Guild Wars 2

also if you dont mind playing without sound

-nosound in the command line will disable all ingame sounds/music.

Audio processing takes quite a bit of cpu processing and can give you a bit more fps.

oc your chip

lower cpu intensive settings shadows to low reflections to none character limit to low

also sound processing takes up quite a bit of cpu load so using the -nosound command line will disable sound and do more fps, but only if you want to play with no ingame sound.

osx is engaging the thermal throttle much earlier than windows is, which is why you fps was low but computer cool. Windows gets better performance and runs hot because it doesnt slow down your chips until a much higher temp. If you could get the proper oc tools for osx (doesnt exist really except for maybe some very technical EFI command stuff), you will see the same thing happen to the mac client.

And as others have said, get a cooling pad

For you the fps is limited by the cpu, your 280x is powerful enough to handle the game at ultra which is why the fps is not changing from low to ultra settings. Though you should check your pcie bus speeds via gpuz.

fx cpus and the way dx9 based gw2 engine is implemented in this game do not mix well. All those other games use more modern engines based on more recent api’s that can take advantage of the unique architecture of amd fx cpus.

But for gw2, atm is pretty much intel i5/i7 or just deal with the lower fps. No changes are announced/expected from anet in the near future

Also lower shadows to low/character model limit to low/reflections to none

2gb is plenty for 1080p. 3gb is for 1440-1600p and 4gb is for 4k+

the 870m is faster by about 30% but in either case, 60fps ultra settings at 1080p in many games is unachievable for both gpus. For gw2 only i would probably take the 860m as the cpu limits of the game will keep fps limited anyways. But other games will not be like this.

It really depends your own budget, how much value you place on graphics, and how much you are willing to turn down. From the prices i have seen the pro 870 versions tend to be about $200 more meaning neither is a better “value” over the other.

as a side note the 860m in the gs60 is not maxwell but rather kepler, which makes the decision a pure budget vs graphics decision, rather complicating it with additional power/heat considerations.

well i3 2100 is still sandy bridge so the best cpu upgrade you can probabaly do is a used sandy bridge i5. I think micro center still has them new old stock for around 100 usd

non gs series msi are all pretty hefty and thick. No real difference between the 15"/17" (17 has 1 extra display port out, 15 has super raid function with better internal connectors) though some reviews have said the 15 has better finish. There is a version of the gs 60 with an 870m for about $300 more and will net you about 30% more performance.

2 other options:

Gigabyte p34/35 14"/15" thin gaming notebooks. Currently they are using the older 765m chips but have been refreshed to the 860m. (to be named p34/35g v2 with a w version for 870m’s). The 860 version is harder to find atm from reputable retailers.

Lenovo has their refreshed Y series that was ok, but now that prices have recently been cut, they are a lot more competitive in terms of value. 15" Y50 would be the way to go as it has the 860m compared to the y40 with a m270 (bleh amd mobile due to higher heat).

Specs are similar to the gs60 but prices may be a bit lower as the msi is still thinner and lighter and thus has a price preimum.

it doesnt matter, modern cards all have dynamic throttling and change the clock speeds based on temperature/power.

Gpu boost 2.0 in the case of nvidia. Basically these cards will “boost” (overclock themselves) when needed and able to, and slow down to save heat/power when it is the smart thing to do.

All the “overclocked/superclocked” label means is that the max “boost” are higher than what nvidia set as reference due to the bigger coolers the board makers have put on them. Base clock is also changed but that has no real effect on anything. In the end “clock speed” is more of a function of cooling capacity these days rather than a setting in and of itself.

for example: my titan blacks superclocked from evga have a base clock of 967 mhz and a “boost clock” of 1072 mhz on the box. what actually happens is this: i launch gw2: it goes from idle 135mhz to the base clock of 967. It sees the temps are low and then boosts the clock to 1166. then after my cards heat up and hits 70c, it slowly drops the clock speeds down/cranks fan up and stabilizes at around 1100. the thing is even if i lower the base and boost clock speeds to reference levels, the card does not care and will still boost to very similar levels because cooling and power are available. All this happens without me doing anything since installing them.

edit: never install the disk drivers, always use the latest from amd/nvidia websites. GeForce expierence does an amazing job of managing driver updates for you.

pcie bus speeds at x16? gpyz screen shots plz

for thin gaming laptops there are really only 5 choices atm

Razer blade 14"

Razer blade pro 17"

MSI gs 70 stealth 17"

MSI gs 60 ghost 15"

Aorus (Gigabyte) x7 17"

Gpu:
The 2 Blades and the 2 msi’s all use 860m’s which are medium range gpus (faster gpus require bigger heat sinks thus compromising the thin nature ofthese laptops.) Not fast enough to drive games at high resolutions (1080p and above) with high settings.

3k res (more below) versions of the MSI use a 870m but still not enough to drive native rez at ultra

The aorus x7 has 765m’s in sli. can drive 1080p at ultra

As for resolution:

The razer blade 14" has a nice 3200×1800 resolution that can be 1:4 perfectly down scaled into a typical 1600×900 (this is important as the 860m gpus are not that strong)

Blade pro is 17" 1080p

The Msi pair have a 1080p version and an upcoming 3k (2880×1620) version. The 3k versions are a lot more expensive and down scale into a funny resolution (1440×810?). Dx command line launch probably necessary to do it.

Aorus x7 is 17" 1080p which matches the 765m’s in sli well.

Cpu:

All of these use intel i7 47xxM hq with minor variations in clock speeds and turbo boosts.

At the end of the day no hardware can run wvw well, especially laptops. But if you must get one and require a thin one, thse are your best options.

As for personal choice it depends on various factors such as bidget and size prefs. At the lower end i would take the $1600 1080p gs60 ghost (same rez as the 17" gs70 stealth/blade pro, but higher pixel densities). at the $2.2k area i would take the blade for a smaller 14" unit, or a x7 for a larget 17" unit.

Asking and getting money from players for development of any sort is bad idea for an established company. It’s ok with kick starter but once large sums are involved people get mad and want a piece of it, look at oculus rift debacle for example.

In the end its all about ROI, and even if they did find the money to do an api change, would they profit from it. Say it costs 25 million (10-20 coders working on it, burn rate 1 million per month) and 2 years to do, but anet (and more importantly ncsoft) will not put up all that money (opportunity costs and manpower)unless it generates 60 million in profit and thats on top of what they are generating now. So for a typical playerbase of 1 million that’s $80 per player but for no content. (my SWAG numbers lol)

You also have to remember that top end machines are few and far in between. If you look at the steam survey, hardware for most people is on the low end, and dont get good fps anyways and yet they still pay money and play. So while the people at the top end might be able to run wvw at 60 fps, most people even with dx12 will not be able to.

Your best hope for a new api is an expansion pack where they redo the api along with all the development, or gw3.

Silvercyclone.1462:

My guild thinking of joining JQ ts but since we are a multi-server guild we were told that most of our members we not welcome in the ts im sure its like that on every server that has a voice chat. As far as I’m concerned server voice chat can go kitten themselves. What we need is 1 voice chat server for the whole game.

Multi server guilds are the very small minority in wvw. WvW is server based so 1 voice chat for the entire game would not work at all.

As with many servers that operate on a public/private TS, you guild as a whole would probably be welcome in the pve/public section, but would not as a guild be welcome in the wvw sections.

as a individual player am sure you could be verified into the private wvw sections of the server that you are on.

As for your guild getting their own channel, that is up to the individual admins, but usually only if you are a part of the server community who’s ts you want to use. TS licenses (especially those with 1000 slots) and server hosting is expensive for large servers. Giving slots out for free to people from other servers usually means at the expense of their own players. So usually only guilds part of the community are given their own channels.

SOme more information plz

PC specs

also gpu and cpu speed/load/temps screenshots would help too

Game implemented voice coms for mmo are usually lacluster due to a lack of features and customization. Even if they buy TS and integrate it, the moderation of admin privileges within a map/server/community has to happen and that require a lot of man hours. So usually we are left with simple single map/team voice coms.

But lets say for some reason Anet did buy and implement TS tech. For wvw, you would want to have at least 4 seperate map overall channels, with multiple subchannels for different guild groups and a channel for the small ops/ Bloodlust team. Then you might have private temporary password locked channels for guild only raids. On top of all the channels you want to have commander whispers lists for your map, all wvw maps, and all guild officers/commanders on your server for requesting help/relief. You want to be able to designate priority speak for commanders and scouts. And this is only for WvW. Add onto that the complexities of private guild channels for social/pve/spvp use.

Not only would the devs have to implement this in an ingame ui, but who gets to admin such features? If it is just based on in game status like guild leaders/officers/commander tags, then anyone could start a guild/buy a tag and troll/mess with settings/channels. So to fix that devs would essentially have to create and implement a fair system of internal player community politics, and then moderate that which would require even more man hours. This seems like a lot of work to replace what is currently working with a possibly mediocre/unfair solution. And the final straw is that would such features really generate more revenue?

Honestly, for gw2 the best solution might be for Anet to team up with TS providers and sell gift able TS server/time vouchers for gems.

if your computer randomly shuts off without the software crashing to desktop/blue screen, then its usually a psu issue. Gw2 uses more cpu than other games and can causes cross load voltage ripples/amp issues on older worn out or lower quality psus and especially with the more power hungry amd cpus. so i would start there first and test with a replacement unit. if its not the psu then it could be a power regulator on the mb

thermal throttling. your cpu/gpu is overheating and slowing down to prevent permanent damage. Try cleaning out your fans/heat sink.

honestly there is no real point in upgrading your system. As even bleeding edge hardware will not offer any major improvements. You will see few gains from a 780ti (mainly from the removal of sli overhead) and and small amount from changing your cpu. The cost for a few frames is very very high and for only gw2 is a but unjustifiable. Just lower a few settings and you should see very playable results in wvw.

There are a few things though.

1) the ivy bridge series has heat issues with its tim/heat spreader. So if you are up to the task you can attempt to delid the chip and fix that.

2) up your cooling (water maybe?) and crank the oc higher.

and a final point:

you are running a decently high res with 2gb vram cards in sli. In SLI vram is parallel not additive so you are essentailly running a 1440p on a 2gb frame buffer. While this usually wont be a problem in gw2, more modern games (at high settings) will indeed hit that vram limit and start limiting performance and stutter. So depending on your plans i would start to save for a set of 800 series cards with larger frame buffers.

sounds like thermal throttling. Get temp sensors. clean out your fans and heat sinks. Also your thermal paste may have gone dry.

The new nvidia drivers 337.50 or (.61 hotfix) seems to be more aggressive with the gpu boost scaling clock speeds that doesn’t happen in other programs.

The game in world map mode will drop the clock speeds down to 1/3 to 1/2 and when you exit the map and move your camera, there is some graphical lag and fps drops due to the gpu ramping up again to full speeds.

There has also been a few times times when the drivers will not ramp up speeds at all though i think this is due to the beta drivers rather than the game.

PrecisionX/afterburner seems to fix these issues though third party solutions are nice, not everyone uses them.

no, rather it is you dont get the benefits of traveler while under swiftness. The effects do not stack up to 55% run speed but rather takes swiftness over travelers when the boon is active for a max of 33% run speed.

Even if it is taking into aegis into account before the skill, then a single attack should still not proc both the skill AND the aegis block.

What i mean is that if aegis is considered before the skill then protectors strike would work like this:

Aegis on and Protectors strike Active
Mob attacks 1 time only.
Attack is blocked by aegis.
Protectors strike is not procced since aegis has blocked the attack and applies protection and does no damage.

What is actually happening is:
Aegis on and Protectors strike Active
Mob attacks 1 time only.
Aegis is popped.
Protectors strike is also popped and does damage and applies no protection.

Same thing with Shield of wrath. With aegis considered first, the combination of aegis and skill should block 4 attacks instead of the 3 that it does.

My point is that when used in series, aegis and the skill will block 2 attacks, however when used in parallel not only does it block only 1 attack, it also consumes the skill block as well.

Is aegis supposed to be removed when another skill blocks an attack?

For example: Guardian under attack uses shelter and has aegis. Attack is blocked by shelter and aegis is still removed. This behavior can also be replicated with Protectors strike (guardian mace 3) or shield of wrath (guardian focus 5)

Is this the intended behavior? Because if a skill is blocking attacks already should that not save the aegis boon to block the subsequent attack after the skill ends?

What should happen:
Blocking skill is active
Mob attacks
Skill blocks (aegis is not removed)
Blocking skill ends
Mob attacks again
Aegis blocks the attack.

What actually happens:
Blocking skill is active
Mob attacks
Skill blocks (aegis is removed)
Blocking skill ends
Mob attacks again
Attack lands.

32 bit os’s can cause Out Of Memory (OOM) crashes. Especially with modern video cards that have large vram frame buffers compared to the cards the os was current with.

yeah the r9 270/x has the same gpu/vram. The only difference is in clock speed and power draw/connectors.

270 reference has only 1 6pin and is at max capable of 150w power draw which is the reason for the lower clock speeds. Also not much room for oc due to the power limits.

270x reference is rated 180w and has either 2×6pins or 1×8pin. Max power available 225w for more overclocking headroom.

Though a few board makers (MSI) have 270 boards with 2×6pins or 8pin. These would be the ones i would buy if i was in the market for a 270.

always run single card solutions until your resolution dictates you need 2 gpus.

The downsides of sli/CF are always there, but the potential gain is really only evident at the 6 megapixel (3×1080p) or higher resolutions

a 760 or even a 270 will be overkill for this game and will run most other games at 1080p@ultra settings smoothly

yeah thats what i meant, oem versions that prebuilt systems usually come with cannot be moved and are locked to a specific model of mother board after activation.

Retail versions have transferable keys.

Reset the same settings using the command line, or deleting local.dat from your app data folder. try using driver sweeper in safemode, then re install latest catalyst. If it doesnt solve it you might have a bad card and should rma

torgalspu.9074:

Currently running amd fx8320 with a GTX 660 wanting to upgrade to an I5 would I have to buy a new windows too ?

depends on what version your windows is. If you bought a prebuilt system, or used a oem version when you built, then yes.

if you used a retail version then no.

Searry.6120:

first of all i know how hardware works, if i was getting a blue screen i would not be here talking on these forums. further more its not a claim that it only does it when i try to play GW2 its a fact, and if my computer was not stable it would be doing all the time on other games or even when i am on the internet. As i stated before the motherboard is 2 months old and i had no problem before this major update. it had only started after this update. also if it just hardware issue, then why are several people having this same problem right after the update. you are going to tell me that all of our systems are all of a sudden unstable and that there is no chance that something with the update COULD have messed things up?

Yes, we are telling you there is no chance that the gw2 up date is causing your specific problem.

OP had a cooler go bad on his video card
Another poster had a bsod
and you have complete shutdowns.

The other two have different problems and equating their problems to yours is competely false. The only one that could possibly be caused by gw2 is the poster who had a bsod. Otherwise these are hardware issues.

I would take a look at your psu. Some BFG Tech models got some bad reviews on johnnyguru. Particularly, they noted a decline in amperage on the 12v rails when hot. This sounds like something that could cause your exact shutdown problem.

As for being stable for other software, each software stresses the system in different ways, which requires different load levels on the psu. Cross loads voltage and amp levels across grouped 12v rails can behave differently in different load scenarios.

Also hardware being new doesnt mean it is working properly, there are always defective products even from good brands, which is why RMA’s exist in the first place

to get the proper vm software and have a rig capable of doing this with ok fps will cost a lot.

It will probably be cheaper to build 2 separate mid ranged gaming computers. Or run the second account it on a laptop.

just move your whole gw2 folder to your other drive. Thats it.

In the case of the 8350, the fps was limited by the cpu, thus the required calculations by the gpu was lower and your gpu was more or less waiting on your cpu. At that point your cards were faster than the required speed. So you could turn on supersample to use the unused gpu power and see the same fps.

With the increase in performance of an i7 over the 8350, the gpu now has to work harder because more frames needing to be rendered are being pushed from the cpu. So it no longer has the extra speed to spare for super sample anti aliasing.

For those kind of resolutions (im currently running 7680×1600) with 290x’s, i HIGHLY recommend using native sampling. Then install radeonpro which will add SMAA (Sub-pixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing) which is a combination of MLAA and MSAA. This will provide a very similar visual to supersampling, but uses a lot less resources and has none of the crappy blurryness of FXAA.

I currently use SweetFX for the SMAA injector(because nvidia cards), but radeon pro (AMD only) is a more elegant piece of software, much simpler to use, has more features, and has amazing support for SweetFX’s other options.

http://www.radeonpro.info/

yeah sounds like a psu issue. especially if your psu has 2 12v rails grouped rather than a single one.

GW2 uses a lot more cpu than sto or tanks or alot of other games, thus more power required to the cpu while the same amount is required for the gpu.

What I meant was: is the in game setting “render sampling” set to super-sampling rather than native. Max everything i will assume you have it set to supersampling.

How is gpu load measured?

gpu load percentage is simply the calculation speed of the chip being used compared to the maximum your chip is capable of. The maximum speed is a function of the number of transistors on the chip and clock speed (which in modern cards is variable and affected by available cooling and power).

For the most part the calculations done on the gpu is the rendering of shaders and textures of the game engine. The higher the resolution the more of renders per frame required. Higher settings require more renders per frame. The more effects on screen requires more renders per frame. And the more frames per second means more renders per second.

A simple way to think about it is (Resolution)x(Effect)x(Settings)x(FPS) = GPU Calculations per second. Resolution and settings are fixed and effects will always be drawn. Thus if your cards maximum speed is lower than the required speed, then the fps will decrease until the above equation becomes true. At this point your card will be running at maximum speed with 100% load.

If your card is faster then either the fps will go up until the equation is true (or is limited by other components like the cpu in a zerg) or the gpu drops below 100% usage. All this means is that the chip is capable of more but not asked to do so. This can be a fps limiter/vsync, or your card simply waiting on the other components to deliver data.

Your 100% gpu load means that your 290’s are being maxed out and not enough to drive your (resolution)x(framerate)x(settings). The 7970 was at 100% because it was not fast enough. Your CF 290x’s are much more powerful, but still not fast enough.

Graphical power limitations are pretty rare in gw2 considering the average players rig, but to be expected in multimontior setups with supersample as even top end hardware (like 290x in CF) is not fast enough to drive those resolutions with high enough framerates to the point of being capped by vsync or other limiters.

Changes in load represent many things. Do you have a specific question about gpu load changes?

Is super sampling on?

100% dual gpu load is easily reachable on CF 290x at that resolution with supersampling on. SSAA is the most resource intensive AA method. With an 1080p eyefinity setup, and assuming 2×2=4x supersample, you will be rendering a 24megapixel frame, which is 3 times the 8 mega pixel image of a 4k monitor. I think (my wag based on performance reductions) gw2 runs a 1.41×1.41=2x super sample which for your resolution is at 12.5 mega pixels. Any system including CFed 290x’s would struggle with such high resolutions. Even at native a 1080p eyefinity system still is at 6+ mega pixels which can be rough on the hardware depending on your cooling/gpu clock/game settings.

The one maxed and one idle in windowed mode is probably an issue with cf/eyefinity drivers and how directx is handeled. This seems to be a prevalent driver issue with dual gpu builds.

buying prebuilt will usually get you a crappy psu/mobo and an oem version of windows.

If you wanted the amazon one, you could spec out the components for a cheaper build instead and still get better quality.

32 bit windows? That could cause some memory limit issues, particularly if with the vram.

Though you will need to show us your crash report to get any help.

AWSHOM.7819:

Ok, I can confirm it now after trying again: once I start the game it’s super smooth at 60+, after a bit I play it starts stuttering and lagging. There is something happening after a bit which destroys the performance…

sounds like it could be thermal throttling. Check your temps on your cpu/gpu

sounds like a end user problem on your end, iv been using shadow play daily and there has been no issues with detecting key presses on my my logitech g19/g13

check all doors at a keep that has white swords. Sneaky guilds will tap 1 door and make sure the scout knows it. Then be secretly ramming another door down while the scout has reported “oh it was just a tap”

Certain gw2 settings don’t run well on the fx series cpus. To improve performance, turn off reflections, shadows, and set character model limit/quality to low. These are the CPU intensive settings that are keeping you from using more of your 270×.

All other options can be set to high/ultra with a r9 270x

Also 4GB ram (hopefully you are using 2 sticks for dual channel) is cutting it a bit close.

at low its still dynamic, but just a blob on the ground, at medium they begin to draw the outline shape and spot lights which eats up the most cpu cycles. Shadows at none landscape only. personally i get a few more fps in wvw from switching low to none on a 4820k

lowest character model limit, no reflections and shadows to none, dynamic shadows are enabled at low and take up alot of cpu power. plus an A8 apu + 650ti seems a strange combo to have.

its not just about clock speeds. the 5570 has 5 times the memory bandwidth, 3 times the pixel rate, 2 times the texture rate, 10 times the shading units and 1.5 times the texture units. Expected performance over the 610 is ideally 2-5 times more powerful.

Although it may be a 600 series card, the 610 is actually rebranded gt 510, which itself was a rebranded 420. which makes it the same generation as a 5570. Only 640 and higher are actually keplar gpus

As for your motherboard, the pci bus version is irrelevant. The athlon II x4 chip set supported pcie 2.1×16 which has more than enough speed to support modern top end video cards. A low end card from a few generations ago has no chance of maxing out the pcie bandwidth on your old board.

when only considering gw2, your new system is actually worse than your old one.

The gt610 is significantly weaker than than a 5570 and has about the same power as the integrated graphics

For single thread centric processes (like gw2) the piledriver based fx6300 could be argued to be weaker than a 10h based athlon II x4

Quetzalcoatl.7218:

Whats the difference between h81 & b75?

Main difference is the processor series supported, ivy bridge (3xxx) for B75 and haswell (4xxx) for H81

Other differences are in the number of sata ports/usb ports/pcie 2.0 channels, and a few other features like Intel Small Business Advantage, iSIPP.

its supposed to be mainly an update on how DX 11 is handled.

Though skyrim is dx9 and is listed, so we can hope.

Yes, your computer is performing as it should. It is a low end model with budget parts, thus you are getting low end performance. This is because much of the cost of that system was spent on the all in one form factor and touchscreen rather than performance components. There are no magic fixes and there is no upgrade path.

So you have two options, accept and live with your current performance, or start saving and try to sell your current HP to get enough cash to build a new system.

my gw2 folder is about 18 gigs, so somewhere around there give or take a few gigs.

Time to download will depend on your connection speed.

I fail to see the problem

Play the meta and get loot. If you choose not to, then expect less than optimal results and loot. Of the current meta, the only people who have a harder time getting loot are the glamor mesmers due to the condi cleanse and longer cds. All other support builts in the current meta have lots of aoe and get many tags.

As a glamor bomb mesmer (the current zerg meta) you need to be in a proper party (guard war ele necro + you) and you will get plenty of tags. Get confusion on enemy and you get bags because of the way party loot works. In a zerg your role is to veil, boon strip, portal, give ethereal fields for chaos armor, and time warp for spike. You aren’t there for healing(guardians), or rezzing(warriors), or buffing (eles).

Engie is not a support class in the current meta, it is a damage role with lots of condis and aoes.