20 replies to this topic

[Yliah Atreides]

As the title indicates, I'm having a really poor experience playing Guild Wars 2 and I don't understand where it's comming from.

Here are the specs for my MBP: http://www.everymac....bolt-specs.html

And I'm obviously running Guild Wars 2 on windows 7 under bootcamp. I have installed the most recent graphic card drivers from the official AMD website.

http://www.cinemable..._1345738244.jpg

According to this performance chart released by Anet themselves, my graphics card is in the 'high-end' section, 4th best (tied with 2 others) of the AMD series at 59 FPS.

Concidering I have a Quadcore processor (2.2 GHz) and 4 GB Ram, I don't think anything is bottlenecking it there.


What I noticed is that on default, it sets almost all graphical settings to Medium or Off which averages me at around 15-20 FPS. Even with everything turned to the absolute minimum, I'm still reaching a max of 20 FPS.

The strange part is that when I turn everything to the absolute max (ultra), I'm still hovering around 15-20 FPS, as in only a very slight performance decrease compared to everything on the minimum. But regardless of all this, my computer should be able to run everything on max with atleast 30 FPS, yet I'm barely reaching the 20 FPS mark on lowest.

What's going on?!

P.S.: Note that my macbook is actually a pretty "beast" gaming laptop. I understand MBP's aren't made for gaming, but that doesn't mean they're not exceptionally good at it, which they are, or atleast mine is. I've been able to play every game I've ever installed on the absolute max settings and I've never had any issues with my graphics. I always had stable FPS in every game I played. So please don't reply with hollow statements such as "MBP's aren't made for gaming". The issue is obviously related to Guild Wars itself, but I wonder if people have figured out a workaround.

Edited by Yliah Atreides, 25 August 2012 - 10:14 AM.

[Kormir]

6750 is not beast...

[Ernesto]

You have a laptop, that is an M graphicscard, that is not the same as one without an M.

You cannot expect to play games on a macbook to be honest.

[Soylent]

A 6750M is still considered a good GPU, definitely should be able to run the game on 60fps on low.
What's more he gets barely any difference which switching from low to ultra.

You're probably just suffering from the same issue as others with their high end rigs yet getting a mere 20fps, while the GPU sits at 30%. The game has been having those issues ever since stress test 1.

Edited by Soylent, 25 August 2012 - 11:01 AM.

[Elo001]

Ernesto, on 25 August 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

You have a laptop, that is an M graphicscard, that is not the same as one without an M.

You cannot expect to play games on a macbook to be honest.

While i hate macs just as much as the next person, that's really not true

@OP: Not much you can do about it except for waiting for a patch / new drivers
While I don't have the game myself, there are many people on various forums reporting very low fps even though they have good gear. Some guy said that changing the refresh rate in the GW2 options from "Default" to 60hz doubled his fps, so you might give that a try

Edited by Elo001, 25 August 2012 - 11:01 AM.

[Yliah Atreides]

As far as I'm aware, the M only stands for 'middle class' (graphics card), and has no real impact on the series number. I could be wrong here. Edit: Actually stands for "mobile", which means they're slightly underclocked to prevent overheating, but essentially still the same card.

Nontheless, i've been able to play SC2, LoL, Bioshock 1 and 2, Fall Out vegas, Crysis and many other games all on highest/ultra settings with barely any FPS drops.

GW2 has lower specs than alot of those games, esp on lowest-medium, yet I'm still struggling to get 20 FPS. :s

Edited by Yliah Atreides, 25 August 2012 - 11:14 AM.

[Soylent]

Yliah Atreides, on 25 August 2012 - 11:02 AM, said:

As far as I'm aware, the M only stands for 'middle class' (graphics card), and has no real impact on the series number. I could be wrong here.

The M stands for mobile. All laptops use the M series GPUs, they're a little worse than the desktop counterparts but consume less power to prolong battery life.

Edited by Soylent, 25 August 2012 - 11:13 AM.

[ghostbusters]

GW2 is running incredibly smooth for me, with a real desktop.  Those mobile gfx card and cpu in the macbook aren't really that great. Just because it says i7 doesn't mean it's comparable to a desktop i7.  Games like SC2 and LoL I can run on core 2 duos with integrated graphics at very high settings.  

If you want good performance, don't use a macbook.  Hell, you could probably get a Lenovo with better gaming specs for $500 less. Sorry bro.

[Ernesto]

A 6750M equals roughly a 6570 desktop version.

The 6570 is not in that list int he screenshot you gave.

If you compare the 6570 with the slowest card in the list, 3870x2 which was released in November 2007.

http://www.hwcompare...d-6570-oem-1gb/


All in all, the result is: You cannot really play games on a macbook, they are not made for that.


The M addition to GPUs is very misleading and rude to consumers.

[Quaker]

That Mac uses some form of automatic graphics switching to switch between the 6750m and the Intel HD3000 graphics as the apps demand. Make sure it is running on the 6750m when you are playing GW2. (I don't know how you would check that on a Bootcamped Mac - it could even be that your Windows 7 is only using the Intel GPU.)

Edited by Quaker, 25 August 2012 - 03:37 PM.

[Yliah Atreides]

I'm just going to bump this because I currently managed to play under 25-30 fps average with everything on medium. Everything in lowest also stays in the same area, same for everything on highest.

The strangest part is my laptop isn't even getting hot (at all), it's as if he's not even struggling to render this. Whenever I played some of the more intensive games (Bioshock 2 on ultra for example) it used to get way hotter and still have excellent performance.

So I think NCSoft is defnitely working on this issue, as I got a random 10 FPS increase without changing any settings, and I'm confident my macbook can probably pump out an additional 15-20 FPS without too much problems.

Looks like patience is the only option, but apparently NCSoft really is working on it...

As a sidenote: I'm still playing in the same crowded areas as before, so it's defintely not related to my location.

Edited by Yliah Atreides, 26 August 2012 - 12:31 PM.

[myklr]

I honestly doubt they are going to be trying to tweak the performance for a windows title running on a mac running a form of windows that is not supported for the game. In this type of situation, you'll probably just have to be happy with the performance you get from it. That, and you are on a laptop.

[Freetobe]

It's not about running bootcamp , it's more that apple laptops use low end gpus and slowest memories there is.
There isn't a mac laptop with a good gpu.

In the end ... they simply aren't good for any kind of 3d rendering or gaming.

Check the newest macbooks .. they come without a graphics card and if you go over the 1600$ mark ... you get a 650M ( it's a 630 ) that's barely decent for gaming.

You have a 6750M ... it's a pretty slow card ... with 512Mb of vram ... but still a pretty slow card , in no way near of the desktop 6750 ... I wouldn't be surprised if that card is the same speed as an oldie 8800 .

I hope the clients gets an optimization , and that you get some extra fps , you should be able to play since you surpass the minimum specifications .. but that gpu ... it's pretty bad.

[drazenmist]

yliah shoot me a message got a question for you.

[Graklynn]

Yilah, to all of the above commentors who say this Laptop is not made for gaming, they are mistaken. Even the low end retina display laptops are beasty.

I am also running a macbook pro in bootcamp, and have had the same problem and not just in GW2, but in Skyrim and other high end graphics games as well.  I was able to fix 3 seperate ways, but the problem keeps returning. I has nothing to do with GW2 and is a flaw with how Bootcamp switches between

• I made a Bootcamp Drivers disk  to reinstall the Nvidia mac drivers. (do not use downloaded nvidia drivers, they dont know how to handle Mac based Windows).
  
• I set it to 1900x1200 with high quality settings. I could get 35 fps that way.
  
• Forced the Nvidia to High Performance.

Quaker, on 25 August 2012 - 03:35 PM, said:

That Mac uses some form of automatic graphics switching to switch between the 6750m and the Intel HD3000 graphics as the apps demand. Make sure it is running on the 6750m when you are playing GW2. (I don't know how you would check that on a Bootcamped Mac - it could even be that your Windows 7 is only using the Intel GPU.)

I am positive it has to do with the switching between this, but I am not sure how to force windows to switch back the 6750m.

[T-D-C]

Instead of Bootcamping have you tried using the GW2 Mac Client?

[Leriel]

Graklynn, on 20 November 2012 - 06:27 AM, said:

Yilah, to all of the above commentors who say this Laptop is not made for gaming, they are mistaken. Even the low end retina display laptops are beasty.

Are they able to run gw2 on all max settings with constant 60fps save for wvw?

[Quaker]

The hardware in a (modern) Macbook is the same as in a "PC" laptop. There is no reason to think that a Macbook would run any better (or worse) than any other laptop with the same hardware. What some people consider "beastly" may be only "meh" to someone with better hardware.

Edited by Quaker, 20 November 2012 - 04:11 PM.

[Graklynn]

Yliah Atreides, on 25 August 2012 - 10:05 AM, said:

As the title indicates, I'm having a really poor experience playing Guild Wars 2 and I don't understand where it's comming from.

FIXED.

I am now running GW2 at 45fps on my Macbook Pro. The Low FPS issue is now gone. After going over what I and others are experiencing, I came to the conclusion that it HAS to be the dual video card issue.

What I had speculated in the previous post was true. The windows OS does not know how to properly switch between the Intel HD and the 6750m. You basically have to remove the drivers entirely for the one to allow the other to be the only option for Windows to choose from. Follow these steps and you can run GW2 at 45 FPS on max settings.

After you follow these steps DO NOT UPDATE your Nvidia Drivers through the Nvidia program. If you do, you will revert back to low FPS.

Install Bootcamp Drivers:
1. Boot up OSX.
2. Open your finder and search for "Bootcamp"
3. Checkmark the second box which should be "Download latest drivers"  (and make sure to de-select "remove windows").
4. For this next step I used my external hard drive, but if you have a DVDR you can use that too.  Allow the mac to download the drivers to your HD or DVD.
5. Swtich to Windows
6. Access the "WindowsSupport" folder on your HD or DVD
7. Run "Setup.exe"
8. Allow it to do its thing. It will install the whole set of mac windows drivers.
9. When prompted, restart your computer.
10. Go play GW2

Remember, do not update your Nvidia drivers through Nvidia. Only through OSX. If you do, you will revert back to low frame rate.

Edited by Graklynn, 21 November 2012 - 05:09 AM.

[The Comfy Chair]

Seems like a quirk of bootcamp windows it seems, as windows itself when ran natively doesn't have those issues.

Glad to hear it's been fixed though, and thanks for your mini guide for other mac users in the same situation

[Glom]

I'm trying it. I'll come back when it's done to keep you updated!


EDIT: seems to work perfectly fine after doing what you said. Quality medium/high, it changes the experience, thank you!

Edited by Glom, 21 November 2012 - 01:54 PM.