Returning player, Unplayably-Low FPS

[Trismegistos.3046]

Hello everyone.Today i installed GW2 after a long time.But it is unplayable.

No matter if i am at the city surrounded by players, or all alone,no matter if i set all graphic options on lowest/off or max,my FPS is between 5 and 22, and if i turn the camera quickly it even freezes for a bit.Max temperatures are 36c for CPU and 49c for GPU.

Installed fresh windows, all up to date, installed drivers/etc. Still the same.

This is my setup:Windows 10 64bit, on some SSDi7 670016GB DDR4 2133R9 390, monitor is a Dell U2311H

I am no expert, so if anyone could help me, i'd appreciate it.

[Eladamri.2437]

You might want to look at d912py, a very fine tool. It's nothing official and probably won't get official recognition but works like a charm. Don't expect miracles, but base fps should be much more stable!

[KrHome.1920]

@"Eladamri.2437" said:You might want to look at d912py, a very fine tool. It's nothing official and probably won't get official recognition but works like a charm. Don't expect miracles, but base fps should be much more stable!This does not explain his performance issues. I played GW2 on a weaker PC but with much higher framerates 2 years ago without any modifications.

@OP:The Windows Task Manager is a good start. Check the usage of your components, namely the CPU, GPU and Ram while you play the game. Maybe some background task cripples your performance or something holds one component back to perform at its full potential.

Your temperatures are okay and even pretty low - I guess because your PC is not fully utilized for some reason.

[BRNBRITO.9624]

Check your windows power plan to see if your CPU is running at 100%

[Trismegistos.3046]

@"BRNBRITO.9624" said:Check your windows power plan to see if your CPU is running at 100%

i checked and it is on "high performance", and everything on the advanced power settings is also set on the performance equivalent.

i also checked my ssd and it is in perfect health.

i also did that smconfig thing where i selected my PC to boot with 8 cores, while it was on 1. it changed nothing.

i was wondering, could it be because my motherboard BIOS is not up to date?https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/H170-GAMING-M3.html#down-biosi checked here, and i am on the "C6" version which is from 2016.should i update it? could this be it?

thanks for your time.

[Diva.4706]

How much CPU is being used while the computer is at idle?

[Trismegistos.3046]

@"Diva.4706" said:How much CPU is being used while the computer is at idle?does this help?https://imgur.com/2rV5lyIpc was idle at the moment.

[Diva.4706]

Okay, run the game and watch your CPU Ghz, make sure it's not throttling ( this is easier to do if you have 2 monitors) The base clock is 3.4 Ghz and the boost is 4 Ghz.

[Trismegistos.3046]

@"Diva.4706" said:Okay, run the game and watch your CPU Ghz, make sure it's not throttling ( this is easier to do if you have 2 monitors) The base clock is 3.4 Ghz and the boost is 4 Ghz.

i "played" the game for just like 5 minutes. so i dunno if that makes a difference.i took a screenshot as soon as i Alt-Tab'ed, cause i dont have a second monitor.https://imgur.com/a/I4ugeBwthere is no difference on the Ghz at all.or at anything other than usage (from 1% to 14%)

[Diva.4706]

Okay, looks like your CPU might be stuck in slow mode (there should be a switch on the motherboard to turn slow mode on/off). This is a feature to force the CPU to run at .8 Ghz on boot. You will probably need to clear the CMOS and turn slow mode off. Boot into the bios and check the CPU speed again, making sure it's not locked to .8 Ghz and save the settings.

If it keeps turning slow mode on, then the CPU cooler is probably not working well, and you will need to re-seat the cooler with new thermal paste.

[ShadowCatz.8437]

@"Trismegistos.3046" said:Hello everyone.Today i installed GW2 after a long time.But it is unplayable.

No matter if i am at the city surrounded by players, or all alone,no matter if i set all graphic options on lowest/off or max,my FPS is between 5 and 22, and if i turn the camera quickly it even freezes for a bit.Max temperatures are 36c for CPU and 49c for GPU.

Installed fresh windows, all up to date, installed drivers/etc. Still the same.

This is my setup:Windows 10 64bit, on some SSDi7 670016GB DDR4 2133R9 390, monitor is a Dell U2311H

I am no expert, so if anyone could help me, i'd appreciate it.

Do you run GW2 in Fullscreen at the resolution that your display can show (1080P)? Windows Borderless in GW2 video settings will make MS Windows treat GW2 as any other Windowed app which might give it lower priority in Windows.

Have you updated your video cards drivers and checked MS Windows so it have the latest updates? With some updates through MS Windows Update there where also some changes to BIOS/UEFI through their MS Windows Update system to prevent some malicious exploit that have been made public. There is also possible bugs in MS Windows Update that have some experience and other not.

Here is a link to one of these: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497165/kb4497165-intel-microcode-updates

You don't have any other problems with other games or apps?

My own system have i5 4670K (now at around 4 GHz on all four core instead of 3.4 GHz or 3.7 GHz on single core), GTX 970 which is much like AMD 390 in performance (see link down where GTX 970, AMD R9 290, AMD R9 390 and R9 390X are being compared on single player games) and I have often around 30 FPS and my screen resolution is 3440 * 1440 pixel. Yours are with HT so you have same number of physical cores which each can work with two threads (8 in total).

Turning camera fast can seem to be lagging also for me, but it can be related to how GW2 fetches new data that have to be processed in video RAM (before it displayed). If you move camera around do you still have that effect or does it seem to vanish after the first seconds? Try in Option to disable all NPC and Player name tags (you can use a key bind to show each). Name tag seem in MMOs to put a strain on processing a video sometimes. I use Action Camera as default so when I look at a player or NPC it still show name for that PC or NPC.

Link for comparing R9 390, 390X, GTX 970 and R9 290:

All cards are very close in FPS - with variation around 10 FPS in some games other a bit more.

[Trismegistos.3046]

@"Diva.4706" said:Okay, looks like your CPU might be stuck in slow mode (there should be a switch on the motherboard to turn slow mode on/off). This is a feature to force the CPU to run at .8 Ghz on boot. You will probably need to clear the CMOS and turn slow mode off. Boot into the bios and check the CPU speed again, making sure it's not locked to .8 Ghz and save the settings.

If it keeps turning slow mode on, then the CPU cooler is probably not working well, and you will need to re-seat the cooler with new thermal paste.

ok, so i didnt have to do any of these.but i did find out a common problem with MSI mobos.apparently i had to disable the "Adaptive Thermal Monitor" setting.and now my CPU is not capped at 0.8ghz but 3.4 !!either way, i really want to thank you!! you did point me towards the right direction in a way. thanks a lot!

[Diva.4706]

Glad you got it working! Have fun in GW2 :)