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Optimization and performance


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I've been playing Guild Wars 2 on and off since the Beta, and performance seems to always be an issues with GW2.The low FPS and stuttering gives me headache and makes me feel really sick.

Back in the beta tests, the game ran horribly bad, I was having 10-15 FPS most of the time.I bought a new computer, and when the game released I was pretty okay with its performance, with around 50 FPS.

I took a pause for a long time from GW2, and when I came back I had really bad performance once again.I eventually bought a new high-end GPU, and GW2 got a decent boost, I was mostly hovering around 40-50 FPS.

I took another pause, and once again, when I came back, my FPS was down to around 20, at the same locations I was having 40-50 FPS before.I bought a Ati HD 390x and was back up to 40-50 FPS.

I've been away from the game since and recently came back because of Path of Fire.I've already bought a new computer, much more powerful than my last one (that ran GW2 fine)And what do you know! HeheGame now runs horribly bad, around 15-20 FPS at some locations.

Why is this?It's all the same maps I played back in the release version of the game that ran really great, but my computer is now 2-3 times better but I'm having really low FPS.The Path of Fire maps are the worst when it comes to performance.And I remember someone mentioning there being a team specifically working on the optimization and performance of the game, is that team still around?

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That doesn't explain why I have lower FPS today with a rather beefy computer, compared to 5 years ago with an average computer, with the same graphical settings (medium) on the same maps. :confounded:The same maps today are almost empty, there were a lot more players on them back when GW2 was released.My friend plays on a laptop, and it was quite capable of playing GW2 a few years ago, but today it can barely start the game.

I'm on a high-end computer, I can play most games on Ultra in 4K, but GW2 I have to run at Medium settings and hardly ever reach 50 FPS hehe. :lol:Guess I'll have to switch to Low on some settings. :cry:

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I'm on a Ryzen 7 1800X CPU with a nVidia GTX 1080 GPU, using 16GB DDR4 3600 mhz RAM.CPU usage is at around 10% and about 20% memory usage (even though that's tricky to actually calculate)CPU runs at around 50-60 degrees during heaviest load.

http://hezkore.com/captures/speedfan_515x85_u1506718302.png

I got better performance using my old ATI card.

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Your GPU won't matter much for this game.I have the same GPU and an Intel 6th gen and I have between 50fps/60fps in 4k.I doubt the Ryzen is that bad.

I had performances issues after overclocking once (bad overclocking values) so check that if you overclocked.Try in fullscreen and windowed, see if there's any difference as well.

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@Hezkore.9568 said:I'm on a Ryzen 7 1800X CPU with a nVidia GTX 1080 GPU, using 16GB DDR4 3600 mhz RAM.CPU usage is at around 10% and about 20% memory usage (even though that's tricky to actually calculate)CPU runs at around 50-60 degrees during heaviest load.

http://hezkore.com/captures/speedfan_515x85_u1506718302.png

I got better performance using my old ATI card.

I'm running a 4790k at 4.8 GHz and a pair of overclocked GTX 970s in SLI. Our systems are fairly close in performance, and most of my settings are as high as they go. You are running at 4K compared to my 1080p, but I'm using supersampling which doesn't reduce my framerate at all. Try setting shadows to none, and character model limit and quality to lowest. You should see a dramatic rise in your framerate, and then you can start raising your other settings again until the framerate starts dropping. That's what your GPU is actually capable of. The settings I mentioned are the ones mostly affected by your CPU. You will have to lower those settings if you want better performance (character model quality imo has the best result with the least reduction in graphics quality) but most of the others can probably be raised from where they are now.

As to the optimization and performance team, I'm sure they're working diligently and making a good bit of progress. But the artists and programmers responsible for improving the graphics are working too, and over the long run these improvements require better hardware. The average player is using much better hardware today than five years ago, so of course Anet is going to take advantage of that.

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@Larenc.1269 said:Switch to Nivid on your graphics they are by far better.

Depends on the card. Saying one brand is blanket better then the other is incorrect and dumb.

Also cpu needs to be at least 4.8ghz to handle the max load guildwars dishes out [and maintain 100+fps]

Nothing out there can keep 100+ FPS all the time, and your CPU matters just as much as (if not more then, to some degree) the clockrate

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  • 2 months later...

@Hezkore.9568 said:I've been playing Guild Wars 2 on and off since the Beta, and performance seems to always be an issues with GW2.The low FPS and stuttering gives me headache and makes me feel really sick.

Back in the beta tests, the game ran horribly bad, I was having 10-15 FPS most of the time.I bought a new computer, and when the game released I was pretty okay with its performance, with around 50 FPS.

I took a pause for a long time from GW2, and when I came back I had really bad performance once again.I eventually bought a new high-end GPU, and GW2 got a decent boost, I was mostly hovering around 40-50 FPS.

I took another pause, and once again, when I came back, my FPS was down to around 20, at the same locations I was having 40-50 FPS before.I bought a Ati HD 390x and was back up to 40-50 FPS.

I've been away from the game since and recently came back because of Path of Fire.I've already bought a new computer, much more powerful than my last one (that ran GW2 fine)And what do you know! HeheGame now runs horribly bad, around 15-20 FPS at some locations.

Why is this?It's all the same maps I played back in the release version of the game that ran really great, but my computer is now 2-3 times better but I'm having really low FPS.The Path of Fire maps are the worst when it comes to performance.And I remember someone mentioning there being a team specifically working on the optimization and performance of the game, is that team still around?

Most of these answers are plain wrong and show a complete lack of computer science or basic programming knowledge.

The problem comes from the limitations of the game engine and how the game processes instructions. GW2 uses old technology, Directx9 Technology, this technology was released in 2002. It has been 15 years since that time and many improvements have been made. Directx9 will not take advantage of the most modern hardware. That is just how the engine was coded and designed, it would be a hard task to ask the developers to modify an old 2002 engine to use hyperthreading, multiple cores, or better instruction sets. Furthermore, for those who played games or did some reading, Directx9 was an awful game engine, it was filled with bugs, inefficiencies, and was just a plain mess.

Take into account that ArenaNet was able to upgrade the graphical capabilities of GW2 using such an old engine is quite a feat. But like all things, it comes at a cost. Bigger worlds, better particle effects, shadows, all these extra settings were NOT designed for such an engine. The way the GPU and CPU processes these instructions are completely different from DirectX11 and 12. In more laymen terms, they are very inefficient. In Computer Science, there are thousands of ways to do the same task, but some are better and faster than others.

For example, shadows are rendered differently in GW2 compared to World of Warcraft. Because of the combination of old engine, increasing graphical intensively, the number of players in GW2, and calculations of combat, movement, etc at the same time. The engine just cannot keep up.

I think most people do not understand, that your computer DOES not fully utilize the hardware you buy without the proper software. In this case, GW2 is using a 2002 engine trying to run an MMO made in 2012. Anyone experiencing lag should know this is normal for a game made with such a terrible design flaw.

World of Warcraft was able to bypass this by upgrading their game from Dx9 to Dx11. But it means ArenaNet does not find it rewarding enough to upgrade. Many people believe changing the 32bit to 64bit would help, wrong.

Increasing the bit size, or instruction size from 32bit to 64bit to process information ONLY works if there was the horsepower from the game engine to use that information. It would not matter if I have a 10-inch yogurt tube or a 20-inch yogurt tube because I would not be able to consume the second one faster. All the 32bit to 64bit upgrade did, was increase the length and size of the instructions and increased the available RAM or registers to store such information. It did NOT increase the speed or improved the way those instructions were processed.

So, in the end, GW2 is a poorly designed game from the ground up. This was a design decision that has completely bitten ArenaNet and will not be fixed unless they are willing to COMPLETELY rewrite their game for newer engines.

Good luck.

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Sounds like you went from an older computer with probably a 1080 monitor and now using a 4K, with an AMD CPU, the new stuff is nice, but still behind Intel in single thread. The game engine does not make use of lots of threads like many other games do, as such GW2 is limited to about 3 total threads, the OS will spread it out, but look at thread use from the game and not core load, you will find a single thread reaching into the 90% thread utilization, when this happens, FPS will cap or drop, but total CPU and GPU load will be low, it is because this thread for the game becomes the limiting factor and everything else is bottle necked around it. The only way to help with this is to OC the CPU so that thread has more cycles to work with.

I see solid gains at 5Ghz vs stock. Even though total CPU load ends up being lower, I see a slight jump in GPU usage, showing that CPU is being the bottle neck, GPU is often under 50% load. This is what happens when you base a newer game off of a version of a really, really old game engine and try to "make" it work with lots of new functions. This being a limit of the core engine from my understanding, would require significant engine changes if not a total rewrite. Something this far in the game is just not going to happen.

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@iLG.2019 said:

@Hezkore.9568 said:I've been playing Guild Wars 2 on and off since the Beta, and performance seems to always be an issues with GW2.The low FPS and stuttering gives me headache and makes me feel really sick.

Back in the beta tests, the game ran horribly bad, I was having 10-15 FPS most of the time.I bought a new computer, and when the game released I was pretty okay with its performance, with around 50 FPS.

I took a pause for a long time from GW2, and when I came back I had really bad performance once again.I eventually bought a new high-end GPU, and GW2 got a decent boost, I was mostly hovering around 40-50 FPS.

I took another pause, and once again, when I came back, my FPS was down to around 20, at the same locations I was having 40-50 FPS before.I bought a Ati HD 390x and was back up to 40-50 FPS.

I've been away from the game since and recently came back because of Path of Fire.I've already bought a new computer, much more powerful than my last one (that ran GW2 fine)And what do you know! HeheGame now runs horribly bad, around 15-20 FPS at some locations.

Why is this?It's all the same maps I played back in the release version of the game that ran really great, but my computer is now 2-3 times better but I'm having really low FPS.The Path of Fire maps are the worst when it comes to performance.And I remember someone mentioning there being a team specifically working on the optimization and performance of the game, is that team still around?

Most of these answers are plain wrong and show a complete lack of computer science or basic programming knowledge.

The problem comes from the limitations of the game engine and how the game processes instructions. GW2 uses old technology, Directx9 Technology, this technology was released in 2002. It has been 15 years since that time and many improvements have been made. Directx9 will not take advantage of the most modern hardware. That is just how the engine was coded and designed, it would be a hard task to ask the developers to modify an old 2002 engine to use hyperthreading, multiple cores, or better instruction sets. Furthermore, for those who played games or did some reading, Directx9 was an awful game engine, it was filled with bugs, inefficiencies, and was just a plain mess.

Take into account that ArenaNet was able to upgrade the graphical capabilities of GW2 using such an old engine is quite a feat. But like all things, it comes at a cost. Bigger worlds, better particle effects, shadows, all these extra settings were NOT designed for such an engine. The way the GPU and CPU processes these instructions are completely different from DirectX11 and 12. In more laymen terms, they are very inefficient. In Computer Science, there are thousands of ways to do the same task, but some are better and faster than others.

For example, shadows are rendered differently in GW2 compared to World of Warcraft. Because of the combination of old engine, increasing graphical intensively, the number of players in GW2, and calculations of combat, movement, etc at the same time. The engine just cannot keep up.

I think most people do not understand, that your computer DOES not fully utilize the hardware you buy without the proper software. In this case, GW2 is using a 2002 engine trying to run an MMO made in 2012. Anyone experiencing lag should know this is normal for a game made with such a terrible design flaw.

World of Warcraft was able to bypass this by upgrading their game from Dx9 to Dx11. But it means ArenaNet does not find it rewarding enough to upgrade. Many people believe changing the 32bit to 64bit would help, wrong.

Increasing the bit size, or instruction size from 32bit to 64bit to process information ONLY works if there was the horsepower from the game engine to use that information. It would not matter if I have a 10-inch yogurt tube or a 20-inch yogurt tube because I would not be able to consume the second one faster. All the 32bit to 64bit upgrade did, was increase the length and size of the instructions and increased the available RAM or registers to store such information. It did NOT increase the speed or improved the way those instructions were processed.

So, in the end, GW2 is a poorly designed game from the ground up. This was a design decision that has completely bitten ArenaNet and will not be fixed unless they are willing to COMPLETELY rewrite their game for newer engines.

Good luck.

To further enhance the topic, this is from an Intel Developer regarding the graphical pipeline of games. He writes, "n addition, DirectX 9 had specific memory constraints. As a result, it limited the number of textures that games could use to improve the appearance of their graphics. To get around this limitation, developers often had to apply textures in multiple passes. Loading extra textures made their games more CPU bound. Making multiple passes through the Texture Filtering stage of the pipeline caused games to be GPU bound."

Source: https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/high-performance-games-addressing-performance-bottlenecks-with-directx-gpus-and-cpus

Now, do you understand why the game uses more CPU than GPU? The single core bounded GW2 wants to pretend to be a multi-core processor. It tries to render the game using one core multiple times to display the large environments you see. It is almost like rendering a jig-saw puzzle with 1 person and expect it to be smooth.

Compound this problem with the memory limitations, and you have yourself a disaster.

This is even more complicated with different CPUs, as all CPUs are different have different pipelines of processing information/data. Some CPUs might not be work as well as others using directx9. This is why GW2 has a hard time appealing to the hard-core fan-base. If your game cannot run smoothly compared to the competition do not expect players to stay and play your game, no matter how many good features you have.

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You may want to run GPUZ to make sure your 1080 is running at x16 3.0. As for the CPU Temps, remember that Ryzen CPUs with the 'X' branding are reported 15-20* C higher than they actually are.

I have a Ryzen 5 1600X, 16GB Team Vulcan @ 3000, RX 470 4GB and pull 40-60FPS in 4K with vertical sync on, 20-40FPS when in a zerg or LA.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@moonstarmac.4603 said:You may want to run GPUZ to make sure your 1080 is running at x16 3.0. As for the CPU Temps, remember that Ryzen CPUs with the 'X' branding are reported 15-20* C higher than they actually are.

I have a Ryzen 5 1600X, 16GB Team Vulcan @ 3000, RX 470 4GB and pull 40-60FPS in 4K with vertical sync on, 20-40FPS when in a zerg or LA.

You're on windows 10 by any chance?

@"Hezkore.9568" said:I'm on a Ryzen 7 1800X CPU with a nVidia GTX 1080 GPU, using 16GB DDR4 3600 mhz RAM.CPU usage is at around 10% and about 20% memory usage (even though that's tricky to actually calculate)CPU runs at around 50-60 degrees during heaviest load.

http://hezkore.com/captures/speedfan_515x85_u1506718302.png

I got better performance using my old ATI card.

I get the same behavior on windows 7/8.1 (both pro) with r7-1700x. My lowest cpu usage was around 4%.Fps drops from 58-60 (in Desert Highlands) to 40-45 every 1-2 seconds while moving around. If i stay put everything is ok unless something (npc/players) are moving around.. Average CPU usage is around 20-25%

Switching to w10 pro i've seen lowest cpu useage around 10-12% and average CPU usage was 30-50% while running around. i have absolutely no issue with it on W10 Pro.I have no clue how to fix it cause i really want to get rid of w10. The game definitely use cpu a lot more on w10 than w7/w8.1The only overclock i have on my system is 103 for bclk, DOCP profile to get memory around the XMP values and multiplier at 34 (instead of auto). CPU voltage/whatever is default.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I also run a high end system and have been plagued by fps drops/spikes and the occasional screen tearing until recently.

The suggestions I am going to put here I have got from other posters all over the web so will not be taking credit for it.

CPU Affinity or CPU Binding: (This applies to CPU's that have more than 4 cores.)Processor affinity, or CPU pinning, enables the binding and unbinding of a process or a thread to a central processing unit (CPU) or a range of CPUs, so that the process or thread will execute only on the designated CPU or CPUs rather than any CPU.

As mentioned by iLG, GW2 runs on Directx 9.0 which only focuses on 4 cores. If you have a processor with 8 cores or more, your system will more than likely be stuttering as Directx 9.0 is bouncing between these 8 cores.There is a way to subsequently get your system to use only 4 cores for a particular program.Load up GW2 -> Load up Task Manager -> More Details (bottom of task manager) -> Details (its a tab at the top) -> find gw2.exe -> Right click on it and choose Set Affinity -> disable cores 1-3-5-7 by un-ticking them (and all remaining cores after 7).You basically want to tell your system to run gw2 under 4 cores.

There are applications out there that can set Affinity for programs permanently. Just google Setting Affinity Permanently.

There is also a theory that turning off HyperThreading will also improve system performance. I havent tested this yet.

Watch your systemTemperatures are a key thing to watch on your system. Software may be telling you that your system CPU is running at a cool 55C, however, that is usually the package temperature. Make sure you have software installed that is telling you what each core temperature is running at. You will be surprised at how 1 core can spike to 75-80c which will then cause an occasional throttle which then creates the stuttering.

Know your settingsThere are a few great youtube videos that explain what each Guild Wars 2 setting does and how it effects your CPU and GPU. Do a search on youtube for optimize gw2 graphics and watch the video by SimNationTV. He explains all of the settings and how they are used, even down to how sound quality can effect your fps.

My last one, which I found out recently, and made me giggle:

Windowed Full ScreenI found that if I hoped from wp to wp in windowed full screen mode my fps would drop down to around 25fps and never recover. If I ALT-TAB to another application, and then ALT-TAB back to GW2, the FPS would recover and stay at a steady 100fps. Jump to another wp, and same thing would happen. If anyone can explain this, then please feel free.

So these are the things that really stabilized my system, and I really hope this all help's some of you as I know how frustrating it can be.

Cheers,

Bumble.

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i fixed my stuttering on windows 8.1 by dropping the shadow from ultra to high.I've tested graphic settings from top to bottom. I've stopped at shadow setting since was the 1st that resolved my problem.Rest of the settings are from best appearance minus depth blur cause i don't like it.

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@Kvasimil.5146 said:Game needs DX11 support, otherwise we can't expect more fps.

The Dev's have even commented on it saying how that works will not improve fps or a very miner amount. Normally there's so many underlying options on our side of things that will affect it, from plain ol internet connection to hardware to settings from 4 or 5 different places. While DX11 can help with newer games in some area's, gw2 would not be one of them, let alone the time spent on that could be used way better elsewhere.

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@Jwake.7013 said:While DX11 can help with newer games in some area's, gw2 would not be one of them

You don't know that. With effort put into this the overall performance would most likely see an increase going from dx9 to dx11 (or dx12).

the time spent on that could be used way better elsewhere

The most tiresome argument ever, repeated far too often.

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  • 4 weeks later...

@"BumbleBee.8456" said:CPU Affinity or CPU Binding: (This applies to CPU's that have more than 4 cores.)Processor affinity, or CPU pinning, enables the binding and unbinding of a process or a thread to a central processing unit (CPU) or a range of CPUs, so that the process or thread will execute only on the designated CPU or CPUs rather than any CPU.

As mentioned by iLG, GW2 runs on Directx 9.0 which only focuses on 4 cores. If you have a processor with 8 cores or more, your system will more than likely be stuttering as Directx 9.0 is bouncing between these 8 cores.There is a way to subsequently get your system to use only 4 cores for a particular program.Load up GW2 -> Load up Task Manager -> More Details (bottom of task manager) -> Details (its a tab at the top) -> find gw2.exe -> Right click on it and choose Set Affinity -> disable cores 1-3-5-7 by un-ticking them (and all remaining cores after 7).You basically want to tell your system to run gw2 under 4 cores.

There are applications out there that can set Affinity for programs permanently. Just google Setting Affinity Permanently.

I found that the best way to set affinity permanently is with a shortcut rather than an app. This walkthrough was the best:

https://www.eightforums.com/threads/cpu-affinity-shortcut-for-a-program-create-in-windows.40339/

Using that, I was able to calculate that the hexadecimal number for setting my 8-core CPU to use cores 0, 2, 4, and 6 is 55, so my shortcut's Target looked like this:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "Gw2-64.exe" /affinity 55 "C\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2\Gw2-64.exe" -autologin -mapLoadinfo

If you have more or less than 8 cores, you will need to change the 55 to something else, and you might have to change other things if you haven't installed in a default location or are not using the 64-bit client. And yes, the Guild Wars 2 command line arguments do work if you put them at the end like that.

Edit: I used to crash after several hours of playing. it has been 11 days since I started running GW2 this way, and I have not crashed since.

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  • 3 months later...

Hi all, i got a good result disabling Game Bar (windows 10 feature)

during the last month i was having very low fps. i tryed to change settings, i tryed cpu affinity.nothing changed my fps, cpu and gpu was working 50% ish, so they were not really overworking..when tonight i reached 9 fps during a big fight in wvw i remembered there is something more i can try:

if you have windows 10, check and disable:

  • "Game DVR" (mine was already disabled)
  • background recording
  • "Game Bar"I was having "Game Bar" active.after disabling "Game Bar" from XBOX -> Config -> Game DVR -> (here depends on windows version. the configuration can be here or if you have an updated windows version you can find a link to "Windows Configuration" -> Game Bar: Disable / Game DVR: Disable

after this small change my fps never went under 20 during fights in wvw.my pc: Windows 10 version 1803 / CPU intel i7-4770 3.40 GHz / RAM 32 Gb / GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

Hope my experience helps someone.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anet could spend some time on optimising the game rather than releasing new episodes/expansions so people can actually enjoy playing them with proper FPS.Having same issue as well, GPU barely uses 30-40% while gw2 on, CPU always bottleneck @100% 3.5ghz with seriously awful FPS..

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