both. You obviously don’t know what GW2 “needs” because you’re complaining that the performance sucks, yet you insist on believing that it’s not because of your hardware.

Draco.2806:

That’s the whole point. Everyone has at least 8Gb RAM these days, even older rigs. The issues of performance have nothing to do with it – and why would they? RAM size helps to alleviate caching/swapping issues, but has no effect on frame-to-frame performance.

At least one person in this thread is only using 2 GB, possibly 4 GB.

Framerate is not the only factor that affects the “playability” of a game. In fact, all framerate really shows you is the “raw power” of your GPU; it does not show you lag that is introduced when the system has to load data from virtual memory (hard disk) even if it’s a small amount.

Your math came down to needing about 32Mb of VRAM in absolute most demanding scenario. That’s about right. You don’t need more than that.

32 MB per frame minimum, plus loading textures and geometry data for the scene, plus keeping partially rendered frames in memory to help improve rendering efficiency.

At 1920×1080 you’d be good with 2 GB. Above that, 3 GB…but 1 GB would cause a lot of assets to get bumped out of VRAM and into system memory, causing lag/stutters as the GPU has to load them from system memory into VRAM.

Get EVGA Precision-X and enable the OSD feature. You can see, in realtime, how much VRAM is being utilized.

The bulk of VRAM will be taken up by textures and shaders, not rendered frames.

RAM is usually used to buffer non-texture information (sounds, meshes, scripts, etc.), so it matters even less.

The GPU can access system RAM directly but whatever its working on needs to be in VRAM. If your card has too little and you want to play at high resolution then it’s going to become an issue.

The Nvidia GTX 580 was considered “handicapped” for only having 1 GB of RAM, so shortly thereafter, 1.5 GB versions started appearing. This was back when running 1920×1080 resolution was something only a small handful of people did. Today, most people are 1920×1080 or 1920×1200.

The need for more memory comes when the game is using more assets within a given location. If those assets don’t amount to much more than 1-2Gb, the extra memory space won’t be used to try and speed up render, it’ll simply be left unused.

You’re right, not EVERY scene in the game will require the full 2 GB of memory, but if you only have 1 GB and 1.3 GB would needed for a given scene, you’re going to notice lag in that scene whereas the guy with 2 GB will fly through without issues.

I don’t think you understand how dire the situation is, because you happen to have a rig that somehow works well with GW2.

I have a system that I built myself by having a deeper understanding of how the components within the system work together. On paper, my system isn’t that much different that what a lot of guys here are listing, and yet the game runs really smoothly for me.

Why?

I can tell you exactly why – because I didn’t cut corners under the false belief that something wasn’t necessary or that a lesser amount was “good enough”. All of the arguments I’m seeing here are what you’d see doled out in your typical gaming or PC forum without much thought behind it.

Every day since beta people with absolutely killer rigs were reporting abysmal frame-rates, and every day since people with much, much, much lower specs than theirs assured them that GW2 runs “just fine” on theirs.

I play the game at 2560×1440 with all effects enabled on high or ultra. This includes shadows, character models and character count set to max. On average I see 50-60 FPS and in the very busy sections of the game it will dip down to 40 FPS. For my GPU, a 680 GTX with 4 GB of VRAM, I do not consider these to be “abysmal” and more importantly, I do not have any stutter/lag issues so even when the frame rate drops to 40 the game is still perfectly playable.

AND

Everything looks awesome.

This is the problem with poor optimization: your stuff runs well on one rig, but not another that’s only different in one tiny obscure aspect.

Oh, I do agree that their 3D engine could be optimized but it’s far from being terrible.

If you’re getting the rough end of the stick, you know GW2’s performance is truly ATROCIOUS. Not just bad, not just annoying, but unforgivably horrible for what it is.

I haven’t experienced this.

I use the “lowest” character culling settings and, by far, this has done the most to alleviate performance issues. Just like everyone knew it would.

This is where not having enough VRAM becomes very noticeable. Just sayin.

Swoo.5079:

1st) The OP is not running a multi GPU configuration – micro stuttering in modern single GPU configurations like the 7850 is a non problem.

I didn’t say that it was, I was citing micro stuttering as an example of how frame rate benchmarks can be misleading since the frame rate numbers will not be affected by the stutters. In the same way, “system lag” will not show up in frame rate benchmarks.

2nd) The OP already has 8GB RAM and you recommended him to get 16GB RAM to improve performance.

Sorry but GW2 will not going to use 8GB RAM.

Do you know what he is running on his system IN ADDITION to GW2?

Should he disable his anti-virus software plus any other programs he may run in the background? He may have other software running or bloated drivers for a mouse, gamepad, motherboard, etc.

Either way, you’ve been missing the point about memory all along. By increasing the amount of physical memory in the system, ALL running applications are eligible for a larger share of physical memory, including GW2.

3rd) While GW2 may use up to 4GB RAM, it will rarely do so. If 4GB ram wasn’t enough for a WIn7 64-bit system, we would have loads of threads pointing to “run out of virtual memory” warnings.

False, because most systems default to letting windows manage the size of virtual memory and windows will automatically scale that file as needed – up to the available space on the disk.

To determine if you have enough physical memory or not is run the “resource monitor” program, included with windows and accessible from the task manager or control panel:

1) Start both “resource monitor” and GW2.

2) Go to the “overview” tab.

3) The top row should be labeled “CPU”. You will see all running programs there. Check the box beside “gw2.exe” to filter by that program.

4) Start the game and enter a busy city like the trader’s area in Lion’s Arch. Walk around a bit, then alt-tab back to resource monitor.

5) Expand the “memory” row and pay attention to the “hard faults/s” figure. Note the graph in the right column. You should see an orange line, which represents GW2.

Hard faults should ideally be ZERO. Any number above zero indicates that the system had to hit the page file (virtual memory) rather than physical memory. Run GW2 in windowed fullscreen and play the game while watching the graph.

4th) Developers know 4GB RAM is a common configuration (probably 2-3GB for 32-bit systems are still reasonably common) so they take measures for the game to run with less than 4GB just for itself.

We know the game can run with less than 4GB – you’re confusing “viable” with “optimal”. If you want to run the game with all or even some of its eye candy enabled you will benefit from at least 8-16 GB of memory.

5th) You said not even 8GB RAM was enough, so please no “4GB is enough myth” shenanigans.

Not really, it has already been explained why 4 GB is not enough to run the game optimally. Please refer to other posts in the thread.

6th) I didn’t say 4GB RAM was enough for games and you should never buy more than that. I said 8GB RAM is enough for games.

Fortunately, I think that our discussion has shown that you are not the best person to take advice from if the goal is to end up with a PC that can run a demanding game smoothly.

7th) No, a 4GB Win7 system isn’t sluggish in general. I have one on my left that is used everyday and the difference to this one with 8GB is not noticeable.

Making unsubstantiated statements doesn’t help anyone and it certainly doesn’t bolster your position. Again, it has already been explained why Windows 7 benefits from using more ram.

8th) A 64bits Win7 with only 2GB RAM is sluggish. A 32bits Win7 with only 1GB RAM is sluggish.

Totally false. See above.

9th) If you don’t like the results I linked to, feel free to provide tests that show that 16GB or 32GB RAM provide benefits for gaming because as it stands now I provided hard numbers and you provided not quantifiable opinions.

I’ve thoroughly debunked all of your misinformation without expecting some random benchmark graphs to do it for me.

By invoking a 3rd party to make your case for you, you’ve demonstrated that you yourself do not understand what you are talking about and are merely reciting what you read somewhere on some website.

If your CPU and GPU are both up to par and your system experiences frequent “system lag” while gaming, adding more RAM can remedy the problem. It’s that simple.

Draco.2806:

Guild Wars 2 needs RAM like WoW or Everquest need RAM. That is to say, it doesn’t. Not on modern machines.

There’s never enough variety in assets on-screen – unless you’re looking at a hundred-player zerg in WvW – to justify occupying more than it actually does – which is 2Gb of SHARED memory at most (“High” textures), as mentioned earlier.

Well, you’re speaking in absolutes by using words like “never”. The situations where having extra memory would be beneficial are the situations that would cause a fair amount of people to rage about “crappy performance” even if the game maintains decent frame rates the majority of the time.

It has already been explained that the GW2 client has access to 4GB on a 64-bit Windows system and that the 2 GB is a limitation of 32-bit applications and an arbitrary split of 2GB for the process and 2 GB for system resources, a total of 4 GB.

Draco.2806:

Windows can’t do anything to prefetch it either – GW2 uses a singular 15Gb file, which never, ever belongs in your RAM. There’s going to be swapping one way or another, and often.

Right, but Windows uses segment caching and not file caching, meaning that it stores frequently accessed file segments in memory. Segments do not necessarily have to be contiguous files, they are often bits and pieces of large files. Windows does not need to store the entire 15 GB GW2 data file in memory for its caching mechanisms to benefit the system.

Draco.2806:

The persisting performance issues have never been linked to RAM, so using more RAM won’t do anything to alleviate them.

What fact(s) are you basing this statement on? We KNOW that GW2 client can use up to 4 GB if it’s available. If it only needed 2 GB why would ANet have bothered to enable the large memory address flag?

Maybe the people with 8 GB of RAM or more can chime in and tell us their experiences. I have a feeling that people running a decent CPU and GPU will not have many issues with this game if they have at least 8 GB of ram. Anyone sporting 4 GB or less is probably angry at ANet right now.

Draco.2806:

Similarly, having more than 1Gb VRAM on your GPU will not accomplish anything unless you’re running a multi-monitor setup with “High” textures and shadows, and Supersampling instead of FXAA. There’s just not enough stuff that would need it, outside of aforementioned dense groups of players.

Seriously obsolete information, boss. Let’s do some simple math:

1920 * 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels
RGBA True Color = 8-bits per pixel plus 8-bits Alpha (transparency) = 32-bits per pixel
32-bits = 4 bytes * 2073600 = 8,294,400 bytes per frame minimum

So at a paltry 1920×1080 resolution every frame requires 8.3 MB of VRAM. If you enable FSAA, the amount of memory scales based on the multiplier you select. 4x FSAA means 4 * 8.3 = 33.2 MB per frame

Frames are kept in VRAM and updated incrementally to boost performance as opposed to re-rendering each frame from scratch. This uses memory.

Textures can be large; high res textures can be 10-20 MB in size or more and for every texture in the scene, a copy is loaded in to VRAM and that can add up quickly. if you don’t have enough VRAM for you chosen resolution you will see stuttering and slow-downs as the textures are loaded from system memory, or worse, from your disk.

The quality of the textures, the effects you enable as well as FSAA and finally your screen resolution all contribute to the ideal onboard memory for a GPU. If you are playing at 1920×1080 and you want to minimize any rending slowdowns during particle-heavy effects, like having detailed shadows and reflections on as well as 4x to 8x FSAA, having at least 2 GB of onboard memory for your GPU is a must. Anything less means that the textures have to be loaded from system memory to the GPU memory prior to being rendered, and this effectively creates a bottleneck which limits your GPU’s memory to that of your system memory’s bandwidth.

Draco.2806:

All persistent problems with performance are ultimately tied to the CPU clock speed and instruction sets (and incredibly outdated shadow implementation on the side of GPU).

Basically, this means the game is plain old poorly optimized.

Nobody said that ANet cannot improve their game engine and client but that needs to be done judiciously. The game runs well and like all games has some issues, but none that are a deal breaker. Get a system that’s up to the task and it will run fine most of the time.

Behellagh.1468:

You didn’t say if you used it or not (FarCry 3 64-bit client).

But my point still stands. Unless the game being tested + 64-bit OS is actively needing more than 4GB then you won’t see a performance shift from 4GB to 8GB.

All that more system memory buys you is the ability to run more 32-bit apps at the same time without the apps fighting over who gets system memory.

The game doesn’t need to statically occupy all of its available physical memory for additional system memory to provide benefits. It’s not just about being able to multi-task more effectively.

Windows does have a good caching system that will utilize available memory, and that any time something has to be loaded from the disk, it’s better if it loads from memory cache rather than the disk.

The specific instances where GW2 bogs can be alleviated by having at least 8 GB of memory, a decent Intel CPU and a quick graphics card. Any issues beyond that would require software optimization from ANet.

Behellagh.1468:

The game’s 32-bit client is large address aware (ECHO … Echo … echo) and on 64-bit Vista/Win 7/Win 8 it can use up to 4GB.

Good point, and also a reason to not hamstring yourself by buying into the erroneous belief that 4GB of memory is “more than enough”.

tasaunders.3746:

Processor is definitely not the bottleneck. I’m running a very similar setup, Phenom II X4 Black edition 3.4 Ghz with an EVGA Nvidia 550 ti OC and 8 GB of G.Skill ram and a Biostar TA970 MB and I run the game on max settings with almost no problems.

CPU performance bottlenecks the GPU at higher resolutions, like 1920×1080 and up. If you’re running on a 550TI then you’re probably not pushing a high resolution…and if you enable full screen anti-aliasing you’ll need a faster CPU as well as more onboard memory on your GPU to sustain decent frame rates.

Swoo.5079:

1st) The frame rates also show minimum frame rates, which would be much lower, like 1 fps if the game ran out of memory.

First of all, FPS benchmarks are a very general overview of what’s going on. They show the rendering performance by monitoring the hand off from the game engine to the system’s output (directx), which would not include system lag. This is easily evident in benchmarking a dual GPU setup that has stuttering issues (a very common issue with multi-gpu systems). The benchmarks will have you believing all is well as the stutters, which can last 1-2 seconds or more, do not affect the frame rate figures – the frames are counted BEFORE the system lag is encountered.

Swoo.5079:

2nd) I’ve checked GW2 with 4GB and 8GB ram and there saw no difference. having a faster HDD or SDD reduce load times considerable though.

Total BS. You didn’t check anything and even if you did, your anecdotal commentary holds no water. GW2 client can in fact use up to 4GB of physical memory. If your total memory is 4GB then you’re not maximizing performance. I highly doubt you play the game without experiencing lag if you only have 4GB. A 4GB windows 7 system is sluggish in general, even with a good SSD.

Swoo.5079:

3rd) If you read the article in the link you will see that they aren’t only using synthetic benchmarks (the BF3 multiplayer is a good indication of this since there is no canned benchmarks).

The fact that you’re citing unrelated articles to make your case for you shows that you do not know what you’re talking about on this topic. I don’t know why you are so hell-bent on misleading people into believing that there is no benefit to having 8GB of system memory or more when there clearly is.

Swoo.5079:

And the synthetic benchmarks just mirrored the real world one.
Note that the 4GB configuration was just 1 stick meaning it was running single channel vs dual channel.

None of those games you listed are MMO type games – they are all first-person games designed for one player or a small number of multiple players. Their engines are optimized for speed rather than maximum aesthetics, and furthermore you’re still relying on FPS numbers alone to perpetuate the “4GB is enough” myth.

If you’re too cheap to buy more than 4GB then that’s fine, but GW2 will use up to 4GB if your system has more than 4GB of physical memory and it will run better – this is a FACT not some weak attempt at drawing parallels between GW2 and frame rate benchmarks of other games.

Draco.2806:

Nothing of the sort. Even the most demanding games/software currently on the market do not go beyond 2Gb of SHARED – RAM, VRAM and Swap altogether – memory. Not for any particular reason, but simply because that’s where it’s at right now.

The GW2 client is subject to a “2GB limit” as 32-bit applications cannot address more than 4 GB, and the other 2 GB is reserved for system resources. This has nothing to do with the memory on your graphics card because that memory is addressed and controlled by the GPU – not the CPU and the system’s memory controller. So there is a “particular reason” and if the GW2 client was recompiled to x64 it would have access to a larger portion of memory.

Uploading 15Gb worth of compressed data to memory is not only absurd, it would do nothing to increase your performance because a competent engine: a)Won’t try to cache this much stuff in the first place because it’s never needed; b)Will know how to smoothly withdraw and retire assets between RAM/VRAM/HDD whenever possible. It’s called “streaming”. We’ve had it since forever now.

You’re missing the point. The memory made available to each program that’s running is a share of the physical memory in the system. The game is not the only program that’s running, and the more programs that you have running – including system processes that run in the background – mean there is less physical memory available for each. In order to ensure the program can operate, whatever shortfall there is gets sent to virtual memory (hard drive). This is controlled by Windows virtual process manager and not by the game or any other application.

a) Not just about caching; the game needs memory to perform calculations, sorts and other operations. These operations write to and read from memory, and in doing so can bump a game file out to swap even if the operation itself didn’t need a lot of memory. If the game needs it, this will manifest itself as lag but it’s not “dropped frames” or lag that occurs due to an underpowered GPU. It’s not all about loading the visual elements into RAM; the game stops or stutters if it has to wait for your system to make certain data available to it.

b) Streaming just means that you see stuff on your screen before the entire scene is loaded. That’s why sometimes you enter a new zone though a waypoint and you don’t see the ground or only see a few buildings. It’s less about memory optimization and more about reducing the wait time on loading screens.

Keep in mind that RAM is used for lower-tier assets and cache. Anything to do with graphics – the actual chunk of the work – will reside somewhere in VRAM. Textures, frames, shaders, everything. Everything done there is lightning-fast by necessity of being displayed 60 or 30 times per second.

No, it’s used for quite a bit more than that. The operation of the program relies on ram, and the underlying OS has many processes running in the background that require a share of the RAM and can cause sluggish performance if you don’t have enough. VRAM is used by the GPU for the textures and related data to rending the scene, and it is not connected to or shared with system memory.

tl;dr – You don’t need more than 4Gb RAM in any case. GW2 doesn’t know what it’s doing.

More outdated info. The bare minimum anyone should be considering is 8 GB, but I maintain my recommendation for 16 GB if you want butter-smooth performance. You’re apparently claiming that 4GB is enough and yet you also seem to believe that GW2 doesn’t run as well as it should on your system.

And hey, I did say that GW2 runs smooth for me 99% of the time at a super-high resolution that most of you probably aren’t even close to (2560×1440).

Swoo.5079:

Nah, 16GB or 32GB will do nothing for GW2 and the large majority of games and other programs.

And the moment you have to load textures from the main memory instead of the GPU memory you are already screwed, since the main memory bandwidth is so much lower than the GPU memory (we are talking 25GB/s for DDR3 1600 vs over 150GB/s for $200 class GPUs) and if you are loading from hard drive or SSD the game will simply freeze for a sec (or more).

For some tests.
http://www.thetechbuyersguru.com/RAMgaming.php

Your benchmark links are not related to GW2 and they only focus on frame rates. The game can be slowed for reasons other than frame rendering performance, especially with large groups of players in a single area, and these would not show up on synthetic tests like the ones you provided.

32 GB is overkill for most people but 16 GB is not. Windows 7 doesn’t have any breathing room with 4 GB and with 8 GB you’re only giving it a little. My system idles with 5 GB memory occupied (no programs running) and it’s responsive – everything opens and loads within seconds.

Textures are not the only thing that a game loads into memory, and thanks for pointing out the obvious about the graphics card onboard memory being quicker than system memory – and yet system memory is still a lot faster than the fastest SSD. Windows will cache the files frequently accessed by the game client if there is additional available memory – with 8 GB there’s not.

If your graphics card only has 1 GB of onboard RAM and you play at a reasonably high resolution with all effects enabled (and why wouldn’t you) then 1 GB is going to fill up fast, forcing the system to swap data from the onboard ram to system memory, and if system memory is full then it has to go to the virtual memory, your hard drive.

You’re also ignoring sound files, data and various tasks that the game client may perform that require a lot of memory even if it’s for a short period of time.

There’s little reason to take the “bare minimum” approach, and this is about improving GW2 performance not “how to scrape by with the least amount of hardware so we can keep complaining to ANet and demand that they make GW2 compatible with Windows XP”.

Afya.5842:

You are right about current AMD CPU being crap. But I just can’t agree with your recommendation of 16GB of ram. Take a look at your process manger and check it yourself. 8GB is enough for GW2 and 99% of the stuff out there. The 32GB memory in your rig is absolutely wasted if you don’t heavy photoshop or ramdisk.

Regarding server cpu, note that they don’t support overclocking so if you are going to overclock a desktop cpu, it’s gonna outperformer the server counterpart.

You’re citing outdated info. Unlike older versions of Windows, Windows 7 and up will make far more efficient use of memory if it’s available – meaning that it will actually use available memory rather than attempt to keep memory free.

Much of the “lag” spikes people notice can be attributed to loading textures from virtual memory (swap) or from having to hit the disk and swap stuff from memory to the hard drive. Even an SSD will become a bottleneck in this scenario because the interface to an SSD is still MB/s while memory is well into the GB/s range.

CPU overclocking doesn’t provide much in the way of enhanced performance but it does introduce stability issues. If you want to overclock then obviously a Xeon wouldn’t be the best choice…but if you want a stable, fast system then a Xeon is a great choice.

There is no reason to limit yourself to 8GB believing it’s enough when in reality, 16 GB or 32 GB would make your system a lot more responsive in general, and ensure that the game can keep all of its assets in memory.

Espionage.3685:

I don’t have an amazing PC by any means (a Phenom II X4 @ 3.3Ghz, Radeon HD 7850, 8GB of RAM), but performance in a lot of cases is lower-than-expected, especially during world events and WvW. I’ve tried plenty of different drivers, OS setups, settings, etc. but I’m 99% sure my processor is the bottleneck.

Your graphics card is OK.

You are correct about your bottleneck. AMD CPUs are junk – get an Intel.

You can buy a Xeon E3 series (like an E3-1230), pop it into just about any LGA 1150 motherboard. Get at least 16 GB of ram and you should be set. These upgrades would set you back a little over $500, but the Xeon E3 is the performance equivalent of an i7 CPU with an i3 price tag.

My system is:

i7-3770S
GTX-680 (3 GB)
32 GB Memory

The game runs smoothly on my system with all settings maxed out, and I run it at 2560×1440 resolution. I recently built another system using the Xeon and it’s as good as my main one, although it was nearly $200 cheaper to build.

…after buying this game nearly a year ago, trying it out and “not feeling it” then coming back to it recently, I feel that the game has improved…but it still lacking in some critical areas.

Poor Character Development
This is a RPG and at the most basic level, you are assuming the role of a character which you then develop by playing the game, gaining experience, abilities, items and such. In GW2, your level is always keyed to the area you are in so in essence you’re always level 1. I understand that down-grading levels allows players to get rewards for participating in starting area events, but it does sap character development altogether. I’m level 51 now, and it feels no different than any of the preceding levels.

Lack of Variety in Gear
Most gear sets look the same and offer minimal stat increases. Perhaps the idea that “gear shouldn’t matter” was overemphasized – it should matter, because the way you equip your character is part of an RPG. Equipping new weapons makes hardly any noticeable difference in how the game plays in terms of dealing damage, healing or survivability. If we’re just wearing armor for aesthetics then why not make some cool-looking armor available every 10 levels rather than mostly at level 80?

Everyone’s a Winner PvP
Largely due to the above gear normalization, and the fact that all classes in the game can attack, heal and defend, PvP in this game is still weak sauce. You’ll see other threads of people saying how “it should be about skill not gear”, well, guess what, gearing and specc’ing your character is a skill you develop.

Having the perseverance to play and acquire new gear is not only an incentive to play, but it also gives you that “unfair advantage” over the guy who logs on once every few months and expects to be on “god mode”. I think WvW is a fun concept that is flawed in that whoever has more people in their group at any given time wins. You can’t “outplay” the mob using tactics or simply by having a smaller group with better class composition. This kind of gameplay is fine for FPS like Call of Duty, but in an RPG it makes the game feel bland and one-dimensional. Calculated imbalances among classes force people to work together to win, or lose because they could not coordinate.

Some Ideas
I think that levels should matter, meaning that a level 80 stays at level 80 even when he’s in a level 3 area. There is no reason a level 3 monster should be any challenge to a level 80 player…but to encourage high level players to help low level players, how about making the level scaling effective only in the context of quests/events for the area, and only vs the event objectives.

People often say “endgame”, but an MMO doesn’t really end, so that really means “What do I do when I’m done leveling” and from what I can tell, there isn’t really anything to aim for. That really dampens my desire to level because what will I get at 80 that I can’t get now? It shouldn’t be a treadmill, which implies repetitive and boring tasks, it should be something that has you going all around the game world.

It could be something as simple as doing a series of quests that culminate in a series of fairly difficult battles, with a reward being an entirely new ability, attack or skill OR an upgrade to an existing ability. These should be usable in PvP once unlocked.

Gear doesn’t necessarily need to boost stats but they can do more with set bonuses as well as on-equip features, like a helm that increases your ability to sense stealth players or a weapon that not only looks cool but augments your attacks in a way that is beneficial to your chosen class.

Finally, why not give players the option to choose a faction and in doing so, become hostile to players in an opposing faction. This way people who enjoy “world PvP” can engage other players in the game world, for fun or to fulfill faction objectives, while the care-bear pacifists (who play a game called guild WARS yet feel they shouldn’t have to fight) will be not have to worry about getting ganked.

marnick.4305:

Sure is acceptable to me. The loan on my house gets 2% cheaper every year, my salary gets adjusted automagically to inflation. People do notice, people don’t really complain. The ones who are against normal inflation the most are the extremely rich. Should give you a little hint about who profits most

As long as it isn’t a hyperinflation spiral, small amounts tend to improve the economy, stimulate business and form an effective form of tax relief for the lower and middle class. Think about it next time you go voting.

I play a mesmer and I can assure you that’s an illusion.

People who are not passive about their finances (includes rich people) don’t keep their money in the bank; they invest it into something – often into a combination of stocks, bonds or mutual funds. Bonds are all but worthless right now, so most of the money is going into stocks, which is why we have this artificial bubble forming again.

You can leave your nest egg in an “index” fund that follows Nasdaq or the S&P500 (if you have faith in America’s economy) and get pre-tax returns around 14% per year on average. Inflation is hardly an issue because when you own shares in a fund or stock in a company, the price of the shares will rise and fall with whatever inflation happens to be, meaning that your actual wealth stays the same.

Conversely, leaving your money in a savings account means that every year it loses about 3-5% of its buying power due to inflation.

The reason we have low interest rates right now is a combination of the Fed attempting to stimulate the economy with spending, by making money cheap, and also due to the sheer volume of new money being printed.

So in reality your mortgage never really changes; it’s just that the money is worth less and is available at a lower interest rate (reflecting its lower value). Your salary increases but your buying power remains more-less the same. This is how the Fed tries to keep most people locked into their “class” – they give you the illusion of progress when the truth is that you don’t really move very far from where you start out in life.

As for your comment about voting – this isn’t the appropriate forum for a political debate so I’m not going to say anything on that matter.

Ensign.2189:

The strength of GW2’s money sinks rests on the 15% TP fee – because it scales up with the amount of money in the economy.

The currency in a game is not the same as currency exchanged among people for goods and services in the real world, so drawing sketchy parallels between them only invites confusion.

Think of the gold you have in your inventory as “points”, OR you can think of your weapon as currency, in that you need to deal X amount of damage to kill monster Y and receive loot Z.

There really is no intrinsic value to the game’s currency so it doesn’t matter if an item sells for 10,000 G or 100 G – it will sell at the price that a player can pay. You can list something on the TP for 10,000 G but if most players have 1,000 G or less in their accounts you will not sell, forcing you to reduce your asking price or accept that you will not sell the item.

The KEY difference is that real-world currency relies on a mutual trust among people that $1 is worth a certain amount and has a certain buying power. There is no such trust among the players in GW2 or any game, which means that the currency has NO value and that “inflation” cannot exist.

Another key reason that game currency cannot have a value is that there is an infinite supply available…and as you know, if you are on a numbered line that extends to infinity in both directions, no matter how far you go in either direction you are always at ZERO.

As you correctly pointed out, players who play the game generate currency for themselves, which they can then spend. The rate at which they generate currency determines the prices that items would sell at on the TP. ANet can easily adjust the amount of “gold” that monsters drop as well as the prices you get for vendoring items.

ANet has a vested interest in minimizing the amount of gems a player can buy with gold because they sell gems to generate real revenue, and the price of gems is set by ANet.

It might make more sense for them to make gem to gold purchases one way only, and not allow people to sell gems on the TP for gold.

Ensign.2189:

It isn’t fixed, though: the rate of gold generation scales with the number of players (more players farming = more players generating gold).

Right, but the fact that there is no upper limit on the amount of game currency that can exist in the economy means that whether you have 1 copper or 1,000 gold, you have the same amount of nothing. Players cannot sell items for more game gold than other players have, thus TP prices will rise or fall based on how much game gold players earn from doing quests and events.

Ensign.2189:

You’re right that all inflation is temporary – in the real world central bankers work really hard to balance money flows to keep inflation within an acceptable range. Since WWII they’ve done a pretty remarkable job of keeping inflation in a controlled range, enough so that most people kind of understand slow, stable inflation to be ‘normal’.

Off topic, but the central bank is really an assault on capitalism. It shifts the valuation of currency from “trust” to decree and it also makes it easier to keep the gap between social classes wider. Since the industrial revolution in America, when the US Government realized it needed to borrow money to continue to function, it created the central bank and gave itself the power to print money.

Imagine if ANet sold us “magic money maker” in-game item that generates 10 gold each time we click it. That’s pretty much what you get with the federal reserve.

Ensign.2189:

Big bursts of inflation, or deflation, in the economy these days are going to be from something changing – and recently we’ve had a lot of big changes.

Also off topic, but in the USA most of the key industries – Energy, Natural Resources, Communication, Transportation – are all socialized and heavily regulated by our government. Did you ever think about starting your own energy company, bank, toll road or TV station? If you could, you would have the potential to earn a lot of money…but the way it’s set up now, you have to already be worth hundreds of millions to billions just to get a shot at playing in any of those arenas.

The reality is that the markets for providing things that people need to live are often manipulated by the wealthy to keep that wealth concentrated among a small group of the world’s population, while presenting the illusion of possible wealth to everyone else.

Inflation is really just side effect of the government printing money to pay for things it can’t afford. They realized that they can gradually devalue currency without most people noticing, and then indoctrinate the public into believing that inflation is “normal” and acceptable (it’s not).

Izaya.2906:

You are taxed when changing gems to gold so you might end up actually losing gold when you need to spend and exchange rate hasn’t risen enough for you to break even.

I did not see anything about a tax on the TP window but it figures there’d be some kind of exchange fee.

Still, since gems don’t drop in the game; the only way new gems are added other than you buying some is when players who have them choose to sell them. If they are spent them on in-game items, the gem disappears.

You may not get a 1:1 exchange on gems to gold or vice versa so “playing the market” isn’t viable, but over longer terms whatever you lose in terms of paying the “tax” or fee is compensated for by insulating your overall buying power.

Most of the items players spend gold on are items they could get themselves but would rather purchase to save time. In the context of a game where both “items” and “gold” spawn from and despawn into nothing, the notion of “inflation” is somewhat misguided.

In the real world, currency came into play as a form of IOU when commerce revolved around bartering. This means that instead of trading you a goat for a bag of grain, I would give you an IOU (the generally accepted currency) that puts me in debt to you for the value of a goat. You could then keep that IOU and come back to me later, then give it to me and get the goat I owe you OR you could give that IOU to someone else and they’d know that the IOU is good for one goat from me or the goat vendor. This all works by a kind of mutual trust among the traders, who trust each other to uphold the generally accepted value of the chosen currency.

In a game, you can generate currency by selling imaginary items that always sell for the same price no matter what. When you loot a mob and collect some items, those items were generated by the game just for you and when you sell them, the currency you get does not have any value associated with it and does not represent debt (the NPC vendor does not go in debt to you because he is not giving you an IOU; the currency is generated from nothing at the point of sale). This is exactly the same for ALL players.

For this reason, it doesn’t matter how much money is floating around in the game because it’s tied to the drop rates of items in the game and is entirely arbitrary (as set by the game’s admins). The value of game currency is controlled by limiting the availability of certain items by adjusting their drop rates, the locations they spawn and the level of the player required to acquire said item(s).

You only notice “inflation” when you compare a game currency to a real-world currency. The amount of US dollars to buy gems is set by ANet and is a fixed value. The number of gems a dollar buys does not fluctuate, but the game gold to gem exchange rate does. Even so, the relative buying power of the gold you get by trading gems stays the same…meaning that if 1 gem got you 10 gold a few months ago, and today only gets you 1 gold, you can still buy the same amount of items for1 gold today as you could for 10 gold a few months ago.

Bottom line is that if you want to “preserve” your in-game wealth (buying power), always change your gold to gems whenever you can, and only change gems to gold when you are going to purchase.

That guy Mavronos in Black Haven is particularly annoying, where he has like a minute or so of dialog as he’s trying to hit on a woman and get her to come to the city with him. What boosts the annoying factor is that his pick-up attempt is located right next to the black lion trader, so if you are looking for items to buy and sell you are going to hear this repeated over and over again. Wish there was an opposing faction I could jump on and attack him with. That would be gloriously satisfying.