PSA: AMD RX 6000 series low performance fix

[Deepcuts.9740]

Hello,

 

Old user of an nvidia GTX 1080 ti. Performance was decent but a lot of stuttering when turning and opening the map.
Recently I could afford to get an upgrade to an RX 6900 XT from Sapphire and expected at least a bit more performance, but to my surprise, it was the other way around. Performance seemed to plummet and being a new AMD GPU user, could not understand why.
Usual tricks found online did not seems to fix anything for Guild Wars 2 client performance, like turning off Fast Startup, making sure the temperatures are low enough, drivers updates, etc.
GPU temperature never goes above 45 Celsius and Hotspot temperature never above 55 Celsius. Latest drivers, etc, etc.
To cherry on top that made me look harder for a solution was entering alone in the Cold War Strike instance and discovering I had 25-30 FPS standing still.
Indeed, I had all the setting cranked to the max. But they were the same as with my old GTX 1080 ti.

 

To not make this post longer than it needs to, this is what I did to make my Guild Wars 2 client perform a lot better.
Figured out what is the maximum speed and the boost speed of my GPU.
Open AMD's Radeon Software, click on Performance top right then click Tuning.
On this page, on the right side click on Add Game Profile button and select Guild Wars 2 from the list.
Now, on the same page, but on the left side click on Global Tuning button and select Guild Wars 2.
Enable GPU Tuning and under it enable Advanced Control.
Set it up like in this image, being careful to input a reasonable minimum and maximum frequency.
In my case, the numbers are taken from the Sapphire's website for my specific model. Do the same for yours.
 

Only after doing this my Guild Wars 2 client performed better.
In Cold War Strike where I was getting 25-30 FPS while being alone, now I get 60 FPS. This instance is an outlier and that is why I chose it as an example. In my Home Instance I get over 200+ FPS while facing some directions and lower while facing others, but never 25-30 FPS.
Even so, my GPU barely gets used and GPU power usage barely hits 180W, but then again I have to remember this is DX9 (not using DX11).
Conclusion: AMD's drivers are being written in a dark room lit only by a candle, by a blind man without a keyboard.
 

Hope this will help someone not going through all the testing, reinstalling and coffee I had to.

 

 

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by Deepcuts.9740

[KrHome.1920]

The DX9 mode of GW2 can cause GPU utilisation issues on RDNA and RDNA2 GPUs. The GPU will enter the idle state and run at 700 to 900 MHz causing low frame rates and heavy stuttering. This is known for 2 years and it has nothing to do with the AMD driver. AMD can't fix it because there is nothing to fix for them.

What you have done is increasing the minimum 3D frequency of your GPU to 2.3 GHz,  so your GPU can no longer adjust its clock speeds and power consumption in 3D applications. You might have already noticed that this does not fix the stuttering issue. Your frame rates are higher now, but the frame pacing is still unplayable and you are still nowhere near the performance your GPU could reach in the game.

Just use either DX9 + D912PXY or the DX11 mode of the game to fix this. 

Btw. the AMD overlay does not work correctly in the DX11 mode. You have to minimize the game then enable the overlay and maximize the game again or the overlay will flicker hard. Before blaming AMD for this too: GW2 is the one and only DX11 game I played in the last few years, that has this issue.

I guess these guys are only testing their game on Nvidia hardware.

Edited October 3, 2021 by KrHome.1920

[Deepcuts.9740]

4 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

You might have already noticed that this does not fix the stuttering issue

It did fix the stuttering for me.
No more stuttering when turning or opening the map.

As for the "it has nothing to do with the AMD driver", I am indeed not a driver developer, but as an end user, if I can fix it from within their software interface (AMD), I will put he blame on them.

I would love to use DX11, but too many problems at the moment. Hope they polish it well enough soon.

Edited October 3, 2021 by Deepcuts.9740

[fluffypaws.2860]

18 hours ago, Deepcuts.9740 said:

Hello,

 

Old user of an nvidia GTX 1080 ti. Performance was decent but a lot of stuttering when turning and opening the map.
Recently I could afford to get an upgrade to an RX 6900 XT from Sapphire and expected at least a bit more performance, but to my surprise, it was the other way around. Performance seemed to plummet and being a new AMD GPU user, could not understand why.
Usual tricks found online did not seems to fix anything for Guild Wars 2 client performance, like turning off Fast Startup, making sure the temperatures are low enough, drivers updates, etc.
GPU temperature never goes above 45 Celsius and Hotspot temperature never above 55 Celsius. Latest drivers, etc, etc.
To cherry on top that made me look harder for a solution was entering alone in the Cold War Strike instance and discovering I had 25-30 FPS standing still.
Indeed, I had all the setting cranked to the max. But they were the same as with my old GTX 1080 ti.

 

To not make this post longer than it needs to, this is what I did to make my Guild Wars 2 client perform a lot better.
Figured out what is the maximum speed and the boost speed of my GPU.
Open AMD's Radeon Software, click on Performance top right then click Tuning.
On this page, on the right side click on Add Game Profile button and select Guild Wars 2 from the list.
Now, on the same page, but on the left side click on Global Tuning button and select Guild Wars 2.
Enable GPU Tuning and under it enable Advanced Control.
Set it up like in this image, being careful to input a reasonable minimum and maximum frequency.
In my case, the numbers are taken from the Sapphire's website for my specific model. Do the same for yours.
 

Only after doing this my Guild Wars 2 client performed better.
In Cold War Strike where I was getting 25-30 FPS while being alone, now I get 60 FPS. This instance is an outlier and that is why I chose it as an example. In my Home Instance I get over 200+ FPS while facing some directions and lower while facing others, but never 25-30 FPS.
Even so, my GPU barely gets used and GPU power usage barely hits 180W, but then again I have to remember this is DX9 (not using DX11).
Conclusion: AMD's drivers are being written in a dark room lit only by a candle, by a blind man without a keyboard.
 

Hope this will help someone not going through all the testing, reinstalling and coffee I had to.

 

 

 

 

 

Hi, please try using Vulkan with DXVK ASYNC

Just drop the d3d11.dll and the dxgi.dll in the root folder where your GW2 exe is ( not the bin 64 folder )

Make sure you have the DX11 beta activated in the GW2 client.

Go into your environment variables in Windows and add the  environment variable DXVK_ASYNC (top line)  then the value  1  underneath that line.

Enjoy excellent performance and utilization :)

 

You can find Dxvk Async here 

https://github.com/Sporif/dxvk-async

 

Version 1.9.2 is the latest.

 

Enjoy 

[VictorLeal.4102]

Fixed thanks! Bought a Sapphire RX 6600 and was running worse than a RX 570 lol