10 replies to this topic

[Lapis]

Hi,
I am experiencing quite big drop in framerate when many characters are on the screen - like in world vs world combats or group events with more than 10 characters. Normally I have 30-60 fps when running thru the world or cities, but in WvW fight it drops to about 8 fps or less and the game is unplayable.

I tried changing most of the features in graphic options in the game, but most of them have almost no impact on fps (except maybe shadows quality). I run GW2 on medium-high settings. I didn't find any option that would help to significantly increase fps in these problematic situations...

I have a desktop Core 2 Duo at 3,2 GHz, 4 GB RAM, ATI 5770/6770 and GW2 installed on SSD drive. I play most of recent games on high details in 1280x1024 (19" monitor), but GW2 seems to have bottleneck somewhere. I would think it is rather CPU, because when I set affinity for GW2 process to run only on one core, fps drops considerably. But I doubt they made GW2 to be usable only on quad-eight core CPUs.

I had Catalyst 12.8 and installing application profiles 12.8 CAP3 maybe improved world fps a bit, but I didn't see any improvement in these scenes with many characters. I tried upgrading Catalyst drivers to 12.9 beta + 12.9 CAP1, but I didn't notice any further improvements.

Does anybody have any advice how to tweak the game to get acceptable framerate in zones like WvW ?

[Treble]

Lapis, on 02 October 2012 - 12:21 PM, said:

GW2 seems to have bottleneck somewhere. I would think it is rather CPU, because when I set affinity for GW2 process to run only on one core, fps drops considerably. But I doubt they made GW2 to be usable only on quad-eight core CPUs.

It's your CPU. Even overclocked Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPU's have a hard time with this game. I personally still drop to mid-30's on a 4.5GHz 3570K. I know some people drop even lower than that on Sandy Bridge.

[Lapis]

Hmm, then game developers should optimize it a bit more to use rather GPU for most of the things than CPU. I don't have such problems in WOW when attending raids with many people, where the game needs to do basicaly same things, so they should be able to improve that...

Did anybody find any tweak or options change that could improve the performance in these conditions? I was thinking like e.g. disabling showing names above players, forcing some lower quality character textures or spell animations or something like that, but I didn't test it yet much...

[Treble]

Lapis, on 02 October 2012 - 02:09 PM, said:

I don't have such problems in WOW when attending raids with many people, where the game needs to do basicaly same things, so they should be able to improve that...

That's WoW. It's a 10 year-old game.

WoW is also the exception, not the rule.

[Ivarr_Ironfist]

Yep, definitely your processor. You barely meet the minimum requirements. Core products are 2 generations old now and the architecture was first released in 2006. 6 years is a hell of a long time in processor terms.

I have an i7-2700k @ 3.5Ghz (stock) and I still don't have seamless performance in WvW.

[Lapis]

Ivarr_Ironfist, on 02 October 2012 - 02:43 PM, said:

Yep, definitely your processor. You barely meet the minimum requirements. Core products are 2 generations old now and the architecture was first released in 2006. 6 years is a hell of a long time in processor terms.

I barely meet the minimum requirements? Minimum requirements are C2D at 2.0 GHz (I have more than 50% higher performance than that) and GPU so low like Intel HD 3000. IMHO there is not huge difference between C2D and i3 CPUs in speed, depending on their frequency. I suppose I just need more cores...

[Treble]

Lapis, on 02 October 2012 - 03:24 PM, said:

I barely meet the minimum requirements? Minimum requirements are C2D at 2.0 GHz (I have more than 50% higher performance than that) and GPU so low like Intel HD 3000. IMHO there is not huge difference between C2D and i3 CPUs in speed, depending on their frequency. I suppose I just need more cores...

Just to demonstrate the difference in performance in a CPU-bound game an Ivy Bridge has over the Core 2 architecture, here's a little comparison:

Quote

Just wanted to post a quick result with my crossfired 5850s, demonstrating that dual GPU users do benefit from moving on from socket 775.

I downclocked the 3570k to match my old Q6600 @ 3.5.

Used Far Cry 2 as the benchmark with everything maxed out:

Q6600 @ 3.5

Average Framerate: 75.30
Max. Framerate: 124.75
Min. Framerate: 50.14

i5 3570k turbo reduced to 3.5

Average Framerate: 125.10
Max. Framerate: 182.90
Min. Framerate: 88.21

Out of interest, even a downclocked 3570k pushes these cards as hard as they can go, moving it to 4.0 makes no difference to frame rates showing that they are GPU limited now.

As a comparison, the downclocked 3570k whips a Q6600 at stock badly:

Q6600 @ 2.4 (stock)

Average Framerate: 40.95
Max. Framerate: 69.31
Min. Framerate: 29.02

This might be of interest to those still using a Q6600 and considering crossfiring even an fairly old card like the 5850.

Things to consider after reading that test.

1. It's time to upgrade to a Quad Core
2. It is actually a good financial investment from a price:performance standpoint to upgrade to Socket 1155 from Socket 775, being that a used Q6600 processor at 2.4 GHz will still run between $70-90 for a minimal performance gain over your current setup, while you can get a good 3570K, motherboard, and RAM for around $350 for about the same performance increase as the price you paid -- even cheaper if you opt out of the K chips.

Edited by Treble, 02 October 2012 - 03:34 PM.

[firywolf]

Lapis, on 02 October 2012 - 03:24 PM, said:

I barely meet the minimum requirements? Minimum requirements are C2D at 2.0 GHz (I have more than 50% higher performance than that) and GPU so low like Intel HD 3000. IMHO there is not huge difference between C2D and i3 CPUs in speed, depending on their frequency. I suppose I just need more cores...

You might want to look at some cpu and gpu comparisons. You do barely meet the minimum requirements. C2D as others have said is old. I good quad core is required to play wvwvw or events with bunch of people. Yes there is still some improvements that need to be made on gw2 side. You are only looking at clock speeds which is a mistake. Need to look at FSB, cache and few other where I3 is a lot better then C2D

[Ezendor]

firywolf, on 02 October 2012 - 06:02 PM, said:

You might want to look at some cpu and gpu comparisons. You do barely meet the minimum requirements. C2D as others have said is old. I good quad core is required to play wvwvw or events with bunch of people. Yes there is still some improvements that need to be made on gw2 side. You are only looking at clock speeds which is a mistake. Need to look at FSB, cache and few other where I3 is a lot better then C2D

Actually, GW2 really LOVES high clock speeds as well.  I gained 40+ FPS in the Black Citadel by OC'ing my CPU from 2.8GHz to 3.8GHz.  WvW performance improved a bit too but I'm held back by my GPU though (GTX 460 1GB).

[Treble]

Ezendor, on 04 October 2012 - 01:54 AM, said:

Actually, GW2 really LOVES high clock speeds as well.  I gained 40+ FPS in the Black Citadel by OC'ing my CPU from 2.8GHz to 3.8GHz.  WvW performance improved a bit too but I'm held back by my GPU though (GTX 460 1GB).

He means in terms of architecture in general. L2 cache vs L3 cache, cache size, bus speed, etc. which all make a pretty huge difference in CPU performance clock-for-clock.

Edited by Treble, 04 October 2012 - 03:15 AM.

[firywolf]

Treble, on 04 October 2012 - 03:15 AM, said:

He means in terms of architecture in general. L2 cache vs L3 cache, cache size, bus speed, etc. which all make a pretty huge difference in CPU performance clock-for-clock.

Yep that is exactly what I meant.
Ezendor, yes the gpu is limiting you but not as much as you think. Right now you are limited by cpu and motherboard. You are not even using the SSD or gpu at full potential because of the architecture. I do agree clock speed does play a huge role but you will never hit the next level of performance needed using C2D, 800 bus and L2 cache.