Guild Wars 2

hehe, thanks, – I really don’t see the big deal when it goes to 30’s – i guess if you try playing at 8 for a few months, – 30 seems lightning fast …and not much different than the 170 -

but I still stick to saying that windows is responsible for a lot of the stress on our system – I did watch my system go from insanely fast – to a noticeable speed decrease and bugs – so I highly recommend that anyone with a high end computer experiencing abnormal speed changes – set up a small drive with a new install of windows, that you boot into just for playing gw2- don’t add anything else – no adobe , no firewalls , no antivirus to that drive – the performance difference is night and day.

while I’m still pulling high fps – ( again with a gtx 460 – so don’t stress yourself over a video card – it’s how I was able to get a high end mobo and cpu – otherwise unaffordable ) – it’s not without new bugs and quirks – now I have to figure out why my mouse keeps randomly disappearing – it’s not because of gw2 – I saw the promised land!! heh!

heh, facing portals in wvw – 170 fps – just capped it ..cuz I hardly believe it myself :x
Seems that my motherboard is countering whatever microsoft did with it’s own drivers – I

I did get a strange error saying that gw2 was not compatible with a particular win7 color scheme, when I see it again, I’ll cap and post it…..

Trying to share this adventure in hopes to give anet and everyone else somewhere to look.

I’m using a 4770k with an msi mpower max motherboard – it’s putting my gtx 460 on steroids heh!! – it’s one bad kitten!! Loving it!

also using 2 8pin eps on my board for my cpu – articles and msi people say it helps with load – not overclocking yet ….have turbo on auto.

ok, i think the stuttering was caused by virtue http://lucidlogix.com/product-virtu-gpu.html my new motherboard came with it free- have to play with the settings, and it actually added a bit more fps – I think it’s v-synch is whats causing the stuttering.

but microsoft definitely killed off some fps – if you want to see high performance gw2 – make a new drive – install a fresh copy of windows 7 and don’t update it – granted it’s riskier because it has more security risks – and you don’t have to install gw2 to that drive either – I was using my old drive and running it from there. Serious, i saw 110 fps and in battles ( got myself killed for the sake of science and ran into a enemy group lol ) it went down to 70

unquestionably it’s microsoft’s fault, my fps just dropped to 68 with jitters. still installing more updates ….microsoft has installed over 200 updates and counting.

custom built a new computer – now getting 110fps on a gtx 460 in wvw – lowest i saw it drop was 70

working the heck out of my 4770k – but i haven’t even kicked in the boosts yet – was just benchmarking it now. and this was while downloading updates on windows 7 in the background – now lets see what the updates do to those numbers – but with a new windows 7 install the fps is ridiculous!! – if the numbers change, then it’s clearly microsofts fault with their patches. cuz i’m running a beta nvidia driver build

this coming from about 7 fps -

no doubt the problem is that gw2 is killing the cpu in a big way – this set up can handle it easy – but still..I was watching those meters fly – no wonder my old pc was exploding …don’t bother getting an expensive card for gw2 – it’s all about the cpu. ( and the right motherboard ) I haven’t even begun to overclock yet heh!

i’d say run your windows experience index – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-windows-experience-index#What-is-windows-experience-index=windows-7

Open Performance Information and Tools by clicking the Start button, and then clicking Performance Information and Tools,, run a benchmark on your system. then start replacing the slowest parts first.

after re-reading this thread, i’m starting to think that the best upgrade I can get is to find other people with older computers who are sick of having to buy new computers – buy some sandwiches, a Frisbee and meet up at a park I’ll get 2 frisbees, one with amd written on it and the other with intel – maybe a whiffle ball with “mac”. Any upgrades from there will be how high you can throw em :p

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm

5 extra bucks you spend now will save you having to rebuy a power supply if you ever get a better video card or add extra drives.

for 5 bucks more you can get a 600 watt psu haswell ready http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171083

I know the feeling, I need a whole new set up – my old system reached saturation point with upgrades ….I’ll tell you this though – don’t be quick to buy from new egg- join their mailing list – as sometimes they give you codes that save you a ton of money – newegg is slick, sometimes they have great bargain savings hiding in their system – but if you add the item too quick to your cart – they won’t tell you about it heh!! I’ve chopped off over $150 from my desired build so far like that – I just keep stuff in my cart and keep searching for deals and coupon codes !! lol

one way to approach is it to go to newegg – search amd apu , then sort by highest price, scroll down to your budget.

as a general rule, a computer is as fast as it’s slowest part. so I’d start there.

in windows 7 – you click – start / control panel / performance – and run a benchmark on your computer to see which are the slowest parts.

be careful with some of the advice you get on these forums, some of the responses are sensible, but other over the top enthusiasts will tell you, that you need to upgrade your power company first lol

I’ve been hearing a lot of great things about the amd cards …the only drawback i’ve heard is the physX from Nvidia, AMD handles it through software and assigning it to the cpu – plus Nvidia is simply more supported on many softwares – i’m sure that may change soon though if AMD keeps it up.

PS – MSI FTW! hehe

you have to see how msi handles it! I can’t wait to get my hands on it !! makes me wonder what a RAM disk on SSD would be like – I was watching this video for an overview – pretty cool – at least for me it was!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx-daXhCRsQ he starts talking about it at around 12 mins. – the reason I really liked the board originally was because it has widi and bluetooth in the package – and it has special features for bumping up matching msi video cards …but the more i research the perks the more i like it!!

the msi z87 boards have a very cool feature called ramdisk – With a RAMdisk you can create a virtual drive from your system memory enabling speeds 20x faster than a modern SSD. – so you can gain a ton of speed and save a ton of money with it for spending a little more on a good motherboard.

i also suspect that microsoft is part to blame for recent decrease in performance. Aside from gw2, much of my older software is ‘suddenly’ running slower on my pc. There are also many newer complaints on the net to the same effect. And I’m quite sure that despite me running windows 7, windows 8 is part to blame as microsoft may be bringing in “new revolutionary advances in modern spying ..err technology” from windows 8 to windows 7 for compatibility reasons – as win 8 users who upgraded from 7 are complaining that it’s making their systems A LOT slower. Meanwhile you got Adobe flash floating around the background like some mosquito trying to bite your ear and giving non stop script errors, and nvidia trying to improve their video cards by overheating your system and giving you a blackscreen… So while gw 2 isn’t running great at this time, don’t lose sight of the of all the poor performance microsoft, nvidia and adobe have been placing in our systems of late. I’m sure it doesn’t help. Who knows, it’s probably a conspiracy to get people to buy new machines lol. – which i wouldn’t be the least bit surprised and wouldn’t put it past microsoft…bill gates didn’t become a multi billionaire by buying a lotto ticket heh! they cause a problem, and have nice affordable solutions. The economy needs a boost and apple macs ain’t hot anymore, ur next system belongs r to us! "southpark quote about kenny getting killed here. "

after watching the forum for a few weeks, i believe they are, but also after reading a few posts from the developers and in the wvw string, I suspect that the solutions will take time. Had they not wanted to address this, you would have seen more posts deleted and threads locked. It’s just frustrating because they can’t fix it overnight. I have a feeling something happened with the events that caused something bigger than they expected.

It might be a good time to revisit gw1 till this is sorted out ….. which btw ….I’m really upset at the idea that it can take months to years in gw1 just to get enough points to get this dull looking felblade skin, but you can easily purchase a fancy looking legendary …..I’m feeling kind of dissed on that ….makes me feel kinda silly for having been so excited about gw2 considering all these issues. my loyalty was paid with a chicken bone and severe lag :p

another thing is the ivy bridge, and sandy bridge cpu’s – set ups are still powerful systems – the next gen cpus are not that big an improvement, and in fact the older cpus are more overclock friendly and the newer cpus are tweaked more for laptops…..I’m only going for it because I do video also – i’m really using gaming as benchmarks – so imo don’t get caught up with the latest and greatest hype when you can take advantage of clearance sales on older models. The video card is usually what makes your build expensive – too bad you can’t take advantage of the back to school sales we are having in the us.

I’d go for an older cpu myself, if I wasn’t so concerned with being future proof – rumor has it that the 1150 is the last desktop socket from intell – so I’m guessing I’ll be good for any future upgrades on the 1150 – if I had the money …I’d go 2011 because they may last longer in upgrades than the 1150 = I’m hoping to last 6-10 years in my next build with future compatible upgrades.

there’s actually a bug in the h87 that allows overclocking – http://www.tomshardware.com/news/h87-express-overclocking-bug,23273.html

if you are going to go 4770k – make sure to check out the msi mpower motherboard series – the other choice is the asus rog vi series – each have special little perks made for gamers

I’ve got my eye on the 4770k msi mpower max combo myself!

I’ve been doing a ton of research lately on building a new computer, and along with this came a few articles that are saying that desktops are a dying breed, samsung is about to stop making desktops, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2013/06/133_138061.html and the recent 4770k haswell chip was actually optimized to have better battery life, the k seems to be there as a courtesy to enthusiasts, as the chip runs too hot to really be considered enthusiast, and future Bradwell chips might be welded on to boards ( more laptop mobos ), the 1150 might be the last socket,http://gizmodo.com/5978232/intel-to-stop-making-desktop-motherboards ddr 2 ram actually went up in price , and so did the gtx 460, as if the gaming desktop is becoming more of a gaming console and prices are going up since more focus is being placed on mobile – Then I read on this forum many posts explaining how laptops are not good enough for online gaming, – understandably so – but then I look at the games and they are lag fests for many laptops, that is completely illogical on a business sense …It makes me think that when game developers focus on making a game too beautiful…that only overclocked desktops can play decently – you are shooting yourself in the foot for the greater market share.

That said, there should be a setting that makes playing on a laptop ‘fun’ , not annoying and impossible.

big sale now at Tigerdirect – save $87,500.00 on their GTX 670 card !! ^.^

it doesn’t effect every system the same, i’d be ecstatic to play at 35 fps – but i’m getting 5-6 on lowest settings possible. was at about 40 before dragon bash.

i don’t get it though, why are so many of these ‘games’ turning into benchmarks …how is that fun for casual players ? is it a freuidian slip of the game designers desire to be movie directors issues rearing it’s ugly head ? lol. you can’t revolutionize gaming if you can’t play the game! lol

@Ilithis – i’d deduct at least 30 fps from that report – beta worked amazingly well on my system back then. this isn’t that guildwars 2 anymore. Would love to see a new updated version of that report actually.

there’s also opening up your command prompt window and typing Tracert 01.02.03.04 . the numbers being the servers you want to ping.

according to this site – http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/visual-tracert/ – I’m ending up in germany in my trace route – im on the us east coast! there may be more to this story than I thought! ^.^

Thank you for the honesty and the time to make this post Bill, it is sincerely appreciated – at least by myself. On the same hand, some of us literally can’t play anymore until these updates are done, I wish there were other ways we could help, but it does literally seem like a roadblock until all is fixed. – Either way, Cheers and Thank you again for this update.

fair enough, I can appreciate that response – especially after sorting through a ton of gear to build a new pc. Cheers

unfortunately, I’m finding that more and more developers are doing more poor coding, so in effect, I find that we don’t really upgrade to have new features but to compensate for errors. It seems that the more power we get, the more bugs are are tolerated as acceptable.

In fact, I dare even to say that this is why mac’s had an edge at one point, it wasn’t so much that their systems were better – but the software was very well made.

yeah, then upgrade again next year when all the cheap parts aren’t good enough!

btw – the parts i named for you total to about 1k without compromising a high end build. any decent gtx card, and 1600mhz xmp ram, will get a boost from additional perks in the msi board …..the extra space and cooling in that case will allow you to do a good overclock on a low fi gtx video card – which will hold you over till you save up for another great part to add to the Beast! What GW2 needs most is a strong cpu – with the kraken and the 4770k ( which also has an onboard video + msi gives you software to utilize it as well ) – you should be able to ( in theory ) do a good overclocking as need be, and see a big improvement in GW2.

honestly, I’m taking my time and researching as much as I can before I spend anything – I’m finding there are 300 opinions and 500 variations per piece of gear – and it seems to be more of an art of building a computer than exact numbers.

as of this moment, my aim is an msi mpower max mobo with a 4770k @750watts psu – with a kracken water cooler – or a phantek – considering a xigmatek full tower – it’s a beast of a case that can hold 2 power supplies! I’m sure that will hold me over for quite a few years! lol – after that I can upgrade the rest of the parts over time.

tip with newegg, I’ve been playing around with it lately for a future proof build myself – they have a lot of hidden great deals – I had found this 100 dollar discount deal on a 4770k with an msi mpower mobo – they took it down the next day – not sure if it was a typo or a one day sale – but I’ve kept playing around with combinations and finding major discounts – current build I’m putting together in my wishlist is -146 dollars in savings – also, keep your eye on the gtx 760 gamer version ….its 259 – and has some really good stats for it’s price range. – I’ve read people posting that 2 sli 760’s oc version performs as well as 1 titan.

yep, since the dragon bash ….and the lag spikes vary on time of the day. i have a feeling this is how it’s going to be from now on because of the non stop events. Feels like i’m the fat kid in extreme dodgeball, getting pelted with lag spikes everytime I try to walk into the game :/

get a refurb or buy / trade for one on craigslist – this years models are only a tinge better than last years models – so you have a better chance of getting a higher performing last years model than a lower class newer model for under 1k. Companies don’t want to be known for having a single refurb mess up 2times so chances are it will work fine. On the used computers, these are the guys that either paid too much or dumping their old systems to spend thousands on a spec more of performance. So realistically if you want better performance for less, go used. :p

I don’t know to be honest, but i may try uninstalling adobe all together to see how and if it relates – for all I know gw2 was simply flooding the ram with it’s 1.8 gig load and adobe just finished killing the memory with it’s own errors. One test you can try is start the game …..then minimize it while it’s logging in to the game itself – then surf a few flash intensive websites, like facebook, youtube, cnn etc – I know that’s when I notice major performance drop in my system consistently, like my mouse starts ghosting and my whole system starts lagging – i would say this has all the markings of a memory leak – but I’m hesitant to call it that because it happens so quick. I do know after I shut the game down ….my system keeps lagging until I do a ram flush

for my ram flush – I simply put this command into a short cut –
windir\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
works great and helps my system recover stability.

if you by chance have a browser or any software that uses adobe flash running in the background, I’d suggest shutting it down. I am having lag issues also, but I noticed yesterday after some experimenting, the latest adobe flash build is causing trouble in the background. I had gw2 up and running, and the adobe flash gave me a plug in not responding error in the background, it locked up my system for like 20 min’s before I was able to do anything in it. On a faster system, I suspect this would be more subtle but is no doubt causing trouble all the same.

Hi Kyllaa

I have the speedfan software – my system is a natural toaster oven lol – it’s one of the pioneers in multi core cpu’s – when it gets too hot, it doesn’t hesitate to shut down on me lol – So we are clear there – I do 3D also, and was working on a project yesterday without any issues – usually when the system acts up – I’ll experience it in the 3D software first…- the weather out here has been pretty hot – I’ve had ac on, and a table top fan blowing into the case – it was running pretty stable – my ambient is @ 46 C now and the temp outside is now @ 101f

I was also pleasantly surprised yesterday after some research to find that my GTX 460 is a mini powerhouse – in the right settings I can actually overclock it to 1350!! – Obviously in this current case, I can’t go there …But I have gone up to 850 without any backlashes – and the biggest increase I’ve seen in fps from this effort is about +2-3 fps …on a normal non hot day.

So while I agree that the heat does play a factor in my machine, I had it relatively safe ( considering the weather and my old school low fan set up ) with room ac and fan.

I have my eye on a new set up I’m planning on building, but this current set up is actually great for beta’s ( which I do often ) – simply because ‘she’ is so sensitive and we’ve spent so much time together I know her well lol. So I would say in a cold environment, she would still generate tons of heat , in fact ..it use to help keep my toes warm in the winter lol – It’s a pentium D 3.2g – they naturally run hot. – and had it been too hot, it will not hesitate to shut down. so I wouldn’t be quick to blame the heat – if I were to make it colder, I’d probably get 2-3 fps more but nothing major.

also – she’s running exceptionally well today, especially considering the weather – I have 2 3D programs up, the autodesk fbx converter, a photo editor and firefox with 8 tabs up – and she’s moving quite fast.
The 320.14 nvidia driver was causing it to overheat a lot – the 320.49 driver is more stable, but still not perfect.

ok, whatever you guys did in last patch is going in the right direction……the game is more stable – it is still slower than pre july event – but less lag spikes.

I did notice though, that there is a connection with the adobe flash issues and the game – I had a browser up in the background while testing this morning – it was giving me a “plug in stopped responding error” from adobe flash. While this crash pop up was happening – I switched to gw2 – character page ( after log in – before game ) and looked at my fps – it was between 8-13 fps – I switched back to desktop – closed the adobe error and shut down firefox – went back to guildwars and my fps shot up to 40. I went into the game, you can still see the game was stressing my computer as it was playing in a flickering (slow 1-8 fps ) motion, but it wasn’t lag spiking – it was consistent ….prior it was walk 30 seconds flickering, then freeze for 2-4 seconds, then repeat – it would get better as I left town to about 12-15 frames.

Aside from this, I noticed there is a major delay ( not using lag to distinguish between local issues and internet issues ) – between your server and my pc – I say this with confidence because I was walking around an empty unconstructed town – I was still connected to the game but the assets, including other players would take forever to load – at one point it took like 5-10 minutes to load the crafting station models.

So my theory is as before, this is a multi part issue -

1 Adobe flash is definitely affecting gw2 performance in a negative way.
2 gw2 is still stressing my ram – less than yesterday so you are going in the right direction…
3 there is something going on before it gets to my computer that is causing the game assets to load slowly – it wasn’t causing me any disconnects or lag spikes, but none the less was taking forever to load in game structures and avatars to my environment.

after a crazy error I experienced last night, I have no doubts it’s a memory issue, and my memory is fine, i have my system scan it every boot up.

I started playing around with different settings in an effort to raise my fps, I disabled visual themes and desktop compositions – anything i could disable to lighten the load …it did seem to help a little bit..but very little – like 2 fps – in my task manager gw2 was up to 1.8gigs in hard ram…at one point I was taking 5 and minimized the game – It took like 20 minutes before my system was able to switch over and become responsive again from how stressed the system ram was from gw2….it kept my keystrokes in a que and kept beeping when it couldn’t take another keystroke… I’m pretty sure that’s what’s crashing alot of players. A massive overburdening hostile burst of information right to the ram!! I finally shut down gw2, and did a quick idle process ram flush and made my system stable again, but it got ugly….black screens, warping cursors, incomplete window filled with black boxes and all that kitten!

the problem with the amd cpu is that their single thread performance is very weak – http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html and that is a crucial stat to gaming. Plus they draw more power. so while it’s affordable in the short term, you get blindsided with the electric bill heh.

I only say that the future of gaming belongs to amd because if intel welds their chips – they are known to be more of a business non enthusiast mobo developer – the enthusiast culture belongs to overclockers and gamers.

there’s a rumor that 1150 may be the last socket for intel – something to consider for getting a motherboard and future upgrades – I’m still debating if i want to go 1150 or 2011 myself… – http://technewspedia.com/lga-1150-could-be-the-last-socket-intel-future-intel-cpus-will-bga/

if this is true, then the future of pc gaming might belong to amd.

from what i gather, processors have reached a saturation point until they figure out new ways to disperse the heat – at this moment, the coldest liquid known to man is liquid helium and in overclocking competitions the highest speeds we can get is 8.6 which is currently the world record. We’ve reached a plateau with current technology and I think the next step will have to be a dramatic innovation – enter Dwave and quantum computing – still in it’s infant stages – but give it 5-10 years and it might be a common household thing -

in otherwords, expect more upgrades like this http://www.foc.us/ until quantum computing becomes mainstream lol

I’m in the process of inventing a brain cooler …hahaha -smh-

ya, i get ya….my issue is that at one time guildwars ran fine.

I just noticed today that whats lagging my system isn’t the cpu spike – in fact, my cpu was handling the spike well in the breakdown and gw2 was only at 70% max, whats hurting the system is a memory spike – i have 4 gigs of ram and plenty of hard drive space.

i did that in the options panel, but I just found a command line that will do it too, I’ll try that…thanks.

just did a quick search on my computer performance vs minimum specs for gw2 – I’m above min specs – maybe it’s time to update the minimum specs – because 3-8 fps with major lag spikes, is not playable.

I know when I saw it happen in another software, it had to do with the radeon driver and how it rendered particle effects. So if this is coming from anets side, then either anet has to fix it or radeon needs a new driver.

you can try uninstalling and reinstalling your driver to rule out driver corruption. Then also monitoring your gpu temperature as many have posted about their systems running hotter. As for your card giving out, Have you tried any other games and had issues ?

another thing that can make a card not function properly is having it in the wrong pci slot.

it’s definitely gotten worse though, I know this because I use to start up the game all the time in the background to let it update while I continued working, those massive updates would take forever too. sometimes I’d forget I had it up…but with recent patches, it’s painfully obvious the program is running in the background.

My pleasure, I’m doing the same thing – i found the computer I wanted would cost over 4k in those customize your pc sites, after learning what I needed, I started putting together a beast of a system that has even more features than the 4k model for 1.5k but this is high performance parts all new ..leaving out the stuff I don’t need ….. I could also scale it back more to bring the price to under 1k ….and even less if I just kept parts from my old system…

It’s quite fascinating ….to keep it fun, do some research on the highest end computers you can find first- then watch some overclocking competitions, then a few gaming build tuts on youtube …..once you get a hang of what they focus on ….you can scale back the parts you want for your computer based on what you learned – It was no doubt an interesting lesson in modern computer builds.

Technically – you can just upgrade your motherboard / buy a top of the line cooling system and maybe even overclock your current cpu – I found out I can oc my old system to 6ghz – but i’d rather start fresh with new intell technology than give this pc yet another upgrade lol.

there are a few benchmarking sites that will give you more or less an idea of how your computer would perform in most games – gw2 being among the heaviest.

Specifically look up the cpu – single thread performance benchmarks, and the video card benchmarks

also, before you spend 500 dollars on an ok system, You may want to do a quick check for individual parts – like a 60 dollar mother board, a 250 dollar cpu and a 170 dollar video card will give you tons more performance than buying an entirely new 500 dollar system, and you may be able to use old parts from your old cpu. It’s really not that hard to build and there are tons of tuts on youtube that would help.

In fact, once you do a bit of research, you’ll see that many of these low cost computers can actually be built for much less, as they toss in extra features you don’t really need. – it’s worth the time.