Guild Wars 2

I had a really nice post typed out, and the forums ate it!

anyway, let my summarize.

Stick with Intel, get an i5-4670K as everyone else in this thread has recommended.
Your GTX 760 is over kill for this game, so go for it!

Since your going to want to OC that K cpu, you need to be aware of all your cooling options.

The best water AIO is the H100i. However I had one die on my and almost ate my CPU (cause I clock at 4.9Ghz, and the system didn’t shut down when the temps got to 105c when the AIO died) So I started to look more seriously at air cooling again.

This is the review I came across and used to guide my purchase of the Prolimatech CPU cooler I now use. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-heat-sink-haswell,3554.html

I would not recommend spending any money on a evo 212, even if its temporary. As all high end Air coolers are going to run you 80-120 bucks, you should put the 30-40 bucks that 212 is going to cost into the purchase price of your final cooler. Running Prime95 for CPU Temp Testing, stock on my GNSS I get 45C, OC to 4.0Ghz(1.2v) I get 58C, OC to 4.6Ghz(1.29v) I get 63C, and OC to 4.9Ghz(1.38v) I get 73C’s.

You will want a 650w 80+ rated PSU. CX650, X650, HX650’s are all good choices (as recommended by Sobe). But if you decide to go outside of those series, then I would recommend getting a PSU that has decent cable management and a SINGLE 12v rail and still rated at 80%.

Lastely, you will want a good case to support your overclocking. Air flow is a must, as the ambient case temps of the Haswell series needs to be 25c’s or less for a stable OC. Having lack of intake fans (120MM) cable channeling (wire mess management) and small chassis (tiny case area between the MB and drives) plays against the ambient temps of your system. So you want a case that’s pretty open and has a good methodology to it for air flow. One recommendation here is a RaidMax ATX-248NWU, and my other is a Cooler Master HAF XB EVO, which is what I recently moved to for the best ATX Airflow I could find.

And for the record is not that AMD is terrible or anything like that. Its just that GW2 uses 1 thread for the games graphical rendering. And AMD has a 65% weaker per core performance then Intel does. If GW2 ever changes that to be multi-threaded, then I think we can expect BETTER things from AMD. But today, that is just not the case. So that is why most are recommending Intel on these forums today. Its not to bash up AMD.

PIC – My current system.

pfanne.9783:

Tolas.2458:

The only good and solid way to fix this issue isif you either get a faster cpu, overclock your cpu, or reduce the amount of draw calls through culling by lowering the character quantity on screen, anything that would require more polygons on screen impacts how much data the cpu has to send.

Thats is not exactly true.
Polycount is not directly related to drawcalls.
The game should probably have all the textures and mesh data residing in buffers on the gpu, meaning that the stuff only has to be uploaded once.
The cpu then only sends which which shader programm to run and which textures to use to render the mesh that resides in some buffer on the gpu.
I have done some “testing” and have noticed that gpu usage actually decreases on my machine when I increase the max player limit.
Something is really wrong with how player characters are rendered in this game.
Drawing a character on screen shouldn’t take more than maybe 20 drawcalls (assuming that each armor piece, the weapon, the body the face and the hair are 1 mesh each).
There seems to be something else going on that scales very very badly with each character that has to be drawn on screen.

That’s because you don’t understand how the CPU is being utilized for this game.

You increase the character limit, you increase the utilization on the CPU, and the GPU has to wait for the CPU to catch up. That is why the GPU’s utilization drops, and no other reason.

And the poster you quoted is 100% correct, the only way to increase performance in this game is to buy a K series Intel CPU and OC it to the teeth. Unless, of coarse, you want to reduce the visual quality in the game by dropping your games settings.

well, you need to make sure your GPU is linked at 16×. From your description it really sounds like its at 4x or 1x instead.

and since your running a completely unsupported setup, I am not sure of how to reset the drivers in Linux to bring the GPU out of that power saving mode. If its actually stuck like I think it is :-)

download CPU-Z and GPU-Z.

in CPU-Z Mainboard tab, what is your PCI-E link speed

In GPU-Z there is a Bus interface section. What is the read out there?

In GPU-Z is a ? next to Bus Interface, if you hit that then choose Render Test, what is the read out in the Bus Interface then?

BetaPunch.3081:

I reinstalled the system two times completely… its not infected.

But i’ll do a complete check with avast.

Depending on your install media, and what else you have running on your network, you can easily get a fresh install infected before its patched and AV protected.

You should never assume just cause its fresh that its not infected.

BetaPunch.3081:

4 tabs, firefox is using 430.000.
52 processes.

That doesnt seem right. Im running 83 processes, have 8GB of ram, and only 3.2GB is paged.

You should make sure your system isnt infected.

How many tabs in firefox? if you open Task manager how much RAM is firefox.exe using?
Also in Taskmanager on the process list, how many processes are listed? (Bottom Left)

• System Memory <—*
  Physical: 3146MB/ 6084MB 51%
  Paged: 8885MB/12166MB 73%
  Virtual: 2787MB/ 4095MB 68%
  Load: 48%
  CommitTotal: 3281MB
  CommitLimit: 12166MB
  CommitPeak: 6805MB
  SystemCache: 2626MB
  HandleCount: 26242
  ProcessCount: 61
  ThreadCount: 1001
• Process Memory <—*
  Private: 1050MB
  WorkingSet: 1005MB
  PeakWorkingSet: 1009MB
  PageFaults: 790096

This bothers me a little, your paged memory is 73% ( 8885MB/12166MB) and while your physical memory is only 48% (3146MB/ 6084MB), 1050MB being used for GW2, you are paging A LOT.

what are you running?

And is your Pagefile located on a HDD or SSD?

The downed state is a joke and It needs fixed, badly.

The cool downs for healing yourself in the downed state are to long, and get interrupted way to often (on every hit, then the CD resets). You are technically just bandaging yourself, it cant even be considered a full healing ability! I would like this skill removed and replaced with something that makes more sense. A better healing mechanic is needed here.

Your attacks in downed are weak and rather pointless. I dont think anyone should be able to 1 shot another player who is not downed. But when you are downed, its only about ‘tagging’ something around you that is under attack and close to death to ‘rally’. Tab target and hope your team mates (or other PvErs) kill that target before your downed timer expires. It’s another aspect of zerging. Has no skill and no strategy to it.

Just cause I’m down does not mean I can’t be defensive! the endurance bar should be active on downed state too. You can’t dodge, but you should be able to ‘roll around’ to reduce damage of that attack, or ‘parry/block’ attacks if you are wearing the right gear. (Parry with a OH sword, Block with a Shield…ect).

And finally, there needs to be a skill that every player has to stop other players from temporary stomping you to death. Not a stun, but a stomp interrupt. And it needs to be AOE.

OP – Your GPU overheating issue is a hardware issue. Not that your GPU is bad or going bad, but the thermal design isn’t currently working properly.

Solution – take your GPU out of the PC, remove the heatsink from the GPU. Clean the fan and heatsink off. Now, clean the GPU chip off. Buy new Thermal Paste (I Recommend Diamond IC7), drop a ‘screw’ size drop right in the middle of the GPU’s Chip, and reassemble. If the temps are still poor, then you need to replace the fan.

Its really as simple as that.

You need to stop fighting all of us on this, or you are going to damage your GPU.

Solution – Dont join custom servers.

Solution – only join Active games

sPvP Farmers are always going to be there. And if you were to put limits on custom games (that COST a lot, btw) People would stop buying them.

If you see someone abusing a open game by farming points like that, report them. Or drop that game and join another.

Also, this is not a tech support issue.

6 176ms 8/ 25 = 32% 0/ 25 = 0% te0-1-1-3.br2.lax1.on.ii.net [150.101.33.195]

Looks like your ISP is ii.net?

Youll need to call them and report that node (150.101.33.195) having latency out of LAX.

I would say the easiest way to be to setup a virtual machine inside of Virtual box with DX9 support enabled.

but the issue with GW2, its not very CPU friendly and running 2 copies of the game on 1 system is going to drive performance into the ground.

yes, the ground and sky. if you set reflections to all, it will reflect the water that is actually under the ground.

best settings for reflections is either Sky/Terrain, or Off. Not all.

just upgrade your GPU’s Heatsink to a MK-26 and put a couple 140MM fans on it.
Best Air cooling to date at less then 1200RPMs.

The only class that still gets booted from PUGs are hunters.

I am seeing less and less 4man Warrior zerk groups now, and more like 1-3 warriors.
Ran 9 dungeons last night (2 being 1-9 and 10-19 fracs) and not once was the group ‘all zerk’

So, OP, I dont know where you are getting your info. But right now, its just not the case.

yea, the game isnt causing the heat. its going to be either a clogged Fan/heatsink or dried up TIM under that heatsink.

You will need to make sure the card is clean.

Nachooo.7859:

Im crunching numbers, and trying to decide if I should buy a new PC or build one myself. My main components that I want are these:

Intel Core i5-4670K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.4 GHZ
MSI Computer Corp. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR
Corsair CX750 PSU
Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H MoBo
NZXT Source 210 ELITE Midtower Case

After Windows 7, HDD, Warranty and shipping it comes out to about $1000

Any suggestions on a good pre-built for the same price or maybe somewhere I can cut costs. I’m not changing the GPU or CPU

Thanks

Local – Frys and/or Microcenter
Web – newegg, TigerDirect, amazon

and build it yourself. If you bought that system pre-built it would cost you an upward of 1500~

while you indeed have a very nice PC, GW2 just cannot be run on ultra settings with any currently available HW and have decent FPS performance.

You should consider turning down the following settings

Reflections – sky or off
Sampling – native
Shadows – Low or Off
Post processing effects – Low or off
Character Limit – Medium or Low
Character quality – High or medium

Now the 30FPS lock you seem to have while adjusting settings, seems to me that your PCI-E link speed is locked at 1×. You can verify this with GPU-Z and look at the Bandwidth Speed (Example – PCI-E 16x v3 @ 16x v2).

If it is not linked at 16x youll want to make sure your GPU is installed in the PCI-E slot closest to your CPU, and that your PSU meets the requirements for the GPU. I dont know what brand ‘beslient’ is for a PSU, but if its not rated at 80+ Gold/Bronze, there is no guarantee that its pushing a min required 320W for your system.

Avelos.6798:

Aren’t the first generation desktop Lianos 32nn versions of the Phenom II with the added GPU?

more or less, they P2’s with L3 dropped and a GPU added. Multiplier was unlocked.

Behellagh.1468:

No Sir Squishy. The A8-3850 are tweaked Athlon II quads with double the L2 cache plus a GPU. Only the mainstream Phenom IIs had L3 cache.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare_CPUs/AMD_AD3850WNZ43GX,AMD_ADX635WFK42GM/

ah right, meant the Phemon II’s.

APU’s are Althon2’s with a GPU added on.

lolisamu.2730:

Hey guys, I’d like to ask for some help regarding my FPS. I usually get 20-28 fps when playing in populated areas and when exploring I get around 35-40 (25-35 when players are around doing an event quest). Is there any way too boost my fps?

My specs are:
CPU: AMD A8-3870k black edition 3.0 gHz (ancient I know)
RAM: 8 GB
GPU: GTX 650 Ti OC

get a good heatsink+fan and OverClock that APU. You should be able to get 4.5Ghz+ easily on that APU. that will be the best thing you can do.

APU’s are weaker then Athlon/FX as they lack L3 cache. Their ‘turbo’ boost Clock is actually only for 1 core at a time, and not the entire APU. And they have core leveling issues if you leave them stock.

To fix it, set your pstates in the BIOS to lock the APU for state0 and state1 at your OC speed, and tune states 7-2 for stable leveling. This will force the APU to clock all the cores the same (rather then core0 and core1 for boost) and you will get 50-65% more performance out of that APU.

example, Llano. My A6-3510MX stock at 1.8ghz with a HD7690M (rebadged HD6790) would get a max of 35FPS in GW2 at 1600×900. When I OC that APU from 1.8ghz to 3.2ghz it went up to 90FPS. and that was a Laptop, btw.

I have also OC’d a desktop using the same leveling/steps I used on my Llano. and I saw the same performance gains.

So just overclock that APU :-)

Druss.6917:

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

Buy new GPU at least R7 250 .. i recommend you R7 250X or 7790/R7 260+

Then download fix for amd CPUs on win7 – it helps a lot

I checked out the R7’s and found one I can afford so I’m prog going to go with that. My old card is running a tad better than that nvidia pile of garbage, but with the fan on it not working (it’s a problem with the card itself, it won’t send power to the fan connector) I don’t want to run it forever. I have a pci bay ehxaust fan on it right now and it’s surviving lol. Are there any ways to force the game to utilize all of my processors cores? because right now it barely uses them at all and I think that’s part of my issue. I have win 8.1 too, so don’t think I need that cpu fix you mentioned, but correct me if I’m wrong.

Get a R7-260X or HD7790. Do not buy any of the other R7’s available. they are not worth the investment. You can find a HD7790 or R7-260x (same card, actually) between 99-129bucks.

In your Bios for the FX6300, disable the 2nd core per module. That helps boost FX performance with GW2 more then anything else. it comes down to how the FX series is designed with how the 2 cores share the same IC, L1/L2 Cache, and IO. GW2 being single threaded Pushes the FX series harder then intel due to this design. So disabling the 2nd core per module in the BIOS actually helps the FX be able to handle what GW2 pushes at it better.

BUT, the FX is still 50-70% weaker then Intel’s I-series CPUs when it comes to single threaded performance. So dont expect super high sustained FPS with that AMD CPU.

I would recommend replacing the FX6300 you got with a i3-3000 or i3-4000 series CPU+MB, as you will get better performance then you can ever hope to get with any of the AMD line for CPUs.

Bitcoin is a currency that is going to become problems for any company that has to show profits to shareholders. BC changes value more often then average stocks, and its not by a few % per float, but by several (20-30% depending on news, events around BC, and the rate at which BC is currently being awarded). Its to volatile for any legit company to consider taking on as a payment method right now. And with how its not backed by any physical form of payback (USD is backed by Gold out of the reserve, for example) it will always be a wash of a currency.

Until there is a standard around BC, I dont think ANY company should ever consider taking it on as a payment method, esp if you need to account for BC to your Local currency at an exchange rate.

When your ASIC miners get better (currently the best ASIC miner clusters are about even with the best GPU based Clusters), the rate at which BC is awarded is going to increase. That is going to devalue BC in the end. The more of that type of currency that is available, the less valuable it becomes. And that is why it cannot be consider a legit/real currency.

its more of a supply/demand model currently, and eventually supply is going to run rampant. That spells bad news for any investors and companies that would ‘bank’ that kind of currency as ‘profits’.

Heartbleed was patched, if that caused an issue with the BLTP then its going to be something ELSE that needs to be addressed. This entire topic was about the heartbleed issue and if Anet was affected by it. The exploit was patched for their cloudservices, and their Front end servers did not use OpenSSL. It is not about the BLTP having access issues.

If you are having issues with your mac client, you need to open a new post/Ticket in the MAC forum.

And yes, the patch has NOTHING to do with the BLTP. As its working fine for us PC users. If the patch broke the trading portal, it would be affecting EVERYONE, not just a select few.

So I think you are the one that needs to stop ‘pretending’ here.

DavidSev.6978:

Except that Anet use CloudFront as their CDN for everything (including this site and the BLTP) and CloudFront do use OpenSSL, and have just rolled their certificates, which broke the BLTP on macs.

So yes, heartbleed does (or did) affect GW2 and GW2 sites.

If you are unable to understand that web sites have slightly more to them than just the URL shown at the top, then maybe you shouldn’t be pretending you do.

April 08, 2014

We have reviewed all AWS services for impact for the issue described in CVE-2014-0160 (also known as the Heartbleed bug). With the exception of the services listed below, we have either determined that the services were unaffected or have been able to apply mitigations that do not require customer action

Amazon CloudFront: We have mitigated this issue. As an added precaution, we recommend that you rotate your SSL certificates using the information provided in the CloudFront documentation: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/SecureConnections.html

Source – http://aws.amazon.com/security/security-bulletins/aws-services-updated-to-address-openssl-vulnerability/

Again, the vulnerability is CLOSED

IIS is a content delivery daemon (much like Apache) it has nothing to do with this heartbleed stuff.

Anet does NOT use OpenSSL. This by default means they are not affected by the heartbleed.

The Heartbleed Penetration tests done against guildwars2.com websites shows up as not accessible by the testers. That means they are protected at the Firewall or their Network security Devices (again such as a Tippingpoint IPS, or Juniper IDP).

So this entire TOPIC is moot and so completely unnecessary, since Gw2 is not affected by this attack at ALL

Quetzalcoatl.7218:

so I did some research and kind of confuse which mobo’s are best: MSi, Gigabyte, or Asus and btw what would be my average fps also in major cities like Black Citadel because my previous pc gets 10-18 fps :/ (core 2 duo 2.4ghz & gt 630)..thanks again

As for your Motherboard choices I would recommend a decent Asus or MSI. I dont put value in ‘gaming’ Motherboards. But if you EVER plan on buying a K series CPU (such as an i5-4670K) You need a Z87 Chipset in your Motherboard, and its mostly ‘gaming’ motherboards that have them. You do not need advanced features like SLI/CrossFireX. So you could get a MicroATX or mITX based motherboard. You really have alot of choices on what you can do here.

Performance? it depends on the # of Players and NPCs that are around, and what your Character Limit and Quality in game settings are. I would say you can expect 60FPS for ‘normal’ areas of the game, and 45FPS for ‘in combat’ scenarios of the game. For Zergs you will be sitting between 18-25FPS in a ‘worst case’ if you set your system right.
But with a 1360×768 Res, optimal Graphical Settings, Proper Drivers installed, you can expect to see higher then the above numbers.

Point in case,
A desktop my wife plays on;

i3-2120@3.2Ghz
8GB DDR3 1333mhz
R7-260x
7.2K 2TB HDD
1600×900 LCD x3 (5040×900 for Eyefinity)
(really nothing that fancy about this system)

In game settings
All settings are High except;
FXAA – Off
Reflections – Sky
Sampling – Native
Shadows – low
Shaders – Medium
Post Processing – Low or Off (Off for Zergs)
Character Limit – Low
Character Quality – Medium
Enable LoD
Rest Options disabled.

PvE with 20 Players on the screen out of combat she floats between 95FPS and 110FPS (Queensdale), when Combat starts it drops between 55 and 65FPS
Doing Shadow Benemeth she gets 45-50FPS with the same player count above. When the World Boss Train is around, shes getting 18-20FPS (Fully Queued Map)

WvW – running around with our 10man group flipping camps shes constantly beween 65FPS and 95FPS. Fighting a 30 vs 20 vs 15 man zerg shes between 28FPS and 35FPS.

The main thing you have going for you with the above build? Your running a 4th Gen CPU, thats about 20% faster then my wifes CPU. You are running 1360×768 while shes running 1600×900 (sometimes 5060×900 – which halfs all her FPS numbers). So I would expect higher FPS on your build then hers based on what I know her’s does, and the age of her components.

Now that being said, on my i5-4670K clocked at 4.0Ghz I will get 175-210FPS in PvE. 80-110FPS out of combat with 50 Players around. 65-75FPS in combat. and in WvW roaming, 90FPS constantly, In a zerg of 60vs60vs30~ 28-35FPS.

its really not bad for a budget build. Depending on your settings, you could get 90-100FPS in PvE where there are 20 or less players around out of combat, and 50-60FPS in combat. For WvW Zerg content you are looking between 18-25FPS on average.

And its because of your 1360×768 Res – Also, run 1360 NOT 1366, that extra 6 puts more strain on the CPU since its a weird resolution.

I would suggest looking into a high quality Motherboard, since you are buying an i3 you have SEVERAL upgrade options over the years before Haswell becomes obsolete. So if you decide to upgrade the CPU you should consider the ability to pop in a K series Cpu for Overclocking if you ever plan to go that route. The K Cpus require the Z series Chipset.

Brother Grimm.5176:

As a CTO I would think you understood the economics of this from a business point of view. As a player, you can wish for this, but I think if you look at the broader picture, you would agree it does not make economic sense to purse this kind of complete overhaul.

My understanding of how DX10 and DX11 works, your ENGINE has to built and/or be heavily modified to support it so that the major performance improvements are actually possible. Many of the games you speak of (if not all) use 3rd party engines that have had this modification done by the Engine developers, not the game developers. Anet is NOT in this boat, since their Engine is proprietary.

Also, many of the games you speak of are FPS and LIVE or DIE by their shinny “eye candy” so they have a (real or perceived) competitive reason to support the newer DXs that allow for some flashy new features. That is not the case with an MMO.

You may be right that “something has to change”, but performing this major surgery on an existing game that is currently (maybe not for long) making money, is NOT the only answer. While I’m sure Anet Devs want to do everything they can to improve the game experience we players have, NC Soft calls the shots on something like this and I don’t see them ponying up the resources involved at this point in GW2 life cycle.

Yea I do, and I think I made that pretty clear in my last response. Also, with GW2 being Buy to Play (not F2P or Sub Based) In China’s market, chances of a change this big coming to GW2 is probably non-existent at this point.

I was really holding out for a Sub in the Chinese market (To match every other MMO out in that area) in hopes that would drive R&D for a better game engine design. But I can no longer see that happening due to Cost vs Investment at this point.

So, oh well LOL

Brother Grimm.5176:

sirsquishy.8531:

Brother Grimm.5176:

This will never happen for the simple reason that doing so would either FORCE everyone to update to a DX11 / DX12 capable hardware / OS combo (not going to happen) or they would have to release and maintain 2 different versions of the client. This pretty much doubles all maintenance and testing work, so this is not a likely scenario either.

No, they could just include 2 different engines for the game. DX9 for Legacy support, and DX* for whatever version they settle on. So they would not need 2 different clients for it to work. Just different included Graphical API’s.

Many games do this, Why Anet does not for GW2 is beyond me at this point. It has been proven time and time again that the single threaded API for DX9 is what holds this game back.

The different “graphical API” IS the majority of the GW2 client. I have no doubt that most if not all of the .DAT file would be the same, but the client WOULD be different code and would have to be tested separately. Also, I don’t think you or I are knowledgeable enough to say for sure WHAT content changes might be needed to support DX12. IF significant changes are required to the data file to support DX12 they would possibly need to support, supply and test multiple DAT files.

If other games were built from the ground up to support multiple DX versions (they MUST since their installer HAS to load different libraries at installation time) then that was a decision made in development, not something they added 2 years after release. Implying this is something that is easy to ADD to a game because other games were DEVELOPED that way is not being realistic.

Nobody is disputing that DX9 is a limiting factor in GW2. I’m just stating that the reality is that NOBODY is going to retool a 2 year old game for DX12. Asking for this is just silly.

Never said it would be easy. But there are a lot of games that shipped DX9 then their Devs added DX10 and 11 support to after the fact. They left DX9 intact in the game’s Options so legacy GPUs could support the game (Rather then only DX10/11 support).

And there is no doubt that a completely new client would need to be created. However, there would be no need to maintain 2 clients for this to work.

As for testing, they should be doing a lot more testing on their releases then they currently do. There are so many bugs and issues in the game , still even since launch, its not even funny. So maybe them adding an updated Graphical API to their development list would be a value add for us players. As they would have to open a public testing area to get the most out of R&D.

I may not be a programer any longer (I used to work for Tivoli and Oracle in development years ago, but now I’m just a CTO), But I know with the right team this can be done in a timely manner. It just comes down to the bottom line (cash), and the return on investment for NCsoft.

So, In my honest professional opinion and with what everyone has proven on this forum, ANet is going to have to change something eventually. The more stuff they add to the game just puts that much more stress on their already over worked DX9 API. (30FPS in the ‘broken’ Lion’s Arch, with no one around is a prime example of what I am talking about)

Brother Grimm.5176:

This will never happen for the simple reason that doing so would either FORCE everyone to update to a DX11 / DX12 capable hardware / OS combo (not going to happen) or they would have to release and maintain 2 different versions of the client. This pretty much doubles all maintenance and testing work, so this is not a likely scenario either.

No, they could just include 2 different engines for the game. DX9 for Legacy support, and DX* for whatever version they settle on. So they would not need 2 different clients for it to work. Just different included Graphical API’s.

Many games do this, Why Anet does not for GW2 is beyond me at this point. It has been proven time and time again that the single threaded API for DX9 is what holds this game back.

SolarNova.1052:

It wont be W8 only.
Microsoft have stated that they estimate that at least 50% of all gamers will have access to DX12.
That’s taking into account that a gamer would require a Fermi GPU or newer card (Nvidia side), basically anything DX11 capable.
With that although Microsoft hasn’t directly come out to say its W7 compatible, the fact they expect 50% of gamers to be able to use Dx12, and the fact that they also say %50+ of gamers are using W7 now + ~%20 using W8 or 8.1, means that yea, W7 compatibility is most likely.

I find this hard to explain, its easy to understand in my head lol. But basically MS’s expectations match up with current W7 vs W8 usage amongst gamers. So yes it will be W7 compatible.

This link explains most of what u need to know about performance of DX 12 and what MS expects.
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/178904-directx-12-detailed-backwards-compatible-with-all-recent-nvidia-gpus-will-deliver-mantle-like-capabilities

The attached image (taken from the MS DX12 announcement) shows why GW2 would benefit, the top half is whats happening now to players in GW2 (and that’s in DX11!! so DX9 is even worse).

An easier way is to look at the Win7 and Win8 EoL support schedule. Its safe to say any new API level features will be adopted to Win7 as long as they are released with in the Support table. And it might be rolled into a Service Pack when its all said and done.

As for the OS market share, Win7 is still dominate. And until updates and feature packs are not available for it anymore (EoL), it will remain that way for a good while yet.

I can totally see DX12 being added to Win7 after a while.

Vendetta.6125:

how to disable e – mail authentication ? whenver i log in it launcher asks me to go to my e-mail account to allow acces to the game, and i tagged option to remember my network. I guess my Adsl is changing IP randomly everyday… i want to turn off this thing.

You do not want to disable that feature. If you have ADSL+, you can request a static IP from your provider (3bucks a month extra) to combat that.

But GW2 accounts are in high demand for hackers and gold sellers. You want that 2tone auth based on source IP. Trust me.

meh, what are your goals with that system.

Blude.6812:

The only answer needs to come from Anet tech support, and it hasn’t yet.

and it probably wont. They rarely respond to these forums.

Blude.6812:

Sites are being closed, the Canadian Tax site has shut down, it is considered a big problem right now.
Perhaps the OP can edit the title and ask the tech if openssl is used.
http://readwrite.com/2014/04/08/heartbleed-openssl-bug-cryptography-web-security#awesm=~oAWoLBAxj8tfy1

3/4’s of web site use it—it has the potential of being a big problem, especially if they are not using perfect forward security. Does ANET use it??

That will not stop an expoilt attack, FYI.

You need a inline system to detect attacks and be reactive to it. PFS doesn’t do that as it doesn’t know about ‘an attack’ book. PFS only forces IP:Port-Service to conform to RFC regulations.

Menelaus.9472:

@sirsquishy, ah! i should have read the FAQ. do you understand what that means? it sounds like if they use OpenSSL it could or could not be patched, we simply can’t tell with this filippo.io tool

I’m still curious to hear from Arenanet.

It means that either their Firewall, Intrusion Prevention/Detection system (IPS), or some other security measure is blocking the attack.

The Exploit for them is closed and they are not open to it.

that is what that means.

Menelaus.9472:

I’ve heard a lot about the “heartbleed” exploit in OpenSSL; can someone from ArenaNet comment on if this is a vulnerability for guildwars2?

I used http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#forum-en.guildwars2.com and it returns

“Uh-oh, something went wrong: write tcp 64.25.40.16:443: broken pipe”

Thank you!

I’m 100% sure this is why

broken pipe and timeout errors are rising now, they are probably counter-measures, firewalls and IPS closing the connection or sink-holing it when they detect a heartbeat

Emirosa.6182:

sirsquishy.8531:

Emirosa.6182:

Hello, here I’m again!

The refresh rate was already set to 60Hz.
I don’t know if it happens with other games, but I’ll run a 3D mark after this post.

When the laptop uses the internal gpu from the cpu, it runs smooth (lower grapichs ofcourse) but the screen doesn’t flash like that.

The dirvers I’m using atm (sorry for the dutch):
Versie stuurprogrammapakket 13.35.1005-140312a-169198E
Catalyst-versie 14.3
Leverancier Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Versie 2D-stuurprogramma 8.01.01.1379
Bestandspad 2D-stuurprogramma /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}/0001
Direct3D-versie 9.14.10.01017
OpenGL-versie 6.14.10.12798
Versie AMD Catalyst Control Center 2014.0312.1131.18796

Does your Laptop only have 1 290X or does it have 2 in Crossfire?

There is a reported Flickering issue with CrossFire on the 14.2 and 14.3 Beta Drivers.

I have just one.
I first tried the latest released version (not beta) but the laptop wouldn’t swtich to the AMD card I think. And if it did, I only had 1-3FPS at max so it was even worse then now.

I’ve read somewhere on a forum that the beta ccc gave better fps so I gave it a try… but they’re both still unplayable

So your laptop has the switchable graphics between the Intel and AMD GPU?
You might need to find modded Drivers for the Intel_SG Fix for it to work properly (I had to on every one of my laptops with a AMD GPU).

Emirosa.6182:

Hello, here I’m again!

The refresh rate was already set to 60Hz.
I don’t know if it happens with other games, but I’ll run a 3D mark after this post.

When the laptop uses the internal gpu from the cpu, it runs smooth (lower grapichs ofcourse) but the screen doesn’t flash like that.

The dirvers I’m using atm (sorry for the dutch):
Versie stuurprogrammapakket 13.35.1005-140312a-169198E
Catalyst-versie 14.3
Leverancier Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Versie 2D-stuurprogramma 8.01.01.1379
Bestandspad 2D-stuurprogramma /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}/0001
Direct3D-versie 9.14.10.01017
OpenGL-versie 6.14.10.12798
Versie AMD Catalyst Control Center 2014.0312.1131.18796

Does your Laptop only have 1 290X or does it have 2 in Crossfire?

There is a reported Flickering issue with CrossFire on the 14.2 and 14.3 Beta Drivers.

locx.6412:

Yeah of course tier and population comes into play. I used to play on a server that was in T6-8 but sometimes the fights were pretty big, especially during the peak hours and they would drop my fps sub-20. Also I don’t think seeing only 30 by culling is the same for performance than there only being 30 people. Of course a lot better than having those 60 though.

No, culling is not even close to the same performance as there being actual numbers on the screen. But, it helps A lot.

locx.6412:

sirsquishy.8531:

Torque.2948:

Once again there is no PC on the market that can play a game that is not optimized and sustain good frames. You should never have to over clock a CPU to make a game run good. Do not build a computer for this game thinking its going to run good, this game is not optimized. Do not base your computers performance around this game go with numbers on tech forums for CPU performance and GPU performance. What else do you use your computer for, streaming, video editing ask yourself these question before you build.

This is not entirely true.

If you tweak your settings, and OC your i5/i7 to 4.0ghz, you can do pretty well. I sit between 28-30FPS in 60man zergs now and 90-130+FPS in the rest of the game.

You have to reduce the CPU bound settings in the game to do that though.

But we all know 60 man zerg is not that huge really. Better not get the man’s hopes up too high. It’s good to have some actual statistics to this thread too so he knows what’s happening though.

Being in a T4 server, I would say that a 60man zerg is ‘average’. and with your character limit set to low you dont really see more then 30~ player bodies on the screen anyway.

Torque.2948:

Once again there is no PC on the market that can play a game that is not optimized and sustain good frames. You should never have to over clock a CPU to make a game run good. Do not build a computer for this game thinking its going to run good, this game is not optimized. Do not base your computers performance around this game go with numbers on tech forums for CPU performance and GPU performance. What else do you use your computer for, streaming, video editing ask yourself these question before you build.

This is not entirely true.

If you tweak your settings, and OC your i5/i7 to 4.0ghz, you can do pretty well. I sit between 28-30FPS in 60man zergs now and 90-130+FPS in the rest of the game.

You have to reduce the CPU bound settings in the game to do that though.

does that happen on other games? what drivers are installed?

Ravenmoon.5318:

SolarNova.1052:

If the motherboard is capable, get a FX8350 + aftermarket cooler so u can OC it.

Will AMD ever learn to put decent coolers on their hardware >.> My i5-2500k can push out 4GHz on stock cooling while my R9 290X completely destroys the need of an air conditioner in the winter >.>

But yeah, ontopic, I’m pretty certain that we will go with the FX8350, saw some promising benchmarks. I guess that’s the best AMD chip for price/performance and AM3+ socket.

Thanks for the replies everyone. When we get it in couple of months I’ll write down the results With that power usage (~150W) I guess we’ll need to get her a new PSU as well.

And mostly thank you for staying outside of fanboyism

FX8130, FX8350, FX9*50 are all the same CPU with different ‘base’ OC’s.
When they are all pushed to the same OC, they perform about the same (give or take 5%). So if cost is an issue I would go between a FX8130 and FX8350 and NOT touch the FX9 series at all.

For the aftermarket cooler I really suggest this if you are going to OC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835242007

Pricy and does not include fans. But works as well, if not better, then water cooling.

My i5-4670K OC’d to 4.9 with a Boost of 5.1 runs at 75C’s with that cooler. With my H100i I was at 83C’s…but the Pump fried on it so I had to replace it. Alot of research went into my decision and ultimately this review sold me on it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-heat-sink-haswell,3554.html

Ravenmoon.5318:

Hey there guys!

We all know that Gw2 scales terribly in WvW on medium or lower end machines, and we all know that buying the latest generation i7 CPU will greatly increase the frame rate in massive fights, yet I have to upgrade my girlfriend’s computer and truth be told I’m not very AMD-savvy customer when it comes down to their A/CPUs. I myself have R9 290X oven but that’s GPU land. Also we really don’t want to buy a new motherboard.

Her current motherboard is running AM3+ socket and a 5-6 year old AMD cpu throwing out some 3.4GHz but really its at the end of its lifecycle. We’ve upgraded her GPU to Radeon HD 7850 (yep GCN architecture) having Mantle API in mind and knowing it would offload the CPU a bit, but then again there aren’t much Mantle enabled games YET.

Regardless, I would like to know what are you, AMD CPU people using in your rigs and what average FPS you are pushing. I’m really bad when it comes to AMD CPUs, having a Sandy Bridge i5 for about 3 years now I haven’t really checked any CPU advancements from any manufacturer.

So, yup, TL;DR; – Help a brother out to pick an AM3+ AMD CPU that would push some decent FPS in WvW, be it at Medium graphics.

You will want to ditch the AMD Motherboard/CPU and go either Ivy or haswell Intel.

youll want an i5 clocked at 3.2ghz or more on either 1150 or 1155 socket.

AMD does not scale well with GW2. Even their best cpus (FX8 and FX9) are about 1/3rd the performance of Intel’s i5’s when it comes to this game.

Hot Boy.7138:

sirsquishy.8531:

Hot Boy.7138:

Same thing happened to me today. Was a hard lock up. I couldn’t even go to task manager. This is the first time this has ever happened to me so I can’t say for sure it was this game. I was logged into the gave and afk in Divinity’s Reach with all graphic settings on max, but i was tabbed out watching anime on Fullscreen on Crunchyroll at the time.

Edit: settings:
i5 2500k (not overclocked)
radeon 6879
16gb ram
windows 7, 64 bit

So you had GW2 minimized with a char logged in to a zone while you were watching Flash Video? When did your system crash, when you left the Flash video and went back to GW2 or during CR playback?

Also, what show are you watching? :-)

It locked up while I was still in full screen mode at Crunchyroll. The video just froze and I assumed it was buffering, but it was making a weird sorta static noise through my headset. So I figured I’d tab back to guild wars 2 so it can buffer, but when I tried, nothing happened. So I tried pressing the windows key, escape, and then even cntrl+alt+del to get to task manager, and nothing happened. It just locked up.

The show I was watching is The Irregular at Magic High School. It just premiered this weekend. I like it so far. It has old school art style with new school animations. And the characters are choreographed fluidly. I like it so far and I have a feeling it’s gonna be a great show. But that’s just one of many animes I’m watching currently.

Ill look into that show, gotta love new releases.

as for the way you describe the lockups. I want you to update your Video Drivers, Adobe Flash, and your browser (I hope you use Firefox and not Internet Explorer) and see if that helps with the hard lock.

Applications alone do not have the ability to hard lock your Operating system. It’s caused by either a hardware issue (rather rare and shows other symptoms) or an underlying API/DLL issue between the application and your Operating system. I believe its the video driver since even your video in the browser was hard locked with the rest of the OS.

Edit Forgot to ask, does your system hard lock while ONLY watching Flash video or sitting Idle? Or does it only do this when GW2 is running?

Edit Your HD6879 seems to be mislabeled? So maybe you have a HD6870? If so that card has 1GB of ram, if you are maxing out the in game settings at 1080P you can easily exceed the vRAM on that card. Epically if you are playing Video in the background. You can check this with a program called GPU-Z, by looking at the sensors Tab.

Galistriace.8054:

Are you saying there is no hope for me? Theres nothing I can do but buy a new computer? If there is something if anything let me know because i simply don’t have enough money for a computer.

Correct.

You can try and resell the HP. The touchscreen is the only feature that will attract anyone. You maybe able to list it in the local College papers and get lucky there.

If you can get 600-750 for it, that is PLENTY to build a decent system to replace it with.

Do you have a Microcenter or Frys Electronics near you? That is where i would buy your LCD, Case, PC Speakers, and probably keyboard/mouse. Then I would use TigerDirect for a MB/CPU combo, and Windows License (system builder or OEM, bundled with the Combo!), then Newegg for your HDD/SSD, GPU, RAM, and misc Cables.

If you shop around, you should be sitting pretty good for that price above. But the first thing you need to do is come up with a budget, then any of the 6 of us here (myself, Loc, Avenos, Bell….ect) can work with you to put something together, speck wise, to meet your needs.