Guild Wars 2

No… this game is indeed very CPU bound. My 690GTX barely ever runs at max core speed while playing this game. My 2500k is running at 4.8GHZ and I still get constant dips into the 40s~50s.

Thanks for posting this ShadowBlaze. I have been meaning to do the same… but being lazy and all that got in the way.

I have the exact same issue. EXCEPT, this is happening to me on my 690GTX with SLI enabled. Obviously a multi GPU issue that has pretty much been ignored since beta.

These do not fix AO. Nvidia reps have said it only “improves” it (thus it’s not in the release notes). These do not fix the ultra shadows/ all relections stuttering or texture flickering with SLI enabled.

I have a i5-2500k @ 4.8GHZ and yeah, performance is still terrible. CPU bottleneck has been fairly obvious from the starts. My 690GTX just sits there, under clocked and with low utilization as the frame-rate plummets just traveling around certain areas (not even taking into account the horrible drops in heavy player activity). Even dungeons run like crap which is really odd since those areas should most definitely be GPU intensive.

It seems like people with high end Ivy Bridge and great OC’s are doing well… but seriously, that’s the best Anet can do in terms of optimization? It’s pretty obvious they have not put any effort into making this any better either. Ultra shadows and all reflections still cause massive camera stuttering and that issue has been around since the game launched (possibly in beta… I don’t recall).

As far as any PC on earth is concerned it functions identical to quad SLI.

Even one 690GTX core is overkill for this game, the problem is that this game is ridiculously CPU intensive. Even areas that don’t necessarily have tons of players can be very CPU intensive so you will hit tons of bottlenecks. I have a i5-2500k @ 4.8GHZ myself and I experience frequent frame-rate drops on my 690GTX.

Wow. Relax.

I want to see this developers comments on performance issues. Because I have yet to read anything were they even acknowledge they are working on it.

And these forums have been the same since day 1. Tons of people having performance issues. It’s not just people on low end hardware either. People with much better stuff are suffering too.,

First time I’ve read that article VirtualBS.

Are these test for real? No difference between a i5-2500k @ 3.0 VS 4.0GHZ?

That would explain some stuff on my end… man, this game… :/

Your not wrong for thinking you specs should run the game decent enough… going by the minimum requirements anyways.

However, this game has been out for a while now and there is plenty of feedback on what is actually needed to get a solid 60 FPS. i5-2500k and up basically. It has to be pretty well overclocked too.

Your CPU is pretty kitten good for a laptop I would say. But unfortunately, at the moment this game just needs so much more. Will this get further optimizations in the future? Who knows. It’s certainly not a priority at the moment though.

i5-2500k is perfectly capable of utilizing the 690GTX. 3570k/3770k would have measurable improvement in really CPU intensive tittles, but we are talking about 120 FPS VS 140 FPS. This is obviously not what we are seeing in this game. We are talking about sub 30 FPS, at 1080p with tons of stuttering.

Yup. It’s super frustrating. I’ve done literally everything (save for a reformat) to make sure my system is 100% stable. The stuttering is just unbearable. I’ve sent two support tickets to Anet and they won’t even do me the courtesy of sending me some BS PR response.

I’m nearly 100% certain this has to do with the 690GTX. I put it in my 580GTX. Stuttering gone.

I did a lot of the recent tweaks that were posted the last couple of days. Most involved turning off core parking and lower DPC latency. They did help a bit with the camera stuttering but something about this game just isn’t right when it comes to the 690GTX.

For example, Charr starting field. Game is running at a solid 60 FPS with very little stuttering. But as soon as one of those NPCs fires a mortar my frame-rate just gets cut in half. This particular thing has nothing to do with many players limiting the CPU.

No PC is capable of that.

Wow. Glad I’m not the only one. One of the very recent updates did this to me as well in that Bandit Cave. Not that my frame-rate is all that great considering my system, but I could always enjoy 60 FPS when not too many players were in the same area as me.

Just going inside that cave drops my FPS into the 25~40 range for no reason. I could be starring at the ground.

i5-2500k@ 4.8GHZ / 690GTX

As if things couldn’t get any worse… one of the recent updates just killed FPS even more.

Now I can’t even get a steady 50 FPS in really isolated, secluded areas with not many players or enemies around. That Bandit cave for example in Queensdale. Getting really choppy 25~50 FPS while not even fighting. Just setting foot in the cave does it.

Is there any outlet were a rep might actually respond to this problem? I send in a ticket two weeks ago and nothing.

You can do that on a game per game basis in the control panel as well. It works the same… at least for this game.

@Cbuzz
i5-2500k running at 4.7-4.9GHZ. I’ve tested extensively with my OC multiplier and it doesn’t really matter past 4.5GHZ.

Like I said in, WvW you are going to get 35FPS max no matter what you gpu configuration is. There is no getting around that CPU bottleneck. Even though your CPU is insanely powerful it’s not really going to matter in those situations weather you have SLI enabled or not.

@Cbuzz

I’ve mention it several times. Both GPUs are being utilized. But only about 50/50. Sometimes higher but when a CPU choke point happens It goes into negative scaling and gives worse performance then a single GPU.

i5-2500k @ 4.7~4.9GHZ (does not make a difference)
690GTX
8GB of Ram 1600mhz

Same performance issues discussed. Really frustrating. I’ve read several people say that “690GTX has issues” with the game but I have yet to see a PR confirm said issue. For all I know this is never getting fixed. :/

You are going to experience the same lows no matter what. For example, in WvW if you are getting 20 FPS you are going to get the same FPS with one or two GPUs enabled. This is because at that point your CPU is a bottleneck. There are a lot of moments like this in the game so unfortunately you are not likely to see the benefit of SLI (especially if you are using a frame-rate limit).

A nice, stable CPU overclock can help a bit. Though you mileage will vary. I have an i5-200k @ 4.7GHZ and my frame-rate goes to hell in heavy players moments no matter what.

I notice a very small improvement in performance when nothing too CPU intensive is going on. Once heavy events start going (or PVP, WvW) SLI offers no benefits in those situations.

I imagine this is the only game it is happening in? Sounds like what usually happens before GPUs die… What are your temps when this is occurring?

I have the exact same card with the latest drivers and other then terrible performance in GW2 is works artifact and tearing free (granted I have vsync on for the latter).

deltaconnected.4058:

GTX600 users should disable turbo too: http://www.overclock.net/t/1267918/guide-nvidia-inspector-gtx670-680-disable-boost-fixed-clock-speed-undervolting

For a long time I thought this was the cause of poor performance on kepler cards. This didn’t fix my issues however. Both GPUs working on 1200 fixed clock and I still got massive slow downs, stuttering, etc.

Post a video of that. I’m sure we would all love to see that.

Anyhow, the only thing I agree with is that game should run better. I don’t know what their recommended specs are, but I’m sure their CPU recommendation is not a i5-2500k @ 4.8GHZ.

deltaconnected.4058:

@Varna: go to Lion’s Arch, find a spot where you get 30-40FPS and remember that number, move forward a little to reset the camera behind you, alt-F4, change your multi to something noticeable (like stock 32x), go back in and without moving look at your FPS now. It will be about 33% less (equal to how much you lost in clockspeed).

Set it back at 47x and it’ll be back at where it used to be.

That would never work in this game. Lion’s Arch is a CPU bottleneck that’s always changing based on number of players. For that to work the exact same number of players doing the exact same things would have to be happening.

My system has really bad frame-rate drops and stuttering just moving the camera around. I already have shadows to high like suggested. Certain locations also drop my frame-rate for no particular reason (no heavy player numbers). No amount of overclocking has helped me with this. I’ve officially given up, I’m taking a break at this point and hope Arena Net decides to investigate some of these issues. Tons of people with 600 series cards are having issues (690gtx here).

I don’t agree with Cheekything. Overclocking is a good way to get some extra performance out of you system. Obviously you should only OC if you have have a decent enough setup and can maintain good temps (70c on CPU).

Not quiet sure overclocking does anything on this particular game though. I get very little usage on my i5-2500k. 40% is the most I have ever seen the game use. I normally have my CPU at 4.7GHZ, but I’ve tested all degrees starting at 3.3-4.9GHZ and I don’t notice any kind of improvement. Performance is incredibly erratic on my system.

I believe the .exe and .dat file are complete portable. Just copy them somewhere else and you shouldn’t have any issues playing.

Know issue. Disable ambient occlusion in the NV control panel.

yangshindo.1527:

pretty sad how this game is bad optimized and bring trouble for people with nice rigs.
Devs should prioritize this issues above all things right now.

Well they said as much during the first BWE. There priority was getting it to run well on low end hardware since that’s where the money is. But now they need to make sure it’s running well for the enthusiast.

Home Style.9640:

That’s very weird.

What’s also very annoying is sometimes if I move my character one inch to the right my fps drops. As soon as I step back It shoots back up to 60 fps.

Is this a memory leak?

No. Memory leak would involve your game’s performance degrading over time and not being able to get consistent frames until you restarted.

i5-2500k @ 4.8GHZ here and my CPU usage NEVER goes above 30%.

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! "

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.

Game doesn’t support PhysX. Why would it matter?

Yeah, nobody is getting 60 FPS in WvW.
This is kind of an obvious thing to do, especially for an mmo. CPU overclocks do wonders.

Anyhow, this won’t solve issues for people who are using hardware that just isn’t supported well at this point.

My score in 3DMark is 14600~15000 (depending if you want to fluff it unrealistic OCs). But this game just refuses to run well.

Where did you read that Paul? That would be really good sign in getting some fixes in the future.

I don’t notice much of difference on my setup (i5-2500k @ 4.8GHZ, 690 GTX) but strangely my GPU usage did go up when moving the PhysX processing to the CPU. Really odd since this game doesn’t use that.

We have had tons of these threads and they all eventually get merged… but one more couldn’t hurt!

Win 7 64-bit
i5-2500k running at 4.7GHZ (I’ve gone as high as 4.9 for testing, doesn’t do a thing)
690GTX
SSD
8GB of Ram

I get very erratic frame-rate. 60 FPS, I turn the camera and it plummets. Event nearby and it plummets. Even some areas (those near the Charr hometown for example) just drop my frames constantly. I will just be walking around without many players and I get constant dips into the 40-50s. All the while my GPU is barely being touched (about 110% usage at most with both GPU combines).

Lazzy.4891:

I’m sorry but what Nvidia said about being CPU bound is complete BS.

I have two PCs

i5-2500k / GTX 460 / 8gb ram
15-2500k / GTX 660 ti / 8gb ram

Guess which one can get better performance out the game? The 660 ti right? Not, my GTX 460 with the same CPU / Ram / Power supply runs this game on max with shaders on medium pretty easy.

While my 660 ti idles at 70 FPS on max then u turn the camera and boom 20 FPS lag.

My GTX 460 Idles at 40 FPS with everything on max but Shaders it’s on medium and i don’t ever drop below 30 FPS while spinning my camera.

So don’t even try to pass this off as a CPU bottle neck because it’s a complete lie.

Explain to me how one of my CPUs can run this game On everything maxed but shaders on medium with a worse card but the better card with the same settings runs like crap?

http://imgur.com/bokvm – My GTX 460

This is a very good point. Some of the Nvidia reps over at Guru3D are very good about giving suggestions and answering some questions. However they have dodged this particular issue.

I have a 580GTX and I do indeed get more consistent frame-rate with that installed instead of my 690GTX.

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

(copy and paste link)

I posted this earlier. Seems like a good explanations as to why 600 series performance worse when CPU limitations come into play.

Someone over at Guru3D had an interesting idea as to why 600 series cards are under performing their in comparison to their AMD equivalents.

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

[QUOTE=wintermutex:]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![/QUOTE]

So in any area were frame-rate would drop because of a CPU limitations (such as heavy events, WvW, etc) instead of dropping from 60 to 40 it might drop double that because the GPU underclocks itself.

Well that makes me jealous. Wish I knew what I could do to improve this on my end. You CPU is a beast, better then mine in many applications. But for gaming, it wouldn’t be that noticeable. Considering how little attention has given to high end gaming demographic, I really doubt the game is optimized well for six core machines.

Rootz.6270:

VisceralMonkey.6128:

CPU, CPU, CPU. Honestly, it appears that you need, at a minimum an i5 running at least 4.2* or more to run it well. And AMD? Forget it, they just don’t even get close, even the “high end” ones.

2600k on 4.8 ghz is not enough combined with a GTX 690 and 16 GB ram. I am not going to crack it up more for a DX9 game my water runs hot already on that speed.

I have very similar specs. i5-2500k that I have overclocked to 4.9GHZ (normally just stick to 4.7GHZ) for the purpose to testing and a EVGA 690 GTX (8 gigs of ram, but that doesn’t make a difference). It doesn’t resolve the erratic frame-rate or camera stuttering. SLI still working only slightly better then a single card and in some situations worse.

I’m glad things work out for you Cbuzz (though I would like to see you post a video of a player heavy event on your setup… try the Charr area), but the +.1GHZ on your setup isn’t really making a difference. There is something wrong with the way this game handles high end GPUs.

EDIT: That last thing was directed at Cbuzz.

This isn’t just a problem with people with ancient PCs wondering why they can’t hit 60FPS with all settings at max, plenty of people with high end systems are having performance issues including myself. Before it got merged with who knows what topic, the Low FPS thread had plenty of people with 680 systems and good CPU overclocks having performance issues. The nvidia feedback page on the latest beta drivers had tons of people with the same problem.

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-306-02-beta-drivers-released/

Also, the newest “official” drivers are exactly the same thing.

VisceralMonkey.6128:

It should be noted, there are NO new GW2 improvements in this driver, it’s just the “official” version of the beta from last week. I’ve also read a comment from an Nvidia developer that a LOT of the performance problems this game has are not GPU but CPU, there’s not a lot they can do apparently.

Did you read it over at Guru3D by chance? If so he was responding to one of my questions.

This isn’t as simple as “It’s CPU” bound. Because a AMD GPU can be the difference between having unstable performance and solid performance. This is a Nvidia issue, specificly it’s kepler (high end) line.

But in general, the message was they can’t really do much until Arena Net works closer with them.

Real shame. As far as GW2 is concerned, these are exactly the same as the beta drivers. I’m still getting texture flickering on certain 2D elements (like Guild page logo). I figured that would at least have been an easy fix.

Of course the bigger issues are…

Fairly bad performance on high end systems.
Bad SLI usage even with highly overclocked CPU.
Ultra Shadows causing ridiculous stuttering when panning the camera.

I said as much in a previous thread. Nvidia is not going to be able to fix this until Arena Net is also willing to spend some time on the issue.

dacooli.6712:

Cbuzz.5083:

dacooli.6712:

In wvw I get 15-25 FPS with gtx 680 and i5 2500k stock. So yeah, it requires a good CPU at least.

Crank that 2500k & watch ur fps fly. What’s the point of even having a 2500k running at stock?

Because it costs money to buy a cooler? I can’t put it in myself and in that case I’ll have to pay someone to do. I mean, it does like 2-3 FPS difference in most games anyways.

What are your temps with high CPU usage? You should be able to overclock to 4.3 easily on stock cooling.

Hyper 212 Plus is a fantastic cooler. Easy to get for about 30 bucks. Been using it for a couple of years now and I am easily able to OC my i5-2500k to 4.8GHZ.

But, their is still something not quiet right with this game. Even with my CPU clocked that high and a 690GTX my frames are all over the place.

You should realize you the exception by now Cbuzz. Most people with high end Nvidia cards are only getting scaling equal to roughly using only 1 GPU.

LookBehindU.6193:

Yeah exactly, i mean i know my system isn’t that good at all, but i would have thought it would run just a bit better haha, I will most likely upgrade my CPU anyway though :/

Oh, I’m not disagreeing with any of you. I have a pretty top of the line system and even I am subject to sub 20 FPS.

You need a better CPU. This game is really CPU intensive and even high-end quads with good OC’s (4.5+ GHZ) can have issues.

SwiftChocobo.3781:

After the countless threads, including the one with official respose (now merged with the “Crashing” thread for no good reason), it’s safe to say that in the majority of cases, those of us with kepler cards, SLI, or both are experiencing less than optimal performance. I’ve posted specs in the other thread to help out, but I thought I’d add in here that;
Anyone with 600 series cards in SLI or a 690 should be getting well over 70 fps at 1080p. So although 40ish is playable, it’s clear there’s still something wrong.
What I’ve noticed, is that, on a 680, when I turn my camera and the fps dips, the power draw acts up. Like literally, my lights flicker when I turn the camera. No other game does that on maxed out settings….

Yup. This is what I’ve been trying to inform people about every time I see thread involving low performance on 600 series card.

Arena net acknowledges a problem with Nvidia GPUs in the crashing thread, but they don’t specify it being related to the 600 series cards and performance.

KerrMD.2617:

What terrible performance? I run on a core i7 with 7GB ram and an ATI HD 5770 card and have no performance issues.

A little detail as to what performance issues you are seeing may actually garner something.

It’s a problem with Nvidia cards mostly. Your computer is probably running the game better then mine. Did I mention I have a 690GTX?

Game is currently having issues with SLI scaling on 600 series cards.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4403079&postcount=442

This is the response I got on the issue from an Nvidia rep over at Guru3D. He suggested I overclock my CPU. My CPU is already overclocked to 4.8GHZ and negative SLI scaling still happens. If you follow the link to the driver feedback page you will see many people are having issues.

All we can do is sit and wait.

EDIT: So try running on a single GPU for a bit. It might help.

Grizzle.9872:

What’s so ridiculous?

Basically the game is running much worse on Nvidia GPUs than their AMD equivalent.

Also if you have high end Nvidia hardware such as 680GTX running in SLI expect performance to be WORSE then running a single card. There are also many reports of just bad performance on 600 series cards in the Low FPS thread. There are many issues at the moment with Nvidia cards.