Bad performance with new AMD Ryzen 9 3900x

[Braile.3894]

Hello, I switched today from my 3 year old intel core I7 6700k to a brand new AMD Ryzen 9 3900x.My problem is, performance dropped a lot.In other applications i got performance gains or atleast the performance wasn’t noticeable worse.

Is there any workaround or is there a optimization patch planned?I tried to assign the cores separately to gw2 but that didn’t help.

[Tony.8659]

I'm going to upgrade my 2700x to a 3900x as soon as I find any in stock. But I totally blame the developers at Arenanet. They refuse to even try to make this game use more than what it seems like 2 cores? I know it's an older game still looks amazing but come on, we have CPU's with 6 - 8 cores out for quite a while and now 12 cores and in Sept the 3950x with 16 cores. They need this game to make use of more then 4 cores. I would like to see it use 6 - 12 cores, if it did I'm sure the game would run so much better. Come on Arenanet, put more effort into giving this a shot, there is a program out there sort of like a hack that uses DX 12: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/ak0mqs/d912pxy_directx12_for_guild_wars_2/But I don't feel like it's stable enough to use plus I use SweetFX to make this game look so much better, and don't want any conflicts with that DX12 program. So sorry Braile this is how it is for now, it's not your CPU it's this game which is unfortunate, and will be unfortunate for me as well when I upgrade. I'm sure Arenanet can do way better than this example video I posted but there is a difference between DX9 vs DX12 performance.Example on how DX12 uses more cores:

[XenoSpyro.1780]

Use the Direct3D 12 wrapper suggested above.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

DirectX 9 isn't multi-threaded, and ArenaNet can't just magically fix it. They would have to rewrite the game engine itself.

[Tony.8659]

But Arenanet can invest in the game and try to use a similar approach like the dx12 program I linked. I'm sure they can do a much better job with that. I mean if WoW can do it, I'm sure Arenanet can do something. Example of WoW with DX12: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/278587-new-world-of-warcraft-optimizations-send-directx-12-performance-soaring

[Braile.3894]

GPU and CPU are both used barly.I also have discord and chrome with multiple tabs including twitch in the background.Why is the Game not using the available resources, i get it it can only handel 4 (?) cores but somehow they are not even used at full potential.

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@Hannelore.8153 said:DirectX 9 isn't multi-threaded, and ArenaNet can't just magically fix it. They would have to rewrite the game engine itself.

No, they wouldn't.

Direct3D is an API, it's a standard of how the game engine talks the GPU, without it the GPU would not know what to do with the information or calls being made. A game engine covers everything, porting a game over to DX12 does not mean a full engine rewrite. That is not to say it is easy, or just a simple click of a button, but more than doable. However GW2 used DX9 when DX11 had already been out for some time, and DX10 was already end of life, the main reason they stuck with this was xbox of the time used a modified version of DX9, so porting the game over to it would be very simple (read cheap). And even after launch they had plans to release on xbox, they then came to realize that they were never going to get the performance needed to release there, as unlike PC, to release something on xbox means you have to hit given performance metrics with very limited HW, and they are not even willing to put in the time and money to optimize the game for PC with higher end HW no less xbox.

@"Braile.3894" said:

GPU and CPU are both used barly.I also have discord and chrome with multiple tabs including twitch in the background.Why is the Game not using the available resources, i get it it can only handel 4 (?) cores but somehow they are not even used at full potential.

They are used, cores are not threads. A single thread can use up to a full cores clock cycles, however the OS and mobo can move that load around, it does this so a single core doesn't get super hot or taxed, so it spreads it over many physical cores. If only a single core was used until it was 100% and then moved on to the next, those first cores would jump in temp and boost clocks are based on temps, so it would end up reducing the clock speed on that core, actually hurting performance. Some programs can lock them selves to a single physical core, but doing so yourself will not gain you anything unless there are some bugs or very VERY old software.

Upgrading to the new AMD from a 6700k was, honestly pointless for GW2 and just about any other game, if you wanted higher gains, you should have OCed the 6700k. As the 6700k is about the same single threaded performance as the 3900x, as shown by almost all gaming reviews of the CPU, where it only gains ground in DX12 games over the 6700k, as DX12 can make use of the extra cores.

With that said, you should not be seeing "performance drop a lot", it should be about the same. Was the 6700k OCed? Are you sure you have all the settings the same? Do you have screens of the fps you were getting on the old PC? If so, have you gone to the same location with the same settings, looking in the same direction and see what your FPS are? What are the temps on your CPU?

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Uhm, I'm a game developer myself, since nearly 20 years, so there's no real point in trying to correct me.

I can tell you that the graphics engine in GW2 consists of thousands upon thousands of files, mostly shader scripts, including duplicate versions for many different but similar hardware configurations, in order to minimise visual glitches. Its not as easy as it may seem, because it was an old game, ported from the GW1 engine (2001), we're talking Warcraft 3-era technology at its base.

It would take them hundreds of man-hours in order to rewrite all of the shader code-let alone the graphics engine itself, to a new API version, which they have stated themselves is why there is no OpenGL engine in the Windows version (e.g for use on Wine), because despite one being developed for the modern Mac client, just using an API is only a small piece of the puzzle.

We're talking about a game in which they can't even add backpiece and weapons dyes because its a hardcoded graphics pipeline, where something that most people would consider simple has been stated to be "impossible", let alone anything more complex.

[Braile.3894]

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:DirectX 9 isn't multi-threaded, and ArenaNet can't just magically fix it. They would have to rewrite the game engine itself.

No, they wouldn't.

Direct3D is an API, it's a standard of how the game engine talks the GPU, without it the GPU would not know what to do with the information or calls being made. A game engine covers everything, porting a game over to DX12 does not mean a full engine rewrite. That is not to say it is easy, or just a simple click of a button, but more than doable. However GW2 used DX9 when DX11 had already been out for some time, and DX10 was already end of life, the main reason they stuck with this was xbox of the time used a modified version of DX9, so porting the game over to it would be very simple (read cheap). And even after launch they had plans to release on xbox, they then came to realize that they were never going to get the performance needed to release there, as unlike PC, to release something on xbox means you have to hit given performance metrics with very limited HW, and they are not even willing to put in the time and money to optimize the game for PC with higher end HW no less xbox.

@"Braile.3894" said:

GPU and CPU are both used barly.I also have discord and chrome with multiple tabs including twitch in the background.Why is the Game not using the available resources, i get it it can only handel 4 (?) cores but somehow they are not even used at full potential.

They are used, cores are not threads. A single thread can use up to a full cores clock cycles, however the OS and mobo can move that load around, it does this so a single core doesn't get super hot or taxed, so it spreads it over many physical cores. If only a single core was used until it was 100% and then moved on to the next, those first cores would jump in temp and boost clocks are based on temps, so it would end up reducing the clock speed on that core, actually hurting performance. Some programs can lock them selves to a single physical core, but doing so yourself will not gain you anything unless there are some bugs or very VERY old software.

Upgrading to the new AMD from a 6700k was, honestly pointless for GW2 and just about any other game, if you wanted higher gains, you should have OCed the 6700k. As the 6700k is about the same single threaded performance as the 3900x, as shown by almost all gaming reviews of the CPU, where it only gains ground in DX12 games over the 6700k, as DX12 can make use of the extra cores.

With that said, you should not be seeing "performance drop a lot", it should be about the same. Was the 6700k OCed? Are you sure you have all the settings the same? Do you have screens of the fps you were getting on the old PC? If so, have you gone to the same location with the same settings, looking in the same direction and see what your FPS are? What are the temps on your CPU?

Yeah same settings, gpu and ram was used with my old cpu.The 6700k had a max oc of 4.8 ghz but most of the time it was at 4.2 ghz because of heating problems lately.The Benchmarks i did back than were with 4.2 ghz.My Benchmark area was in Amnoon looking at the water and some rocks basically, take a look at the screenshot below.With the 6700k ive got 120 fps there now iam getting 82 fps.

IPC of the 3900x is higher at the same clock speeds than a 9900k and again higher than a 6700k and the new 3900x is clocking around 4.1 - 4.3 ghz atm.

But i need to note while my high fps are less now my low fps are way up, playing the boss event atm i get higher fps ive normally did with 6700k, the whole gameplay feels smoother overall.

[Tony.8659]

Well they can make something like that DX12 program I linked. It would be much better if Arenanet made that in-house. Being that it does run much better with the DX12 wrapper. Like I posted earlier WoW is much older than GW1 and GW2 yet Blizzard has the game using DX12. Anet just needs to make some kind of official DX12 wrapper. Hell I would be willing to fund that via Kick Starter if they did that :)

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@Braile.3894 said:

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:DirectX 9 isn't multi-threaded, and ArenaNet can't just magically fix it. They would have to rewrite the game engine itself.

No, they wouldn't.

Direct3D is an API, it's a standard of how the game engine talks the GPU, without it the GPU would not know what to do with the information or calls being made. A game engine covers everything, porting a game over to DX12 does not mean a full engine rewrite. That is not to say it is easy, or just a simple click of a button, but more than doable. However GW2 used DX9 when DX11 had already been out for some time, and DX10 was already end of life, the main reason they stuck with this was xbox of the time used a modified version of DX9, so porting the game over to it would be very simple (read cheap). And even after launch they had plans to release on xbox, they then came to realize that they were never going to get the performance needed to release there, as unlike PC, to release something on xbox means you have to hit given performance metrics with very limited HW, and they are not even willing to put in the time and money to optimize the game for PC with higher end HW no less xbox.

@Braile.3894 said:

GPU and CPU are both used barly.I also have discord and chrome with multiple tabs including twitch in the background.Why is the Game not using the available resources, i get it it can only handel 4 (?) cores but somehow they are not even used at full potential.

They are used, cores are not threads. A single thread can use up to a full cores clock cycles, however the OS and mobo can move that load around, it does this so a single core doesn't get super hot or taxed, so it spreads it over many physical cores. If only a single core was used until it was 100% and then moved on to the next, those first cores would jump in temp and boost clocks are based on temps, so it would end up reducing the clock speed on that core, actually hurting performance. Some programs can lock them selves to a single physical core, but doing so yourself will not gain you anything unless there are some bugs or very VERY old software.

Upgrading to the new AMD from a 6700k was, honestly pointless for GW2 and just about any other game, if you wanted higher gains, you should have OCed the 6700k. As the 6700k is about the same single threaded performance as the 3900x, as shown by almost all gaming reviews of the CPU, where it only gains ground in DX12 games over the 6700k, as DX12 can make use of the extra cores.

With that said, you should not be seeing "performance drop a lot", it should be about the same. Was the 6700k OCed? Are you sure you have all the settings the same? Do you have screens of the fps you were getting on the old PC? If so, have you gone to the same location with the same settings, looking in the same direction and see what your FPS are? What are the temps on your CPU?

Yeah same settings, gpu and ram was used with my old cpu.The 6700k had a max oc of 4.8 ghz but most of the time it was at 4.2 ghz because of heating problems lately.The Benchmarks i did back than were with 4.2 ghz.My Benchmark area was in Amnoon looking at the water and some rocks basically, take a look at the screenshot below.

With the 6700k ive got 120 fps there now iam getting 82 fps.

IPC of the 3900x is higher at the same clock speeds than a 9900k and again higher than a 6700k and the new 3900x is clocking around 4.1 - 4.3 ghz atm.

But i need to note while my high fps are less now my low fps are way up, playing the boss event atm i get higher fps ive normally did with 6700k, the whole gameplay feels smoother overall.

Something is going on for that large of a drop. Though AMD does still have bugs they are working out, this could be one of them, which is why it's good to wait before jumping on new gear. Also, it does not have higher IPC, depending on workload, they trade blows with each other when locked core/clock speeds are used, IPC will never be the same across the board, saying something like "IPC is higher on the AMD" is just not understanding how it works.

To be blunt, the 3900x was a bad choice for GW2, it is, at most places that have it in stock, higher in price than the 9900k, which has been out for a while now, but the 9900k clocks MUCH higher, real world you will probably never see much past the 4.3Ghz you are hitting, with higher load it will drop even more, while the 9900k will hit 5.1Ghz on its own, my own 9900k will do a 5Ghz all core OC. Now, if you do mixed work loads and do production work, the 3900x is a solid choice for the extra threads, but for gaming, the 9900k is still king. Every review out there shows this as well, not sure why people are buying these large threaded lower clocking CPU's and expecting upgrades from Intel chips. I saw streamers do this when threadripper came out, and they didn't understand why their frames tanked.

@Tony.8659 said:Well they can make something like that DX12 program I linked. It would be much better if Arenanet made that in-house. Being that it does run much better with the DX12 wrapper. Like I posted earlier WoW is much older than GW1 and GW2 yet Blizzard has the game using DX12. Anet just needs to make some kind of official DX12 wrapper. Hell I would be willing to fund that via Kick Starter if they did that :)

Not really. The wrapper is very buggy, as one would expect. The gains are also only on lowend systems for the most part, as it offloads some of the work from the CPU. The guy did a great job with it, but it's far from something you would want to support on a mass scale for people who know nothing about computers, as most people who use it or even know about it, are going to have a better understanding of how to do things on their own.

Myself as an example, with a 9900k OCed to 5Ghz, it DROPS 60FPS off of my normal FPS of 110-180, 110 being in fights and 180 just roaming around in WvW or somewhere nothing much is going on. While with the wrapper I see upper 60's to 80FPS max. This is something even the guy coding this states, most mid-high end systems will not see gains and might even have issues.

Anet would need to port the engine over to DX12, while it would not mean a full engine rewrite, it would still mean a lot of work. At this point they would have little monetary reason to do such a thing, as it would mean hiring new people and lots of hours, for a game that has been out so long and on the down trend it would probably never have any ROI to be worth it for them. The next GW maybe, assuming there is one. WoW is not the same in that WoW is a subscription based game, so making constant improvements to the game will bring in new people as well as keep older ones, which means more money, while GW2, they have already bought the game. I would not hold my breath for GW2, outside of maybe a stand alone expansion, to ever get DX12. I would hope GW3 would be based on a different engine, as the engine they are using now is extremely old at this point.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Braile.3894 said:GPU and CPU are both used barly.

The 2nd and 5th threads on your last row are used quite a lot, especially the 5th, and that's the problem with the game.

[Nokomis.5076]

just a side note:

@Tony.8659 said:Like I posted earlier WoW is much older than GW1 and GW2

Much older than GW2 which came out 2012 maybe, but GW1 came out only one year after WoW, in Europe even in the same year (WoW: Februar 2005, Guild Wars: April 2005)

[KrHome.1920]

@Braile.3894 said:IPC of the 3900x is higher at the same clock speeds than a 9900kNo it's not. And that's your problem. You think AMD is competitive to Skylake / Coffee Lake (both is bascally the same architecture) in terms of IPC. But I can not blame you as most hardware reviewers are not competent enough to write a good CPU test. The Intel IPC is still 10% higher than AMD in games. Add the higher clock speeds of the CPUs (up to 5GHz, while AMD clocks at least 10% lower) and you get your 20% performance difference.

Another important factor is RAM speed. If you read a review, that compares a 3900X @ DDR4 3200 with an i7 6700K @ DDR4 2133, just because these are the official memory specs, while in every practical scenario the Intel CPU is combined with XMP RAM @ 3200 MHz or above, you might get the impression that AMD is competitive in terms of IPC as you cripple the Intel IPC by at least 10% just because of the slower RAM.

Last but not least there are some older games that have problems with AMDs Infinity Fabric (that connects the core modules) and drop significantly when facing that architecture (not saying that this is the case in GW2 because I simply don't know).

[Braile.3894]

OK guys I didn't want to start another Intel vs AMD war.As I stated in my first post in every other instance I've got a higher performance than before.

Now I want to know if anet is working on this, can they even provide a solution or is it that I can't buy any CPU in 2019 that can run gw2 smooth all the time? And if not in what year is it possible to run gw2 smooth that it doesn't drop to 30 fps.

[SkyShroud.2865]

Actually no.For pure gaming performance, 9700k and up are better than amd.For mainstream users, Ryzen 5 3600 is the choice, nothing intel offer at that price range can beat that. Afterall, one need to go for 9700k for performance which is like 80% price difference for 10% more performance, that's crazy.On modern games benchmark 6700k indeed is inferior to Ryzen 5 3600 and above. However, since gw2 is made with an ancient piece of crap, it is very likely that the game is not optimized at all for amd but optimized heavily for intel.

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@Braile.3894 said:OK guys I didn't want to start another Intel vs AMD war.As I stated in my first post in every other instance I've got a higher performance than before.

Now I want to know if anet is working on this, can they even provide a solution or is it that I can't buy any CPU in 2019 that can run gw2 smooth all the time? And if not in what year is it possible to run gw2 smooth that it doesn't drop to 30 fps.

It's not an AMD vs Intel war. We have had a winner in that war for some time now, and it's Intel. From a pure CPU limited gaming stand point.

Your choice of CPU was poor for GW2, a 9900k would have been a better choice. The fact you get better performance than your old rig in other games has nothing to do with GW2 and it being single thread bottlenecked because it is based on the DX9 API. As at this point you are talking application specific, where for some time, Intel has had the crown in single threaded performance, in both IPC and clock speed, AMD has been catching up in IPC and in most cases now matches them, but is still behind in clock speed. This matters most in gaming, workstation use the new AMD chips are the way to go once all the bugs are worked out of the new platform.

However, for gaming, the 9900k is still top dog, it's also cheaper than the 3900x. If performance in GW2 matters a lot to you, return the system you have now and get an i7 9xxx or 9900k.

So no, anet is NOT working on this. The only way to have a large gain from more CPU cores is to move to DX12, which is something they are not going to do. And yes, there are many CPUs you can buy in 2019 that will play the game smooth, I and others have told you, but you don't want to hear it.

[SkyShroud.2865]

You know, disabling the hyperthreading or what amd called smt can possibly increase the performance for gw2.Nobody knows exactly why but this is the same case for 9700k vs 9900k at same clockspeed. Some games just perform poorly on cores with hyperthreading while some games perform well with hyperthreading enabled.In fact, people did tested on Ryzen 3000 if disabling smt has any effect and it does. Some games gain more performance while some games dropped.Also, it is important to note that Ryzen 3900x beat i7-9900k on I think half of the games tested when smt is disabled while having lower clock speed.

[maddoctor.2738]

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:The fact you get better performance than your old rig in other games has nothing to do with GW2 and it being single thread bottlenecked because it is based on the DX9 API.

Just to correct this mistake here: DX9 can be very well multi-threaded, you don't need updated versions of DirectX to make a multi-threaded game. Games using all cores have been around for a very long time before DirectX 12 was even announced yet for some reason this idea exists that DX12 is the multi-threaded version and previous versions were single thread bottlenecked.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

a) make sure your cpu is cooled really wellb) disable powersavingc) pin gw2 to 2 cores

you are welcome.

[EnderzShadow.2506]

@"Tony.8659" said:Well they can make something like that DX12 program I linked. It would be much better if Arenanet made that in-house. Being that it does run much better with the DX12 wrapper. Like I posted earlier WoW is much older than GW1 and GW2 yet Blizzard has the game using DX12. Anet just needs to make some kind of official DX12 wrapper. Hell I would be willing to fund that via Kick Starter if they did that :)

Wow is not "MUCH" older than Guildwars 1I was there playing WoW when GuildWars was released, played Gw when it released.WoW was released November 23, 2004Guildwars was released April 26, 2005

5 months. /cheers

[Calistin.6210]

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Braile.3894 said:IPC of the 3900x is higher at the same clock speeds than a 9900kNo it's not. And that's your problem. You think AMD is competitive to Skylake / Coffee Lake (both is bascally the same architecture) in terms of IPC. But I can not blame you as most hardware reviewers are not competent enough to write a good CPU test. The Intel IPC is still 10% higher than AMD in games. Add the higher clock speeds of the CPUs (up to 5GHz, while AMD clocks at least 10% lower) and you get your 20% performance difference.

Another important factor is RAM speed. If you read a review, that compares a 3900X @ DDR4 3200 with an i7 6700K @ DDR4 2133, just because these are the official memory specs, while in every practical scenario the Intel CPU is combined with XMP RAM @ 3200 MHz or above, you might get the impression that AMD is competitive in terms of IPC as you cripple the Intel IPC by at least 10% just because of the slower RAM.

Last but not least there are some older games that have problems with AMDs Infinity Fabric (that connects the core modules) and drop significantly when facing that architecture (not saying that this is the case in GW2 because I simply don't know).

I am a ryzen fan but pretty much this. Also the 3900 cpu is on two chiplets which mean a bit more latency than say a 3800x or lower will see since they are on one chiplet. Also the sweet spot for ram on the 3k ryzens is not 3200c14 like it is on the 2k cpu but rather 3600c15

I see lots of people going for the 3900x for gaming and I think in the end they may well be disappointed with what they get as performance overall in gaming. I Like amd they are starting to put some pressure on intel which has been taking advantage and sitting on its kitten for a good while now but for gaming and looking to keep cost low I think the 3700x is they way to go as it give a bit more performance than the 3600 without breaking the bank.

If you want better than that just for gaming than yeah maybe you should look at the 9900k, myself though I am happy to go AMD this time around as a 3700x will suit my needs just fine and 8 cores should be plenty for the next 5 years or so.

[ardhikaizecson.3697]

Gw2 cannot any longer sustain modern hardware, I wish they wrapped it up after season 5 and just continuing the story in gw3 or make an effort before the next expansion to upgrade the engine, I mean how many threads already like this since when? Years ago.. not exclusive to amd but i saw plenty who upgraded to intel cpu who also happened to dropped their fps to sub 10 as well.

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:The fact you get better performance than your old rig in other games has nothing to do with GW2 and it being single thread bottlenecked because it is based on the DX9 API.

Just to correct this mistake here: DX9 can be very well multi-threaded, you don't need updated versions of DirectX to make a multi-threaded game. Games using all cores have been around for a very long time before DirectX 12 was even announced yet for some reason this idea exists that DX12 is the multi-threaded version and previous versions were single thread bottlenecked.

DX9's render pipeline is single threaded. DX9 can indeed use more than a single core, however the processes and functions are single threaded as DX9 is not default thread safe, while DX10 and on is. Meaning if you do add a multithreaded flag to make the DX9 API thread safe, you will run into significant synchronization overhead.

[Nokomis.5076]

Just out of curiousity: How do other MMOs work with multiple cores? I really have no other MMO to compare, thus I ask the peoples experiences here.