15 replies to this topic

[brunothomas]

Hello guys,

I have been wondering what are the better drivers to be used today for GW2.

I play on a i5 2.80GHz quad with 8Gb RAM and a GeForce 450 GTS. I would usually get ~30fps but recently it has been halved not matter what in-game graphic setting I choose..

Also do we have any tweak guides for the NVIDIA Control Panel relating to GW2 performance/looks?

Thanks.

[Mr.Kotte]

brunothomas, on 17 December 2012 - 02:32 AM, said:

Hello guys,

I have been wondering what are the better drivers to be used today for GW2.

I play on a i5 2.80GHz quad with 8Gb RAM and a GeForce 450 GTS. I would usually get ~30fps but recently it has been halved not matter what in-game graphic setting I choose..

Also do we have any tweak guides for the NVIDIA Control Panel relating to GW2 performance/looks?

Thanks.

Hi!

I for one could use some more info!
Exact specs? Laptop/PC? Is Vsync on? Tried to reinstall graphics drivers? Are you using the latest graphics drivers? Tried fiddling around in Nvidia CC?

[brunothomas]

Mr.Kotte, on 18 December 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

Hi!

I for one could use some more info!
Exact specs? Laptop/PC? Is Vsync on? Tried to reinstall graphics drivers? Are you using the latest graphics drivers? Tried fiddling around in Nvidia CC?

I'm using the NVIDIA drivers v. 304.48 which around last August were said to be the best for GW2. The video card is a GTS 450 1Gb. DDR5 and I haven't tried changing the advanced options in the control panel, leaving it for the application to decide what is best. Vsync is off.

At the higher in-game settings I was getting around 30fps but now it doesn't get to that anymore, no matter which graphic options I pick.

I'm running it on a PC i5-760 @ 2.80GHz (quad) with 8Gb RAM DDR3. Windows 8 SP1.

Thanks.

[typographie]

brunothomas, on 17 December 2012 - 02:32 AM, said:

I would usually get ~30fps but recently it has been halved not matter what in-game graphic setting I choose..

I actually had a very similar issue when I went from 306.97 to 310.54. I tried the latter several times (rolling back to 306.97) and each time, it would only work for a short time and then I would get a similar problem to what you're describing. That is, a massive drop in framerate that I only remedied by rolling back.

I'm back to 306.97 at the moment and just haven't bothered to try anything more recent. Using a GTX 460, by the way.

Check to make sure ambient occlusion isn't defaulting to On or something, because that will choke your 450 to death. But if that's not it, I'd try a different version.

Edited by typographie, 19 December 2012 - 03:01 AM.

[brunothomas]

typographie, on 19 December 2012 - 03:00 AM, said:

I'm back to 306.97 at the moment and just haven't bothered to try anything more recent. Using a GTX 460, by the way.

Check to make sure ambient occlusion isn't defaulting to On or something, because that will choke your 450 to death. But if that's not it, I'd try a different version.

Occlusion is off.

I'll try 306.97 and see how it goes, then. Thanks.

Anyway, some kind of tweak guide for NVIDIA Control Panel would be nice to have around.

[typographie]

brunothomas, on 19 December 2012 - 03:33 AM, said:

Anyway, some kind of tweak guide for NVIDIA Control Panel would be nice to have around.

As far as GW2 is concerned, the only really interesting options in the driver are proper 16x anisotrophic filtering (which, for me at least, works way better than the in-game equivalent) and ambient occlusion. MSAA/CSAA and probably transparency AA don't work at all.

Edited by typographie, 19 December 2012 - 04:57 AM.

[Mif]

typographie, on 19 December 2012 - 04:56 AM, said:

As far as GW2 is concerned, the only really interesting options in the driver are proper 16x anisotrophic filtering (which, for me at least, works way better than the in-game equivalent) and ambient occlusion. MSAA/CSAA and probably transparency AA don't work at all.

I think you're better off running SweetFX with SMAA. The sharpen filter makes a huge difference to percieved texture quality.

[Baldur The Bold]

Sweet FX with SMAA is very nice. Especially with supersampling enabled. There are other posts about Sweet FX and how to use it.

Edited by Baldur The Bold, 19 December 2012 - 06:22 AM.

[Lord Sojar]

Uh, you can override and enable CSAA/MSAA in the nV Control Panel for GW2.... it's hysterically easy...  why people use SweetFX is beyond me.  


Also, the official 310.70 drivers are out now.  Use them... they're great.

[typographie]

Mif, on 19 December 2012 - 06:11 AM, said:

I think you're better off running SweetFX with SMAA. The sharpen filter makes a huge difference to percieved texture quality.

I run SweetFX. But what he asked for was info on the control panel settings.

Edit:

Lord Sojar, on 19 December 2012 - 02:51 PM, said:

Uh, you can override and enable CSAA/MSAA in the nV Control Panel for GW2.... it's hysterically easy...  why people use SweetFX is beyond me.  

Was that made functional in recent driver update? Admittedly, I'm using 306.97, but I thought it was due to a limitation of the GW2 engine that we had to rely on post-processing AA alternatives. At least as recently as 306.97, I don't think MSAA functions in GW2. I stand corrected, if that's the case.

Edit again: Even with 310.79 WHQL, Antialiasing - Mode and Antialiasing - Transparency are locked out in the driver settings. If you have a way around that, feel free to share, rather than just pointing out I'm wrong on a technicality.

Edited by typographie, 19 December 2012 - 07:39 PM.

[Baldur The Bold]

I didn't think you could override the MSAA in GW2 either!
I have been using the 310.70 and haven't bothered to check to see if the nVcpl changed.
If transparency is locked out as well then maybe I will wait. I like sweet Fx but if I can override the MSAA then I would for sure!

[Lord Sojar]

It's quite simple.  You could do it all along.  

All you need to do is go into the Global Settings area and change it to Override Application.

Then, set GW2 to 4x or 8x MSAA in the EXE Specific 3D Settings.  

This gives the nVidia drivers license to override ALL executable functions on your PC.  Been there since 260.xx

[Mif]

You can set certain things to override in the Nvidia control panel, but it won't do anything if the driver has it disabled completely for GW2.

The only way you can change that is by modifiying the flags for GW2.exe in Nvidia Inspector.

[Lord Sojar]

Mif, on 20 December 2012 - 01:08 PM, said:

You can set certain things to override in the Nvidia control panel, but it won't do anything if the driver has it disabled completely for GW2.

The only way you can change that is by modifiying the flags for GW2.exe in Nvidia Inspector.

Follow what I just said.  It will work.  It's how Ring 1 to Ring 0 access in Windows works.

[typographie]

Lord Sojar, on 20 December 2012 - 01:06 PM, said:

It's quite simple.  You could do it all along.  

All you need to do is go into the Global Settings area and change it to Override Application.

Then, set GW2 to 4x or 8x MSAA in the EXE Specific 3D Settings.  

This gives the nVidia drivers license to override ALL executable functions on your PC.  Been there since 260.xx

I'll have to check this out later as I'm at work; I'm sure you are telling us this because you use it and it does work. But this begs the question, why is it disabled in the program settings? MSAA was conspicuously avoided by GW2's developers and Nvidia appears not to want us to use it with this game, it seemed reasonable to assume it either was non-functional or caused problems.

I'll give it a try when I get home, but SweetFX has a negligible performance footprint, satisfactory AA as well as other adjustable improvements such as image sharpening. So to answer your earlier question, that may be why I might continue to use it despite MSAA being an option,.

Edited by typographie, 20 December 2012 - 04:07 PM.

[Lord Sojar]

typographie, on 20 December 2012 - 04:05 PM, said:

I'll have to check this out later as I'm at work; I'm sure you are telling us this because you use it and it does work. But this begs the question, why is it disabled in the program settings? MSAA was conspicuously avoided by GW2's developers and Nvidia appears not to want us to use it with this game, it seemed reasonable to assume it either was non-functional or caused problems.

I'll give it a try when I get home, but SweetFX has a negligible performance footprint, satisfactory AA as well as other adjustable improvements such as image sharpening. So to answer your earlier question, that may be why I might continue to use it despite MSAA being an option,.

SweetFX is fine, especially because adding MSAA adds significant performance demands.  I can dip into the low 30s in LA with it at 8x.  The GW2 engine plays well with it in some ways.  I'm still looking at image quality a lot to determine is the SMAA works better for more coverage samples, but it does work.  

The issue I've encountered is on internal texture to texture sampling (example: on stairs)  MSAA doesn't seem to kick in there, so it's jaggy heaven on the internal joints of the staircases.

UPDATE: After remember that I was using developer side drivers, I have discovered it doesn't function in the consumer level drivers.  So nevermind, use SweetFX still.

Also, it appears the stupid hallow texture glitch was caused by that, sot that fixed that issue for me as well.