Guild Wars 2

Fruban.4169:

I’ve been reading that readyboost won’t help with performance if you have enough RAM and a fast enough hard drive. I have plenty of RAM, 6GB, but only a 5400RPM hdd. Now, I know that the HDD is rarely used during gameplay and it wont increase FPS, but what about when it is accessed for loading new areas, loading into the game, and loading up textures when running around?

Your best bet is to probably just benchmark it yourself. For example, I play a game called osu! that on first start, scans through about 2000 songs I have.

With ReadyBoost enabled, it goes fast, but with ReadyBoost disabled, it goes significantly faster. That is how I found out ReadyBoost is… not needed for my system at all.

I would clean uninstall your graphics drivers and reinstall either the latest stable (12.10) or latest beta (12.11 B11) package.

I would also suggest making sure nothing else is using video memory or graphics resources (another game running at the same time as GW2, video, flash content, etc.). Especially the flash content part. A YouTube video in the background in most cases will toggle PowerPlay, and cut the max usable clock speed for core and memory by a good bit. Not sure if this would really affect textures though.

Most (recent) games will restrict the use of high textures if either system RAM or video RAM is too low, if your on a 32-bit OS, or both.

I was using high textures on GW2 with 4GB of RAM and 1GB of Video RAM in the past, but upgraded to 8GB system RAM, 2GB Video, so no idea if it’s the memory amount stopping you.

I’m not aware of any other reason for the restriction though.

Espionage.3685:

Iyeru.5240:

The CPU itself does core sleeping, it’s not something someone can edit easily

I can’t recall the exact option I mean, but it can be modified via Registry (the key to edit is something like “ValueMin” and “ValueMax”; you change one to the same as the other)

Got it, the term I was referring to is “Core Parking”
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=159864

Iyeru.5240:

The CPU itself does core sleeping, it’s not something someone can edit easily

I can’t recall the exact option I mean, but it can be modified via Registry (the key to edit is something like “ValueMin” and “ValueMax”; you change one to the same as the other)

On my system, I just figured I could run at near-highest settings without any issue whatsoever. This, isn’t nearly as true however.

I believe I’ve found a perfect match of settings that also give me pretty decent performance on my system.

My system specs can be seen here: http://valid.canardpc.com/2647942
And detailed GPU specs can be seen here: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/8c8ew/
And in-game settings for GW2: http://puu.sh/1McVC.jpg

My Processor is overclocked to 3.6GHz at Triple-Core. I can unlock my processor to a Quad-Core, but only can take the speed to 3.3GHz. With this in mind, GW2 seems more singlethreaded (based on what others say), and does perform better at 3.6GHz.

I also have done various tweaks to my system, which may or may not really help, but here they are:

- Disabled DynamicTicks (bcdedit command; Windows
- Disabled Processor Core Sleeping (the exact term escapes me currently)
- Disabled Paging File (8GB of RAM is fine for me to do this)
- Disabled AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management; Hard Drive)
- Various fsutil Tweaks (disable 8dot3, etc.)
- Disabled Processor Power Management (from BIOS)

I have also gone out of my way to disable most forms of security on Windows 8 (no Defender, no DEP, no Security Center, etc.), and run no security suite. I don’t recommend doing this.

FPS when general PvE is fine, most of the time around 50-60 FPS. FPS during combat in WvWvW is around 20-30.

My system is not something I would consider high-end, but I’m pretty pleased with the performance and graphics quality I’m able to acquire. Perhaps it’ll change in-time though.

For in-game settings, I would highly suggest you take a look at changing Reflections and Shadows firstly. Shadows at Medium don’t change the quality “that” significantly, and may be worth the performance benefit over Ultra. Reflections are somewhat nice, especially in the Water. But after changing the setting to None, my performance skyrocketed in some areas, even if Water wasn’t visible (really Water is the only thing I notice being affected). If you can live with Reflections, the performance gain should be significant.

Rendering Sampling doesn’t seem to affect performance that much for me at all in most areas, but I notice larger performance hits in other areas. Running it at Native should really be fine, especially if your looking for more performance. I personally don’t notice that much of a quality difference between Native and Supersample.

Any other setting didn’t really affect performance that significantly in my case.

NiicK.9302:

So, I swore on map chat last night, and I’m banned for 3 days. 3 days is way too long for just swearing on a game aimed at young adults and older.

I feel there’s something missing from this story. If you were directly swearing “at” somebody in a negative manner, then I can understand the ban. If you said something like “crap man, you do some pretty awesome damage” then that would be less ban-worthy imo.

But then again, if swearing is bannable no matter what, then what I mentioned above would probably be ban-worthy.

Are you using Windows 8 by some chance? I heard this issue appeared with some people when upgrading to Windows 8.

LionHeart.2490:

Why even running on a 64bit. Windows 7 do i still get a memory loss error and crashes the game?

A x64 OS will not help you if you don’t have enough RAM to start with. I’ve run GW2 on a 4GB system with Win7 x64 and never had an out-of-memory problem; but then again I’m careful with what I run too (I idle around 900MB)

As for what OS is better; I’ve had better overall performance on Windows 8, but it is minimal. I see no real reason as to avoid Windows 8, unless you want 100% support from ArenaNet and GW2

Size: 14.7 GB (15,882,103,456 bytes)
Size on disk: 14.7 GB (15,882,104,832 bytes)

Also I thought the dat file was pre-allocated, but I might be wrong.

Rampage.7145:

Do u guys realize ur problem is most likelly hardware related since 99% ppl don’t have this issue right?

Yep, my hardware must be the issue, especially since the rest of the game performs better when the friends list specifically isn’t open, and no other game experiences such an issue, and that this issue didn’t happen before to me in GW2 in the past :p Also lol at 99%

Also, I noticed I have the same problem too. Can’t say I open my friends list too often, but framerate does drop.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

marnick.4305:

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Windows 8 is insanely popular and actually a very good operating system.

no it isn’t, on both counts.

Both corporate and consumer level people are moving to Win8 in a very fast rate which pales Win7 conversion rates. These are also facts you can find everywhere on the webz.

Stop getting your stats from NeoWin. You’re wrong, simple as that.

Windows 8, from my personal experience, does use less memory, and is overall faster then Windows 7. I don’t care what any random person says, but what I experience on my own system is 100% fact. Will this same experience be the same for everyone else? No idea…

In any case, when I last played GW2 on W8 on my computer, it worked fine without any issue. I’m about to try it again here in a little bit though.

kirito.4138:

If you can’t physically add more ram try to free up resources.
Close as many application/processes/windows-services etc as you can.

Upgrading to 64bit would allows you to use more of that 4GB due to 32bit architecture limitations.

Most motherboards only allow like 3.25GB of total system RAM to be used under 32-bit Windows, some even less then that. Very few allow 4GB (in my experience).

Under a 32-bit OS, applications that are 32-bit can only use 2GB of RAM, no way around this. Under a 64-bit OS, 32-bit applications can use a bit more then 2GB of RAM (I think 3GB?) if they are Large-address aware flagged (which I think GW2 is). So the most memory period that GW2 can use is either 2-3GB. I think AutoCAD has some boot flag you can set for 3GB of memory (idk exactly what it does), but it might be worth looking into.

There is also the video memory duplication you have to take into account as well. Vista+ Windows OS’s have a new display driver model that also duplication video memory into system memory (an alternative to this is to set GW2.exe to XP SP3 compat mode). I don’t know exactly if this is in the same memory space as the application itself or it’s own, but in any case, simply put, just 4GB of RAM on a 32-bit OS is not going to cut it in most cases, especially with GW2. Window’s paging file is supposed to help out with this though I guess.

asafy.7450:

Espionage.3685:

GW2 doesn’t use Unreal Engine (if it did, my interest in the game would of dropped drastically; I hate PhysX’s implementation and horrible CPU performance). I’m almost positive that GW1 doesn’t use Unreal Engine either.

As for this FPS issue, I’m hearing that GW2 seems to prefer higher clock speeds over core quantity, since it seems singlethreaded. So this should mean that I should go from my 3.3GHz quad core, to 3.6GHz triple-core?

have you read what i have posted?
i said the engeine gw2 using is an improvment of gw1 and that was wrong.
unreal engeinw is much better and good

I just re-read what you said, my misunderstanding. In any case though, I would prefer.. GW2’s current state over Unreal Engine.

GW2 doesn’t use Unreal Engine (if it did, my interest in the game would of dropped drastically; I hate PhysX’s implementation and horrible CPU performance). I’m almost positive that GW1 doesn’t use Unreal Engine either.

As for this FPS issue, I’m hearing that GW2 seems to prefer higher clock speeds over core quantity, since it seems singlethreaded. So this should mean that I should go from my 3.3GHz quad core, to 3.6GHz triple-core?

I’m on Windows 8, and have no such key delay.

Cynthia.2147:

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Cynthia.2147:

How am I supposed to add the “-umbra gpu” command line to my target line? When I try to apply the changes, it tells me that the location specified in the target line doesn’t exist, so what am I supposed to do? I’d appreciate some assistance, thanks

command switches are added after the quotation wrapped path

“d:\games\gw2\gw2.exe” -umbra gpu for example

Using this command line made my fps drop by about 20-25, why’s that?

Your GPU might not be up to the task. I believe it’s safe to say:

- Default config (no -umbra gpu) is good for computers with high-end CPU’s
- -umbra gpu is good for computers with high-end GPU’s

Darth Loki.5610:

…Due to my computer’s miserable download speed, downloading the full game takes 5-6 hours. I’ve been downloading since then.

I do apologize for going off-topic, but you don’t know what miserable download speeds are until you’ve had Verizon DSL. Max download speed is 360KB/s. Imagine how long GW2 takes to download on that :p

Also I thought I heard of some command-like switch that would allow you to re-verify the game, perhaps it was -repair

Squall Leonhart.2075:

what it doesn’t do is upload a complete list of voltages and temperature values

PCWizard might though.

HWMonitor (same company from CPU-Z, CPUID) can do this as well, but that’s about all it does, voltages and temperatures.

BigDeath.7023:

People getting low fps… there’s a simple fix for that (at least for me worked i got 60 fps, before i had 50)
Just open the Fraps (see the fps), then open google chrome (only works with google chrome, i don’t know if version interferes on this, i have the latest) and go to a website that have flash content like youtube.com, click in any video and let run while you play (you can stop the download of video, but you need let the browser in the video page)
You can see that Fraps shows the fps of video page…

Sorry for my bad english, i hope it works for you guys.

In my case, this will clock the GPU at a lower GPU speed. For example, my Radeon HD 5570 is at 650MHz stock. With flash content open, it clocks to 400MHz. Needless to say, this would probably lower my FPS on 3D content.

I know a person who has reported higher FPS however when having flash content open. I believe he had some AMD APU however, which may make me think that on certain GPU’s, flash content may have the GPU actually clock itself at the highest possible.

Any feedback on this?

I actually can’t recall my GW2 client crashing, ever since release. I use a Radeon HD 5570 currently, but even when I was using a 7850, OC’d, with beta drivers, I had no crashes.

I haven’t played the game for a few days now though, so I have no feedback on what recent updates may of done. But up until I last played, I’ve had (from what I can recall) 0 crashes.

CPU-Z has a validation button, that allows you to upload detailed system information online, and provides you a link (and also a cool forum userbar if you want to use it).

To show how detailed it is, here are my specs: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2537200

From that, you can tell:
- What my OS is
- What CPU I use and how far it’s overclocked
- Memory timings, type, and clock speed
- What GPU I use
- etc.

CPU-Z is nice for overall system specs, but it appears to be a bit lacking on what it presents for GPU information. This is where GPU-Z comes in.

GPU-Z also has a validation feature that allows you to upload your specs online, and provides you a link.

To show how detailed it is, here is mine: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/vdwu9/

I believe providing both CPU-Z and GPU-Z validation links will help people get an understanding of exactly what is going on with your hardware, and also allow both devs and other people to suggest options for issues.

CPU-Z: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
GPU-Z: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Also note that both programs are free, and very lightweight (don’t even need to be installed). Both programs are pretty popular as well, and are safe for use.

- What FPS are you getting? 5 more FPS on top of 100+ FPS isn’t nearly that bad…
- Care to give more in-depth system specs, maybe using CPU-Z’s validation tool?

RadeonPro has a setting for Texture LOD, that if set to highest (3), will basically make most/all textures blurry. Setting it to 0 is default, and -3 is sharpest.

Don’t know if anyone has messed with RP, but if you have, that setting might be worth looking at to see if you may of accidentally set it. Otherwise, perhaps even getting RP and setting this option to 0 or -3 might help.

Magnificat.5439:

OMG… cant belive it…

it IS because the bad pci-e multiplier… i checked with gpu-z, it said it is supporing x16, but running on x1… i said, its a false read, i can run the bf3 just fine… i started screwing around with bios update, chipset driver update (i have the latest ati gpu driver)… somehow i managed to raise this value up to x4 (i know, its still sucks, its not x16, but i tried the gw2… and its 40 fps from 15!…

But now, im kinda confused… i have only one pci-e slot, which is x16, and a pcie 3.0 x16 card in it, but it still runs only on x4…
anyway, im at least seeing the problem…

Try taking out the GPU and putting it back in (when the computer is shutdown of course). As silly as that may sound, sometimes doing this can actually fix low-speed PCI-E speeds (it did for me a few times, and was reported a few other times by other people)

I find that generally, WDDM-based drivers tend to have lower FPS in comparison to XPDM-based drivers, simply due to XPDM drivers commonly being kernel-mode and directly only using the video card’s RAM for texture data, whereas WDDM is user-mode and copies video card memory into system memory as well (on DX9 games, which GW2 is).

I know about the -cuda switch, but I only thought it was for taking advantage of CUDA cores on Nvidia GPU’s. I thought I read recently that the -cuda switch actually enables use of OpenCL though, which in Nvidia’s case, means the same thing, it will take advantage of CUDA cores on the GPU.

But if the -cuda switch does use OpenCL, does that mean it will work on any hardware/driver combination that can use it, including AMD? I happen to have a AMD CPU (Phenom II X3) and GPU (Radeon HD 5570; soon to be 7850). If so, is there anyway to test if it’s actually working as intended?

I too am interested in making this guild my home I added all the people on that list above and nobody appears to be online currently (unless I added them wrongly or something; I just copy/pasted the names individually into my friends list), but I’ll keep on the lookout

Kind of a generic title, but there it is :p

I would be interested in finding a guild that:

- Has a good bit of people that are active
- Is PvE based (for the most part anyway, I don’t mind PvP at all though)
- Preferably US East based (I live in PA; a guild I was on on another MMORPG actually had majority of people from that state which was cool)
- Friendly to all players
- Doesn’t require voice chat for everything
- Preferably doesn’t use Ventrilo (probably my most hated voice chat client; I prefer TS3 or Evolve)
- Would be willing to try using Evolve for guild-related matters (don’t really have to, but I would be real happy to see a guild using that program)

As for a little about myself, I’m a PC gamer Nowadays I’m usually either playing Torchlight II, or Guild Wars 2. I use Steam and Evolve majorly (I happen to be a moderator at Evolve) and I have a good bit of technical knowledge and experience (I’ve setup websites, Vent/TS3 servers, troubleshoot hardware, etc.) I’m also currently studying Japanese too.

Just ended up disabling HPET on my system earlier for unrelated reasons, but it did help improve performance.

The method for me to disable HPET was:
- Disable ACPI SRAT Tables in BIOS
- Reduce ACPI level from 3.0 to 1.0 in BIOS
- Run “bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock” in Command Prompt in Windows

Some BIOS’s and UEFI machines have nicely named HPET options for toggling, but as in my situation, this isn’t always the case (I basically played around with various settings until I found those two settings to disable HPET).

I uploaded a few Timing, related programs earlier for other people to test HPET, DPC, and Timing accuracy: http://puu.sh/18avL
https://www.virustotal.com/file/b565599b47ef1898d9f3957b5ee438c58a35e3d41b247ac0c50c229f34138358/analysis/1348483600/

HPET2: Tests if your using HPET or CPU clock
dpclat: Tests DPC latency levels
WinTimingTest: Tests timing accuracy

Here’s a transcript of the conversation with my friend:

Espionage724: hey, whenever u mentoned that GW1 failed or something, what did you mean lol
Friend: um with the patches
Friend: when they started to update it before they anouced the guild wars 2
Friend: they patched it and made a bunch of de buffs and pay for better armor
Friend: and pay for better recipies for ur skills
Espionage724: hmm
Friend: and changed some of the pvp
Friend: and pve stuff
Friend: through the patches and made it weak
Friend: my friend from Germany was telling me how much they changed
Friend: and made it more pay to win
……..
Friend: from what i understand the patches for the game were very bad
Friend: after awhile
Espionage724: hmm
———————————————————————————

Since the Mac version appears to be using Cider, it probably wouldn’t be at all difficult to port it over to Linux as well

Something official would be pretty awesome, but in any case, it probably wouldn’t be hard to manually port the Mac client to Linux.

I have an AMD Phenom II X3 720 CPU (triple-core). It can be unlocked to a X4 (quad-core) easily from BIOS.

With triple-core, I’m able to get 3.5GHz stable (3.7GHz with voltage increase), but with quad-core, I’m only able to get 3.3GHz stable (3.4GHz with voltage increase).

Most games usually only are optimized for use of dual-core, and would benefit from the X3 setup, since there are higher clock speeds on 2 cores. Games that benefit from more cores would most likely benefit from the X4 setup.

What would Guild Wars 2 perform better with?

I’ll have to see if I can get more specific details as to what my friend meant, but I’m guessing either he’s making this up (he already preordered MoP collectors edition, maybe doesn’t want to regret that or something :p), or maybe he heard bad information from a friend or another source.

There’s always a way to escape grinding! Just jack the XP rates to 800% or so, and with 1 kill, you’ll be level 80 :p

I joke though, but it might be possible a lot of people played MMORPG’s on “private servers” and commonly, those types of servers have some increased XP rates, and they feel that every game should be 1-kill-level-max or something :/

This game is definitely pretty fun

I have a friend who keeps telling me the reason he won’t be getting GW2 is because apparently GW1 died out. I believe he said something along the lines of ArenaNet adding some patch, and majority of players not liking it, and leaving.

I have no idea if this is true or not. I’ve only played a bit of Nightfall years ago, and I found it pretty entertaining. In any case, I haven’t heard anything about GW “flopping”, but then again I haven’t really looked into it too much.

Does anyone else happen to know if what my friend says is true or not? I’d love to just prove him wrong…