Guild Wars 2

But it’s not unplayable. There are hundreds of thousands of users playing it regularly. 15 fps might make it unenjoyable but not unplayable.

it’s not your GPU but your CPU. No CPU is strong enough to put up with this game, you’re gonna be looking at 20-30 fps in the crowded areas nonetheless. The only thing you can do is overclock the most out of that beast, turn down shadows, reflections and culling options.

does this happen in other games?

install programs called GPU-Z and Real Temp.
in GPU-Z look at the Bus Interface section, also GPU temperature. CPU temps as well in Real Temp. See what info you can gather from those.

It could be a sign of dying PSU or GPU. If you can get your hands on spare parts, try those out. It’s really not healthy to be running on a faulty PSU.

it’s your CPU. This game requires single core performance and yours has 6 individually relatively weak cores. Even my overclocked 4670k drops down to 15 fps at times. The only thing you can do is turn some of your settings down, that would be shadows, reflections and culling.

and this 40% is with low fps everywhere, even in crowded situations? You should make another thread to fix this issue instead of necroing a year old thread

How does it flicker? What about if you set Vsync off and turn on frame limiter at 60 fps?

From what I’ve read you sometimes can reuse the OEM key if you indeed make the call during transfer, but that’s against the terms of the OEM license. Being able to is not the same thing than being allowed to. Why they let it happen if you make the call however is beyond my knowledge. Here’s a bit more on the subject

What Alex said is true, so that’s another $100-200 to the upgrade. Also if your Windows is OEM version you have to get another one

with that GPU I think you could bump up to maybe even 1080p. Crowded areas however are still gonna be a problem. Today I was in an open world boss battle and I noticed my fps going down to 11 even though I have a overclocked 4670K. So definitely a huuuuge upgrade from your system but it wont be butter smooth everywhere you go.

Yeah, I don’t know what causes it, best play around with it if it starts acting up again. Glad to hear it got fixed this easily though!

Is it possible that you have frame limiter on? When I put it to 60 it sometimes caps it at around 50. Try turning it off (and on again if you wish to keep it at 60)

Well, blowing or sucking (terms push and pull are usually used when it comes to fans) is just moving air into some direction, what matters is that the VRM gets cold air to it and hot air out of it. Usually PC cases have natural front-to-back airflow and you shouldn’t go against it, put a fan somewhere in front of it in push or behind it in pull, where ever is the best place to attach it.

Your H60 sure should keep your CPU cool seeing you haven’t overclocked, but the problem with liquid coolers is that depending where you have placed the radiator part the airflow might not reach the VRM which it would on an air cooling heatsink, especially if the airflow in the case isn’t too great.

You say it’s not overheating, but how do you measure it and what are the results you’re getting? With a little research I found out there could be an option in your BIOS that throttles down you CPU even at as low kitten C. Check you don’t have that enabled. Others reported the cause was VRM overheating, you could place a fan pointing at it.

have you tried simply reinstalling the game or at least repairing the game client?

Can you post your system specs so it would be easier to help with this?

Turn down character model limit and quality, I have mine at low and medium even though I have 4670K. Also shadows at medium enables dynamic shadows – turning them to low helps to a certain degrew.

For GW2 the first one, because this game is terribly CPU bound and you need all the power you can get. Also a GTX 750 Ti is enough to handle the graphics side of things max at 1080p (for the settings that are not CPU intensive, like Shadows).

If you don’t want to overclock, there’s also a 4670 model without the K. I have to tell you though that your fps will be capped by your CPU power, so you might want to reconsider OC’ing. It’s really not harder than pressing 2 buttons, but it’s your choice. It would also require you to buy a better CPU cooler.

I don’t know which skill that is but sounds like you’ve put an auto-attack on that skill. Press Ctrl + mouse 2 on your first skill to bind that as an auto-attack. if you don’t want any skill to be the auto-attack, just skill Crtil + mouse 2 on the skill that currently is bound.

Well, H81 is part of the 8-series chipsets that go together with Intel’s 4th Generation CPUs, those i3/5/7-4xxx ones, whereas B75 is 7-series for 3rd Gen (i3/5/7-3xxx). It’s a bit hard to compare those two, more of a fair comparison would be between H81, H87 and Z87 or B75, H77 and Z77.

StRaWberryCrEaM.4875:

so if i just open up my case will it be a lot better?

No.

You see, the CPU produces heat (surprise, surprise) and to get rid of it there’s this block of metal called heatsink on top of it (and usually a fan to make it even more efficient). Between the heatsink and the CPU chip there’s this thing called thermal paste because on atomic level there are gaps of air even though they seem smooth to naked eye and heat doesn’t transfer thru air very well. Now, the thermal paste (also known as TIM) you have there has dried up over time and the heat has no way to reach the heatsink, thus causing the CPU to overheat.

You need to detach the heatsink, wipe the dried TIM from both CPU and heatsink and apply it again.

Opening the case, cleaning the dust out and closing it again will help a bit, but cases are designed so that a “wind tunnel” forms from the front of the case to the back, CPU being in the middle and the current taking some heat away. If you open the case the tunnel effect will be broken and the issue gets even worse.

Well, that CPU temp looks high and with a little googling I found out that AMD recommends staying below 62 degrees. What I would do is open up the case, blow the dust out (might even want to buy those $5 cans of compressed air), take the CPU heatsink out and apply some fresh thermal paste (might clean the heatsink real good while it’s out of the case). You don’t have to buy the most expensive thermal paste, but you got to have some. choose one of these for example over here and look on some guides online how to apply it if you’re not familiar with it. Should be the end of your problem.

Yeah, “well” is kind of subjective but the truth is you can’t hold 30 fps in 100+ man fights, not even in a little smaller ones. At least you know that no one else is getting any better performance than you are.

No problem, glad I could help

your account is bound to a server and you can change it if you delete all your chars, otherwise you have to pay a little. However you can guest into other servers of your region (EU or NA) and dungeon instances etc can be created with people from other servers as well without even guesting (has to be the same region tho).

There are some changes coming in the April 15th patch where PvE areas are changed into “megaservers” where you have players from all servers in the same map if the amount of players doesn’t exceed the limit, after that they split them somehow, haven’t looked too much into it. Point is the server you choose isn’t really important, only the region is.

Not sure if there is a better place to ask this but there’s a whole bunch of EU servers and they all should be same with your ping. Can’t remember how it went since I started so long ago but there might be different tabs for EU and NA servers.

Yeah of course tier and population comes into play. I used to play on a server that was in T6-8 but sometimes the fights were pretty big, especially during the peak hours and they would drop my fps sub-20. Also I don’t think seeing only 30 by culling is the same for performance than there only being 30 people. Of course a lot better than having those 60 though.

sirsquishy.8531:

Torque.2948:

Once again there is no PC on the market that can play a game that is not optimized and sustain good frames. You should never have to over clock a CPU to make a game run good. Do not build a computer for this game thinking its going to run good, this game is not optimized. Do not base your computers performance around this game go with numbers on tech forums for CPU performance and GPU performance. What else do you use your computer for, streaming, video editing ask yourself these question before you build.

This is not entirely true.

If you tweak your settings, and OC your i5/i7 to 4.0ghz, you can do pretty well. I sit between 28-30FPS in 60man zergs now and 90-130+FPS in the rest of the game.

You have to reduce the CPU bound settings in the game to do that though.

But we all know 60 man zerg is not that huge really. Better not get the man’s hopes up too high. It’s good to have some actual statistics to this thread too so he knows what’s happening though.

Alright. Since ~900 bucks already gives you a pretty nice machine for GW2 having that extra 600 really gives some options to tweak around. I’ve chosen this kind of system:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3occ5

Good motherboard and a CPU paired with very powerful cooling solution gives you tons of headroom to overclock (this is what you really need in WvW), a GPU that’s capable of running the game even in 1440p if you ever decide to go there (you need a 1440p monitor for this though, but there’s the headroom we spoke of), 1 TB mass storage should be plenty even if you decide to save some movies or TV shows etc. and the icing of the cake is the SSD drive for lightning fast loading times in game (seriously, if you haven’t had this before you don’t know what you’ve missed)

I’ve left the chassis out so you can check which one you find appealing, also there’s no DVD drive since I’m not sure if you’re gonna need it, you can get one for 20 bucks if you do.

I have to point out here that even with this system which will bring you the best performance you can get, you will see fps drop in WvW from time to time. There’s just not a single CPU out there that’s strong enough for this game. I have i5 4670K overclocked from 3.4 GHz to 4.6 GHz, that’s around the average for these chips, and I still see sub-20’s in fps when the map is absolutely crowded. that 4770K will bring maybe a few more frames but still it wont be butter smooth.

Alright then. Since it’s your computer you need to make some decisions.

i5 4670k or i7 4770K? i7 basically just means more threads from which GW2 doesn’t really benefit. New applications will though and if GW2 gets optimized then it might too, but I wouldn’t count on it. So is ~2 fps worth the extra $80?

GW2 doesn’t demand much from the GPU, last generation units max the grapics easily at1080p. Now if you ever wanna go 1440p or 4K you need a lot more power, so do you want to leave some headroom?

How large storage do you need?
Do you care for the aesthetics of the internals? Or is it all about performance?

Yes, there are hardware stores that sell components and build them for you and there are also just services that don’t sell the parts but just do the assembly. If you wanna go this route I can put up a more concrete list so it’s easier. First I just need to know is GW2 the only game you play and/or is there some other demanding tasks your PC needs to run?

With that amount of money I’d say the best option would be to choose the parts to your computer and and have it built for you, most of the computer stores should do that. Problem with prebuilt computers are they don’t list all the specs and that usually means they’re not very good quality. Usually the manufacturers of PSU and motherboard are left unmentioned and you don’t want those to fail.

If that option is still not ok, I’d say look into something like these.

Bottom line, you want a PC with an overclockable Intel CPU, a good cooling solution and overclock the jesus out of it as this is the part that will be bottlenecking you no matter what.
For a GPU, Nvidia’s GTX 650 Ti or above or any of the GTX 700-series, or AMD’s HD 7790 or R7 260X or above.
The rest is pretty optional, see how big hard drive you’re gonna need, 8 gigs of RAM should be plenty and PSU and Motherboard from reputable brands and you’re good to go.

Well that settles it, your video card is not behaving correctly (assuming that screenshot was taken while you were playing). Like it was suggested, make sure your video card is in the slot closest to the CPU. even if it is take it out, take the power cord out and put it back together. If no help, reinstall the latest drivers.

Does the crash occur always during a big zerg fight or can it happen at anytime, even while waiting in the safezone without other people around?

Your computer is rather old and it could be that the fully queued map fighting just brings the extra players needed for the crash over a world boss and whatnot.

Download Real Temp or Core Temp as well as GPU-Z. In the chosen Temp see how hot your CPU gets while gaming and in GPU-Z do the same thing for your GPU. That should give us some info. I believe it’s a heat issue but if it’s not, let’s try something else.

Good to hear the culprit was found. Enjoy your game!

12 max where? All time max anywhere you’ve been? If it’s WvW zerg or other situation that involves tons of other players I’d say that’s about what you could expect.

If it’s everywhere, download a program called GPU-Z. Check your Bus Interface, Core Clock, Temperature and GPU Load. Give us the numbers you see in those.

I have to agree with Avelos and squish here, GPU first. X4 640 is a tad better than a Q6600 stock with which I had no problems playing, except for zergy content. Although I did have 800 MHz RAM I also had 4 gigs and I didn’t feel it slowing me down. I wouldn’t go buying DDR2 anymore either, unless you found a very good deal (which should match your current RAM or or buy enough to get rid of the previous) since after the CPU/mobo upgrade that purchase would be pointless.

That’s pretty much it, but it varies though. I have my 4670K overclocked to 4.6 GHz and it drops down to less than 20 fps at times, but it takes quite a big fight for it to happen.

As much as you hate to hear it, turn your Shadows down to low. In my experience when 100 players are trying to kill you the least of your worries is how good the shadows look. Also you might question this, but turning character limit down as well helps a ton. You will see the nearest enemies as well as everyone’s nametags so you can estimate how many of them are out there. I believe it’s better to have no lag and thus being able to kill your enemies than enjoy the scenery while laying down dead.

As for your question, a GPU upgrade isn’t gonna help you. If you need reassuring, download GPU-Z and check your GPU usage in zergy situation. If it’s below 99% more power isn’t gonna help you.

Well, if you take it to a pro I believe they would clean it all if they find anything else worth cleaning. So that should do it.

BTW, thermal paste under the GPU/CPU Heatsink, not below the unit itself

SolarNova.1052:

Its a bit late now, but in the future OP… Never NEVER take advise from a sales person ..ever. Doesn’t matter the subject, be it computers, cars, houses, what ever, NEVER listen to advise from som1 in sales. Always go online, ask trusted friends and family members in the know.

Generally I agree with this, at least question what they say, but what I don’t quite understand is why the owner would suggest a CPU half the price of that i5. Maybe only if his Intels were selling so great they didn’t need marketing and he feared those FX-4130’s were gonna be left on the shelf. Who knows, but I would go back and ask what’s the deal here.

Cyclical and regular performance drop can be caused by heat issues so are you sure there’s none of that in your system? Which programs did you use last time?Try monitoring them once again, see if anything’s gone wrong.

Well then you were kind of cheated to be honest. You don’t have a bad computer, it just doesn’t work well in GW2. If it is pretty new one you could ask the shop if you could replace the AMD parts for something Intel. If it’s not possible you will just have to live with low fps in GW2.

I believe the new RAM will solve this so just wait those couple of days. It’s not always advised, but if you remember which stick is the faulty one you can quickly try with 1 or 2 good sticks and see if it gets thru.

RAM works in mysterious ways and the errors even more so. As you can see even the faulty stick passed 8/10 tests 100%, could be that character select just hits those 2/10 instances.

Is this a new machine? Does it crash to desktop (guessing since you have the crash log)?

Download Memtest86+ and run it from a bootable USB stick/drive for each of the RAM modules individually. This means you gotta have them out of their slots while it’s doing it’s magic. You wanna run the test for each stick for about 1-10 hours, the longer you do the more accurate result you get. Might not be this as I’d expect your computer to crash to restart, but wouldn’t be the first time.

I personally don’t have a laptop for gaming, but what if it’s connected to AC?

Also, what else does your GPU-Z tell you? When, or if you manage to get just before, this drop happens what does it say for Core Clock Speed, Temperature, Usage % and TDP?

EDIT: ninja’ed.

abomally.2694:

Besides, I’m sure the OP would rather fix the problem then worry about “perceived” sound quality differences.

Sure, but the problem was that his sound card being too close to the GPU caused overheating and if there’s no PCI slot farther away or it doesn’t help, then an USB card would be a solution, no?

Don’t have your hopes up too high. Changing or implementing an alternative API is expensive and time consuming and ANet is a relatively small company. Also GW2 is currently running on Dx9. Mantle is not yet too well tested to see what kind of performance increase it would give over newer DirectX’s in MMOs and GW2 specifically, over Dx9 it would probably be noticeable. I would rather count on newer Dx than Mantle, but I’m not even counting on that very much.

How hot does your GPU run with and without the sound card?
With a little modding, you could try buying a PCI-E riser cable to move it’s spot a little and see if it works. Or you could see if you can install a fan above the cards, if the card is taking air like that. Or you could buy an external USB sound card, a friend of mine who is a bit of an audiophile says they are actually better for analog output since converting the signal inside the case creates more electronic noise.