Guild Wars 2

How people spend their money is their business, IMO. I don’t see the usefulness of saying ‘more money than sense’. His question is legititimate and in line with the thread.

HomeStyle, if you read through the various fps threads, you will see that the GPU is not the limiting factor. So it’s not going to help having that much GPU power.

If you have the “best” processor Intel makes, that means you have 6 cores, and 12 total cores with HT. That also won’t help, as the game can’t utilize more cores. You may be limited by the speed of a small number of threads in the software. Maybe only one thread. And the only way to run that thread faster is with a faster clock.

Even with overclocking my system higher, I saw limited gain.

Some claim HT could slightly hurt game performance. I doubt it matters much either way. If it makes no difference, leave it on I think?

No idea, but I wonder if the game supported 3D and something went wrong, you would get that.

For kitten’s sake…

There’s always one thing on a computing system which is the weakest link. That’s not even debatable.

In the case of this game, it’s the CPU, at least on the client side (obviously the server side is another matter.)

Hence, the bottleneck on the COMPUTER HARDWARE is the CPU. That’s all I meant, and why debate that just to argue semantics…

<sigh>

OBVIOUSLY improving the software’s performance will improve the performance.

We don’t generally talk about software being the bottleneck, as it’s self evident that the software’s own performance is almost always a limiting factor. But I was talking HARDWARE.

When we talk about software bottlenecking, we look at what component in the software is the limiting factor. We don’t talk about the software as a whole.

Ok?

I am not competent to judge whether their software, in general is poorly written. I am not even sure how so many people here feel they are competent, unless they have worked with it, and analyzed it. There’s almost always room for improvement though. Maybe they have exhausted the easy options.

You are putting words into my mouth. CPU bottlenecking simply means the CPU is the piece of hardware where the limiting is applied. Of course more efficient code runs faster…etc.

I have dual GTX 670s and an i7 3770K CPU (overclocked,) and I can’t maintain 60fps on max settings (vsync.) I have to turn reflections to terrain and sky to maintain 60 fps.

It’s definitely playable to use refelections set to all though.

Fluke in the calculation I would guess. Also some system RAM could be allocated to something else such an onboard video.

Of course they were all suggestions; sorry if that was not clear.

I feel an SSD drive is worth attempting to get into any current build due to it’s very high performance gains. In fact, I can think of few pieces of hardware that give you as nice of an improvement in overall user experience.

But I understand having a budget.

Try to budgest for an SSD as your primary system drive. $200 gets you 240 GB now, or better. I would get at least 240 GB. That would let you put some games on the system drive if needed for performance.

I got a WD cavier black 1 TB drive as my auxillary drive for games and data. Pretty cheap these days.

Don’t think Blu-ray playing drive is needed for most people, but they are pretty cheap, so why not?

Make sure you get some sort of wi-fi on the mobo or with an internal board. I am not happy with USB based wi-fi solutions.

RAM is cheap, so I got 16 GB for my system. While I don’t think it’s needed now, you never know. But I understand saving a few bucks.

You can save some time by anticipating any additional needs ahead of time, such as more cooling fans. I ended up getting a bay mounted fan controller as I ran out of of fan headers on the mobo. So thinking about stuff like that before you order can be helpful if getting a new case.

I am no PSU expert. There are sites that tell you what you will need for various configurations, and you might want to use those. High end video cards will need a fair amount of power so ensure you have enough…better too much IMO. And make sure the PSU you buy supports and video care you will buy (such as having enough auxillary 12 volt PCI express connectors.)

My board is an ASUS P8Z77 which got good reviews, but Gigabyte is a well respected brand as well. I have certainly had their mobos in my system.

My zone loads seem pretty reasonable at the moment. < 15 seconds I think but I did not time it. I remember 60 second zone loads for EQ when that MMO first came out. Turned out, for that game, RAM helped a lot.

In some areas, I get very high fps. I might get over 180fps in some areas, and the GPU is hitting it’s max OC, and the GPU fan is on full power. Then you move to a different place on the map, and the fps drops, and the GPU starts underclocking as it’s not being fed. Ok, so maybe that’s CPU bottlenecking, but I see where nothing can be done.

As mentioned before, I have OCd an i7 3770 up to 4.6 Ghz with only a small gain of fps, like 2.

So don’t assume just by going out and buying a new CPU or OCing what you have that you will see much benefits (obviously depends on your current CPU, etc.)

I would not expect a C++/direct-x product to be using an Intel compiler even if it was biased. Also there was a lawsuit on that settled in 2009, so presumably if there were issues that compiled code for AMD chips non optimally, it’s been resolved.

I am not sure it was ever intentional, as why would Intel want to get embroiled in that mess? It could have simply been that it selected some module which was written for known perfomance improvements on intel chips – but I was not there

I would not mind an option where the game tries to point the camera parallel to the terrain. So when you run around, you don’t have to adjust the mouse as often. It would stop working when you are stopped, as you are likely manually adjusting the view then.

Having to wait sounds suspicously like a connectivity issue to me. You monitored the ping lag?

If it’s for sure not connectivity, seems like a system issue. System overheating and downclocking is one thought. There’s tools to monitor such things – I don’t know what your hardware is, so I can’t say if your hardware supports downclocking under load.

Could be a lot of things not related to the game, which would have to be dismissed.

Of course it could be the game logic or their own server issues, but I think you realize that your issue is pretty unique to you.

2 GB RAM seems low to me.

Your computer compensates for lack of RAM by copying memory to the disk (swap file) as needed to make more RAM available.

This works very well up to a point. But it has a downside when the programs running on the computer all want more memory than there is RAM at the same time. Programmers call that state ‘thrashing’. The computer can become unusable as the OS spends most of it’s time dealing with the shortage of physical memory.

Anwyay, if it was me, and I was going to try one somewhat affordable upgrade option, I would see if I could bump the RAM up 4 GB which I believe is the maximum usable by most versions of Vista.

Seems like someone else is running ok with a similar config, otherwise.

Sadly, gaming PCs have a longevity limit of 3 or at most 4 years. Upgrading video cards is often a solution, but Guild Wars 2 seems to be very demanding, and seems to run best on new hardware.

What does the flag do? Seems it changes some setting with how the Umbra software works. Does it offload some processing to the GPU with ‘-umbra gpu’?

Someone asked about tweaks. A mod did mention a thread which suggestions, and there’s an official stickied post.

Best tweak is to change reflections. I could find no other setting which made a difference on my system.

There’s no simple answer I think? Depending on your system, different things can be tried with varying success.

I have this same thing happen. I have not isolated it. Might be Skype, but even if a call comes in, it does not close the window. Far as I know I am running full screen.

I run various monitoring tools which could cause it as well. Such as EVGA’s GPU util and ASUS monitoring tools.

When it does happen, it might happen 3 times in a minute or 2, then not happen again all night.

It’s killed me a few times, so it would be nice to isolate it, but time consuming as it does not seem like one of those easily repeatable things.

I have a general question. Are some people who are monitoring this thread having smooth gameplay, but low fps (below 60fps) in some places?

Just curious. Even during a large dragon battle last night, I still had smooth gameplay. It’s just that the fps drops in a few specific areas.

I am thankful for the fact that it’s not hurting me in any obvious way. I don’t play WvW, so I can’t comment on performance then.

You may ask why I care if the fps drops below 60? Because then I feel like I don’t want to turn vsync on in case the fps drops, and vsync makes it worse. And the game looks better with vsync on, and the PC runs a LOT cooler.

Way too many bugged quests and events.

A friend of mine had a similar issue ( but perhaps not identical.)

She used a proxy service to download it. Apparently some other person in Missouri had the same issue.

Maybe you can find the solution via google, as I forget what it was.

Gibbel.5734:

Sup

I am getting between 27-40+ FPS in Lion’s Arch on my setup can anyone confirm if that’s normal or is it time to cleanup my pc

Amd phenom II 4Ghz
ATI HD 6870 × 2
Windows 7
8 Ghz Ram

I can live with the FPS btw just want to know if i can squeeze out more.

Probably not unreasonable. Some areas result in low fps even on better hardware than what you have. Do some reading in some of these low fps threads, and you will see what I mean.

No idea what your settings or rez are, but there are some settings which can help, such as reducing the reflections setting.

I understand the need for VRAM. In fact, some games have apparently really been pushing the need for more VRAM, but I can’t point you to specifics.

I don’t see the point to these anti-sli posts. It works fine. It even helps GW2, trust me. But it won’t help in places where there’s already a known issue, IMO.

For example, goto Caledon forest, by the southern village. Walk across bridge near waypoint, then look up a bit directly back across bridge. You will be lucky to get 60fps. Near as I can tell, no amount of video cards will resolve the low fps issue there (just to name one obvious spot.)

I re-iterate this to be clear. That’s ONE spot in the game. In many other locations, fps is just fine.

I know this won’t stop the haters. Frankly, some of you sound like a jealous kid, and others of you have not even tried the setup to say KITTEN about it. So just…you know…stop.

p.s. I will spend my money how I like; you do the same; fair deal I think.

Kargion, where do you get your projected fps from? I don’t get that fps with dual GTX 670s on best appearance at 1080p in many areas, and I think all is working properly (I do turn down reflections.) Even with CPU overclocking to 4.6 Ghz I don’t get that. I think that’s ambitious on high settings.

Maybe someday this game will run better, but for now, I think it’s working “normally” on my system, and in some areas, I barely get 60fps.

I noticed slower load times too. I doubt it’s internal IO, given how fast my zone loads were in the past. My PC is likey not slower.

As to what could cause the slower loads, I have no idea. Something on the server side?

My system is similar. Turning reflections to terrain and sky gives me better than 60 fps in most places

I hate to ask, because people become defensive, but are you overclocking?

Also, try a clean driver install with the latest drivers. I realize this is unlikely to help, but it’s a simple step.

A lot of post here relate to lower than expected fps; people with arguably high end hardware can’t get over 60fps all the time

THAT being said; the game clearly requires pretty good hardware both CPU and GPU. I don’t think that’s much debatable. Have you considered all this game engine does? For example, the shadows on high settings are very detailed as such things go. There’s lots of animation going on. etc.

I would say, based on evidence, an i5 processor or better and a recent gen GPU on the higher end of the line is going to give you good results. But even with that, you might run into issues. Some people with what I would call high end systems have serious issues with fps. Some others (like me) are doing ok, but have occasional low fps.

WvW and such can be really bad based on what I read here. In my case, with my one WvW experience, my system handled it fine. My system, minus the SLI part, would be comparable to overclocked i5 running GTX 670 GPU. I assume it’s not much of a step down getting a $300 GPU. Unknown how well a $200 GPU works.

Hello, I also have dual GTX 670 cards. They will be great in many games (so ignore the jibes With GW 2, it’s kind of a mixed bag. You will see high fps (> 80) most of the time, if you have similar performance to mine, but you will also experience < 60 fps sometimes.

You probably want to set reflections to terrain and sky, or whatever that is. That helps quite a bit.

As for overclocking CPU, I tried that. 2 fps gain. Hardly worth it.

On the bright side, I have smooth graphics, and can set to vsync and maintain 60fps most of the time. So the low fps in some areas don’t seem problematical.

For me, the real problem is broken events. I am really tired of them.

One option, if you don’t want to build you own, is to find a good deal on an i5 PC. I would go with 8 GB RAM, but most should have that.

Buy from a reliable brand, ideally, because I believe some makers will put in crap parts.

Then replace their GPU with a $200 GPU (obviously you buy a PC with a crap GPU, so as not to double pay)

There’s one problem with this method though! Some GPUs do have specific power requirements such as needing certain special power connectors. These may come with the stock PSU, but you would need to figure this out. ALSO, there’s no guarantee any old PC will fit any GPU you want to buy.

That’s why, in some ways, it’s just simpler to build, because you pre-plan so that the PC you build supports the GPU you will use.

There are pretty important differences in CPU implementation, TheRealLink

Been a LONG time since I studied that area, and it’s so sophisticated now. But I recall that they used to optimize execution in various ways. They can reorder instructions for efficiency. They have various ways of getting data from memory into the CPU cache and such which effects performance. They have these “pipelines” which try to increase efficiency. Anyway, lame explanation, but it’s not simply about instruction sets.

Nice, Morglus. Seems like there’s a number of issues like that, with stuff not working like it should.

I admit to giving up trying to solve my low fps for many reasons. It’s only in a few places, it does not cause stuttering usually, and after spending over $300 on new CPU so I could overclock more, I only gained 2 fps. Even if that means it’s CPU bound, it also means the solution for me does not seem to be overclocking.

I have not had an issue with bots (if you mean what I think you mean.) So curious why people care?

I noticed that both my cards are 8×. Apparently this is a limitation of my motherboard. No idea if that has any effect on fps due to lower bandwidth.

One little issue with migrating to a bigger SSD. It was easy to back up the system image and restore. What did not go well, was to put the old SSD back in then reboot. I ended up making sure all was well, then hot plugged in the old SSD, then brought it online.

Copy the whole drive using windows backup/restore system image (if you have a HD to write image to.) There’s sites that explain how to migrate.

Right, but that’s different than a process still using memory when it’s not running In that case, it’s running

As you say, you can always check for processes running when there’s no application shown running in the application pane.

I can conceive of no way a process can keep using memory once it’s not running. That would be news to me. How are you sure this is happening?

Define struggle? I can play at 60fps or better (most of the time) with dual GTX 670 cards and an i7 on best appearance with lowered reflections.

Using unlocked i7 3770 K, I can see a small gain via overlocking. As much as 2 fps raising ratio from 41 to 45. which is a fair overclock at 103 Mhz BCLK (from 4223 to 4636)

So no big gain here, but some indication that the game is CPU bound even with what should be a pretty fast i7.

Using task manager, and looking at all 8 cores, I don’t see 100% load on any CPU. Not saying that proves anything. Just saying what I see.

New unlocked i7 3770 should have arrived today at home. If so, will put it in after happy hour. Hope I don’t bend any pins and remember to properly hook the closed loop cooler up properly. You never know after tossing back a few.

I will try to do before and after benchmarks to find out if the game can be sped up with more agressive OC, or whether it’s just one of those hard to understand things (as to why fps is low in some areas.)

32 bit should support 4 GB (except for some starter edition). For more I think your need 64 bit windows. Sadly we are now stuck with 64 bit windows I think – I would never consider 32 bit anymore, unless you had compelling reasons.

I seem to recall if you had a certain version of Win 7 you could run XP in some emulation mode which supported old games, but not 100% sure on this (mention it only because 64 bit windows seems to have compatibility issues with old games.)

Divide $60 by hours spent playing. Assuming you mostly enjoyed those hours, you can compare the game to other entertainments per dollar.

It’s MUCH cheaper than my golfing outing at the Broadmoor this year. And comparing it to an $8 movie, makes the movie look like a rip-off.

I think people fail to realize how cheap a game can be per hour played compared to most amusements.

I think this is a legit concern. So far, it seems like what’s happening (in my server) is not so much a lack of players, as a very large world.

There’s just not enough players to cover the large number of zones, especially higher level zones.

But it seems to be dynamic. On any given night, some zone could be deserted or well populated with players.

Personally, I enjoy the game a LOT when there’s helpers around. Solo play is a pain the kitten sometimes (intentionally typed kitten – in you FACE auto-censor

Been playing a awhile now. I finally had fun playing tonight. So I think the game has promise.

The Pros :

• Lovely graphics IMO
• HUGE world; Not Skyrim huge with much repetition, but MMO huge with much variety
• They really seem to have achieved playability with your friends who level at different speeds, and with group play, where if you wait around long enough, even tough stuff can be very manageable
• The story mode, even though I have not done it, adds some nice playability if I want to solo in a more controlled fashion
• Seems it won’t get boring well past the point where I feel I got my money’s worth
• Death is pretty cheap vs past MMOs I have played; I like that – it encourages experimentation

The Cons:

• Many broken events/quests; I know they will fix these, but some nights it’s been frustrating and time wasting – I realize playing games is inherently a time waster. but it’s supposed to be a FUN time waster
• Some unexpected performance issues; I manage ok with my PC, but some poor souls really have serious fps issues
• The combo system seems overly complex AND underwhelming when I DID figure it out
• Game could use an in game version of the wiki; some of the character stuff is not intuitive – it’s a bit different than other RPGs
• I thought the elementalist master training manual was WAY overpriced IMO; 1 gold is a lot of money in this game; what’s the point to pricing it so high?
• Kind of pricey teleportation system IMO

Game could use some zone stats. Sometimes some areas are just painful to do if deserted. If I could find out what zones were populated with players, I would jump to those areas rather than being frustrated.

Any game can crash with those symptoms in my experience. One could be due to some semi-random bug in the game or drivers. If it happens more often, but only to GW, it’s hard to say what that could be. If it happens outside GW, then it seems likely to be a hardware issue.

I see what you mean. Pretty subtle though. With this game, I would be happy it’s not crashing or experiencing unexpectly low fps

Did you file a ticket? Will likely be assigned a low priority if it gets onto their bug list (assuming it’s not a driver bug.)

There’s three possibilities I can think of here -
1) You have the same issue some others have with very low fps [ No known solution I have seen so far]
2) Your CPU is a limiting factor (this game seems CPU bound depending on your specifics)
3) The 550ti is not sufficient for the settings and resolution you use – did you try experiementing with different options for your settings?

Sounds pretty good to me! A lot of people report issues in that area. If it seems smooth you are doing fine.

Standing on steps near the fountain (trader waypoint) and looked south, I am getting 56fps. This on max appearance with reflections reduced. i7 3770 and GTX 670 SLI. 1080p rez.

It can go lower than that, depending on exact area.