Guild Wars 2

You could even buy a GTX690, but with a Q9550@2.83GHz forget about it. Try fitting a Porsche engine inside a Fiat Panda, it’s the same kind of ordeal!

You can try Pinnacle Game Profiler, some user already submitted a profile for GW2.

You really need a better CPU+GPU for this game. I would suggest you loot at:
System Builder Marathon, August 2012: $500 Gaming PC

Try to turn off reflections and depth blur, should give you a very nice boost, instead on lowering the other settings (Reflections in off will give an effect similar to reflections in WoW, tbh still pretty good).

Those look like overclocking artifacts. Is your GTX690 o/c in some way, even “factory” overclocked? GPU or GDDR clock?

skeletank.4382:

@VirtualBS
I am sorry, but I am not quite that computer tech savvy to really understand what you are talking about. All I know about my power supply is that it has enough wattage to support my system as a friend of mine who is more knowledgeable than me told me it would be. I made sure of this months ago when I updated my GPU with the 7870 and wanted to make sure I didn’t need to get a new PSU as well.

Your PSU will have its specs rated on a table in one of the sides, like this, for example. This one has 4 +12V rails, rated at 20A, which can become troublesome. Here is an example of a single +12V rail PSU, rated at 62A.

If your PSU has multiple rails, you need to be sure you are evening out the load of your system through them as much as possible. That means spreading out the PSU connectors through the components as much as possible. Try to swap some if needed, while testing for stability.

skeletank.4382:

Also, like I said before, I can play other games such as Tera and D3 just fine.

You wouldn’t believe the calamity when Crysis came out in 2007!

deltaconnected.4058:

Try running the Quake 3 time demo on your PC now and lemme know if you see anything.

TL;DR: Your PC is not a fridge. If developers catered to the “my ‘decent’ 4 year old rig” crowd, we’d still be playing pong on a black and white screen.

Good’ol Quake 3… Runs pretty fine on a Raspberry Pi nowadays!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQzlCo8FWv0&hd=1

Maybe we’ll be able to run GW2 like that on Raspberry Pi v.5 or 6?

Chiming in, great fps here too (consistent 60+), on an:

• i7-2600K@4.5GHz (stock voltage)
• 16GB DDR3-1600 ULV (1.25V)
• 560Ti@1GHz, monitor connected to the HD3000 iGPU, using Lucid MVP v.115a with enabled HyperFormance and Virtual Vsync (yes, it actually works, and yes, it is actually worth it).

The AMD FirePro M5950 is the “professional” version of the Radeon HD 6770M, which supports DirectX 11 (Shader Model 3.0)
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-FirePro-M5950.51673.0.html

You should be able to run GW2 just fine, you are most probably having driver issues, try updating to the most recent ones.

Has anyone experiencing this tried to:

• Disable TCP checksum offloading in their network card?
• Disable Ethernet Flow Control?
• Enable/Disable Interrupt Moderation?
• Maxing out Receive and Transmit buffers?

(Link Speed should always be set to Auto for proper Full-Duplex negotiation)

Anyone with this issue tried the unofficial 12.9? There are some reports for increased GW2 performance.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=367954

skeletank.4382:

My specs:
AMD Phenom II x4 965 3.40 GHz (not the greatest cpu but still very respectable)
AMD Radeon HD 7870
8GB Ripjaw RAM
Windows 7 64 bit
Power supply is like 600 or 650 watts (I couldn’t tell you the make or model number)

How many +12V rails does your PSU have, and what’s the Amperage of each (the less the better, single-rail PSUs are the best)? How many PCI-E power connectors does it have?

skeletank.4382:

A diagnostic program won’t help me because when I get the black screen my whole computer freezes/locks up and I have to manually turn it off and back on. I guess that is another reason why I am pretty sure I’m not overheating, because my computer doesn’t turn off but rather locks up.

Stability and overheating are very different things. Overheating will generally give you a BSOD, while underlying stability issues will immediately hard lock your machine.

Some stability issues that usually hard lock your PC:
- Overvoltage or undervoltage of CPU/RAM, due to incorrect BIOS settings (platform dependent, but generally related to CPU Voltage, Load-Line Calibration, DRAM Voltage, VTT Voltage, CPU PLL Voltage)
- Faulty PSU, delivering incorrect voltages or not enough power under load
- Incorrect RAM timings (would generally give a BSOD, but not always)
- Defective RAM
- Defective SATA controller

Are they both USB peripherals? If you disconnect them from the USB ports, wait 3-5 seconds and replug them, will they resume working?

TsukasaUjiie.2837:

VirtualBS: You need to understand that this crash often locks up the computer before it is able to throw a blue screen, as illustrated by my issues and skeletank or create a minidump.

Quite often there is no stop code for us to diagnose with or dump to run bluescreen view with.

Im still hoping a dev will weigh in on this topic.

Hard crashes without a BSOD are usually related to instability in either the CPU or RAM.

There is a very good util for testing that (much much better than Prime95), IntelBurnTest, that uses linpack to heavily stress CPU+RAM:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?197835-IntelBurnTest-The-new-stress-testing-program

On the settings, be sure to use as much RAM as is available to you (Stress Level: Custom, leave ~500MB out, so you don’t get pagefile thrasing). Also right-click the Start button and select “Xtreme Stress Mode”, then start it. Your system will appear somewhat frozen, from time to time, but just wait for it.

You should also have running HWMonitor during the test (or a similar utility), so you can check for any anormalies:
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

If this passes, you can rule out CPU+RAM problems.

GW2 uses all 8 cores on my hyperthreaded i7-2600K. CPU multithreading is very different than GPU shader multithreading, since they are doing very different kinds of processing.

There are very good tools to check what’s causing crashes or BSODs. They serve as a valuable starting point.

Diagnosing application crash issues:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/app_crash_view.html

Diagnosing BSOD issues:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

Go to your C:\Program Files (x86)\Games\ and move the Guild Wars 2 folder outside it, for example, to C:\Games\Guild Wars 2 and try to run it from there.

You should use an utility to check what’s making your system crash:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

I would suggest you look at Tom’s Hardware System Builder Marathon articles for very good systems with different budget limits:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/How-To,4/Tweaking-Tuning,17/

I’ve been using nVidia beta drivers since I bought a GeForce 3 Ti 500 in 2001, and they are 99% “as stable as” the WHQL versions.

HunterofDusk.1059, the GTX 675M is probably worth it, depending on your budget. http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-675M.70785.0.html

Incredible, the number of people in this thread that didn’t even bother to check that mobile versions of i5 vs i7 don’t relate to their desktop counterparts!

Mistbooster.1803, ever since I got my first quad-core (Q6600 o/c@3.2GHz) I never looked back! Especially with CryEngine 3 and Unreal Engine 4 coming shortly.

Again, both i5-3210M and i7-3612QM have hyperthreading. The only difference is this i5 is a dual-core CPU and the i7 is a quad-core.

I wouldn’t even blink in choosing the i7 vs the i5 for gaming. Heavily multithreaded game engines are the future, you can bet on that.

Go for the 670 instead of the 660ti. It’s worth the price difference in performance (larger memory bus), and will last you a bit longer.

HunterofDusk.1059:

(Not sure if this is the right place to put this but if not im sure it can be moved)

Hey,

I was wondering about how much of a difference using an i5 intel core would be over a i7, I’m looking at getting a laptop and have a choice between those,

i5-3210M (2.50 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.1 GHz -2GB Graphics)
vs
i7-3612QM (2.10 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.10 GHz – 2GB Graphics)

Both would be with the 2 GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M Graphics card

Also would 8GB vs 16GB of RAM, is 16GB overkill.

With these components would that be enough to play GWs2 on Ultra with 1080p?

Thanks
David

The i5-3210M is a dual-core processor with hyperthreading (2 physical cores, 4 virtual cores), the i7-3612QM is a quad-core processor with hyperthreading (4 physical cores, 8 virtual cores), so I would heavily recommend the i7.

16GB of RAM is not overkill, windows will use the free RAM to cache your most used files, so there is no such thing as “unused” RAM. Think of it as a mini-SSD.

For one, the benchs show that AMD CPUs really suck at this game…

The game seems much more dependant on CPU architecture than clock, and AMD CPUs are really bad at this game…
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-7.html

CPU benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-7.html

Let’s set this straight...

_____________________32-bit Windows OS ___ 64-bit Windows OS
Standard 32-bit program________2GB_______________2GB
LAA 32-bit program____________2GB_______________4GB
64-bit program_____________Will not run!________Physical RAM Limit
Total memory for
all running programs___________3.5GB____________Physical RAM Limit

GW2.exe is already LAA (Large Address Aware), no need to modify it with any tool.

I’ve tested running Resource Monitor while gaming to check the core park issue (i7-2600K@4.5GHz). Before entering the game, all hyperthreaded cores are parked (4/8). Upon entering the game and running about in Lion’s Arch, all cores are being used constantly (8/8), with none oscillating between parked states. However if I minimize GW2, there are 2 cores that enter parked state immediately. Upon returning to the game they immediately unpark.

Could someone post their results too?

Rolo.9248:

killimandros.5087:

This is my rig; Win7, 64-bit
i7 processor 3770
NVIDIA GeForce 660ts
12gb DDR3 mem
2tb hd

- Your stock CPU isn’t any better than my OC one unless hyperthreading helps, which I’m inclined to think it doesn’t but folks posting some numbers (or Anet chiming in..eh? eeeehhhHH?) would help to figure that out. I opted for the i5 over the i7 (at the time) to get better OC and put the $100 where I know it would boost performance rather than hope

Tested hyperthreading right now on my i7-2600K@4.5GHz, and yes, the game uses all 8 virtual cores, meaning the game engine does benefit from it.

Why wouldn’t it? Most game engines nowadays are heavily threaded.

Reflections are still a huge performance hit. I was testing that in an area where None would use ~55% of the GPU, Sky and Terrain would use ~70% and All ~80%. The difference between them is not worth that kind of performance hit for a slight visual effect.

Core i7-2600K@4.5GHz, 16GB DDR3-1600, GTX 560Ti@1GHz

killimandros.5087:

where would I find said launcher option?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

I’m still curious if using the launcher option -cuda (nVidia only) can help alleviate some CPU bottlenecks…

Zelta.6829:

I’ve already made a post regarding the new drivers, tests have confirmed no significant improvements in overall guild wars 2 gameplay, only some minor improvements with particular scenes/graphics properties.

Ah, I didn’t see your post. Maybe an admin can merge the threads?

New nVidia driver – 306.23 WHQL

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/48771

The new NVIDIA GeForce 306.23 WHQL drivers are now available to download. An essential upgrade for every GeForce GTX user, the GeForce 306.23 WHQL drivers enable high-quality TXAA anti-aliasing on GTX 600 Series GPUs, improve game performance by up to 17% on all GeForce 400, 500, and 600 Series GPUs, enhance seven top titles with NVIDIA Control Panel MSAA and Ambient Occlusion profiles, improve the overall user experience for all GPU users, and add SLI and 3D Vision profiles for new releases and upcoming titles, including Borderlands 2, Darksiders 2, Dishonored, End of Nations, F1 2012, Guild Wars 2, Max Payne 3, Orcs Must Die! 2, PlanetSide 2, Sleeping Dogs, The Secret World, The Walking Dead, Torchlight II, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

The release notes also state support for SLI in Guild Wars 2.

Most keyboard and gaming mouse software nowadays has huge macro recording capabilities, some of them even offer recording and playback on-the-fly. Autohotkey simply provides the same functionality as those proprietary software.

It checks the state of your gw2.dat file and only downloads the remaining files needed for the game to run. My gw2.dat is currently using about 14.1GB. You can also edit the gw2 shortcut and append -repair at the end, and the next time you run it, it will check all files inside gw2.dat to see if they are ok. Afterwards, remove the -repair.

haddock.4625:

Looking on the error log, I found this…

—> Error Logs <—
Disk read failed with error 23 (incomplete): file ‘D:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.dat’
Disk read failed (23): file ‘D:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.dat’

Ouch! Not good… I would suggest you:
1) Check if your HDD health is ok, with a S.M.A.R.T. monitoring app, like this free one for example.
2) If it’s ok, see if you have any kind of file system corruption. For that, open an elevated command prompt (Run as admin…) and type chkdsk c: /f (replace c: with the drive letter of all your drives, better check all). If it asks to dismount the drive, say No, and say Yes for doing the check in the next reboot. Now, reboot!
3) If everything is ok so far, run gw2.exe with the option -repair. Edit the gw2 shortcut and append -repair at the end, like “…\Guild Wars 2” -repair. This will check to see if all game files are correct. You can remove the -repair afterwards.

Good Luck!

There have been reports of launcher issues with nVidia SLI, try disabling it for gw2.exe and see if it works!

You can also try this: get the gw2setup.exe client download from your account, rename it to gw2.exe and drop it inside the gw2 folder, overwriting the gw2.exe there. Run it and it will download the latest files again. Maybe you have a corrupted file.

The problem with a 32-bit Windows system is that the Virtual Memory space for each app has a default hardcoded maximum of 2GB, which doesn’t happen on 64-bit Windows versions.

Interesting discussion about these memory constraints here.

Yes, delete all files on the GW2 folder except gw2.exe and gw2.dat. Then go to your Documents\Guild Wars 2 folder and delete all files inside.
This will reset all your GW2 settings to default, but it solved my launcher crash issues.

Hi, I’ve seen there is a launcher option for enabling CUDA acceleration in-game for nVidia cards.
We’ve seen other games use CUDA (or other forms of GPU computing – ID Soft’s Rage uses CUDA for texture transcoding, several other games use DirectCompute) for increasing performance.
What benefit does GW2 get (if any?) from enabling the “-cuda” option in the laucher? Has someone tested it more in-depth?

Thanks!

You can also try the trick to download the “gw2setup.exe” from your account page, rename it to “gw2.exe” and drop it in the gw2 folder overwriting the “gw2.exe” there. It will automatically update to the latest “gw2.exe” when run. Also remember to delete all local.dat copies and anything inside the “Documents\Guild Wars 2” before you run it.

Mine is still working 100% from 2 days ago, thankfully!

Y u mad its vydia.6324:

This happens to everyone is a problem indeed. I think it’s bad scaling, as some mobs have huge HP even when there are only a few players around, while others are very easy solo even if there are 20+ people participating.

I agree. The problem is not tagging “per se”, but bad scaling of the “time to die” of the mob. It has to be much slower with more people around.

+1 for SMAA, because it’s really much better than FXAA.
It will also be available in CryEngine 3. Complete info @ http://www.iryoku.com/smaa/

That is most probably a ram timing issue when running on dual channel with 4 dimms. Try running the mems with more relaxed settings, or using a different divisor (or slightly upping MCH voltage if needed).

A good starting point for you: http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/27140-ga-p35-ds3l-memory-settings-i-just-need-stable-machine.html

I’ve had this problem earlier today too, and submitted a support ticket.

I was also having launcher issues, so I deleted everything in the “Documents\Guild Wars 2” folder and any “local.dat” files, and that fixed my launcher issues. When I got back into the game, about 30m later from the support ticket submission, the “Represent” button worked.

So, I really dunno whether support fixed my “Represent” button issue in those 30m or the launcher fix also fixed that, since I didn’t change anything else.