Guild Wars 2

There needs to be an effective balance between the main 3 builds, that this game is lacking

P/T/V vs P/T/Pre vs P/Pre/C% should yield the same amount of damage over a set period of time. Whether that be 30 seconds or 45 seconds.

What I would like to see, Berserker builds spike their damage faster, but when their CD’s are all used they stream line their damage down to a sustained number (lets say 10K DPS), while Knight/Defensive Builds have smaller spike Damage but their sustained DPS is a bit higher (Lets say 12k DPS). This way, the only difference on what you run would be based on the type of thing you are fighting and if spiky damage is more effective then sustained damage.

Burst = Kill Vets faster, But doesnt Kill Champs any faster. Good for Farming Open World, can be good in WvW(if played correctly), Relies on Player’s Reflexes for defensive abilities.

Sustained = Doesnt Kill Vets faster, but the sustained Damage allots for fighting Multiple Vets at the same time (2-3) with out having to worry about running a full defensive line of utilities and skills, Champs cant kill you as fast because of the innate defense from your Toughness/Vitality, Good for WvW and doesnt require ‘high player skill’.

Something like that is what I would like to see added to the mechanics to the build offsets. There is no reason when wearing PVT I should be getting 1 shot by the Karka Queen and having my damage Nerfed because of the lack of Crit% and Precision. But I do feel its fair for those that only run Offensive Stats to get 1shot.

reon.6723:

no effect, maybe worse:

my config on screen.

weird, nothing selected for shaders?

uncheck use best texture filtering, there is no visual gain for the performance hit you are taking using that.

It kinda looks like some effect is enabled even if you disabled it in options.
plus, shaders being blank doesnt even look right.

Character Limit should be Low, Post processing Effects should be Disabled, and Reflections should be terrain and sky.

your 740M is what will hold you back. But it sounds like your getting the performance you paid for.

reon.6723:

Now i have gamma 0.87 and i dont want darker all word because my snow glowing.

Turn off Post process Effects. that enables the Bloom/Glow effect you are complaining about.

Aza.2105:

Behellagh.1468:

Grebcol.5984:

problem is gw 2 doenst have good mutlicore support and there is the main problem.i think when this game use 2-3 cores it will run a lot smoother than now.

It already uses 2-3 cores, it just doesn’t scale past that. The game is multithreaded, it has over 40 threads running but only 8 or so are using 20% or more of a core each with two at around 50% and one using above 75%. The performance of that lone 75% thread determines overall performance which is why people keep referring to single thread performance. The faster the CPU, the faster that thread can run and the higher the frame rate.

A faster GPU doesn’t help because it’s binding on the CPU side of the renderer, setting up all the calls to the driver. The game uses Dx9 so the renderer can’t be multithreaded easily if at all.

Reflections and shadows are both CPU intensive, turning down those options will improve your frame rate.

Its making poor use of multi core cpus. Lineage 2 uses 2 cores as well and it still runs at 20fps on todays machines. Do not try to make excuses for the optimization in this game, by no means does this game genuinely take advantage of multi threading.

Kind of Correct.

The Main application thread does not do ANYTHING with Multi-threading. It will home to 1 Core and stay there, never splitting its I/O up (Like it should!). But, it will spawn a crap ton of worker processes. That is how this game multi-threads :-) Through additional processes, and not threading the main application.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Something that has not been talk about is WiFi congestion if your PC or laptop has to be connected to WiFi and there is no practical way to get a cable to it then you may want to check your area for the number of WiFi signals you can detect. I live in an apartment complex and can detect 23 active WiFi signals. I do not have my PC connecting over WiFi to play the game, but my iPad and laptop do. So I got curious one day, when I was getting kicked of Netflix on my iPad, I was on a WiFi channel with 5 other signals. So I found a channel that only had one signal and change to it, haven’t had a connection issue since. Also cordless phones, remote control toys, and baby monitors are all on the same frequency as WiFi, causing more congestion.

Channels 1, 6, 11 can be shared and have multiple Wireless Access Points on them.
Cordless Phones, Baby Monitors, and Wireless Cameras (Esp X10) use Channels 2-4

Depending on if your 2.4Ghz or 5.6Ghz and running G over N will determine what channel setup you should be running. N adds 40mhz or 20Mhz (Upper/Lower) to the base channel Freq to maintain the higher Xfer rates. So if you enable N in a highly flooded G network, you might end up on over lapping channels.

My recommendation is to run G-only on Channel 11. If you need to run N, move into the 5.6Ghz Freq and update all your Equipment. In congested areas, that have a lot of G radios, 2.4Ghz N(40/20Mhz) does not work well.

Network issues are going to be between YOU and the End point, 90% of the issue. There are so many components involved, with how the Internet works, and it seems that no one here understands any of it.

If Anet’s servers were laggy, then a lot (and I mean pretty much ever user) would be here reporting about it

If it was your ISP, you could call them and ask. And they would either tell you they are over subscribed (likely) or they are having an area affecting outage (also likely)

or you can find your remote IP (issue /IP ingame) and do a visual ping to that IP and you can see just how ‘laggy’ that connection is. Follow that by a traceroute in Command and you will see just where the lag starts (From my testing when this affects me, its usually Time Warner’s or ATT’s routers that are affecting the connection). The issue here is, unless you are a customer of said provider there is nothing you can do directly to fix it with them. But you can call your ISP, report the Node/Hop Spike and see if they can do a Head to Head NOC Ticket with said Provider. If you are not regionally located to the failing network, then your ISP wont be of any help and you will need to wait for affected provider to get it fixed on their own.

Then there is the 10% when it is something that affets you thats on YOUR side. Signal strength with Cable, Sync issues with ADSL+, failing old routers (WRT-series for example) and Modems (mainly cable since they get so hot), Your Wireless Connection getting RF interference (Channel 11 is the best for saturated areas, FYI), and Infections on your Local PC that can cause this (Is your PC apart of a BotNet?!)…ect.

Everyone should be running a up-to-date standard AV program. I usually suggest Avast! cause its 100% free, and includes a good malware protection Library, and has one of the smallest RAM footprints currently. You can see for yourself with the following real world tests→ http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/avc_prot_2013b_en.pdf

Follow that up with weekly or bi-monthly system scans with programs such as Malwarebytes, Spybot, HitmanPro, …ect. and you are keeping your system 99% Clean.

Why 99%? Because 1% of the infections out there are NOT detectable via Scanners. You must manually scan using your eyes for that 1% with programs such as Process Explorer, TCPView, ServiceScanner….ect. Then clean up what isn’t right manually to get that 1%.

But, All of the above can and will affect network performance.

Brother Grimm.5176:

sirsquishy.8531:

Flatley.1620:

Everything on at least high, reflections on terrain and sky, character culling settings are both low.

Not bad. So those Gen1 i7’s really hold their own still :-)

Gen 1 i5s work fine as well…..i7s are definitely NOT needed for this game.

yea that’s what I have been seeing on these forums, if the system is tweaked just right.

Looking at upgrading the wife’s Rig after Xmas.

Shes on AM3 with an 830 pushed to 3.8Ghz. It does OK, but When im watching her screen while we are playing together, its just painful. I’m rocking 25-30FPS in these zerg fests, and shes barely pushing 8-12.

So, I figure either a 130 bucks for a 965BE (which I would expect to hold 20FPS~) or popping 250-300 for a 1155 Z board and a unlocked i5 gen1. I would RATHER do another i5-4670K as the outcome from that upgrade was 10-20x’s faster then that am3 platform (I moved my 1066T over to my ESXi host)

been kinda thinking of flipping a coin on this one :-)

Im know if she found out I spent 300 on her system, it would be a week long war about the cost :-)

copkilul.2760:

Caedmon.6798:

If i were you i would save up 20bucks and get the AMD FX-8120 Black Edition instead.I owned the 965BE and the 8120,but the 8120 is by far faster and way easier to overclock,you can hit 4.5ghz easily on air ,has a much larger cache lvl aswell as it has 4 more cores.

Yeah, but i need to get a new motherboard aswell:( Kinda low on budget.

Exactly, so your choice is pretty simple.

965BE, or going Intel.

At this point in time I would not consider upgrading the entire system to AMD if you need to also switch out the Motherboard. If you were already on AM3+ My Advice would be to go with the FX-series, but since you are on AM3 instead you should only be looking at the 965BE or an i5-4670K.

That is my honest opinion, since you are looking for better performance for GW2 mainly.

Flatley.1620:

Everything on at least high, reflections on terrain and sky, character culling settings are both low.

Not bad. So those Gen1 i7’s really hold their own still :-)

What in game settings are you running with that new GPU and the older i7?

rDr.6728:

I am also struggeling with FPS issues.

I hardly played it on my old computer, as it was running slow (old specs: Core2Duo E6750, 4GB RAM, GTX 260).

But I thought i was due to my old hardware.

Now I got the old graphics card from a friend. It is “just” a GTX 470 but this should be sufficient.
I also upgraded my CPU to a FX 6300 with 8GB RAM.

I am aware this is nowadays not a high-end rig but it should be quite fine for a 2012 game.

The game runs quite smooth (60fps) when i run around on my own and do some heart but as soon as i go to WvWvW or play a world boss with lots of players around my fps drops to under 10 – even with all settings set to minimum.

I can run Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag with everything maxed with constant 30+ fps for example.

I know my hardware is still not high-end but it should be far enough to play GW2 on lowest possible settings.
And regarding the AMD single-thread stuff: i doubt it runs on single thread as 4 of my 6 cores run at 100% usage when playing GW2.
…

You will want to lower your ingame settings, load up GPU-Z and CPU-Z to verify CPU Load/Clock Settings, and CoreTemp (GPU-Z>Sensor) to verify heat. And tweak your settings accordingly.

My AMD system runs a Phenom II 830, gets 28FPS looking at the Fountain in LA on Medium/Low Settings (with the current patch). 15FPS in WvWvW Zergs, 10-15FPS in the World Boss train. But 45-60FPS out in the open world, and 60-75FPS in MOST dungeons. That is the system I would upgrade to a Phenom II 965BE (And Hope to get at least a 30% Increase).

My Other system is an i5-4670K, now OC to 4.6Ghz, Looking at the fountain last night on Ultra settings, 32FPS. In a WvW(30vs45~) I was getting 28-32FPS. In my BL Cit looking north at the new Winter Decor, I was getting 80FPS. Out in the Open world I get 90-115FPS (In caves It will pop to 175FPS until players enter).

But looking at both of those system (One was assembled back in 2009~, the other assembled a month ago) what is the common denominator? GW2 Player presence. So you gotta tweak your settings around that.

Lemon.9680:

sirsquishy.8531:

Lemon.9680:

sirsquishy.8531:

Lemon.9680:

Thanks For all the Posts Guys, I Have tried Over Clocking the CPU and the improvement in minimal at best. I want to know how a company like this can just brush off the obvious need for optimization? I mean you ask any real Guild Wars 2 Player and they will tell you that the game does play very well or just simply search (GW2 FPS) and you will see the Links .

I would love to play this game more and probably spend a lot more money in the cash shop, but I think that my days with Guild wars are numbered, because of this issues and this issues alone (Have around 600 hours in game, so I am no noob)

Its not optimization anymore. Its the fact that the game’s engine is Single threaded. And AMD does NOT do single threaded processes as efficiently as Intels. that is all the issue is now.

use the applications I told you about to Overclock, look at the GPU/CPU Utilization, while running GW2 and adjust ALL your settings (Driver level and in the game) until you get the performance you are after and start to see your GPU/CPU not spike out.

that FX will only do so well. But it should be tunable to be adequate for your needs.

I thinking about quitting this game, I really should not have to do this much just to get it to a playable state on my system, Shame on the development/Engineering teams and the support teams to make 20-30 FPS the “Normal” for such a great game.

I’m in the boat (about quiting) but for an entirely different reason. This game is BORING after you hit the ‘end game’.

Anet FAILS at WvW (the current end game meta), and breaks fun events (Teqautl) and makes it so PvE is a zerg/farm fest rather then challenging.

But, the game’s design is what it is. If you don’t wanna play the tuning game, that’s really on you.

Everyone here has to tweak their settings for this game to work properly, if you don’t wanna do it that’s cool. If your going to quit over it, then I think PC games are just not for you in general.

LOL I’m OK with “TWEAKING” Settings , But what you are saying is not tweaking, changing your CPU clock Frequency and Voltage past the manufactures Specs, just so the game might run a little better is not Tweaking, and thank you for all your replies btw its nice to have someone in the same boat.

If you run on a BE or K series CPU. the Manufacturer’s are EXPECTING you to over clock and push the CPU to the max. That is why they sell CPUs that are listed like that. They also offer the warranty to support it too.

Whether it be this game or another, ultimately its going to like this anyway. That is the nature of PC gaming. Just happens GW2 is soo poorly coded, we need to do this just to get the game to work ‘decently’.

And, its not like we have to pay to play this game (unlike other MMOs) so quitting is actually in their favor as it puts less load on their servers. That is the ONLY reason I have no quit this game yet, cause it doesn’t cost me a monthly fee. Even with the game as boring of a grind fest that it has become :-)

Lemon.9680:

sirsquishy.8531:

Lemon.9680:

Thanks For all the Posts Guys, I Have tried Over Clocking the CPU and the improvement in minimal at best. I want to know how a company like this can just brush off the obvious need for optimization? I mean you ask any real Guild Wars 2 Player and they will tell you that the game does play very well or just simply search (GW2 FPS) and you will see the Links .

I would love to play this game more and probably spend a lot more money in the cash shop, but I think that my days with Guild wars are numbered, because of this issues and this issues alone (Have around 600 hours in game, so I am no noob)

Its not optimization anymore. Its the fact that the game’s engine is Single threaded. And AMD does NOT do single threaded processes as efficiently as Intels. that is all the issue is now.

use the applications I told you about to Overclock, look at the GPU/CPU Utilization, while running GW2 and adjust ALL your settings (Driver level and in the game) until you get the performance you are after and start to see your GPU/CPU not spike out.

that FX will only do so well. But it should be tunable to be adequate for your needs.

I thinking about quitting this game, I really should not have to do this much just to get it to a playable state on my system, Shame on the development/Engineering teams and the support teams to make 20-30 FPS the “Normal” for such a great game.

I’m in the boat (about quiting) but for an entirely different reason. This game is BORING after you hit the ‘end game’.

Anet FAILS at WvW (the current end game meta), and breaks fun events (Teqautl) and makes it so PvE is a zerg/farm fest rather then challenging.

But, the game’s design is what it is. If you don’t wanna play the tuning game, that’s really on you.

Everyone here has to tweak their settings for this game to work properly, if you don’t wanna do it that’s cool. If your going to quit over it, then I think PC games are just not for you in general.

yea i read that dialog after the tower destruction. And was like WOW, a touch of lesbian. Good job Anet :-)

Just wish they picked better voice actors for Kasmeer and Marjory.

BriarRose.5639:

The way this game is set up is rediculous:
1. You charge us to go to a WP, which is just stupid.
2. You charge us to list our stuff on the TP, another stupid idea.
3. Whenever we do find a way to make money you guys nerf it by stopping it or way lowering the drops we get.
4. Donate to Winterdays to get part of the achievements, is outragous.

This is suppose to be a game that is fun and you doing all the above is not making it fun. Why are you guys constantly looking for ways to take the money we spend hours trying to get? Where does the money really go? into thin air as the NPC’s are not real people, WP, TP and Winterdays Donation do nothing but STEAL FROM US.
We spend grinding hours of trying make money or get items which is getting to the point of NOT FUN. NOT FUN GET IT????

They are called Convenience fees. And as others have said, gold sinks balance the economy for the game.

the only thing that needs to be changed is the TP listing fee, it should be collected when you sell an item. Not when you list it.

Lemon.9680:

Thanks For all the Posts Guys, I Have tried Over Clocking the CPU and the improvement in minimal at best. I want to know how a company like this can just brush off the obvious need for optimization? I mean you ask any real Guild Wars 2 Player and they will tell you that the game does play very well or just simply search (GW2 FPS) and you will see the Links .

I would love to play this game more and probably spend a lot more money in the cash shop, but I think that my days with Guild wars are numbered, because of this issues and this issues alone (Have around 600 hours in game, so I am no noob)

Its not optimization anymore. Its the fact that the game’s engine is Single threaded. And AMD does NOT do single threaded processes as efficiently as Intels. that is all the issue is now.

use the applications I told you about to Overclock, look at the GPU/CPU Utilization, while running GW2 and adjust ALL your settings (Driver level and in the game) until you get the performance you are after and start to see your GPU/CPU not spike out.

that FX will only do so well. But it should be tunable to be adequate for your needs.

You will need to over clock that CPU, get a better cooling solution and tweak your system to the requirements of GW2.

CPU-Z
GPU-Z
CoreTemp
MSIAfterburner

Get those apps and use them to learn how your system actually is working while running GW2.

yea, when the BSOD comes out scrambled like that. It means your GPU is fried. a BSOD is a kernel mode crash and does not require any drivers or software to display it correctly. Its the same as booting your PC into safemode.

With it scrambled like that picture was, means you simply need a new GPU.

copkilul.2760:

Just some quick questions for anyone who has this CPU and plays GW2. How is the performance? Do WvW or big events/world bosses with lots of players run at around 30 fps on decent graphics? Was thinking about upgrading from my AMD Athlon II x3 450 and I don’t have a lot of money. Also, my GPU is AMD Radeon 6850 and have 4GB RAM installed.

The 965BE is the BEST CPU for the AM3 socket. It overclocks the most, and has the most ‘gains’ over all the other PhenomII’s when really pushed to the max.

If you are NOT planning on gutting and rebuilding your system from the ground up. Then I would dump the 90-130 for that CPU (I am considering it personally, for my AM3 system that still has a 830 CPU). But if you are, save the 130 you ARE going to spend on that CPU and plan on spending 420 on an i5-4670K/Z87 Motherboard (worth every penny) and go that route.

However, as the other poster said. If you expect ‘top of the line’ playability. You need to consider the more expensive i5/i7’s.

Fermi.2409:

Sousui.1635:

Fermi, going to the i5 would have costed about $140 more ($440 vs $300), I probably wouldn’t have gotten as nice a motherboard and put out of budget.

No idea where you were buying from, but even for Mobo+CPU+RAM you can do an i3 for like $210-230 or an i5 for around $280-300.

sounds like he was looking at the i5-4670K for that price range. Mine cost me 219 + 175 for the Motherboard.

do you have vsync enforced via your driver settings?
if so that would be why.

Scepter/sword, Arcane Thievery, Blink, Decoy. trait into Retaliation on Block and watch the thieve kill himself while attacking you :-)

I normally run 20/20/30/0/0 which gives me 3-4 really good different trait builds.
I find respeccing to be tedious at best and try to stay with a single trait line build that will let me do well in both PvE and WvW with out doing a respec.

However with the new Trait changes on the 10th, I am not sure its ‘as optimized’ as it was before the changes.

So for those out there that play 50/50 in PvE and WvW is anyone running a single trait line build for both?

You need to wipe your drivers out, clean the registry and download the drivers specifically written to windows 8.1.

If you were to do a clean install rather then an upgrade, you wouldn’t have this issue.

Behellagh.1468:

No, if GW2 was built for 2-3 main threads AMD would not win out because when an Intel core isn’t trying to handle two threads at once with HT on the i7 it is significantly faster.

GW2 has 40+ threads with around 6-10 having around 1/4 core or more worth of CPU load with 3 threads over 50%.

It’s the OS that assigns threads to cores. Yes there are ways to force the issue but I doubt ANet used any of those techniques since they don’t know every player’s system and what else they are running. That’s the whole purpose of the OS, arbitrate fix resources across multiple application while convincing each application it has the whole system to itself.

Not getting into the Intel vs AMD battle here. But unless Anet wants to recode their game to be multi-threaded we will never know how this application would perform :-)

I would say, if upgrading your system do it right.

No matter if you buy an i3 or i5 right now, do it on the 1150 socket and get a moderately high end z87 Motherboard. This way, when you finally hit the ceiling on your CPU (and you will if you don’t buy a high end CPU) you can just pop in a new CPU with out doing a complete Gut and replace.

That is what I would do, since you ARE going to replace your MB anyway. The Core of any good system is a GOOD Motherboard and GOOD power Supply. Those are the 2 Items that you should never have to replace unless jumping CPU/system generations.

Your asking alot of questions that have long explanations.

let me short hand it.

Hyper Threading is a ‘virtual’ thread tied to a physical core. It shares the resources of said physical core and is slower (30% at least) when compared to a logical (physical) additional core. That is the easy explanation of HT

i3 with HT, vs i5 with out HT – the i5 will outperform the i3 (if clocked the same, and of the same Generation), because the i3 only has 2 Logical(Physical Cores) and the i5 has 4 Logical (Physical) Cores. Even though the i3 has HT it will not touch the i5 of the same class, performance wise.

AMD FX vs Intel i-series. AMD does what Intel did with HT. The Big difference, the Additional Core On AMD is a Logical (Physical) core and not Virtual (unlike Intel with their HT). BUT those additional cores are shared with each other in groups of 2. So a Dualcore FX has 1 Pod that has 2 Cores and those 2 Cores share the L1,L2,L3 and I/O Path to the Buss. A quad core FX has 2 Pods (same as above) and a 8Core FX has 4 Pods….ect. That is how AMD stacks cores ATM. And why AMD cannot hold a candle to Intel when comparing Single threaded Performance.

It really has little to do with applications being ‘optimized’ for AMD or Intel at this point. It’s that this application (as many others) are SINGLE THREADED, and will favor hardware that works better with that technology.

Behellagh.1468:

49% across 6 cores or approximately 3 cores worth of actual CPU load and that’s normal. Why is it so difficult to understand that the game only produces around 3 cores worth of CPU load?

Oh and the same thread doesn’t have to keep running on the same core so just because one core gets used a lot, doesn’t mean one thread decided to camp there. For individual thread load use Process Explorer from Microsoft, bring up the properties for gw2.exe when it’s running, click on the thread tab and sort by CPU %. You will see no thread goes past 1/number of cores in CPU %. That’s the single core limiting factor people talk about.

^ This 100x’s

Bambi Is Strong.6083:

Hey I’m thinking about getting a computer with
core i7 2.3ghz
8GB ram
Gforce GT650M

is that enough to run WvW fights of 50v50 and still maintain 60 frames per seconds while still using good graphics?

If not;
what would be the requirements to be able to maintain 50v50 fights with decent graphics.

Can anybody suggest me good parts that will do the job but still be relatively cheap?

The best any System can currently do with WvW with what you are asking, is about 25FPS. And thats with a 4th gen i7 OC’d to the teeth.

My i5 OC’d to 4.6 will survive 60 vs 60 zerg at 20FPS on medium settings (give or take on the settings).

Sousui.1635:

Ah, well now I know what that amd patch does. Didn’t think the order of the pods mattered, they share resources and the FP unit but other then that they were equal. I’m still not sure how you guys consider %80 a bottleneck when I can easily peg both pods at %100 which means I have %20 of the CPU sitting idle that no one can answer.

Its because you are not listening. GW2 is a SINGLE THREADED game that spawns ‘worker’ threads. As long as the game’s MAIN PROCESS is single threaded, that 80% IS YOUR BOTTLE NECK.

There is no way around that fact.

George Steel.1804:

Here, this shows my temps, usage, card usage, and ingame fps (21). My processor is nearly at 3.6, card usage not 100% (expected) but frames are still not NEAR where they should be, and this is without supersampling and even certain “very high” options enabled.

Your performance is normal for this game. OC that 4670K to 4.5Ghz and youll get 7-9 more FPS.

My system details are attached.

Exiled Dbl.9035:

I have a faster setup than the guy that started this thread and people have faster setups than me alot do this isnt the problem the problem is this game is coded bad, cant balance cores/threads or take advantage of them properly, let alone its in Direct X 9…… LOL

Your not helping, please go away.

George Steel.1804:

sirsquishy.8531:

George Steel.1804:

Bought a new rig, thankfully not for GW2, since I’d be more angry at these results:

Core i5 4670K Quad-Core Haswell @3.4GhZ (non-OC atm)
Gigabyte GTX 770 4GB
8GB Corsair Vengeance
240GB Samsung SSD

First time firing up GW2 on the rig, auto-detected all settings to high/max. Upon loading Lion’s Arch, I found frames dropping to as low as 16.

This is disappointing, tbh. Are there any plans to change this for the better?

GPU-Z
CPU-Z
CoreTemp

use CPU-Z to verify your PCI-E Link speeds (needs to be 16x or 8x), as well as core voltage

use GPU-Z to verify Graphic Load/Utilization and Temps

use Coretemp to verify Core Load% and Temps

I suggest the following for your i5;

Disable HT
Disable Turbo boost
Verify stable temp of 45-55c, then set your Clock to x45/x46(if you have a z87 Motherboard).

Have verified all temps, core/ht speeds, etc via these monitoring tools very early on (before launching any of my games).

what about during the game(s)?

SolarNova.1052:

Usualy just putting on new TIM, making sure case has good airflow, and settings a custom fan profile is enough to keep things cool.
if not, and the card is still within warenty, i would RMA it for running to hot.

Otherwise for aftermarket coolers, look into the Arctic Accelero range, they have dual fan, triple fan, and hybrid water/fan coolers available.

http://www.arctic.ac/eu_en/products/cooling/vga.html

Do remember that these types of semi universal aftermarket GPU coolers usualy include heatsinks for the VRM’s and VRAM, which are stuck on with thermal adhesive, meaning they are perminant.

Thanks for the TIM idea. I took my GPU out and removed the HSF. The TIM from the factory was pretty much non-existent, and the screws holding the HSF to the card were very loose.

I applied my Diamond IC7, and under full load, GW2 at MAX settings, 100% GPU load, 100% GPU Fan speed, my peak temp is 65c.

Maybe Ill up my clocks on this card to 1200 (since many report that is a good thing to do for the 7790 series) and see what benefit I can get.

Sousui.1635:

Sir squishy, don’t confuse fx cores as hyper threading, each core executes commands, they just share the floating point processor. We know that per core the and is slightly behind Intel, but no ones really demonstrated how much a shared FP unit effects things. Now a bottleneck is when one piece of hardware is maxed out allowing no further gains in performance across the board. Please tell me how you came to the conclusion that %80 is maxed out.

I didnt mention HT at all here. Each ‘Pod’ has to 2 physical cores. Both cores share the I/O pipe, L1,L2, and L3 cache. Microsoft has been able to patch windows so that threads will hit each POD first before jumping back to Core 1,3,5,7..ect. Because it has been identified that the FX (Bulldozer) has issues with threading when applications thread to logical Core 0 and 1 before hitting 2 and 3.

His issue is that the FX6300 is a budget/medium grade CPU. GW2 is still single threaded (the main thread will spawn worker processes when it needs to, but the main thread determines how fast and smooth the game is going to run). The main thread for his system was hitting the 2nd core on his 6 core system at 80-90%. THAT IS A BOTTLENECK.

I am sorry you cannot understand the basic concepts here. There are PLENTY of forum posts elsewhere that exactly explain how FX chips are designed, how they differ from their Intel i-Series counter parts, and why they are NOT THAT GOOD as single threading when compared to modern Phenom II and Intel i-Series CPUs.

sobe.4157:

sirsquishy.8531:

Sousui.1635:

Uhhhh,

1. gw2 has active threads on all 6 cores, that is pretty far from a single threaded game.

1. math fail, %80 =\= %100, gw2 is not topping out on any cores.

GW2 has about 50 Threads in all, but only 1 main thread that actually runs the game. If you open your CPU details in Prefmon you will see how many gw2 threads there are, and you will see that the main thread lives on a single core and is the one that is pushing that #2 core to about 80%.

that IS your bottleneck.

If he only wants to instigate because he thinks his budget hardware is top of the line “better be able to run EVERYTHING”, just ignore.

I know, but still. He asked and needed to know that his FX6300 is the reason his system is choking so bad. He will need to disable most of the CPU bound effects in the game, and possibly Look at over clocking that CPU to get better FPS then he is getting now.

Its really a shame that FX uses cannot disable that 2nd Core in each ‘pod’ on those chips. Granted it would be a Tripple Core down from a 6 core CPU. But I think there would be a 10-20% Performance gain out of it. That is the only reason I have not yet upgraded my wifes PhenomII x6 to a FX8350 yet, waiting for some way to control the Pod’s.

George Steel.1804:

Bought a new rig, thankfully not for GW2, since I’d be more angry at these results:

Core i5 4670K Quad-Core Haswell @3.4GhZ (non-OC atm)
Gigabyte GTX 770 4GB
8GB Corsair Vengeance
240GB Samsung SSD

First time firing up GW2 on the rig, auto-detected all settings to high/max. Upon loading Lion’s Arch, I found frames dropping to as low as 16.

This is disappointing, tbh. Are there any plans to change this for the better?

GPU-Z
CPU-Z
CoreTemp

use CPU-Z to verify your PCI-E Link speeds (needs to be 16x or 8x), as well as core voltage

use GPU-Z to verify Graphic Load/Utilization and Temps

use Coretemp to verify Core Load% and Temps

I suggest the following for your i5;

Disable HT
Disable Turbo boost
Verify stable temp of 45-55c, then set your Clock to x45/x46(if you have a z87 Motherboard).

Sousui.1635:

Uhhhh,

1. gw2 has active threads on all 6 cores, that is pretty far from a single threaded game.

1. math fail, %80 =\= %100, gw2 is not topping out on any cores.

GW2 has about 50 Threads in all, but only 1 main thread that actually runs the game. If you open your CPU details in Prefmon you will see how many gw2 threads there are, and you will see that the main thread lives on a single core and is the one that is pushing that #2 core to about 80%.

that IS your bottleneck.

SolarNova.1052:

No doubt the 7790 is a great budget card, but i still think somthign is off with those temperatures being that high. The reviews iv seen of the Diamond 7790 (am i correct in saying this is ur one?) shows load temps should be around the 75c mark at most.

http://www.pureoverclock.com/Review-detail/diamond-radeon-hd-7790/11/
http://www.bjorn3d.com/2013/05/diamond-hd7790-graphics-card/3/

Interesting, Ill have to look at it then. My Core is 1075 and my ram is 1575. Neither are OC, and according to that article I shouldnt be pushing even 80C’s on that card with those clock rates (And 65-75c is my normal Range, I get to 80c’s in WvW all the time though).

Any recommendations on GPU aftermarket Coolers if I have to go that route?

Vuh.1328:

if i don’t run double monitors the ram usage is fine, first i thought i had my ramdisk running but it’s not. have done a ramtest and it’s fine, it’s just seems to be gw2 throwing a massive fit cause i’m running 2 monitors.. .
Maybe some weird memory leak with gw2+windows 8.1, but i really don’t wanna switch back to win7 unless i know it will fix it

could be a memory leak and 8.1. you are using 11G of ram out of your 16G. That is really unheard of for a single game IMHO.

that and the game has TONS of pagefaults in the small memory footprint it took during the crash sample you gave.

what about finding updated video drivers? Maybe that is part of the issue (I run 3 monitors in Eyefinity and do not have any crashes like this).

Vuh.1328:

So i’m using w8.1(got it for free, bf4 not crashing on it) and this is the first time i’ve had problems with it, if it is related to win8.1 that is.
Is there any way to fix this other than disableing my other monitor or running windowed?
And why in the …. is it only gw2 that has problem with double monitors, seems like double monitors is kinda becoming quite common nowdays..

Here is the full error message

hide spoiler

—> Crash <—
message too long for this forum so i put it on pastebin http://pastebin.com/jpUu66Lf

You are using 11G out of your 16G of ram when that crash happened. But GW2 was only using 900Megs. There are also A LOT of pagefaults for that little of memory.

First, find out what is using 11G in your system, Second Verify that your RAM is actually good (run memtest86+ for 72hours).

—> System Memory <—
Physical: 11826MB/16063MB 73% <—- 11G of ram used out of 16G
Paged: 25784MB/32447MB 79% <—- Could be disk related since you are also paging alot of memory too
Virtual: 2963MB/ 4095MB 72%
Load: 26%
CommitTotal: 6662MB
CommitLimit: 32447MB
CommitPeak: 8607MB
SystemCache: 10587MB
HandleCount: 46505
ProcessCount: 104
ThreadCount: 1696

—> Process Memory <—
Private: 911MB
WorkingSet: 110MB
PeakWorkingSet: 175MB
PageFaults: 248137 <—— Very high for such a small memory foot print.

SolarNova.1052:

Wow Sirsquishy ….those GPU temps …not good.
If those are correct reading i would highly advise u sort it out, regular usuage at those temps can diminish the longevity of that card.

Those temps are when I push the card like that, which i never do.

Normally I dont run the game all pretty like that, just did for for compare/contrast for the OP. Normally my temps are 65-75c depending if im in WvW or not.

But yea, pushing all the settings to max, 95c is not good :-)
BUT, for a $107 card what can ya expect. that HD7790 can Chug!

SolarNova.1052:

Ok so every program nowerdays can send commands/data to the CPU through multiple …lanes….
Think of it like a checkout in a superstore.

Old CPU’s used to be 1 Core (1 thread). Which meant 1 checkout. Any program had to use just that 1 check out doing 1 thing at a time.

GW2 has around 50 threads. So A single core/thread CPu would have to run all those threads 1 after the other.
On a multi core/thread CPU thigns can happen at the same time. And remember we are talking very small periods of time less than 1/10 of a second for loads of commands/threads to go through. But even so ..the more ur CPu can handle at once the better.

Problem is it requires the program (Gw2) to be made in a such a way that it can seperate what it wants to do into multiple smaller threads that can be processed quikly and efficiently instead of 1 or 2 big threads that use up all the CPU’s ‘single thread performance’ and leave its other threads doing almost nothing,. This is hard to do without causing a variety of problems ..which i wont get into ..technical :P.
Anyway end result is most games are not very well optimised for this and have only a couple of ‘main’ threads with a load of really small ones, and thus only efficiently use a couple of a CPU’s cores/threads.
In GW2 there are 2-3 main thread and about 47ish really small ones, when those big ones hit the peak performance a CPU can handle per thread, alll the other GW2 threads have to slow down to keep pace with those big ones. This is why u will see overall CPU utilisation sitting at say 70% or 50% ..and ur GPu suage at 50% ..yet ur FPS is only 30..becouse 1 Thread is maxed out and everythign else has had to slow down with it.

So whilst an AMD FX8 or 9 series has 8 cores, and an Intel i5 only has 4, GW2 can only effectly run up to 4 of those core/threads anyway.

Then ofc Intel i7’s have ‘hyperthreading’ ..which is bassicaly making each of the 4 ‘checkouts’ (cores) handle 2 items (threads) at once instead of 1. Its not as effective as adding another 4 checkouts (cores) ..but its better than just handling 1 thing at once.

AMD’s 8 core CPU’s are actually not ‘true’ 8 cores ether, as every 2 cores uses 1 set of resources……but .. tbh i cant really explain this part very easily so ill just stop here :P

Anyway the types of programs that actually use all threads, and are multithread optimised are things like compilers, rendering programs, and other such programs.

Also.. im Dyslexic so im probably not the best person to try explain this kinda stuff, i know it ..its just a PITA for me to put it in writing for other people to understand :P

Not a bad explanation at all, But let me clear a couple things up.

GW2 has around 50 Threads in all, as you stated. But it only has 1 main thread. As long as that one main thread has to wait for %RDY on the CPU (Process Latency) because of other tasks, or the other smaller threads running, the game will hit its ceiling pretty quickly with that CPU hardware. That is the root reason why the i5 and i7 for GW2 will beat out any of the AMD FX8 and FX9 Cpus.

The FX’s have a module that shares the L1, L2, L3 cache and 1 I/O Path per 2 Cores. Where Intel has Dedicated L1, L2, L3 and I/O paths per Core. That is the BIG and main difference between the Intel i-series and AMD’s FX-Series.

If GW2 was built for 2-3 Main threads, I think AMD would win here and not Intel.

GW2 will also use up to 6 Cores. I have tested this myself thoroughly. You can get GW2 to span more cores by forcing affinity (Ive successfully gotten GW2 to span across 32cores so far) but there are absolutely no performance gains because, again there 1 main process.

For GW2 to be useful on more then 4 or even 6 Cores, your CPU Clock has to be 5-6Ghz per core. Else that single thread is what is holding you (really the game) back.

I wish they would rebuild the engine and make it multi-core friendly. This game can be beautiful when set to max (Did it for the first time since building my i5-4650K system) and what a WOW. But the performance hit when there are a lot of sprites and textures on the screen is why we run the game in less then adequate in-game settings :-)

It would be more useful if you could include the BSOD stop code and failing module. that would tell us a lot more about your crash then anything else.

Point in fact, a game cannot directly cause a BSOD (kernel Panic). Its going to be an underlying issue with your system (IE, Hardware or Driver Component). One thing I have seen in the past are hidden rootKits masking as a NIC driver, causing BSOD’s for MMOs and other Online Games.

Gelfgar.7698:

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this or it is just my machine. I have been playing gw2 since beta and never really had any issues with my machine. Ever since the fractal patch I have started to get more lag in game and my machine is running hotter than it ever has. Something I noticed is that I now see a lot more particle effects that I had never seen before. From seeing bright glows around people with legendaries to karka having glowy particle dust coming off them to just brighter animations.

I did not change any of my graphics options since the patch. I have a Nvidia 540m and I have a friend that plays with an integrated graphics card and he doesn’t see any of these particle effects much like I use to not see them before the patch. If anyone else is experiencing this and knows anyway to fix I would appreciate it. I have a support ticket open, but they keep just having me do basic things like disabling services and updating drivers which are not helping the issue at all.

So Your Playing on a laptop?

You might need to clear out the Air Ducts from any hair/Dust/Lint that has collected in the last couple years. Install CoreTemp for better CPU Temp Monitoring and GPU-Z for the GPU Temp Monitoring and go from there.

Nuggi.7861:

The past 2 weeks after an update in GW2 I have started to crash in WvW. And Only in WvW.
I have read this thread and they different solutions, and I have tried to delete the dat-file, and I don’t know what to do.
Never had this issue before.

My computer is:
I7-core 950
WIndows 7, 64-bit
3 times x DDR3-1333 Kingston 2 GB
SSD Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB
Nvidia Asus GTX760 2 GB OC
HDS 1000GB Seagate SATII 7200rpm HDD

My Internet connection is: 60/6 Mbit and I don’t have any packet loss or internet problems.

1. dont hijack threads, it makes them confusing

2. what are you ingame graphic settings? Esp the ones for Character Quality Limit and Character Display Limit?

AleCenta.2190:

used avast no virus but still game lag don’t know what to do , i downloaded razer game boost, tried to run gw2 with windows xp service pac 2 but still lag… i have 45 ping and no packet loss.
Im runnning gw2 on a samsung 840 ssd could it be a problem?

I think its the GW2 servers, in all reality. I had 5 disconnections last night while doing the Queensdale Champ train. And when I was not being disconnected, there were large server lag spikes when a lot was happening (combat with all the other players in the area).

You can try a different server to see if that helps, But I think there is an ISP issue in between us and ArenaNet again (AT&T I am Looking at you, again).

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Just use Security essentials must third party antivirus sucks any more and slows down your system. For the average user it’s all you need. I have been using it since beta and no viruses no issues with the game and it at all.

Security essential is the WORST AV solution because it offers no Self Protection. Any malware/root kit can get in and Kill/disable Security Essentials with out the user knowing.

Avast! is the best currently, it combines malware/rootkit into its AV Engine, and has one of the smallest FREE AV Memory foot prints on the market.

Sousui.1635:

So I just got done with a nice budget upgrade overhaul, kicking out my aging intel q6600 for a FX6300 with 8 gigs of 1866 memory running at 936mhz. It is joining some previous upgrades I had done in the past which were a nvidia 460GTX (EVGA SC) and Samsung’s more recent EVO SSD drive.

Now while I saw a lot of performance increases, esp in gw2, lions arch still caused my system to bow down in submission, forcing me to keep video settings low and still handing me under 30 FPS. At this point I figured I may have reached the limit of my gtx 460. Since model details contributed the largest fps increase I figured I was either peaking the number of polygons or my texture memory. So when monitoring my cpu and gpu loads I was left scratching my head as I was seeing plenty of performance to spare. Here is a nice snap shot of what was happening when looking out of the bank in LA.

http://abload.de/img/gw2loaddub7t.jpg

GW2 is awesomely utilizing all 6 of my cores and not a single one is peaking. GPU load is a mear %46 and video memory usage is 600 megs and slowly rising, but is no where near the 1 gig limit.

So I am stumped… why am I sitting here looking at 20fps? (It isn’t always 20fps when moving around.. just some angles in LA).

your Bottleneck is your CPU, look at task manager CPU Tasker #2, its at 80-90%.
GW2 is still single threaded, your GPU cannot keep up with your CPU. Turn down all effects that are CPU bound and youll see your FPS get better (not by much).