Spell Effects

[cyndelaq.7148]

Specs:

Processor: Intel i7-770 @ 3.60GHz (8 CPUs)RAM: 32GB @ 2,400MHz (DDR4)DX: DX12GPU: Radeon RX550 (ASUS)VRAM: 4GBMotherboard: Gigabyte GA-B250M-DS3H (DDR4)OS: Windows 10 HomeStorage: 1TB HDD (Seagate) w/ 200GB SSD (Intel)PS: 800W Raidmax Vampire

Settings:

Animation - HighAA - SMAA HighEnvironment - HighLOD - UltraReflections - AllTextures - HighRender Sampling - NativeShadows - Medium (For Raids)Shaders - HighPostP - NoneCharacter ML - LowestCharacter MQ - HighestAO - OnBTF/Depth Blur/Effect LOD - OffHigh-Res Character Textures - OnVSync - Off

I also have player/NPC names turned off and yet I only get 15 fps during GH, 20 fps during Palawadan, and on average 25-30 fps in general. I'm no expert, so maybe I'm doing something wrong in my settings, or maybe my PC just isn't powerful enough to run this game on high graphics, but one thing I think would help a lot in the performance department is the ability to toggle on/off other player's spell effects.

During events like Akili, GH, and Palawadan (in Istan) there are just so many spell effects from the masses of: Engineers, Scourges, and Dragonhunters as well as particle effects from the terrain, environment, and monsters that cause my frames to drop drastically. But it isn't just in Istan. I've noticed severe drops in raids and in fractals as well. Another reason to be able to toggle spell effects off would be so that I actually can see my target when I'm fighting something because, most of the time, my target is just a ball of effects and I can't see anything.

[steki.1478]

Turn on Effect LOD.

[Galaa.8475]

i have the same problem. i lose sight of the boss in all the clutter. i will try this lod you speak off. ty

[IndigoSundown.5419]

I don't have the low frame rates the OP cites. That said, I run with Effect LOD on, and it does almost nothing to limit the visual clutter.

[Ban Sidhe.9637]

The only way to know what is holding your PC back is analyze the load on your CPU and GPU when playing GW2.. Windows 10 task manager (press ctrl+shift+esc) has a performance tab that can show you this. Open it up, start the game, play for a minute, then quickly alt+tab out of the game to see what levels the CPU and GPU got to on that performance tab. If one is constantly stuck to 100% usage and the other one isn't, that one at 100% would be your bottleneck for that game.There are more advanced tools to check this, but for an estimation it'll do.

To solve it: I'd say try just setting stuff to medium/high instead of high/ultra.Your CPU is quite alright (by the way you made a typo.. its probably an i7 7700, not 770). It probably uses the boost clock up to 4.2GHz, 3.6GHz is the standard clock but it probably will go higher than that while playing GW2.I'm sorry to say but your graphics card is only an entry level one when games are concerned. Although I'm not entirely sure that the graphics card is in fact the bottleneck in this game. GW2 really loves high CPU clock speeds more than anything.

I have an older CPU, it runs at 3,8GHz boost (i5 3570K) and my graphics card is a GTX1070Ti since the old one died in december. I have mostly the same graphics settings as you do. My game will do 50-60fps when playing in quiet areas, but I get drops down to 20 or 15 as well in big fights. Sometimes even below that (Maw in Wayfarer Foothills is terrible!). My graphics card definitely is not the bottleneck for me. My CPU is at 100% load on all 4 cores pretty much all the time when I play GW2.

This game just loves high CPU clock speeds more than anything, so I'm trying to overclock my CPU in the next few days, hoping that will help my case a bit at least. If it works I might hold off on buying new parts for a bit longer.

[Orpheal.8263]

If your not using something like this already, I suggest you to use also programs, that increase your PC performance specificly for gaming, which close when you start them all unneccessary programs, services, system processes and stuff, that could affect otherwise your gaming performance.With programs like this you can increase your gaming performance mostly like by 40%+ making this way run your games smootherExample: IObit Game Boosterhttps://www.techspot.com/downloads/4842-game-booster.html

[cyndelaq.7148]

@steki.1478 I turned ELOD on, so we'll see what happens. Thanks for the reply.@Ban Sidhe.9637 It turns out that my grpahics card is being bottlenecked. o.O

[Ban Sidhe.9637]

@cyndelaq.7148 said:@steki.1478 I turned ELOD on, so we'll see what happens. Thanks for the reply.@Ban Sidhe.9637 It turns out that my grpahics card is being bottlenecked. o.O

To make sure I understand you correctly, The CPU is the one at 100% and the graphics card is never getting close to that?

If so, I think that is the case with most people. It's just because the game isn't very optimised, and has a rather old engine. Not much we can do about it sadly..

[cyndelaq.7148]

@Ban Sidhe.9637 Other way around. GPU is 100% CPU is fine.

[Ban Sidhe.9637]

@cyndelaq.7148 said:@Ban Sidhe.9637 Other way around. GPU is 100% CPU is fine.

Ah in that case, there's a possible upgrade you could do. I have to warn you that it's a bad time to do so though, as graphics cards are quite expensive all over the world right now. This is due to some shortages on video memory, and they also blame the crypto currency miners for buying all the cards that are available.

A tip:For me Shadows have quite a large impact. Try playing with that setting a bit, maybe lower it even further to Low or None, depending on what you find acceptable.Strangely shadows don't have the same impact everywhere in the game, as I'll show below:

Values I get when standing still in a fairly crowded area.First number is Mistlock Sanctuary (near the center looking at a lot of people), second number is Lion's Arch (near the bank, looking at a lot of people):

• Ultra: 38fps / 34fps
• High: 43fps / 37fps
• Medium: 43fps / 37fps (no difference with High settings in either area, strange)
• Low: 55fps / 40fps
• None: 57fps / 45fps

Your results may vary, as we have quite different CPUs and GPUs. Settings that barely impact my graphics card might still have some influence on yours for instance. That's because for me the bottleneck is the CPU, sometimes I think I can actually hear my graphics card yawn at me. When my graphics card's temperature stays below 60°C/140°F the fans won't move. They never move in GW2.

[zombie.2167]

Change Character MQ - Highest to Medium.