Guild Wars 2

When enemies can blast through death shroud and another 75% health before your skill bar even refreshes out of ds and the last 25% during the cast duration of your last desperate move How in the ever living kitten are you supposed to use death shroud for protection.

Espionage.3685:

Meep.1724:

Espionage.3685:

I have a X3 720 BE currently, but my motherboard allows for core unlocking. So I took my X3 @ 2.8GHz and put it at X4 @ 3.4GHz.

Core unlocking is a bit of a gamble though; might be better off getting a X4 or X6 BE processor.

Tried core unlock once. Entered an unending cycle of reboots ^^"
Not gonna try that again

Interesting; the two motherboards I have (BIOSTAR A880g+ and ASRock 970 Extreme3) both have a safeguard to turn core unlocking off if it causes any boot problems.

If voltage was set properly before enabling core unlocking (and given the PSU could handle the little bit of extra load), it could just be possible that processor has a bad unlockable core(s). Or the motherboard itself doesn’t properly implement core unlocking (may want to make sure you have the latest BIOS available and see other people’s feedback on core unlocking with your particular board and CPU).

CursedShaitan.9720:

…Finally. When I say targeted I mean I snapped the frame at the lowest frame I saw. The situation itself was not targeted in any sense. . Its not ment as conclusive evidence just the best I could come up with on short notice. I’ll show you can scrape above 30 with most settings maxed in world events and wvw tomorrow but I don’t expect anyone to believe or hold their breath till then. Have a good one.

I might also suggest getting framerate numbers from a SB event. There’s usually a lot of people at that event.

It was 1am and the expectation to beat was 18 fps with more than 5 people on screen. Which was supposedly impossible. To the point higher up about resolution and my GPU. I’m not trying to prove anything about my GPU combi. Its is adequate at best but does allow me to run super sample and max the game in most scenarios with only minor compromise in the gpu related settings in worse case scenarios. At max settings a phenom is not the limiter in wvw. Your GPU will be. This isn’t about my stupid tower I threw together. My frame rates scale with resolution and GPU settings. Shadows / animations CPU related setting Do next to zilch to my frame rate. I’ve spent to much of this car trip on the forums today. Blegh.

Behellagh.1468:

CursedShaitan.9720:

i’m traveling so these are screenies I posted that are still on the forum from 23 days ago. I’ll take more if you need.

So if you overclock the shiznit out of a Phenom II you’ll get good performance. When is that NOT true with a quad core and this game. <eyeroll>

You really need to frame the post with the fact you overclock since you have no idea if something like that is in the OPs bailiwick.

Last runs of the phenoms which he would be buying push 4.1 and up super easy. An fx solution would still need to be overclocked. Intel provides better performance options that don’t need ocing but they are costly and some people don’t appreciate their business practices. Cost effective upgrades from am3 won’t exist for another 2 months. Just exploring options. If money is no limit sticking to a Phenom II would be silly but that wasn’t the situation I gathered. Getting off now. I’ll make a seperate thread for the video in case anyone cares. Didn’t intend to rile anyone up.

Finally. When I say targeted I mean I snapped the frame at the lowest frame I saw. The situation itself was not targeted in any sense. . Its not ment as conclusive evidence just the best I could come up with on short notice. I’ll show you can scrape above 30 with most settings maxed in world events and wvw tomorrow but I don’t expect anyone to believe or hold their breath till then. Have a good one.

I think my intent has been misconstrued. I don’t intend to brag. It just barely sneaks by but it makes the cut. my system has no significant upgrade path but with $100 I was able to hold off spending 450 dollars on a new mobo and proc so I can spend it on a new system in a few months when kaveri offers me more bang for my buck and still get playable performance at nice settings in the mean time. For a cost I’ll have recovered many times over when I do upgrade. I was in this guys position and felt stuck and I just wanted to help. Posting from a phone so I apologize for the way this is written.

The shots taken were targeted for lowest results to emphasize worst case scanario. and was done to prove a quick point so I hopped into a champ train at that moment. I’ll make a video tomorrow because this comes up way too often. Ill demonstrate max settings attainable in average scenarios and by lowering character settings to high you can do just fine with much higher body counts. The. I’ll drop resolution down to remove GPU from the equation and try to target just how many on screen characters it can handle. Im aiming only to save people money. I saved a bunch of money and bought a second computer with the money I saved and it kept me from leaving the game. My only intent here is to help. Its clear there is a healthy amount of skepticism here and I find no issue with people expecting proof. I’ll do my best to provide when I get back from seeing kvelertak and high on fire in San Francisco

For the record it wasn’t always this way mind you. I’m not sure if removed culling, or mis applied fx optimizations being no longer applied to phenom IIs or what happened but one day i logged in and the game was a totally different animal. I kitten near quit until it happened.

i’m traveling so these are screenies I posted that are still on the forum from 23 days ago. I’ll take more if you need.

sirsquishy.8531:

CursedShaitan.9720:

A phenom II is PLENTY for this game.

If you can get a 965 to 4.1ghz(easy) you should effectively get the same performance as buying a top of the line $350 AMD FX-9590 in this game.

I max the game out with super sampling on and keep above 30 fps in WvW running a Phenom II 965 x4 at 4.3ghz and keep above 100fps if i turn limiting off in most game areas.

I Highly doubt you get even CLOSE to that 30FPS when there are more then 8 players on the screen.

I run an i5-4670K OC to 4.8Ghz now (Water Cooled), and I will sustain 30FPS in a heavy player setting (20-30players on the screen). And I do that with Native sampling.

OP – Dont listen to this poster, its full of miss information. DO yourself a HUGE favor and either get on an AM3+ System with a FX9-series or a Socket 1150 (4th Gen) and either a i5-K or i7-K. GW2 or not, its the way to go if your going to gut your system and replace the MB/CPU anyway.

AMD will set you back 350-450
Intel will set you back 390-475 (my i5 cost me 420 after taxes).

Look through my past posts on the issue. I have plenty of screen shots on this forum demonstrating 30-40 frames in large zerg scenarios running on my system. A few people even apologized for rudely calling me a liar after I demonstrated to them.
There is no disinformation in the post and the numbers time and time again point to the same conclusion about the Phenom II. The phenom II has greater single thread performance than the FX. Period. THIS IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE.
Phenom II Cores@4.3ghz NB-CPU@3.6ghz under corsair h60.
8gb ddr3 1333, 7770 + 7750 crossfire. (this is what lets me get away with super sampling)

I don’t blame you for being mad that my Phenom II system is beating your I5 system but is not your I5 that’s to blame. You’re I5 should be just fine and I bet a GPU change would send your frame rates well over mine.

A phenom II is PLENTY for this game.

Phenom II > FX single threaded
FX > Phenom II Multi threaded
GW2 = mostly single thread dependent.

There is a lot of math involved but the gist is GW2 is a MOSTLY a single threaded game and the multi-thread performance of the FX is wasted on it. An FX is superior only at multi-threading which is irrelevant to this game at the moment.

A 4.3ghz Phenom II will perform equally with the highest end FX processor overclocked to 5ghz at single threaded performance but cost you $250 less . This can be both calculated on paper and proven with benchmarks. In a multi-thread performance comparison the the results flip and the FX processor wipes the floor with the Phenom II. The trouble is this game doesn’t benefit from multi-threaded performance so you are paying for an advantage this game doesn’t use and paying more for the same amount of performance in the area the game does use.

Essentially if you can find a 965 or better Phenom II for less than a fx-8350 + motherboard(should be able to ) do it beacuse the fx won’t have anything to offer you for the price increase.

i was just a few rings away from getting the hybrid and conditionmancer finished and nemesis is leaving the game….. maybe its time to try out battlefield 4.

Ronah.2869:

Why “kill” the only fun and relaxing activity in this game? You think everyone wants hard mode content with brainstorming on strategies and attack plans? No sorry.

In order to not make end game loot acquisition trivial with easy dungeons they have to distribute token collection so that it takes excessive repetition of a dungeon to get the item you want. Increasing difficulty would mean you could lower the amount of needed repetitions to acquire an item without devaluing it. Less mindless repetition of the same areas equals less boring. There is nothing fun about running around the ugliest zone in the game and tagging champions a few times to receive dirt loot. If i want a brain dead relaxing experience I watch tv.

Sorry guy but that was a lesson I learned 10 years ago when I was a teenager. If you want new games to play well you’re going to need to upgrade your computer or replace it at least once every other year. You aren’t the only one who finds this difficult to do, its a sentiment shared by most console gamers.

this needs to happen.

Mirsa.1628:

Add me. I’ll be more than happy to teach/run Arah with you. Just please don’t be the “I play how I want” type.

I WILL!
A little busy right now but later for sure. I prefer to play whatever works best for the group. I’ve been using Nemesis Hybrid Necro build primarily but i’ve been working with his Conditionmancer build as well its a bit more survivable. really though i’m open to anything that helps the group.

Enaretos.8079:

Are you on NA or EU ?

NA
mayne i’ve just had reallllllllly bad luck with timing…idk.

What sucks is i can’t find a group to do it. My guilds stance on it is “i’d rather do fractals 1000% of the time given the choice between them” and PUGS refuse to take me because i haven’t done arah explorable before. Throw in getting kicked from a group yesterday just because I was a necro and its starting to get really frustrating. I’ve pretty much been eyeballing LFG for the last 3 days trying to find a group just to try a path. I even started my own group but as soon as i admited i hadn’t done any of the explorable runs they all left. I tried again with a “no experience required” group and no one even bothered to join. I’ve never had so much trouble finding a group for a dungeon for any mmo i’ve ever previously played and many of them didn’t even have an lfg system.

Lorelei.3918:

I don’t understand your logic templar. You are saying that because mmo’s have always been boring and grindy, this one should be too? Why is it that the most enjoyable game modes are the least rewarding? Why is everything based on daily play, when many people can’t play every day? It’s not like I’m asking for things for free. I’ve put just as many hours into this game as others, but have way less to show for it. I just don’t think thats right.

if grind is innately boring then explain mmo’s being popular in the first place. That’s because grind isn’t boring unless its made too easy or too hard. Too easy and it feels like all the rewards you got mean nothing. To hard and you spend to much time waiting. Its not that hard to get the rewards from dailys/monthlys with out daily play. Do a daily every other day (14 hours) and grab a monthly (takes like 2 hours tops) and you’ve netted yourself the most expensive ascended trinket you can get. 16 hours isn’t bad for highest end game gear possible that isn’t even remotely required to be successful. If you needed it maybe that 16 hours would seem ludicrous but since its not you can’t expect them to make this game something you can complete in its entirety a day because you work a lot at the expense of a bunch of other people who work 50+ a week, have social lives, other hobbies, and still manage to find the time to play and still feel the game is just bordering on too easy.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Sadly – you can’t dye it in some deep black color. It looks blue in midnight ice and dark-gray in abyss.

have you tried midnight fire. gives me the darkest black i can get on some armors. others kittenty red tint. i use it just for the pieces that it gets that effect and it works great.

I’m a little surprised people find orr so “hideous”…. I love the way the coral makes an eerie contrast with all the rot and creates such a creepy forest environment. I have to hand it to Anet, visually its one of the coolest zones i’ve explored in an mmo yet. So much potential. I fear their best work is going unseen day in and out while everyone is running around a leveling zone that’s practically reality by mmo standards. Living in rural northern california kinda takes the wind out of QD sails. Nothing I don’t see everyday. Well, the bugs dont’ get quite as big but you know what i mean.

I enjoy dhummfire as a concept. bleeding and poison doesn’t feel like enough variety and in games that offered necromancers and demonologist the later playing like a fire themed necro i always enjoy the hell out of that class. getting condition duration up to 70% makes that skill real nice.

Not as an replacement but more a thematic alternative (since burning doesn’t stack, its a waste having it twice in a group, and some of us might want to be more loyal to grenth) I was thinking of a grandmaster skill called Grenthfrost. One that added damage to chill. might encourage more CC in game. Add a bit of pressure into a condition more “native” to a classic gw necromancer. Either way, I’d hate to see burning go all together. I’ll leave it up to people who’ve played long enough(still fairly new) to decide if its balanced at present but i hate the idea of not being able to bow to a fallen god for a little bit of hell fire in some form or another To those of you arguing that burning isn’t necessary to put out enough damage. This is likely entirely true but personally i’d rather do my damage through as many avenues simultaneously as possible. Its why i’m playing a hybrid. I don’t think dhuumfire should be required but i don’t think everyone wants a build that focus’s on one line of damage output.

Think it might be a combination of both cpu and crossfire optimization? I wonder if we can find any instances of intel with dual card setups improving or Single Card AMD set ups.

Some Solo Play, waiting for a world event to start somewhere. I don’t blame you for your disbelief. I didn’t believe it when it happened and i was witnessing it with my own eyes. Like I said my main concern with this thread is making sure people who are living with substandard performance are aware they may have potential to get a lot more than they are currently and speculate how this has happened(i sure as hell don’t know).

would normally be at sub 25 fps just standing here.

Ended up having to change model settings to high to keep above 40 in all situations but the point remains. I couldn’t stay above 30fps even on lowest settings before.

DarkHigh.2516:

Not inclined to believe a phenom with a 7770 can achieve this. screen shot or it didn’t happen. Fairly fluent in hardware and it leads me to believe you are simply trolling.

crossfireX

screenie coming up.

I’m disinclined to believe the server side changes have much to do with the dramatic (3x-4x) increase to my frame rate seen 3 days ago though I could see it possibly playing a minor role. Has there been any undocumented under the hood changes to the client in the past few days that may explain this sudden change? I’m using a Phenom II that is commonly accepted as insufficient for playing this game on the forums and previously lived up to that reputation. I’m now miraculously experiencing a totally different GW2 that’s encouraged me to stay with the game I was very near leaving. What gives? I haven’t noticed any one else experience this and in fact am still hearing people with superior systems experiencing what I was previously. I’m excited as all hell but feel like its too good to be true and i’m going to wake up from a dream any second. I hope this doesn’t come off as a complaint i’m just curious as to what it could mean for others if its a sign of whats possible.

my current settings
Animation: High
AA:None (fxxa makes a pretty game ugly)
Environment:High
LOD Distance: Ultra
Reflections:(usually on All but some zones take much bigger hits for it so i turn it off in those instances
Textures: High
Render Sampling: Super Sample
Shadows: Ultra
Shaders: High
Post Processing: High
Number of Character Model: Highest
Character Model Quality: Highest

Everything ticked except best texture filtering(strange 20fps hit with that one)

A general before and after (before with medium settings after with near max)

Solo PVE (33-58 before) (70-130,after 200 if on native sampling)
Dungeons(15-30 before) (38-70)
Large Zerg(10-20)(40-50)
World Event/WvW(5-12)(34-50)

All 4 of my cores are being utilized 100% and my GPU is actually get utilized over 30% .

This is huge for me. It was difference between quitting and playing for many more years. Once again I’m asking for people with good fps and AMD or older Intel chips to come forward and share their specs along with those who don’t and see if we can find a commonality that divides us. I’m really excited to be able to finally play this game as intended and I’d hate to think their are a bunch of people settling for way way way less than they need to because they think its their only choice.

I was in your shoes up until 3 days ago. I had a serious crash that required a full reinstall of windows and the game(i’ve dones this numerous time since owning the game with no dramatic results in the past) for some reason though i’m now maintaining 40+ fps even in zergs and well over 80 fps in world exploration with supersampling on. I can get 200+ fps now if i turn super sampling off. I’m using a phenom II so your FX should be able able to keep up in theory but I have no explanation for why i’m suddenly getting food frame rates when a few days ago i was stuck in your boat.

Looks driver related to me but could be a hardware issue. Def worth looking into before starting an RMA. Nothing more embarassing/infuriating than rma’ing something only to have the new one come and find the same issue and discover it was software all along and you were waiting for no reason.

As I mentioned I downloaded that patch and played on it before this happened. No performance increase resulted from the patch. this wasn’t until after that patch came out. Secondly their have been many posts since the patch and even since this post that have superior systems to mine getting inferior results. Even today i saw someone get told their FX-8100 couldn’t cut it and thats why they are getting sub 20fps in game. Another instance today suggested someones i7 might need overclocking. I see it as unlikely server optimizations would give me such a massive 3x increase in fps and not do the same for others with newer systems.

Few things to try. Disable best texture filtering. Of all the in game settings it does the least visually and for some reason gives me a 20fps frame hit at stand still and 30+ frame hit when moving. I kept overlooking it because its an option that usually gives me 0 frame hit in other games and so avoided disabling it for a long time. Another thing to try is removing any frame limits you have set. For some reason frame limiter bugs out occasionally and when set to 60 will artificially limit my frames to 32 exactly.

Secondly, Aza i was convinced this game was poorly CPU optimized but i’m wondering if theirs actually a widespread persistent bug because yesterday after a random reformat and install(i’ve done many since owning guild wars with no benefit in the past) and now i’m getting 40+ frames in zergs at max settings when i couldn’t keep 7 fps at medium a week ago.
I’m using a phenom II as well which is commonly accepted on this forum as insufficient for running this game at max settings compared to AMD FX processors which are commonly accepted as inferior by a wide margin to I7s in game. Somehow my computer is doing it which proves its possible. What worries me though is i’m still seeing lots of people with this issue and i’m afaid whatever luck i may have stumbled on will run out.

My main concern with this thread is making sure people who are living with substandard performance are aware they may have the potential to get a lot more than they are currently and not let you be dissuaded by posts telling you an upgrade is the only viable option.

Suddenly a miracle has happened and i’m getting amazing fps at Maximum settings to boot. I’m posting primarily because a lot of people are being told their FX, I5, or even I7 is insufficient to play this game at decent settings because of general optimization issues that would require a complete recode of the game to correct. The fact that my phenom II is now proving capable of these feats and knowing they didn’t up and recode the entire game over night goes to show that perhaps something else is more specific (bug related maybe?) than overall lack of optimization(i’m not suggesting the game is highly optimized) is at play here on systems experiencing such issues.

Today, for the first time since owning GW2 I played with decent frame and I’m not sure whats happened but after being told and accepting that “it isn’t possible and the game isn’t optimized for amd CPU’s” i’m thoroughly shocked. This is my 3rd reformat since i’ve owned the game and my performance after a fresh install/download has never been anywhere close to this smooth(in fact the best I could get was roughly a 3rd of what i’m getting now)
Today though after a power failure that forced me to do a clean install of 8.1 and the same beta drivers I had been using and now i’m getting 100 fps with super sampling on and everything maxed. and in world events i’m only dipping as low at 34 fps keeping above 40fps in zergs.

Yesterday I could hope for 15-40 tops with the graphics cranked down to best performance. Not even spinning around during a world events getting me close to the slide show i was getting before.

I’m not sure whats happened. The drivers are the same. The OS is the same, the overclocks the same, the install disk is the same. I followed the same procedure i did the last 2 times as well down to the order in which i installed all my software. I see nothing in the change log to explain this except for some server side optimizations that were released days ago and did nothing at the time for my frame rates?

Is anyone else suddenly having any major improvements?

i’m running a phenom II x4 965 at 4.3ghz w/2.6gh cpu/nb.
8gb 1333mhz, M4A79T Deluxe Motherboard, 7770+7750 in crossfire
1terabyte HDD.

If you are using an Phenom II or FX processor and getting the sudden change i am chime in. If you are still getting lousy performance maybe we can look deeper and figure out the issue because I know a lot of you had given up any hope under the impression that lack of optimization made playable frame rates impossible but the fact that my Phenom II is pulling it off likely means your much new proc can too

removing gpu gives same effect. I still get better frame rates with crossfire. I’m pretty sure the instance where crossfire has negative impact is when a single card is sufficient to max out the settings and not be a bottleneck. If the card can do the job by itself then it will perform better by itself rather than forcing it to split the work load and introducing communication overhead. If your card can’t keep up on its own though it will benefit from the additional horsepower.

I’ve tried with crossfire disabled and get a 5fps drop. My hdd read/write times are fine. I’ve got a solid state drive coming in the mail though. Anyone had any luck with an add in sound card. I rememer the creative xfi was supposed to save cpu cycles and no one cared because “cpu’s aren’t a bottle neck”. Anyone used an x-fi and seen any performance improvements?

Srsly though, if arena net was just like. "Yeah we predicted wrong, made and oversight and now we’ve got a big task ahead of us splitting the main thread in half or more pieces. Don’t expect anything to come in the next 6-9 months months but trust us we’re concerned that all the hard effort we put into this game is going to waste because people are having a hard time experiencing it as intended. "

i’d be happy enough. Just to know its a priority. I don’t want to invest time into a game thats never going to get better.

I wouldn’t be using an igpu as i have two dedicated gpus.
I’m presuming the whole reason amd is dropping the fx line is the kevari apus with the igpu disabled can out perform the current line up.

why did it bleep 4.4 ghz…….

I’m using a phenom II x4 Clock Speed okittenhz, CPU-NB at 2600mhz ( stock of 2000 is a huge bottleneck for phenom IIs even at stock speeds. I get more fps out of those 600mhz than I get out of the 1ghz tacked on to my clock speed)

I’m using 2 7770s in crossfire, my motherboard has 4 x16 pci-e lanes
I’m using two of them and they register as running at x16.

8gb of ram, 1tb HDD recently formatted, Windows 8.1 x64

i think people really tend to over play the age on phenom IIs.
My last system had an 8350 before I sold it to cover my moronic roomates space heaterbill. I still had my old phenom II and built my new system around it and have noticed pretty much 0 difference in pretty much every game out this year. My friends stilling running his 8320 and honestly doesn’t experience much better game play in most scenarios and the ones that really crush my system to 10 fps still nail his below 20. I’ve got money stashed aside for a new AMD chip / mobo once they start releasing steamroller based chips. I’ve got no issue spending 400+ dollars to get the game where I want it but I take issue knowing spending that amount currently won’t get me there with out switching to a company i’ve boycotted for years over their scummy business practices(great products don’t make a company worth my money if they do evil things with that money)

Terrible as in sub 20fps, in every situation with more than 4 characters on screen be they players,mobs, npcs. I’m not sure what these people even play when they claim to get 40-60fps in pve. Do they mean leveling and solo world exploration? Sure I get anywhere from 40-120 fps while doing effectively nothing but running from point a to point b.
That doesn’t describe “most” pve.
The majority of end game PVE is dungeons, fractals, world events.
all 3 of these bring me below 20fps and world events often down to 7fps.

I really wanted to play WvW but i’m holding off on as theres no way i’m putting myself in a competitive sphere with under 30fps.

I’m making this post for people like myself made the mistake of buying this game thinking that AMD optimization problems were in being sorted based on forum information. What you will find is that the only solution currently available is upgrading to intel. For people like myself(there are plenty of us) who boycott Intel products for moral reasons relating to their business practices (ie, not because i’m on team amd, not for any fan boy reasoning, not because of imagined superior products i realize they under perform to a small degree, i’d sooner buy a product from a 3rd competitor if they existed, and certainly not because of I7 prices’ as all are within my means of purchasing right now.)

This is to highlight what happens if you go in search of better performance in this game with only amd as an option.

As of right now there is nothing in the works for us, (at least nothing they are willing to discuss and from my time playing GW for 6 years since launch there isn’t much arena net isn’t willing to discuss so the fact its being avoided is a pretty clear indicator)

If you have a Phenom even at 4.5ghz you will be instructed to upgrade to an FX processor which has weaker per core performance than the phenom II.(game is all about per core performance)
If you have an fx they will tell you that amd processors have weaker ipc than intels and you need to overclock. If you overclock your fx clock speed high enough counter act the weaker ipc and still have issues( you will no amd chip exists that can play this game) you will then be told to upgrade to intel

since all roads in search of performance in this game ultimately lead to buying an intel chip that leaves me with a whopping 0 options left to improve my performance.

The only small glimmer of hope is kevari in the future but seeing as how this games performance is miles worse on amd products than even their lower IPC can excuse i have a feeling even amd chips that match up with their intel counterparts core for core will continue to under perform. Its a gamble i might be willing to take though as its more enticing than a new 9350 for a whopping 2 fps increase.

kitten was hoping to find news of potential coming optimization in here.

ive got a phenom II 965 running at 4.4ghz and terrible fps

people keep telling me to get an fx processor, but they have even weaker single core performance than phenoms do and since this game doesn’t take advantage of multi-threading. If i did i’d be spending $300 on a processor that when overclocked to its max would give me maybe 5 fps increase keeping me still below the 30fps i need.
Not worth it.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

My system is basically the same as yours except the Video card may be a but lower then yours and I have all my in game setting to high or medium and on average I get 60fps, rarely dropping below 30fps in big groups anywhere in the game. I think the difference is I have not over clocked my system and I run the game in a clean install of Windows7 64 bit. With nothing running in the background except vent or ts3 . For some reason this game does not run well on an overclocked system.

I’m sorry but merely the fact that its overclocked alone cannot cause a game to run poorly. a truely stable overclock(one that remains stable under maximum stress for prolonged periods of time with 0 errors) cannot slow down any game. No matter how its coded. You’re giving arenanet an out they don’t deserve by allowing myths to propagate. Whats happening with games that display “unusual sensitivity to overclocking” is unstable overclocks that formerly behaved themselves are cracking under pressure they’ve never been tested at before. This means they either need to lower their overclock to where it can survive under max stress or increase the voltage to provide extra stability at the clock speed they desire given they haven’t already reached the voltage and temperature limitations of the chip. When a cpu is becomes unstable it halts, freezes, and spits out errors which in turn result in terrible FPS. The solution isn’t give up your 500mhz entirely and blame it all on the overclock. You dial it back till the system no longer cracks under stress.

Example. My native clock speed is 3.4 ghz. i see fps gain every 100mhz. all the way up to 4.3ghz where suddenly it drop off dramatically at 4.4 and everything goes to kitten. If i were to conclude that i needed to turn my OC off completely because i get bad fps i’d gain a whopping 5 extra frames a second by dropping all the way down to stock. Conversely dropping only 100 mhz gives me significantly more improvement. i’d be giving up all those gains i made up by wrongly concluding the problem is by any overclock at all. For me that’s almost 25 extra fps while exploring and an extra 8 during world events. If you’re having issuse with your overclock its not because of the game plays funny with the additional horse power its because your overclock was unstable to being with and you just never new it.

That alll being said……. I was able to go from 8fps during shadow behemoth at stock of 3.4. clock speeds to 16 fps during shadow behemoth at 4.3 ghz. Since getting above 4 and keeping it stable can be tricky on my processor I know its not something most will be able to do. We can conclude then that while overclocking can allow you significant in game fps improvements the baseline we are improving from is so bad that we don’t even get ourselves out of the red with those gains under the best conditions possible. the news is even bleaker for those who aren’t willing to dedicate significant time in squeezing the absolute max out of their overclock. So its it worth it? For every other game you own probably but here its only a tease. The prospects might be slightly better with newer amd chips but not by much. Its going to require amd to release a new processor or anet to correct their problems for this issue to go away. Weather or not i stay is dependent on their move when next gen amd chips come out. If they own up and deal with this issue perhapse Ill stick around but if they just wait for amd to release its next generation and then endorse everyone with a current amd product to switch over i’ll be leaving faster than a bat out of hell.

think i’m ready to throw in the towel. Was going to get my gf the game but finding that pretty much everything there is to do at end game.(dungeons, world events, zergs, wvw) performs terribly, this shouldn’t be the case when i’m running around the same game with 100+ most of the time and then crash land to 8fps when more than 8 people come on screen, regardless of settings.

7770s crossfired. Phenom II x4 @4.3ghz and nb-cpu at 2.8ghz custom cooled loop. 8 days prime stable(went camping for a week lol) If upgrading CPU’s was an option i’d take it but I won’t buy intel products(moral implications, & business practices) though I don’t deny they currently offer better performance. Its just not worth it to upgrade to the latest AMD chip that still won’t give me the frame rates I want when EVERY OTHER GAME I HAVE IS PLAYABLE MAXED OUT. I’m using a bunk kitten monitor right now that isn’t even 1080p and my frame rates hardly even change if i disable crossfire. So i’m i know this is a cpu bottleneck. One caused by software and not the cpu itself. I’ll probalby check in every nce in a while to see if things have changed thought thats probably just what they want. The people with issues to just go away so what remains is good press. Besides what do they care if i leave? they already got their money out of me. That just means lower server costs for them. Its just not fair. If I could find a single shred of evidence they cared or were trying to do something about it maybe I wouldn’t feel so taken advantage of but as of right now i truely feel arenanet doesn’t care about anything but money. Certainly not me at least. If only i could get a refund for all those gems I thought I was buying to support a game with a lot of potential.

24 hours prime stable 4.4ghz 965 phenom ii with the nb-cpu at 2800(bigger per mhz performance increase than clock speed itself from a stock 2000 makes a huge difference in pIIs) Shadow Behemoth on High Settings at 1600×900 hits 18 fps lowerging gpu settings does nothing and scaling between 4.0 and 4.4 shows fps gain so i know the issue is cpu limit. I’m using a 7770+7750

My girlfriend is using a dualcore pentium g6950(i3 or i5 based i think) that i’ve pushed from 2.8 to 4.1 and a single 5750 hd. her frame rates beat mine/meet mine depending on location with a gpu equal to my 7750, one half of my gpu equation. and half the available cores. running near the same frequency. my computer pretty much trumps hers in almost every game we play but not gw2….. i know the ipc on intel chips is generally superior but given might overclocker of an intel chip has none of the cache its high end brethren have or my amd chip and its running at a lower clock rate and 2 core disadvantage this is clearly an issue with optimization and threading…..the cheapest proc intel had to offer at the time shouldn’t be beating out my system. not when other cpu bound games perform better on my computer.

Boss Kill Timer/Rarity Swing +- 5 minutes / +-%5 based on graded server performance. Instead of removing the time and using grades to adjust the frequency of spawning. Use grades to microadjust difficulty by adjusting time to kill the boss. Say default of 15. challenge grows up to 10 minutes. But eases up to 20. Have it start out with the standard 15 minutes. Every 2 consecutive success in a server results in the timer shrinking by a 1 minute and a small increase increase in loot rarity.
Every failed run per server results in a 2 minute timer increase and a small decrease in loot rarity and a dramatic decrease in loot at 20 minutes resetting to 15 minutes automatically if the standard time is beaten even on a 20 min timer.

This would keep things challenging for more adept servers and provide further challenge after they have succeeded and would also allow smaller servers a chance to complete with out making it an automatic freebee and allow them to ramp themselves up to the the big time.

Finally this would help keep people from ditching their servers in hopes of success.
If they know the bad kitten servers have their dragon timed at 9 minutes and only succeed 1/3rd of the time but in their own server they have a much better chance of completion and achieving a drop at 17 minutes while teaching you what you need for a faster time i think they will do it. Conversely having the rarity drop off significantly at 20 minutes will keep people from guesting to smaller servers to take advantage of their easier time limits.

Basically allowing timer/rarity wiggle room based on past server completion grades will allow difficulty to zero in automatically on a servers skill level letting more people complete the boss with out taking the challenge away from the hardcore PvE players and still giving everyone a reward equivalent to their accomplishment.

the loot spectrum would show appreciable gain for upping the challenge but not so much that loot from the same boss on different servers would be incomparable. maybe 5-10%??? would need some deeper analysis to get the swing right but i truely feel letting the timer swing 5 minutes in either direction would give the big guys their challenge and the little guys a way to progress with ruining the challenge for everyone.