Guild Wars 2

Regardless of what GPU you purchase, you will not see any meaningful improvements to your GW2 gameplay. The game is heavily dependent on CPU and CPU bandwidth and architecture. You will have to OC the Q9550 to around 4GHz to reduce bottlenecking.

With that said, you will see improvements in many other games like Battlefield 3, which are more GPU reliant.

michaeljhuman.3940:

I ordered, at great expense, an unlocked i7 to replace my locked i7. I will be able to test to see if that helps, and will report back.

If as some people speculate, sometimes GPU and CPU don’t seem to be maxed out, the bottleneck “could be” the bus. But I have the Ivy bridge with the Z77, and thought the bus is PCI Express 3.0 – would seem odd if that was the issue.

And PCIE 2.0 and 3.0 as ~1% difference in gaming.

Teknobug.3782:

I tried these drivers, GPU usage went way down and CPU usage went up so one of my 6 cores hits 99% half the time while GPU sits at 40% and gave a few slow motion hiccups during WvW. With 285.62 GPU was 85-87% usage while CPU was around 65%. Think I’ll go back.

Personally I would actually want more CPU utilisation, GPU is hovering around 70% which is ridiculous with native sampling.

Well, almost any computer now days can run it on highest settings, but the point is do you want smooth gameplay. With your setup, I would say no, you will be stuck at around 35-40 FPS. With the change in GPU, you will probably see a slightly higher minimum fps, but you will not break the 60FPS mark in most areas.

Is this every type of CC or only a particular one? Could be a skill bug.

If you ask Anet, they will probably say it’s working as intended then ask you for a DXDIAG log. AC is still broken (for 3 weeks), so I don’t think it’ll be fixed any time soon.

It really does feel like overclocking AMD CPUs is not as worthwhile as an Intel chip. They both are 3.5ish out of the box, but sadly Intel and Nvidia seems to have the pull on developers to optimise their engines and whatnot to only their products, thus the Intel and Nvidia logos in the beginning of 99% of the games.

An OCed i5 and an OCed bulldozer simply cannot compete at the moment, but then again, if you are just a casual gamer, AMD chips are the way to go, but personally I feel like the bulldozer series is one of AMD’s worst lines compared to the old phenoms and so on. With that said, some of the Intel lines had been dreadful as well, like the i5 750 etc.

As I said in another post, games now days is tied up with certain brands like Intel. So in order to play it at the smoothest level, gamers have to go out and buy those parts, clearly an endorsement from those respective companies.

The problem here is that the game simply does not like single bottlenecks.

For example, if you run a first gen or second gen quadcore like the q6600, q8200 etc, even with some overclocking the game still fails to gain fps. At the same time, if you upgraded your GPU to some of the latest (500, 600, 7000 series), the game again will not increase its fps. One way to check if you have a CPU bottleneck is to change the resolution of the game from high to low, as well as the graphics, if you see no noticeable improvements, then there you go.

Even though CPU utilization is still horrible when you upgrade to say an I7 3770k, the extra bandwidth and newer architecture seems to equalise the bottlenecking. I am running an i5 3570k @ 4.5GHz, and the game only manages to use 40-45% of it, where as GPU (GTX 670 heavily OCed) is at 70-75%. This again seems to be a slight bottleneck, as my frames becomes unstable. If I downclock the CPU to around 4GHz, the game actually becomes smoother overall.

Thus the game requires a precise balance of CPU and GPU power in order to maximise its efficiency, apart from the horrible coding that went on, it pretty much is telling gamers to buy “a certain PC combo”, perhaps endorsement from Intel I do not know.

For me GPU utilisation is much higher than CPU, at times it can hit 80-85%, where as CPU will never exceed 50%, it’s unlikely to be a bottleneck problem as I run an overclocked 670 with i5 3570k @ 4.5.

It’s difficult to maintain a stable 60fps in slightly crowded areas. As I said before, it’s pointless to optimise one aspect by increasing the load of another, that’s just laziness in coding.

I might have to switch to SLI to gain a stable fps.

Saw no improvements at all.

i5 3570k @ 4.5
GTX 670 @ 1049
8GB Ram

Getting around 50 in Lion’s Arch with everything on Ultra and native sampling.

Ascalonian Catacombs Story mode.

Can’t enter as party, relogging grants 1 entrance (when you are alone).

I am laughing so hard at Anet, the little PVE content they do have is not working. If the game had subscriptions, people would have quit a month after release.

Good to hear you sorted it out.

I haven’t seen one GM in the time playing GW2. You can screenshot it and submit it.

Personally I would only consider AMD for their video cards, their multicore advertising is almost as bad as Asus with their 8phase to 12phase motherboards. There is a reason why AMD CPUs are half the price to an intel one.

With that said, the GTX285s were probably my favorite cards, the 9000 and 400 series were just a mess…

AMD CPUS even the latest models seems to struggle with GW2. If you push the CPU to 4.5GHz, you may see some noticeable improvements.

That is a really nice system Cbuzz, unfortunately, SLI and dual GPU simply cannot compete, especially a GTX295 = 2xGTX260s.

This should give you some insight.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/AMD-CPUs-and-Guild-Wars-2/first

Both came out within 2 months of each other, i7 920 release in November 08, GTX295 release in December 08/Jan 09. So it’s not a ‘bottleneck’ problem, it’s simply outdated hardware.

I think a lot of people don’t even have that option in their bios. And how does this affect the game file corruptions?

It really does feel like a Catalyst problem, make sure you have defaulted the entire CCC, as the newly implemented AA options for Darksiders 2 causes black screen crashes.

You should be able to setup the game launcher using that exe, after wards there should be a gw2.exe file to open the main game.

That exe file you have is not the launcher, but the setup file ‘for’ the launcher. Make sure you are adding that command to the launcher (gw2.exe) shortcut, not the original setup file.

Does this happen on every graphics setting? Make sure your gpu is not stuck in 2D mode if you are using Nvidia card, change power management mode to max performance under global 3D settings.

Are you forcing any injectors through CCC, like AA, AF and vertical sync?

Try adding the shortcut command —assetsrv 173.223.232.138 after gw2.exe

So right click the gw2 shortcut, properties, then under target add that line, so it reads

gw2.exe" -assetsrv 173.223.232.138

Edit: after looking at the server lists, it’s actually the 173, but please correct me if i’m wrong.

Those temperatures are within the limit, but are awfully high, especially the CPU. I would take the side panel off and create some extra airflow (with fans etc), and lowering the temperatures and see if you still see artifacts.

If your CPU/GPU overclocked at all and what power supply are you running this on?

Overvolting your GPU without overclocking it is simply pointless and stupid. Unless your card is undervolted (i.e. it crashes all the time during 3D, artifacts and causing general instabilities), pushing the voltages will only increase the card’s temperatures.

Please do NOT offer potentially dangerous fixes that simply do not make any sense.

If the “grey colors” you refer to are artifacts, it’s probably the video card overheating or driver acting up. Do you monitor your CPU and GPU temperatures while playing?

It seems to be some sort of model link error.

What system specs (running 64bit windows and SP1) do you have and you running the latest Nvidia Drivers?

Yes I feel you man, a lot of people were expecting to play with minimum or just above minimum specs. I think they (Anet) might have underestimated the requirements for the game, hence the huge number of people facing framerate issues on older systems (that meet the min requirements).

I guess for now, you can focus on solo levelling and some crafting which doesn’t require too much fps to do.

If appears your guild wars data file is corrupted, use the -repair function for the shortcut to fix it.

I haven’t noticed any improvement in framerates, maybe +-~1fps.

But people with old sound cards definitely should try this, but at the same time update your audio drivers (which a lot of people forget).

You will definitely have trouble with GW2 even on low settings (if you want to enjoy the full game). The problem is that for a decent video card, if will cost you around 200-250 dollars, plus the rest of the system.

I would upgrade to an i5 laptop, but the truth is an i5 desktop will cost a lot less and perform 10 times better.

If you still have your Windows Disc, you can search for that file from the DVD and copy it into you C:\Windows\system32 folder and restart your computer.

Or you can download it here www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msimg32

But this should be your last resort as the file above might not match your missing file 100%.

Do you have ambient occlusion enabled in the Nvidia control panel?

Yes, the new drivers officially added SLI support, but as always, SLI performances won’t be very good until they tweak the drivers in the next month or so.

With that said, the GTX295 is not the ideal card for guild wars 2.

Did the controls defaulted by any chance, maybe the key/mouse binds were accidentally deleted.

Or if you are using any sort of programs (like Razer control panel) that stores keybind commands, it could be that you have accidentally changed to another ‘profile’.

A lot of us share your frustration, but the game currently requires high CPU clocks as well as being 2 or 3rd general i5/i7s. Older quadcores seems to have a difficult time handling the game despite GPU upgrades.

For now, to increase performance, the best way is to turn off shadows and reflections completely.

I used to have driver crashes despite reinstalling it (clean install with driversweeper). The first stage being games going into black screen then coming back on, but gpu will be locked at 2D mode.

It seems the only way is to format the Windows drive, as some of the bugs/driver files are persistent even through clean install. It has since solved any crashing problems including any bluescreens. With BSODs you will have to debug yourself, but if the cause it nv related (nvxxx.dll etc), it’s probably faulty drivers = reinstall Windows.

It is rather frustrating, especially when you see “Is your PC ready for Guild Wars 2” “Buy latest GTX600 series cards” on the main Nvidia website, but none of their drivers are optimised to run it efficiently with the latest hardware.

We can expect a new beta driver in a weeks time, but at this stage it seem they really need to pull something out of the hat (like 50% increase performance) to ease some of the anger. Then again, they test performance improvements on top of the line hardware which might not be applicable to a lot of the players facing fps problems.

It could be a overheating issue with the CPU or graphics card, make sure you monitor your temperatures especially during heavy WvW.

It’s sounds like either unstable overclock or overheating.

If OC problem – run stress tests using prime95 for 1 hour+ min

If overheating – run GPU-Z and monitor core and memory module temperatures, run speed fan to monitor cpu temperatures, make sure you have both “always on top” options selected

I would suggest gpu stress test, but I dont want you to burn your card down if it is overheating.

mumble_ol.dll is known to cause the game to crash, not sure if there is a work around at this point, might need to wait for updates.

Hi man,

You actually just fixed you own problem, if you noticed the error report indicated a particular program is causing the problem, in this case, your RTSHOOK is probably injecting something into GW2.exe, you might want to disable/uninstall it.

Is it just GW2 crashing, try running other intensive games like crysis to narrow down the problem.

If you don’t crash during 2D programs, and only crash during highly demanding games, it might be your PSU.

I don’t think the constant crashing is driver related, it’s most likely to be Windows related since your hardware is professionally tested.

Run gamebooster to disable some useless services and make sure your overclock if you have one is stable, run stress tests for 10-12 hours and see how many threads fail or if at all.

@ Rolo

I am not directing this at you personally, there was another big thread a week ago and a lot of people just said “your system is trash, upgrade”, even though they were running on decent hardware.

Disable System restore for every single drive, that is both bad for performance and can cause problems with viruses and malware.

Also Disable Indexing services for every drive/folder, also turn it off in services (start run services.msc)

Where is the GW2 installed, make sure it’s not on your Windows Drive.

Good choice, OC your new CPU to around 4.4ish and you’ll be ok, So i would spent a little on an aftermarket cooler for it.

If yo can afford the Z77-V Pro version, get it, makes overclocking much easier with the cmos reset button.

I think the issue here is that not everyone can afford a top end system, but at the same time people expect to be able run the game at medium low settings with decent fps. I do believe that is somewhat reasonable, provided they are not running pentium 4s.

Most players were looking at the system requirements provided the Anet, and since the game is DX9 based, I imagine many of them believed the game will run decently on a 2-3 year old system.

It is unfair for the people who have high end system (me included) to simply criticise those who are unfortunate to upgrade. We should also be helping them in finding ways to optimise the system, the game and so on.

Is your i7 OCed at all? Personally I don’t use supersampling and only have shadows on high. Can only get around 70-75 max.

I think people failed to realise the ‘stress test’ were for server load, but then again at the time, everyone kind of naively believed the ‘finished product’ will be lag free.

The improvements I’ve noticed might not be from the new drivers, could be an Anet patch. If so, we hope to see some major optimisation work done in the near future.