Guild Wars 2

It should still be under warranty.

Q1: Why is my FPS so low?
A: Your system does not meet the requirements for the game or need to lower your graphic settings. Use this CPU chart & GPU chart to compare your relative performance.

Q2: I meet the Minimum System Requirements, but my FPS is still low?
A: Meeting the requirement allows you to play the game, but does not mean it will be fully pleasurable experience.

Q3: I exceed the Minimum System Requirements, but my FPS is still low!
A: Many reason why. However, GW2 is very hardware intensive especially CPU power.

1. CPU running at max load and bottlenecking GPU. (most common reason)
2. Your drivers might be out of date or GPU driver settings need adjusting (Nvidia controlpanel / ATI Catalyst)
3. CPU/GPU might be overheating and throttling down due to dust build-up.
4. GPU running at max usage, lower settings or resolution.
5. WinXP runs slower than Win7, in some cases 2x slower.
6. Disable Vertical Sync, if you can’t get consistent 60FPS+ or try windowed fullscreen mode.
7. Make sure your hardware is clean, and properly connected/seated. This user reassembled his desktop and his issues got fixed after trying everything else.
8. Incorrect memory speeds could cause GPU issues rendering lower FPS
9. Make sure your GPU is running at the correct bus speed. Use GPU-Z tool.
10. Possible software bug in the game itself.

Chart for those lazy to read

Go back to top Q/A list

http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/Huge-fps-drop-when-opening-contact-list/

Yes a core i7 has 4 physical cores, with hyperthreading enabled each physical core will have another logical core for a total of 8 cores seen by the OS.

Try disabling hyperthreading. My hunch is that GW2 is trying to use logical cores, but doing so doesn’t help because it lives on the same shared physical core. GW2’s main thread (game loop) is very dependent on single core performance, and by loading two big threads into one physical core it slows down inadvertently.

2 thread instead of 8? I think you mean cores. (Gw2 actually uses like 50threads)

So disabling all but two cores and your FPS increased?

Read through this
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ

Where are you getting 5fps?

read through this
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ

As for your blue lines etc, it could be your software drivers, or physical card itself. Watch the temp, try under clock, but good thing is your system is new and probably with in warranty.

When someone claims X number of FPS it could be subjective. Depends when/where they measured their fps, was it min or avg and they could totally just overestimate from memory. (e.g standing in WvWvW with no one around and getting 30-40fps vs gates with dozen of people attacking is totally different)

Did you look at your CPU% usage for the GW2 thread? Likely its at max for the core its working on. There are people who OC their 2500k even higher to 4.5ghz+ and still have rough time in WvWvW.

If you really read through the linked FAQ list and understood it, then u would have already concluded your performance is rather normal. Yes, it sucks, not what people would expect, but just how the game is coded atm.

I believe you did not completely read it all, and/or do not completely comprehend the explanations, but your answer does exist in that FAQ list.

That list actually address an wide array of scenarios, which are you referring to when you say “it does not really do that”

I’m running fine with the old Q6600, not the best and WvWvW suffer, but everything else is very playable 30-70fps.

Yea he would be much much better with a new system upgrade, but he can still do a simple GPU upgrade and get better fps or at least playable fps.

If you can’t afford now to buy a whole new system you can just upgrade a better GPU now and build the rest later, or just get a mid range that is cheap. Just reference the http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html charts and aim for something 2x+ of your existing card.

Just by looking at your core graph, you can see that one core is highly loaded. Likely Gw2 is running on that core maxing it out, hence your bottleneck.

Example of looking at per-thread CPU usage.
http://i.imgur.com/L0Pom.png

I have a quad core, each core handles 25% of the CPU’s total usage. The thread TID 5008 (first thread) I highlighted is probably gw2’s main game loop. it eats about 20-24% of the CPU usage. Each thread can only operate on a single core, because of that the main gw2 thread is maxing out a core. It can’t go any faster and will cause other threads to be slow waiting for commands. The other 3 cores will remain partially at load waiting up on the main thread.

he sorta did post PC spec, at least the important ones. gtx680 and core i5 2500 @4.2ghz.

Neways, read this
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ

should answer your questions on your issues.

Does your internet disconnect while playing other games and/or browsing the web?

Does your modem report any CRC or RS FEC errors? Too many errors and modem often will try to resync cutting your connection briefly.

Assuming you have ruled out your home network setting, router, modem and home wiring issues as the cause. All that is left is the line outside the home, the DSLAM it connects to and the central office wiring.

I’ve had my DSL disconnect a lot and it took a field tech a whole week to figure out it was cause by the DSLAM error. Phone support people never was able to detect this because they simply are just trained for simple checks and general support help. I recommend insisting getting your DSL provider to get tier2 or elevated support to assist you. Those people are more likely to know how to troubleshoot beyond the basics.

I recommend postoing on http://www.dslreports.com/forum they have more knowledgeably people to help with your dsl connection. As I don’t think your problem is specific to GW2.

Short answer: probably.
Long answer: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ read the last Question on FAQ.

this should answer a lot of your Q’s about your system’s performance

http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ

BlooodX.8025:

(…GW2 is terribly (not) optimized for GPU and for SLI too…)

I would say more so GW2 is terribly (not) optimized for CPU. Even with your core i5 @ 4.5ghz it still can’t handle gw2 well and it shows up especially in WvWvW. GPU is just sitting there twiddling around waiting for the CPU to tell it to render stuff.

Makes me wonder, what kind of CPU the developer is running for game testing.

Basically, You’ve done all you can. Probably can’t do much better with your hardware than wait for software optimization in the game code it self.

Your CPU is bottlenecked, OCing helped a little, but still bottlenecked. Since OCing, your CPU was able to give out more data for the GPU to process, but your GPU is also bottlenecked ( you said it runs at 98-100% load full time )

For reference. I have Q6600 @ 3.2ghz with GTX 660 (4x faster than your 9800GTX) Running max setting, 1680×1050. GPU at 70-90% load. My CPU is still bottlenecked, but I get 30-70fps PVE questing.

should answer your questions.
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ

I recommend posting on hardware forums like overclock.net or hardforum.com regarding ocing your system for help. They have a lot more people with their with detail expertise in the area and more likely someone will have the same exact motherboard you got.

you need to look at the per-thread cpu usage not core usage (read faq above for detail)

lion arch is problematic for almost everyone. That said, is your friend measuring fps in the same areas?

Says about 7k files to download for me. I wonder if your whole client is re-downloading. Do you have startup command line arguments in your gw2 shortcut? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

Your answer here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ

deltaconnected.4058:

+1 for holding the fort.

Just to clear up the CPU usage, the 2.5 was only in my example in LA. Depending on where you look, this might be 1.5 or 3.5 or even 4.0, but assuming the GPU is not the bottleneck, one (or more) of those threads will be using very close to the max allotted to a single core. A few too many flaming infractions so I don’t post much any more :p

(eg. my new jormag benchmark is very close to maxing out my 2500k @ 4.8)

This is true. If someone has a fast enough CPU (a core that can handle the main game loop thread) then GW2 will fully utilize all the other cores. But sadly for most people this isn’t the case, so at beast they see 2-3 core at best utilized.

Its like a music conductor (main game loop thread) if he is slow then the other orchestra members (graphic threads etc) will sit idle yawning waiting for instructions. When the conductor is fast, the music flows beautifully and everyone works.

Still rather sad you need to OC a modern CPU so heavily to achieve this. Main game loop needs more slimming down and optimize since its living on a single thread, the limiting factor.

Should probably read this for help.
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ

LogicalOne.8927:

I’ve used every program to monitor my CPU (specifically CORE) usage and it never hits 100%.

And it never will, explained more in detail here

giangy.7845:

it’s weird, one of my friend have a intel core 2 quad Q8400 2.66Ghz, and he don’t have any problem, i don’t think it’s problem of cpu

Providing some more concrete info would help troubleshoot. CPU% usage, GPU% usage, FPS #s, Driver version, etc.

Crowded area/cities have lots of things happening and your CPU can’t handle it.

Read: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-GPU-CPU-Performance-issues-FAQ/

Reading through this will answer most hardware FPS related issues. Post reply here if you have one that should be added.

Q1: Why is my FPS so low?

Q2: I meet the Minimum System Requirements, but my FPS is still low?

Q3: I exceed the Minimum System Requirements, but my FPS is still low!

Q4: What is cpu/gpu bottlenecking

Q5: How do you check for CPU/GPU usage?

Q6: FPS low or stuttering with 100% GPU usage?

Q7: My total CPU usage/load never reach even close to 100%. Why is FPS & GPU usage is low?

Q8: My cores never ever come close to 100%, but my FPS & GPU usage is still low.

Q9: So my CPU is bottlenecking what now?

Q10: I have a FAST graphic card, it plays other games on high settings with good FPS except in GW2 I get low FPS

Q11: Performance is horrible, why are the developer not fixing this!!!

Q12: I upgraded from YYY graphic card to a better ZZZ card, but my fps doesn’t increase.

Q13: Rotating or turning camera lowers FPS.

Q14: My fps drops when opening contact list or UI windows.

Q15: Why is AMD performance bad with the game? Is it not optimized as much as INTEL?

Q16: So what kind of system do I need to run GW2 well?

Q17: My FPS was fine before the most recent patch. Why is it now low?

Q18: My system crashes or restarts randomly or whenever I enter a certain area?

edit: list was getting too long, re-organized into links of smaller segments for easier reading.

LogicalOne.8927:

Ok—I ran it for a while—made sure to quickly turn and jump into new backgrounds and textures (the time when I get an FPS drop) and they still occurred and NONE of my cores went past 65% and my GPU was at 55%. Any ideas?

You gotta look at the per-thread cpu usage. Task Manager or HWiNFO sorta average out the cores. Use ProcessExplorer and look at gw2.exe

Good news:
nothing is wrong with your desktop, its powerful. Everyone with similar systems is having the same issues; its the game. People with lower end system are suffering even more. You have a core i7, it overclocks well, and will add a boost to compensated the game’s inefficiency.

Bad news:
gw2 is heavily dependent on single thread performance so you will continue to get low fps until developer can optimize; it if ever.

450 to 550ti is about 25% upgrade, not much but still a tad better. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html for rough reference points.

Your fps dives when rotating the camera, which sorta hints to me that the CPU is having trouble handling somethings. You have a 2600k @3.3 which is rather good, maybe OCing it and see if it improves. Many people get 4.5ghz easily. However, gw2 isn’t really optimize so OCing can offset some of that.

Hmm. I actually get better fps in caves because there are less stuff to cpu/render.

9800gtx is old, but it can still run GW2 on low settings and be above 30fps.

If you were doing fine in WvWvW previously and now you are stuttering badly, go check if your GPU or maybe CPU is overheating. Could be due to too much dust on heatsink/fans or it fell off completely lol.

C2D CPU have locked multipliers so you can’t go higher, just lower. So to overclock you want to increase your FSB, not lower. (e.g 400fsb x 8.5 multi = 3.4ghz)

But remember that when adjusting your fsb, your ram/memory frequency will also increase. So you need to adjust the ratio so that it does not exceed your ram’s rated speed. I assume your ram is 667 or 800mhz.

As you increase the fsb and ram speed you might also have to adjust your voltage to keep it stable. Usually people increase slowly until it becomes unstable and notch back a little.

My guess to the reason why your bios keeps going back to 333×8.5 is the mobo couldn’t handle whatever setting you used and defaulted back to be able to actually boot.

Also remember to set the PCI bus speed to 100mhz instead of auto.

I left speedstep and C1E still enabled on my system. Reason why a lot of guides tell you to disable them is because it helps determining the overclocking limit. If speedstep/C1E was on the computer wouldn’t be at full stress to reveal any instability. Once you have found the stable setting, you can safely enable it again.

Having only a x4 bus does hinder it a little bit. Look at this chart. http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/images/perfrel.gif

When running gw2 on a quad core, you won’t see individual core load reach 100%. Windows sorta distributed it out to other cores, making it look like each core is partially loaded. If you use a program called ‘ProcessExplorer’ you can inspect each thread’s cpu load. You will see the main gw2 thread eating 22-24% of CPU load, and because you have a quadcore each core will be 25%, so it is already max. Since that one thread is probably the main game loop. other threads will wait for it to finish before getting more instructions.

Gw2 actually has about 50 threads, but only 3 of them actually have cpu loads, the remaining 47 uses barely any cpu. On my quad core, the 3 threads have cpu loads of 22, 17 and 10 respectively. So gw2 at best is working 3 cores, but because the main thread is running at max it slows down other threads.

Another easy way to test is to disable one of your core. You will find that running the game on 3cores will yield no FPS difference.

If you change graphic settings around, but fps doesnt, it is a good indication the CPU is holding it back. You have a Quad core, but gw2 won’t fully utilize all your cores, so you will never see 100% load. The game relies a lot on a single thread performance which runs only on one core and likely that core will be at max load at 2.8ghz. Overclocking will help some.

Im running a Q6600 OC to 3.2ghz and able to get 30-65fps in PVE, but WvWvW is low 10-20fps.

You will probably get about 20fps avg in PVE with all settings low. Playable, but not great. For sure WvWvW will not be playable unless you like slideshows.

Its very likely your dual core cpu is running at near 100% usage and bottle-necking your gpu causing lower fps. Atm, GW2 is very demanding of the cpu until it gets optimized better.

I have a second desktop spec similarly, except it had a ATI Radeon HD 4670 which is a notch above yours. I was never able to get close to 60fps on high setting @ 1680×1050.

Got more like 20-30fps in PVE with low best performance settings.

I would say the intel integrated graphics is the biggest factor in low fps for his/her setup. Because it is integrated, there is likely no upgrade option, but getting a whole new laptop or desktop. That or pray/wait that gw2 will be optimized better for lower end machines.

Gw2 is very cpu heavy and not really optimized so 2.4ghz will affect fps, but even people with core i7 need to OC to get decent fps in WvWvW to put in perspective.

SolarNova.1052:

IIRC GW2 uses 2.5 max .. the other 0.2 is likely other system processes. There for it is concievable that your CPU is concidered to be maxed out. You can check this by trying a higher OC ..problem is your using a ivybridge cpu so chances are you wont get much higher than 4.3ghz on air cooling.

There is a better way to check than OCing. Use the program ‘ProcessExplorer’ you can inspect gw2.exe threads and see how much CPU% each thread uses. It uses about 50 threads, but only 3 of them are actually using CPU resources for most of the time. Likely one of the thread is will at full CPU% for the core its working on.

michaeljhuman.3940:

Having more cores past a certain part also won’t help, because the game does not have that many threads (I think this is a common state of affairs with games.)

Actually gw2 uses about 50 threads and is using all cores available, but not efficiently. The problem is gw2 rely a lot on a single thread for doing certain task; probably the main game loop.

I used the program ‘ProcessExplorer’ and inspected gw2 thread CPU utilization. Of the 50 threads, one was using 22-24% CPU, the next one was 17% and third was 10%. The remaining 47 thread each used barely 0.25% of the CPU. This is why on my Quad core it only use 55-68% of my CPU total utilization. The big thread using 22-24% is already maxing out one of my core.

As you can see gw2 relies heavily on single thread performance, and only about 2-3 thread is actually doing the bulk of the work. Hence having more than 3+ core give little to no benefits. By overclocking people are improving there single thread performance and it is sad that people have to over lock a core i5/i7 just to get 30fps in WvWvW.

Your best bet without buying new hardware is to play at lower video settings and overclocking your CPU or maybe GPU if that’s even possible.

My CPU was already bottlenecking my GTX 660 and only getting 40-50% utilization on avg. Turned things up to Ultra setting and supersampling + ambient occlusion and got utilization to 90-95%. Might as well get more eye candy if my fps can’t go higher because of my CPU =]

@Swordbreaker
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/11mz4k/i_am_a_programmer_for_guild_wars_2_amaa/c6nwhy1
They seemed to answered questions on optimization, looks promising. At least they are aware and trying to fix it, but whether they can or not is a different story.

Highly recommend reading up on overclocking guide especially if you never done it before. Lookup the model of cpu/mobo you have and see what other people are able to do. Different CPU/Mobo overclock differently. (e.g there are many version of Q6600 and each have different overclocking potential.) I have G0 step and able to get 3.2ghz without voltage increases, but can’t reach 3.6-3.8 because my mobo can’t go that far.

GW2 only use 2.5cores. Think of it this way. You no longer have a Quad core, but more like a Dual core. Go disable a core or two. Likely your remaining cpu will reach 100%, but your GPU utilization will not change or fps.

Now those people with Core i5/i7 will also have 4 or more cores, and only use 2.5 of them, but each of their core can compute more than the C2D hence they probably won’t see a bottleneck in gw2.

Maybe some day GW2 developers will think of a ingenious way to use more cores effectively and WvWvW could be do able at 120fps lol

This is how I interpret bottlenecking on my Q6600/GTX660 when my CPU utilization is only barely over half on each core.

GW2 is probably optimized for about 2-3core so a person with a quad core will think that two core should register 100% load and the other two at low 0-1% load.

But in reality, the OS will nicely divided up the work evenly among the four cores making each one show 50% utilized. Sorta like an invisible bottleneck you don’t see but it exist.

Try disabling a core or two, not much will change in terms of fps or gpu utilization, but you will see the active cores reach 100%.

Some games are more optimized for multicore; like Left 4 Dead 2. It used all my four cores. I get 70-85% CPU load, and also 70-90% GPU load. It didn’t bottleneck my GPU much or at all.

But other games are not optimized; like Team Fortress 2. It only really use two cores, so I have about 50-55% CPU load overall (but logically two core is at max load). Because of that my GPU load was only 15-20%. Here bottlenecking exist.

In both games I still got over 100-200fps, do it didnt matter much. GW2 is way more compute intensive to not be optimized to use more cores.

Hopefully GW2 will be more optimized for quad core or higher and maybe nvidia release some optimization as well.

Q6600 @ 3.2 + GTX 660. GW2 isn’t optimized for quad core. It uses only about 2 core and 3rd core partially. Try disabling a core you will notice no fps drop. Im getting about 40-45fps Questing and 15fps in heavy fights. My cpu load is only 55% on avg. GPU load at 40%. Hopefully gw2 will be updated for optimization.

Windows 7 64bit, Samsung 830 SSD, 8GB ram, 600w PSU
Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz
MSI Nvidia GTX 660 OC (306.97 drivers)
Gw2: 15,754

1680×1050
Best Appearance setting

Getting 35fps in WvW. 15fps zerg/gates. 40-45fps Qwesting alone.

CPU Load: avg 55%, peak 88%
GPU Load: avg 40%, peak 80%

GW2 is clearly not optimized or fully using my CPU or GPU. Looking at the attached load % graphs, it usually hovers barely half. Other games I play would push GPU loads to constant 90%+. For some reason GW2 only uses about 40%.