Guild Wars 2

There’s a basic list of troubleshooting that people should carry out if they’re having crashes or performance issues;

1) Check drivers – this is for everything, motherboard chipset, sound, graphics etc.
2) Turn off any overclocking. GPU, CPU, RAM, whatever.
3) Stop any unnecessary programs from running in the background.
4) Make sure the power plan is set to high performance.
5) Check temperatures with a tool like RealTemp.
6) If you’re getting blue screens, use a tool like WhoCrashed? to see if it can point out what is causing them.
7) Set GPU control panel settings to “Application defined” wherever possible.
8) Turn Vsync off if it’s enabled.
9) Disable frame limiting.
10) Try with reflections and shadows off.
11) Try with AA off.

You have no idea how many times I’ve seen that when a new game is released. It happens with pretty much every new release in every forum. It’s nearly always something on the user’s end.

That’s obviously not proof that you’ve done anything to verify that your system isn’t having the issue rather than the game. No one will be able to help you until you are willing to take those steps.

Delete local.dat from your my documents and try launching the game again. Reapply auto-detect settings.

dacooli.6712:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

They’re all games that have been out for longer than GW2, so obviously they have better driver support.

I don’t see the need for insults, it’s like you don’t actually want any help.

A couple of days ago?

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,review-32511.html

Monday 27th August. 2 days after head start. Pre 2 Nvidia driver updates and 1 (possibly 2) AMD updates and CAP updates. Pre many many GW2 patches.

Look at the benchmarks, 670 averaging over 60FPS on best appearance. That goes against what someone else told me about the same benchmarks too.

Your issue could be something as simple as corrupted data files, a misconfigured control panel settings – unless you actually act like you want help you’re not going to get anywhere.

No. I don’t have any corrupted data. I also had good FPS first days till some patch a week ago, so yeah. I got no corrupt data, nor anything else corrupt. I play all other games as I should and its not about drivers; NVIDIA SAID on the forums that they can’t do anything about it, since its so heavily CPU based (too cpu based = bad optimized). So yeah, its not my computer, its the optimize for specifically my card and my processor. Anet failed hard.
And I get no errors, there’s NOTHING wrong on my computer, since again, I play all other games as I should and I get much better performance than you in most games. So it is.

Have you deleted the local.dat gamefile from my documents to verify that nothing is corrupted?

I’m sure I’m not the only that notices how you ignore it when someone contradicts your ranting. I’m also sure I’m not the only that notices how you say everything is fine on your end yet offer no proof or suggestion as to how you can be sure.

You say you’d like this fixed but when someone tries to help you become extremely aggressive.

Refraction.1892:

If the game was at fault, this issue would be rampent, but most people aren’t getting hard resets or blue screens.

These style issues are generally either driver problems or hardware faults. Software can never directly make your computer hard reset and if it did, everybody would suffer.

Just need to back this post up. This is 100% true. Those having the issue are in the minority and it would indeed be affecting absolutely everyone if it was solely related to the game.

Hard resets are only caused by high-level failures – so hardware or software that directly interacts with hardware like drivers. Games are nowhere near this level.

It depends though. I don’t think your card is great at handling detailed textures and AA – so as that was shifted to the GPU it would have had a big impact on your performance. That comes down to the memory bandwidth on your GPU more than anything else.

Notsure.7028:

BeatTakeshi.3924:

At the moment it is a lottery, you could spend over £1k and still not get above 15 fps.

There is nothing you can do about a poorly optimised game.

I would hold off buying a new computer until they address the serious problems in the game first.

I disagree. I think that most people getting low FPS is due to some issue other than the game. Granted I have an above average gaming rig, but its not liquid cooled crazy rig. You can build a system like mine for right around 1k probably.

CPU: Core I-7 3770k overclocked @ 4ghz (Core I5 will work jsut as well)
GPU: EVGA Gforce 580 3072 GB (factory overclocked)
Ram: 32 GB DDR3 1600 (G. Skill Ripjaw series) really only need 8GB as GW2 is 32 bit client (that leaves 3.75 Gb for game, rest for OS)
HD: C drive is 120 GB SSD (Not needed really, only helps with load times)

I run game at max settings, with AA turned off, depth of field turned off, everything else at absolute maximum 1920×1080 resolution.

I get a consistent 50-110 FPS Pve, 40 – 110 in WvW depending.

I have also tuned my OS services and such, and I dont run any kind of antivurs on my gaming computer (I have a server dedicated to running scans on my network remotely).

Have a somewhat similar system to this and get the same performance.

I also play with AA off most of the time as I feel with it on it makes the game too blurry.

DaveK.1023:

Refraction.1892:

Apologies, i did overreact slightly there, I have been seeing a lot of people getting angry about it and got a bit carried away, im glad to see someone such as yourself is providing as much information as possible

However i do realise there are a lot of FPS issues at the moment, the game is very cpu and gpu intensive, understandably to a point as it is a very very pretty MMO. Im sure they will optimize things over time (also hardware will catch up too) and things will improve.

One saving grace may be if they choose to implement DirectX 11. As there is such a huge amount of high quality textures, the texture management in DX11 is much better than DX9 so this will provide a nice little boost in performance. So, fingers crossed on that one!

I’m glad we’re on the happy note again mate! :-)

DX11 would improve performance ? I didn’t look into that direction, so this is new to me. That would be good, but somehow I have this feeling DX11 is a bit further down on the list.
2 things puzzle me:
1, in BWE2 I personally had exceptionally good FPS, which declined substantially later on
2, a good portion of players claim their FPS got better after BWE2
Apparently there’s no middle-ground achievable, whatever ANet did, it helped some while it lowered performance for others.

If I’m right in thinking, BWE2 was still almost completely CPU bound – after that, a good chunk of the load was shifted to the GPU and a lot of optimisation was put in place.

So that that had good processor but poor GPUs (mostly laptop owners) complained that performance went down, while those that had decent CPUs and good GPUs were delighted that performance went up.

Yea, those temps are probably correct, and yes if it’s been overheating for a while then it could have done some permanent damage to the card.

It could also be that the card is clogged up with dust in hard to reach places too, that could still be causing issues.

If you have pets in your home its worth looking into dust filters for your PC. They can improve the lifespan of your components drastically.

Some things to check;

Have you got the latest drivers?
Have you tried playing without Overdrive on in the CCC settings?
Does the crash happen on auto detect settings as well as best performance?
Have you got the latest drivers for your sound device?
Have you tried lowering sound quality in the game options?
Do you have any errors in Windows Error Reporting that coincide with GW2 crashes?
Have you checked component temperatures with something like RealTemp?

It’s not the majority. There are around 2 million people playing this game off and on. How many FPS posts are there spread around the forums still being updates? 500? That’s not a majority.

At least you’re cooperating with support there are far too many that just want a whinge and won’t accept any evidence / advice. I even posted proof of my framerates earlier for someone to say “this isn’t possible, I don’t care, it doesn’t happen for me so you’re lying.”

They’re all games that have been out for longer than GW2, so obviously they have better driver support.

I don’t see the need for insults, it’s like you don’t actually want any help.

A couple of days ago?

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,review-32511.html

Monday 27th August. 2 days after head start. Pre 2 Nvidia driver updates and 1 (possibly 2) AMD updates and CAP updates. Pre many many GW2 patches.

Look at the benchmarks, 670 averaging over 60FPS on best appearance. That goes against what someone else told me about the same benchmarks too.

Your issue could be something as simple as corrupted data files, a misconfigured control panel settings – unless you actually act like you want help you’re not going to get anywhere.

DaveK.1023:

Maybe you should stop being so oversensitive and use common sense.

Logic dictates that if an element was working inside a certain framework and now it isn’t and the framework itself didn’t change, that the corresponding element is where you should start looking for answers.

As for Lucetius and Gareson – search for “GW2 low fps” and you’ll find a ton of tips.

Logic dictates that if it were that simple, it would have broken performance for everyone. It hasn’t. Agree?

For people who are looking for help you’re really not being very cooperative.

Have you tried deleting the GW2 folder in your “My Documents” and then launching the game again?

HxCFTW.8192:

He could just upgrade to the AMD FX-8150 8-Core Processor which is nearly as good as the i5 2500k. The CPU is only like $200.

It’s nowhere near as good for every day use. Only in heavily threaded applications does it even compete with the 2500K. For gaming it struggles to best i3s.

That won’t cut it for just the tower, you’ll be building something underpowered to game on. Budget gaming builds start out at €500 minimum.

Are you actually after a fix, or are just having a whinge? There’s no need to post the same thing in multiple threads.

Believe it or not, some problems take a while to fix, especially if the issue isn’t affecting everyone on the same setup.

Are you, by any chance, right clicking in the are where event notifications are listed? (top right of screen).

I just tried to turn my camera and accidentally clicked near where the heart description is, and it ignored my click.

Just a thought.

Both will help, but the CPU upgrade will be quite expensive. GPU upgrade should provide a cheaper but still decent boost.

It’s solidly mid range, imo.

If you’re looking to upgrade GPU, I wouldn’t bother looking at anything below a 7850, otherwise the difference won’t be worth the expense.

rebalnz.3869:

well i have

gtx 670
i72600k
8gb ddr3 RAm

found out last night after spending hours trying to attempt to fix that it was my cpu bottlenecking in heavy situations. not sure if it is throttling down or something but def the cpu. what was weird was i temporary OCed cpu 100mhz and it yielded massive fps increase. a hell of alot more than it should. (cant keep OC cause of temp issues)

therefore ive come back to the conclusion the game is just poorly optimized in demanding situations. seems to put to much stress on the cpu compared to te video card. for instance in lions arch if i dropped all my settings to low would only give me a 5fps increase which is a joke.

I have the exact setup as you and have no frame rate problems. Are you running the PC on best performance in the power options?

Lucetius.4253:

Yep, did a repair this morning. Her card is a 8800GTX. Not a great card, but it ran the game perfectly well (for her) at around 25- 30FPS for the first few days on medium settings. Changing her settings to lowest makes not one bit of difference either. It now won’t go above 10FPS, but is usually around 7 FPS

What is turned on in the settings?

Frame limiter?
Vsync?
Reflections?
Shadows?
AA?

Try with all those off at the same time.

You can also try going into My Documents > GW2 > and deleting local.dat, then launching the game again. That was a fix for settings corruption in the beta.

You should also make sure that Nvidia Control Panel settings for GW2 are left at default.

People need to realise that you rule the easy stuff out first. I’m interested in graphics card because there are settings to change for either brand that help.

Stop trying to jump down the throat of people offering help.

The only thing a laptop that you can upgrade is RAM and sometimes you’re able to add an SSD. Neither of those will help, sadly.

I’m playing on dual monitors (GW2 on primary, chrome open on secondary) and don’t have this issue.

I have a Logitech Performance MX with the latest version of setpoint installed.

When you say losing focus, have you tried running the game in windowed mode to make sure that a background application isn’t trying to take focus away from the game?

Or is it more like the game just doesn’t register mouse clicks?

On lowest settings you should be able to manage 30fps pretty much everywhere except cities and WvW.

Have you tried running the game with the -repair command?

What graphics card has your wife got?

What are your system specs?

They have said that they are still looking into FPS issues so I wouldn’t give up yet. It seems to effect people somewhat at random – people with the same setups can have drastically different performance.

What do you have running next to the game?

amytheplanarshift.8520:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

I have a 670 and have zero issues with frame rate. I’m easily above 60FPS on max settings even in WvW – this is since upgrading the CPU to an i7 2600K, mind.

Last week I was running on an i5-2400 and had to turn reflections and shadows off to stay above 40FPS in WvW.

Impossible. I have a GTX 680 and i7-2700k @ 4 GHz and I drop to 25-30 FPS in large battles in WvWvW. There is no way you are getting 60 FPS on max settings in large castle sieges.

For WvW I turn off reflections and shadows.

I haven’t been involved in any super large battles, but last night there were about 40 of us trying to take a castle and my frames were (according to fraps) mid 40s.

Take the overclock off your CPU and see if that stops it, others have said that this causes issues with the game.

I have an album of screens with the Fraps overlay taken in a pretty hectic event, if you want to see those?

http://imgur.com/a/Syb1y#0

@Afro – your drivers aren’t up to date. Try that first. I know it probably won’t fix it but that’s the first thing ANet will tell you to do anyway.

dacooli.6712:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

killimandros.5087:

Dont discuss with him. Fanbois will be fanbois. Await an answer from Anet. I bet he can even play at max on his Pentium 4, ’cause hes pro. They have issues with the new series cards. They have to deal with it.

Don’t be rude. This is not my issue, it’s people who have a problem and then therefore post everywhere proclaiming that everyone else must have the same problem when they don’t.

Incoming screenshots to prove otherwise;

The images should be self explanatory. One is taken when stood still, and there’s a few more taken auto by fraps during an event with particle effects flying around.

Note that because FRAPS is running in the background, the FPS will be lowered a bit. Probably a couple of %, so nothing major.

http://imgur.com/a/Syb1y#0

That doesn’t mean anything and it stills at anets end.

See my point? “Oh this contradicts what I’m saying, therefore dismiss it out of hand”.

killimandros.5087:

Dont discuss with him. Fanbois will be fanbois. Await an answer from Anet. I bet he can even play at max on his Pentium 4, ’cause hes pro. They have issues with the new series cards. They have to deal with it.

Don’t be rude. This is not my issue, it’s people who have a problem and then therefore post everywhere proclaiming that everyone else must have the same problem when they don’t.

Incoming screenshots to prove otherwise;

The images should be self explanatory. One is taken when stood still, and there’s a few more taken auto by fraps during an event with particle effects flying around.

Note that because FRAPS is running in the background, the FPS will be lowered a bit. Probably a couple of %, so nothing major.

http://imgur.com/a/Syb1y#0

rebalnz.3869:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

I have a 670 and have zero issues with frame rate. I’m easily above 60FPS on max settings even in WvW – this is since upgrading the CPU to an i7 2600K, mind.

Last week I was running on an i5-2400 and had to turn reflections and shadows off to stay above 40FPS in WvW.

may i ask what you run your i72600k at? and what model you 670 is. it would help locate my problem more. im having the fps issues the same as everyone else but am running an identical setup to you. i think ive nailed it down to cpu/optimisation. although could be video card still since usage is low when it should be high. thing is my pc has never been running better own bf3 and other game with fps 60fps+ all the time. gw2 in cities/zergs fps drops like hell and gpu/cpu usage is not keeping up. im pretty sure my cpu is doing something like under-clocking or something therefore bottlenecking my video card. for instance when these drops happen if i change my graphics settings makes almost zero difference in fps(im talking 8fps diff from all low to maxed)

It’s the EVGA 670 (not superclocked, ftw or 4GB model or anything like that) and I’m running my 2600K on stock settings at the moment. I don’t see the need in overclocking it yet.

HawkMeister.4758:

Same GFX card, same OS, same issue, only difference 12.6 driver and that CAP is installed too.
And what the heck is a target command switch??

It’s an “argument” that you put in the shortcut of your GW2 icon.

So all the testing they did was hardware related rather than trying to troubleshoot specific issues – no wonder the problem wasn’t solved.

Trying to fix crashes by randomly swapping hardware without first looking for software solutions is just the store trying to make quick money from you. You rule out everything before hardware changes, always.

There’s also a target command switch that you can use to disable occlusion. Struggling to find it at the moment but maybe someone else knows it off the top of their head.

Oh it’s easily enough, it’s just not “top end” – but you need to be more specific with the crashing issues – I know plenty of people with the same CPU and GPU as you that play the game without issue – so it’s not the problem.

How long did they look at the machine for? What sort of research did they do? Something like this can take a fair few hours to track down and fix.

Your CPU will be hurting performance a bit, and it really sounds like you have a problem with your hard drive. Is it nearly full? Has it been defragmented recently (don’t do that if it’s an SSD!), is your computer slow to reach a usable state once you’ve logged on?

I switch between the two quite often and I think I only notice a small difference in performance, in favour of Windows 8. It makes better use of GPUs and is faster in general, so that’s probably why.

I’ve also noticed that all of my components run a bit hotter (GPU 3°, CPU 5-7°) at all times under load, so it’s probably making better use of the hardware.

It pegs my 670 at about 70% – so that’s pretty heavy usage.

MMOs are CPU dependent. All of them are – if you have poor CPU its gonna drag you down – you know why?

Most people with a PC have a decent CPU and a rubbish GPU – so they need to cater for that to allow more people to play the game.

That is good enough but it’s not top end because of the GPU.

If you’re getting crashes that’s a system problem rather than the game, otherwise no one with that card would be able to play without crashes.

Yea, you know those benchmarks are from pre-release, right?

Believe me, I can play it on ultra (not ultra shadows, mind) and easily achieve over 60FPS pretty much everywhere. Sorry you have a problem, but just because you have it doesn’t mean everyone else must have.

Yea, crashing is a software or driver issue. If it was a fault with the game, it would be an application error that everyone has, or is at least mentioned in the support knowledge base. If the error isn’t there, that means it’s pretty rare and caused by something outside of Anet’s control.

This is just how software works – especially with games. Restarts, shut downs and blue screens are very, very, very rarely caused by an error with the game itself. I don’t say this as a fan of GW2, I say it has someone who has spent a career fixing people’s PCs and being an enthusiast gamer.

I wasn’t hinting at you to be honest – because the guy I had in mind was complaining that they had to play on low settings to get decent performance, so I’d appreciate a bit less of the attitude, ok?

I have a 670 and have zero issues with frame rate. I’m easily above 60FPS on max settings even in WvW – this is since upgrading the CPU to an i7 2600K, mind.

Last week I was running on an i5-2400 and had to turn reflections and shadows off to stay above 40FPS in WvW.

If you’re getting poor frames with a 680, either your card is damaged or something else is slowing the game down. I have a 670 and I have above 60FPS on max settings even in WvW.

I agree. I have seen a lot of people complaining about performance and then listing their specs and having really old / low end hardware.

This is a brand new game, if you’re in the low end you’re not going to get good performance on anything above the “best performance” settings.

I saw a thread where someone bought a GTX 290 (why?) and someone else a 630 and they were wondering why the game wasn’t performing so well!

Eh, the game struggles on some setups but to say that no one can achieve 60FPS is flat our wrong.

I’m sailing past that at the moment with everything on bar AA.

i7 2600K
GTX670

It’s a brand new game and, shock horror, to play it on max you need high end hardware.

There’s still some people struggling on low and medium settings when they shouldn’t, and this will doubtlessly be fixed in time through driver updates and game patches.

Crevarski.8230:

So how do you explain that some of my friends, who live in Geneva like me, using the exact same internet forfait as me with Swisscom (same router) can play without this issue?

Because not everyone will be routed through the same path.

This is most certainly an ISP & infrastructure problem rather than something that Anet have done. Particularly as 99% of the people with problem are living in Switzerland and using Swisscom.

If it’s crashing – it’s not the game, otherwise the forum would be full of complaints. They’re not, there’s a handful (in comparison to the number of posts on the forums).

There’s something with your system that’s doing it.

Yes, we all have either Swisscom or Green.ch, which I guess use Swisscom’s backbone.