Guild Wars 2

Have you tried turning your computer off and on again?

Seriously tho, there could be many causes. Here’s something I could come up with from the top of my head.

While your CPU is dual core and rather from the bottom line from it’s generation performance-wise, it is new and passes the minimum requirements clearly. Have you just recently started playing or is this just a problem as of late? If so, when did you first notice this?

What is the situation with your hard drive? What’s it’s make and model and how full is it? You could try cleaning it up, deleting unnecessary files, defragmenting (if it’s not an SSD) etc.

You could also try repairing the game by clicking properties of your gw2.exe shortcut and adding " -repair" to the target line without quotation marks (also outside those in the target line). Remember to remove it before you run the game again or do it on a separate shortcut. I reread your post after writing this and you said you have reinstalled the game, so this probably has no effect but try it last if nothing else works.

Have you checked your system temperatures? Download programs like Core Temp or Real Temp for CPU and GPU-Z for GPU temps. If they hit near-maximum while gaming your computer could shut itself off to protect itself.

Well that’s a shame

No worries tho, enjoy that monitor you got, if we start seeing G-SYNC monitors in like a month you can always resell this monitor you’ve just bought (shouldn’t be too big of a drop in price if it’s only 1 month old) or hook ’em both up as a dual monitor setup

Which one did you get, anyway?

Well I found out after installing and running Defraggler that my gw2.dat is fragmented. I haven’t got the chance to repair the game but you could check what yours say. If it’s fragmented I can’t believe it would mean any thing good at the least (this is assuming you run your GW2 from an HDD and not an SSD – they are not meant to be defragged and I don’t know if they would show correct info in a defrag program)

If you haven’t bought anything yet, I have one suggestion you might want to take into consideration:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/g-sync

G-SYNC monitors are coming slowly this year so if you’re not in a hurry and you can wait a few months I would definitely take a look at those. G-SYNC looks so good on paper that in a few years we will be laughing at monitors without it (or similar technology).

If you don’t want to read thru all the pages in that link, heres a brief overview: what it basically does is it turns your GPU into master and monitor into slave, just the opposite of how it’s been before, by adapting the screen refresh rate (Hz) to the rate your GPU can render frames. It eliminates tearing, stuttering and input delay brought by Vsync and normal refresh rate. If I hadn’t bought a monitor just a little while ago I’d be definitely looking for a chance to get one (and surely am later on).

I’m not sure if you’re getting some special deal on it, but I would suggest to invest a bit more if you’re not. GW2 doesn’t need too great of a GPU, but you might want to play another game too that could be more GPU-bound, and it’s never a bad idea to leave some headroom so your card doesn’t run at full speed constantly. I’m seeing it going for about $75 at lowest, whereas for $100 you could get something like this: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-hd7770dc1gd5v2 which gives you over 2x the performance on paper with only $25 added to the price.

SolarNova.1052:

The problem arrises when u try to get a haswel to OC that high on a resonably priced cooler. A sandybridge 2500k/2550k/2600k/2700k wouldnt have any problems hitting 4.6ghz with a mid range ar cooler. A Haswell on the other hand would requir a top end air cooler at the very least to have a chance at being temperature stable at 4.5ghz.

Throw in Haswell delidding and then we’re talking of completely different chapter of the same story (to which ones benefit is unclear to me, tho)

SolarNova.1052:

EDIT: One last thing to mention, unless proved otherwise, as far as i know the single thread performance charts linkd in posts above have the clock speeds shown. The 3930k apparently was at 3.2ghz whilst the 4670k was at 3.4ghz. Though those may simply be the ‘title names’ of the CPU as advertised and infact they may have been runnign at the turbo speed. In which case its 3.8ghz for the 3930k and 3.8ghz again for the 4670k.
If u look at the scores between identical processor/architecture but different clocks, like the 2600k vs 2700k, the 3570k and 3770k etc, they have 100mhz in difference and all seem to have roughly 70 points between them. So u can work out roughly what the 3930k would score at the same clock as the 4670k. Its not a perfect theory but its close enough without actually doing the test itself. Its still lower than the 4670k obviosly but not as low as the list makes out.

Out of boredom and the desire to help others, I did a few calculations. Here’s a list of performance per BCLK (100MHz) of unlocked Intels from SB onwards. inside the brackets is what the score would be if it was actually achieved with Turbo Boost clock speed:

Sandy Bridge
i5-2500K: 56,82 (50,68)
i5-2550K: 58 (51,89)
i7-2600K: 56,61 (50,66)
i7-2700K: 57,14 (51,28)

Sandy Bridge E
3930K: 60,78 (51,18)
3960X: 60,33 (51,05)
3970X: 57,43 (50,25)

Ivy Bridge
i5-3570K: 59,32 (53,08)
i7-3770K: 59,43 (53,33)

Ivy Bridge E
4820K: 55,49 (52,64)
4930K: 59,82 (52,15)
4960X: 58,72 (52,85)

Haswell
i5-4670K: 64,64 (57,84)
i7-4770K: 64,65 (58,03)

Now the final clock speed that could be reached varies (vastly even inside the same CPU model, too) and I don’t have a record of average OC’s of each model, but for example now 4670K is 14% faster than a 2500K, meaning it would have to attain 5 GHz to compete with 4670K @ 4,4 GHz. This is all made on the assumption that those scores were actually made with Turbo Boost on.

Also and as the silicon lottery pays huge part here, you could be as lucky as this guy getting 5 GHz on Haswell with air cooling (it was delidded tho) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUHm2qHI3gc

Not really, except what has been said before. Tweak the in-game graphic options I listed to you and wait. There could be a bug in the game right now which is drawing performance from many players. There might be a sudden bump up in the fps some time near future, but still, WvW and LA are not gonna be 60+ fps when many players are online at the same time.

Now I just noticed that you haven’t given us any actual numbers. What do you consider decent fps? What numbers are you getting now? it’s subjective, i do notice difference in 30 and 60 but being with a low-end machine for so long 30 is pretty smooth to me, whereas some people just can’t watch at anything lower than 45.

Thanasis.1875:

I will probably try to get temperatures just a little bit lower, is there an on-screen program that shows your CPU and gpu usage, as well temperatures?I would like to know if there is any other out there to run some tests

I don’t know of a single program that does that but you can try these:
RealTemp or CoreTemp for CPU temps
GPU-Z for GPU temps and usage
Windows Task Manager gives you an idea of CPU usage

You shouldn’t change your hardware just because of a 1 program, unless that program is something that you really need and have to run, that’s for granted. Also, as Jake pointed out, some players have been getting some unusual performance drops lately that were fixed also out of the blue. You could just wait and see if the fps gets a tad better, but like I said, it will never, especially on that CPU, reach a level of absolutely flawless fluid motion. (unless ANet changes their code, of course).

@Makke: Actually that wouldn’t bring you any performance upgrade, unless you could overclock it higher. This game only utilizes 3 cores heavily so adding more cores wouldn’t help. In fact, i7-E actually has lower single thread performance IIRC, so you would get even lower fps.

Also go to BIOS and reset back to factory settings or check that your CPU multiplier and base clock speed are normal (resetting to factory should do this)

I hear you, it should not be this way, I’d think technology in so far ahead already that it should be able to make 150 players run in the same place possible. This is one reason I bought a 4670K (I was due to an upgrade already tho, my previous CPU was from ’07)

you have to understand that those games are single player games or their multiplayer modes don’t allow as many players at once as GW2, which makes them more GPU bound than CPU bound (which is always the case in FPS games vs MMO’s).

Yes it is annoying that a CPU dependent game doesn’t utilize your CPU well. All we can do about it tho is lower some of the settings and overclock our CPU’s and wait for ANet to come up with a better solution.

Now for the worst part: There isn’t a single CPU on the market that won’t be bottlenecked in GW2. Not even the most powerful. Let that sink in a bit.
If you overclocked a 4670K or 4770K or something similar with liquid nitrogen cooling to 6-8GHz you could probably get smooth gameplay in big WvW fights, but that wouldn’t be real solution. Now with best cooling methods people get 4,8-5,0 GHz overclocks which gives them 20-25 fps in the biggest fights.

As for the program, I don’t know which one it is or how it works, if it really calculates your usage real-time while playing, but my guess is that it’s looking at the game requirements that are made normal PvE gameplay in mind.

Right now I have GTX 660 and Q6600 CPU. I’m actually monitoring the GPU usage at the moment and only once it hit 99% when all settings where maxed, including supersampling. When rendering is native and other setting are maxed or close I’m getting 40-60% usage. Still my fps is below 20, actually below 15 in LA for most times. What does that leave you with?

The problem is your CPU. it has 8 cores and each of them is quite weak individually. This game requires some hefty amount of per core power. Your graphics card is more than fine, but your fps is limited in CPU intensive tasks, which is running many different moving things on screen simultaneously. WvW and LA are the places where this happens the most.

To make it a little easier, change these options in your graphic settings: Antialiasing to none, Reflections to Terrain & sky or none, Shadows to low or none and Postprocessing to low or none (I keep it on low because I actually like it more than low). Next step would be getting a more single-thread powerful CPU. Intels are doing better in this category right now.

Vabbi is one of the 2 EU servers with Medium population (others being High and Very High) so there are less people than in most servers. You could be playing at hours when most Vabbians are off, too, but where are you not seeing people? Out in the open world there’s usually virtually no one, except in Queensdale since most players start on human race and high level players farm Champs there. Go into Lion’s Arch and I bet there are more people than just 1 or 2 even on that server.

That could be true. Even if the game is using only 3 threads heavily that’s 75% of i5’s cores while only 50% of that i7’s (and 25% when hyperthreading) and the other things need to be running as well. It could get tricky to test it which one would yield better performance but I’m willing to believe that the difference in some huge zerg situation is not more than a few FPS into whichever direction.

This, while being entertaining, is getting a little OT, so I’d just like to say go for i5 if you’re on a budget, go i7 (i7-extreme if you’re willing) for futureproofing and all that kind of good stuff if money is not an issue.

I have the same issue, but loading everything slowly, from the bootup to anything else basically. You only have this problem in this game?

I think this is an issue with your hard drive. How old and how full is yours? Have you defragmented it lately? If everything else is loading fast and your system is new you could try repairing/reinstalling your GW2 files.

Fermi.2409:

loseridoit.2756:

Avelos.6798:

Fastest computer I know of which is used by SolarNova sporting an Intel i7 3930K clocked at 4.6 GHz with a GTX 780 still gets crippled.

cpu speed is determined by architecture and clock rates. If the OP manages to get a Haswell cpu to clock 4.4 GHz then it will be faster than Solar Nova.

Only for single core performance; iirc, the 6cores don’t really beat the quads per core. Overall the hexcore demolishes.

I’m not sure how well this http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html list translates into a real world scenario, but at least it states that a 4670K actually has around 13% edge over 3930K with 6,25% faster clock speed so 4670K should be a tad over 6% faster at same speed. That means that if the i5 is clocked at 4,5 GHz the i7 would have to be clocked at 4,8 to outperform it. This is all based on those synthetic results, of course.

@OP do you possibly have any parts from your previous computers that you can use? Like a DVD drive or do you even need one? Nevertheless, as you can see in Fermi’s list, it’s gonna cost you around $900-1000 to build a decent high-end computer from the scratch

chris.9142:

For gw2 a Hd 7790 is more then enough my 7770 can run it on ultra with about 20% spare power

Sure, my GTX 660 (which is more powerful and more expensive tho) keeps the FPS pretty much the same despite the graphic options (except all maxed with supersampling vs everything on lowest), but it’s not worth to build a system to run just 1 game. Most other games use GPU much more so it makes sense to have a little more headroom on that front.

Before reinstalling it back to your HDD, you could try reinstalling it on your SSD again to see if something went wrong in the installing process.

You said you came back here and did the upgrade. Have you played recently but before that SSD? Some things have changed in the game and lately I’ve seen some players having the same issue and getting over it in the next patch.

Also, where are you seeing these FPS’s? Are they in the same place you remember getting those maxed framerates before? For example in Lion’s Arch it’s typical to get far worse framerate than out in the open world.

Since the only thing you did was switched to the SSD and especially when other games are running fine I doubt it’s an issue with the drivers but best double check you have the latest ones installed.

You should start off by telling us your budget. There can always be a more powerful option and you just can’t get too powerful CPU for this game. If only sky is the limit we can give you a killer build which will last for years, if you’re on a tight budget even a slightest tweak could make it or break it.

That being said, the build recommended above looks very good and is maybe the best bang for the buck that gives you smooth gameplay with a little headroom. Some dollars can be saved by minor changes or a few more can be spent for minor upgrades. At this point is just a matter of how much you’re willing to spend.

You’re right, with higher CPU usage you would get better FPS. However the problem is that this game only uses heavily 2 or 3 cores of a CPU and yours happens to be a 6-core, thus even at full demand you would’t see usage much higher than 50%. Whether this is question of optimization or something else (which at this point is quite irrelevant since we can’t do anything about it directly), the only option right now is to get a CPU that has higher per core performance. Just remember that CPUs with the same per core performance but 4 cores vs 8 for example will give you relatively same FPS, just different usage % (which being at half is not a bad thing, the computer needs to compute other stuff in the background as well)

I have the same problem, it takes ages to spawn in LA when I first turn the game on. Based on what I’ve heard, a Solid State Drive (SSD) reduces load times drastically over a regular HDD, so what I’m guessing is your hard drive might be getting old. What kind do you have and how full is it? Have you defragmented it lately or cleaned up otherwise?

Now I’ve just ordered an SSD so I can’t really give a viable opinion on it, but seeing some tests it takes 20-30 seconds to load into LA even on them. It could be something gone wrong at ANet’s end or simply your server population has increased.

Avelos.6798:

Shift Focus may be running a rather high clock in wvw on a lower server that doesn’t have as big of fights as Black Gate / Jade Quarry / Sanctum of Rall. Always keep that in mind.

Could be, definition of huge zerg varies from people to people. That’s one thing you could also tell us what your estimation of the player number is when getting those framerates, better yet screenshot or video clip it.

It could be that something went bad all of a sudden in your hardware, however I’m doubting that very much. What can you remember changing from the last time FPS was normal to the first time this was on? Windows update, GW2 update? have you noticed this anywhere else? Are other games fine? if you monitor your CPU, GPU, RAM usages and temps while playing, what do they say?

Can you give us some more info please. Hardware specs, software specs, is this everywhere in GW2, cities, open world, dungeons, WvW, PvP? How long have you been playing and what has your FPS been before?

I’m still confused with this hatred towards Win 8. The interface is purely subjective, I have gotten used to it pretty well. What do you mean not stable for gaming? Can you give some reference? If this is true and has significant effect, Win 7 would definitely be worth considering. Since Win 7 support ends in a year and he seems to be getting 8 for free, I would hesitate going with 7, unless that would be free as well.

Sounds very acceptable. May I ask what clock speed you run at?

You did see he wrote 15 fps in big zerg fights, right?

Well I’m glad I could help feel free to PM me or post another question here if you have anything on your mind!

I have to ask now just to make sure, you have checked your mobo is compatible with that CPU and RAM speeds? Since you said you’re getting a new computer it probably is, but best to double check. About the mobo itself, more expensive doesn’t really give fps increase, it translates into more tweaking options, more USB ports, higher quality and thus smaller chance of failure etc. 430W PSU sounds like it’s about on the edge on having enough watts. Luckily that CPU is low power-consuming.

What you could look into is getting a Solid State Drive (SSD), it’s quite expensive per gigabyte but it’s also about 5-10 times faster than an HDD. You could grab a 60GB or 120GB version and install Windows and GW2 on it and you’d be running the game from boot-up in less than half a minute and blasting thru loading screens.

The GPU isn’t too powerful, but then again GW2 isn’t too graphic heavy so I’m not sure. That might be the next thing in the line to upgrade.

the 2130 is a 2nd Gen (known as Sandy Bridge) entry-level i5, and the 3330 is a 3rd Gen (Ivy Bridge) entry-level i5. that S version means little less performance while getting a huge boost in performance/power consumption ratio. The generation gap made it impossible to compare just by clock speed vs. clock speed, if they both would’ve been 3xxx or 2xxx then your worries would’ve been real. I would say that any i5 and above would be enough for mostly anything, including smaller WvW battles, except maybe those ultra-low power saving T-versions of CPUs.

Glad I could help! Just out of curiosity though, and since it might have an impact, what does the rest of your system look like?

That would depend on what you want to do with it.

based on this http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html list the 3330S actually has more per core power than 2310, which is something needed in GW2. for a reference, my current CPU is Q6600 and it seems to get 919 points versus your ~1,6k on either one of those and I can run pretty much everything fine except big fights in WvW (drops down to 5-7 FPS). On the other hand a new CPU that I bought and for which I don’t have a motherboard yet is a 4670K, a top-notch in per core performance but other players using that CPU are reporting to get 15-25 FPS in big zerg fights, so I don’t think you need to feel too bad if you don’t get a decent framerate when a lot of things are happening on your screen. If you have a solid system on the other parts as well, I’d say you’re all set.

EDIT: Checked the total performance on both of those and it seems the 3330S outperforms 2310 in that as well. It is 1 generation newer so the clock speed doesn’t correlate directly into the performance. on top of that your 3330S has a power consumption of 65W intead of 95W on 2310. I think you made a pretty good deal!

Rick.5781:

What I hate about the “horizontal gear progression” is that the game forces you to PAY for it. A lot of the time if I want a specific skin, I need to buy transmutation crystals in order to apply that skin to the stats I want. Yes you can grind money and trade gold for gems, but the inflation price on gold is through the roof, and grinding gold just isn’t that fun.

Also, if I’m going to spend all that time on grinding for something, I would like it to improve my character somewhat. To be honest, most of the time people don’t even notice how “cool” your gear looks. There isn’t enough variety, most people have seen all the armor/weapons by now so nothing is “new,” “unique,” or “fresh.”

Still, I prefer this method to being forced to pay to get stat bonuses. Undoubtfully having to work hard to get better looking armor always means more work to some people as the definiton of “better looking” is subjective. I personally really like the Citadel of Flame armor and I was lucky it is perhaps the most easily obtainable Exotic set.

My point of view might differ from yours, but the way I see it is that the looks are meant mostly for you and that’s why it doesn’t bother me too much that my CoF set wont stand out from the rest of the crowd. If a low level new player walks in the midst of Exotic’d out players he’s most likely gonna be amazed by all of them. On the other hand none of those experienced players will really notice or care what the others are wearing, just as you said. Sure, it would be nice to proudly show something you have achieved via hard work and dedication, I think titles are more closer to that. The problem is that there’s so many of them that especially new players are having a hard time remembering them all.

I once read an article about vertical progression and horizontal progression. Vertical is the typical composition in RPG’s and MMO’s where you level up and get better gear, and you get so much more powerful compared to players lower level or in worse gear than you that fighting with/against you renders their toon virtually useless.

Now horizontal progression is the skill of the player actually in front of the computer. It means that pvp battles couldn’t be fought by comparing the stats of the opposing players like in the scenario above. I guess FPS games are more of an example of this gategory.

Guild Wars 2 is (at least trying to be) very horizontally progressive game, meaning that a player with good skill and bad gear could overpower a player with bad skill and good gear. Here the best gear that could take months to achieve has zero benefit over gear that can be achieved in a week. Only the visual side, that’s it. Things changed a bit when Ascended weapons and armor were introduced, but like I said a player in Exotic gear (the former best) can easily overpower full Ascended player if they have the skill.

You said that you don’t really care about the skins and whatnot, only the stats. If what you really want is that some players couldn’t make a dent to you in pvp or couldn’t contribute virtually at all against a boss while trying their hardest compared to you paying only half attention, I’m afraid this game just probably isn’t for you. I have played some RPG’s where it becomes a battle of the wallets, where a player could hit an equally leveled player for only 1 dmg and the other one do a 1 Hit K.O. I don’t see the point in that, but we are all entitled to our own opinions, that’s the beauty of human nature.

EDIT: I missed the part where you said progression via gear and personal skill matters to you. Anyway the point pretty much still stands, progression via gear is very minimal in GW2. I think the increase in Ascended over Exotic is about 6%. the increase in personal skill however is about 200%.

Avelos.6798:

I personally disbelieve that it’s a waste to upgrade to Haswell unless it’s a couple months (2-3) until the new generation Broadwell comes out. It’s a long ways off anyway.

I agree with that, my point was neither of them is a dead upgrade (especially from GW2 point of view) hence both is just as dead. If he thinks it’s wiser move to go Haswell for more futureproofing while looking at Broadwell, I was trying to point out that you need just the same amount of upgrading when going Broawell from Haswell than from IB/SB, meaning both mobo and CPU. I personally went with 4670K because I got it for 185€ and I’m probably not going for Broadwell (upgraded from Q6600, big jump anyway :p)

Now, I’m not an expert on the subject but I can tell you what I’ve learned based on my research. please correct me if I’m wrong.

Broadwell (aka. the 5th gen i-series processors) that’s probably coming out next year will introduce a new chipset, the 9-series, instead of the 8-series Haswell brought. What this means is that although they both are 1150 Socket, those new Broadwell CPUs most likely won’t work on current motherboards. This means that a 1155 Socket mobo+CPU combo is just as dead as an upgrade to Haswell.

for GW2 performance you need per core performance in a CPU more than the overall performance. AMD’s are known to lose in this category on current processors. Makes sense if you think about it, an 8-core AMD has an overall performance equal to a quad core i5, which theoretically means Intels’ cores are twice more powerful (this is rough speaking of course).

I’ve heard that while 2500k is a little slower than 3570k which again is slower than 4670k, it runs a bit cooler and overclocks a tad better than a 3570k, and the same goes for 3570k vs 4670k. That means that once overclocked these babies will all perform nearly equally. If you don’t want to overclock or want to do it just a little bit, 4670k would probably be your best bet. Again, the difference is minimal, so whichever you find the easiest and cheapest would be a big upgrade over your current CPU.

Hope this helps and good luck in game!