FPS improvement from core i3 to core i5

[acelara orion.4210]

so i run gw 2 on a crappy laptop(far away from home for couple months) (intel had 4000) so i got a good deal on a core i5 laptop(which is trash too but deal is too good)__should i get it? ty for help

[rng.1024]

As far as I understand it, the Guild Wars 2 engine relies alot more heavily on the graphics card than the processor. I mean sure it would be an upgrade (for certain settings), but you might want to compare the graphic cards because that will most heavily contribute towards better FPS.

The reason for this is because whatever you do in game needs to be pinged to the main server before it's sent back and you see your action happen on screen, rather than your pc calculating everything every player do - leaving network latency as the major contributor towards low fps on your end.

At the same time there is alot going on on your screen that needs to be kept track of, AoE's to render, massive amounts of players doing different things, explosions of color and moving objects - if your graphic card isn't equipped to handle all of these tasks simultaneously, it will eventually bottleneck and you will experience a decrease in FPS. Of course you can lower some settings to ease the burden and make it run smoothly again.

Therefore, if you have good internet you will definitely get the most from upgrading your graphics card allowing more to happen on screen without it starting to protest, giving you a smoother and more visually pleasing experience.

(Disclaimer: These are all notions I have made myself reading on this forum about performance, my own experience and the advice of fellow players. I am in no way certified to give you advice, and I don't know if this is exactly how it works - so if there are anyone with more technical knowhow, feel free to chime in :) )

[Nuka Cola.8520]

This game is running on an Egyptian relic known as DX9. Forget about performance.

[Fat Disgrace.4275]

game is heavy cpu over gfx. went from a nvidia gtx 660 (years old) to a modon 1050 and gained nothing in performance wise, only got it as I also upgraded to a 2k resolution screen.

[Krystal.3271]

When saying i5, there are many kinds of i5 processors out there. Currently, I play on my 5-year-old laptop which has i5 3230m and GT630M. Put all setting to low and full-screen mode, I get steady 40-45FS for most of time. I realize that full-screen mode gives higher FPS (~10FPS) than windowed or full-screen windowed mode. And finally try to play on a SSD, the game loads much faster.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@"acelara orion.4210" said:so i run gw 2 on a crappy laptop(far away from home for couple months) (intel had 4000) so i got a good deal on a core i5 laptop(which is trash too but deal is too good)__should i get it? ty for help

For optimal performance, IF your video card is not the limiting factor, you want whichever CPU has the fastest single core performance, which means roughly whichever is clocked the highest.

I say this because once the video card is out of the way, the main thread is the limiting factor on current hardware. GW2 uses three other cores pretty solidly along with it, but that is much less relevant because every modern CPU has enough cores to satisfy that need for "free", so optimizing for that single core performance is the easy way to get what you need.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@rng.1024 said:As far as I understand it, the Guild Wars 2 engine relies alot more heavily on the graphics card than the processor. I mean sure it would be an upgrade (for certain settings), but you might want to compare the graphic cards because that will most heavily contribute towards better FPS.

GW2 uses a lot of PCI-E bus bandwidth to the video card, and likes a nice fast one at maximum settings, but if you get a fast enough card (eg: NVIDIA 1080Ti) then the limiting factor is single core CPU performance today. You simply can't buy a CPU fast enough to make the main thread of GW2 run faster than the top end video card can keep up.

When you are further down in the weeds, hello my former NVIDIA 685MX, video card performance certainly can be the limiting factor. So ... it's complicated, and like any performance thing, it depends on what the slowest component is.

(Disclaimer: These are all notions I have made myself reading on this forum about performance, my own experience and the advice of fellow players. I am in no way certified to give you advice, and I don't know if this is exactly how it works - so if there are anyone with more technical knowhow, feel free to chime in :) )

Your comments about the network influence are reasonable accurate, but probably mostly irrelevant to players; GW2 does a fairly good job of hiding latency up to around 100ms in everything except sPVP gameplay.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@Nuka Cola.8520 said:This game is running on an Egyptian relic known as DX9. Forget about performance.

Aw, this is so nostalgic. I still remember when people were crying their little eyes out because games were moving to DX11, and it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, extremely slow graphics pipeline, and why couldn't they stay on good, high performance DX9!

Anyway, point being: DirectX 9 actually has nothing -- zip, zilch, zero, nada -- to do with performance limits in GW2.

[Nuka Cola.8520]

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Nuka Cola.8520 said:This game is running on an Egyptian relic known as DX9. Forget about performance.

Aw, this is so nostalgic. I still remember when people were crying their little eyes out because games were moving to DX11, and it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, extremely slow graphics pipeline, and why couldn't they stay on good, high performance DX9!

Anyway, point being: DirectX 9 actually has nothing -- zip, zilch, zero, nada -- to do with performance limits in GW2.

I don't believe that one bit. DX9 was made for ancient cpus. DX12 for quad cores+/multi threading. That's why this game has never been optimized and run as poorly as it did in 2012 when in a zerg. Unless they port their engine to something that wasn't built over 10 years ago, this is not changing.

[rng.1024]

Thanks alot for all the awesome input guys, got super hyped seeing so many replies as the page refreshed!

Been tinkering with the idea of a new computer purchase, and as gw2 pretty much is what I play this has been a conundrum of mine for quite some time. Now I feel alot better equipped for choosing the optimal setup, as my knowledge of the subject.. well as is evident, was severely limited

Good luck OP with whatever you decide, tons of solid advice in this thread now. Thanks again all :)

[crepuscular.9047]

@rng.1024 said:As far as I understand it, the Guild Wars 2 engine relies alot more heavily on the graphics card than the processor. I mean sure it would be an upgrade (for certain settings), but you might want to compare the graphic cards because that will most heavily contribute towards better FPS.

A totally misleading statement, every seasoned GW2 players knows GW2 relies more on CPU core speed.

I upgraded my GPU from GTX 870 (non Ti) to GTX 980 Ti on the same CPU (Intel 4770K) on my old rig during HoT, every graphics settings remained the same, 2FPS improvement; Go to a heavy populated world boss like Teq, alter Player Model Limit in the options will significant better FPS improvements.

It is only in PoF the game starts to put more load on the GPU from the new post-processing effects, but you should fine tune it to find the sweet spot.For your reference, these are the ones in Graphics options that show most differences in terms of GPU performance

• Reflection
• Texture
• Render Sampling
• Postprocessing

 

 

@"Nuka Cola.8520" said:This game is running on an Egyptian relic known as DX9. Forget about performance.

We don't need another unintelligent post as DX9 vs DX10/11/12/Vulkan, Devs already addressed this topic previously, and the answer is consistent with tech industry experts' opinions and benchmarks. https://semiaccurate.com/2016/03/01/investigating-directx-12-cpu-scaling/These are graphics APIs, player coordinates, actions, system response are non-choreographed, so CPU requires constant recalculation.

CONCLUSION: upgrading from DX9 will only provide minuscule improvement with massive financial investment. (which would send a development studio bankrupt and the game shutdown)

[Dawdler.8521]

The only thing close to a laptop I've ran GW2 on is a Surface Pro 2.

I got sick and nearly threw up due to the stuttering performance in WvW. I could take about 15 minutes of it and after that I was totally done, it was quit or puke. Using a 24" screen maybe didnt help lol.

Trash laptops arent that much better but if they have a discrete graphics card then maybe somewhat ok. Like a GTX1050 minimum.

[LaGranse.8652]

@acelara orion.4210 said:so i run gw 2 on a crappy laptop(far away from home for couple months) (intel had 4000) so i got a good deal on a core i5 laptop(which is trash too but deal is too good)__should i get it? ty for help

Could you post the specs on the laptop which you run gw2 on now and the specs of this i5 laptop? 5 might be a higher number than 3 however there are so many other factors. Dedicated vs integrated graphics, cpu/gpu generation and model etc etc.

[chrisjfinlay.5614]

@"Dawdler.8521" said:The only thing close to a laptop I've ran GW2 on is a Surface Pro 2.

I got sick and nearly threw up due to the stuttering performance in WvW. I could take about 15 minutes of it and after that I was totally done, it was quit or puke. Using a 24" screen maybe didnt help lol.

Trash laptops arent that much better but if they have a discrete graphics card then maybe somewhat ok. Like a GTX1050 minimum.

First generation Surface Book (i7 model) laughs at GW2, it's so much smoother than even my main desktop. The big problem with the Surface lines for it is that they run at a weird resolution - 3000x2000 (though I don't know if the 2 range used that?), and it really stresses a load of games out because that's way above even max settings. But the Book line is awesome at it.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@Nuka Cola.8520 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Nuka Cola.8520 said:This game is running on an Egyptian relic known as DX9. Forget about performance.

Aw, this is so nostalgic. I still remember when people were crying their little eyes out because games were moving to DX11, and it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, extremely slow graphics pipeline, and why couldn't they stay on good, high performance DX9!

Anyway, point being: DirectX 9 actually has nothing -- zip, zilch, zero, nada -- to do with performance limits in GW2.

I don't believe that one bit. DX9 was made for ancient cpus. DX12 for quad cores+/multi threading. That's why this game has never been optimized and run as poorly as it did in 2012 when in a zerg. Unless they port their engine to something that wasn't built over 10 years ago, this is not changing.

Well, you are completely welcome to believe whatever you want, no matter how wrong. You are correct in saying that DX12 is "for quad cores+ / multi threading" in the sense that it was deliberately architected to remove some of the serialization that DX11 and earlier imposed when building scene data for each frame, because of internal locking to the graphics stack.

However, this only influences the overall performance if those locks were the root cause of the problems. There is no evidence of this being the blocking factor in the GW2 client, and thus, no evidence that it has any relationship with the performance limits. The behaviour when increasing CPU speed suggests that the issue isn't locking contention, too: gains are roughly linear to single thread performance, rather than showing the significantly reduced or zero gain that lock contention would imply.

Regardless, we know from ANet discussions about the work they have done optimizing the engine that their internal architecture was heavily single threaded, and they have moved some work to additional threads -- why we now see three additional fairly busy cores as well as the capped main thread core -- but the limiting factor is still that single thread.

So, this isn't a question of "port[ing] their engine to something that wasn't built over 10 years ago" in terms of changing the DirectX layer; porting the current code to use DX11, or DX12, or Vulcan, or Metal, would not change the fundamental performance constraint, which is that CPU-side calculation on a single thread limits overall performance.

Instead, it would be a question of further improving the amount of work distributed across the available cores in modern CPUs, which have broken the classical (and at the time the engine was built, widely believed to be true for approximately ever) design in which single threaded performance increased without bound, while core count wouldn't grow in number all that rapidly.

If, and only if, that change happens, using DX12 might become valuable: as more threads are used in the preparation of the scene, internal locking in the graphics stack becomes more likely to be the choke point in performance, and that is something that the new architecture can help with.

[acelara orion.4210]

bro this is so confusing give me yes /no

[maddoctor.2738]

@acelara orion.4210 said:bro this is so confusing give me yes /no

What's the GPU of the two laptops?What's the amount of RAM?What's the single core clock speed of the two laptops?

[TheQuickFox.3826]

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Nuka Cola.8520 said:This game is running on an Egyptian relic known as DX9. Forget about performance.

Aw, this is so nostalgic. I still remember when people were crying their little eyes out because games were moving to DX11, and it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, extremely slow graphics pipeline, and why couldn't they stay on good, high performance DX9!

Anyway, point being: DirectX 9 actually has nothing -- zip, zilch, zero, nada -- to do with performance limits in GW2.

This.

Any skilled programmer could just tell the GW2 renderer to use DX10/11/12 instead of 9 and it would fix nothing. But actually offloading much of the rendering and customization code to the GPU instead of the CPU would help a lot but this is a giant task requiring changes all over the engine. But we want advanced character customization, fashion wars and the dye system which all are heavy on the CPU now. And the more customized everything becomes the harder it becomes to let the GPU handle it. CPU's are good in doing advanced tasks, slowly. GPU's are good in doing simple tasks, really fast.

And herein is also my answer for the topicstarter: Guild Wars 2 is generally very much CPU dependend. You generally get the biggest performance improvement by getting a CPU with a high per-core performance. GW2 can benefit of multicore processors but only on a limited base. You will get better performance on a 3 GHz dual core than a similar 2GHz quadcore for example.

You did not mention your GPU. Of course, this is also important. If you just have a crappy graphics chip, you can definitely get a big performance boost by getting a (laptop with a) better GPU.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Nuka Cola.8520 said:This game is running on an Egyptian relic known as DX9. Forget about performance.

Aw, this is so nostalgic. I still remember when people were crying their little eyes out because games were moving to DX11, and it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, extremely slow graphics pipeline, and why couldn't they stay on good, high performance DX9!

Anyway, point being: DirectX 9 actually has nothing -- zip, zilch, zero, nada -- to do with performance limits in GW2.

This.

Any skilled programmer could just tell the GW2 renderer to use DX10/11/12 instead of 9 and it would fix nothing. But actually offloading much of the rendering and customization code to the GPU instead of the CPU would help a lot but this is a giant task requiring changes all over the engine. But we want advanced character customization, fashion wars and the dye system which all are heavy on the CPU now. And the more customized everything becomes the harder it becomes to let the GPU handle it. CPU's are good in doing advanced tasks, slowly. GPU's are good in doing simple tasks, really fast.

And herein is also my answer for the topicstarter: Guild Wars 2 is generally very much CPU dependend. You generally get the biggest performance improvement by getting a CPU with a high per-core performance. GW2 can benefit of multicore processors but only on a limited base. You will get better performance on a 3 GHz dual core than a similar 2GHz quadcore for example.

You did not mention your GPU. Of course, this is also important. If you just have a crappy graphics chip, you can definitely get a big performance boost by getting a (laptop with a) better GPU.

Well, there's a thing to gain with DX11 and DX12 that would benefit GW2 immensily. The DX11 and 12 has better support for multi-threading, which, given that we're unlikely to go past the current single-core speeds, would be ideal to get more out of this game, since it is better using multi-core cpus.Yes, it would take a significant rework of the engine. But maybe that's a worthwhile endeavour. Blizzard seems to think so, and when they implemented DX11 the game saw massive improvements in performance (WoW suffers from the same CPU bottlenecks as GW2 and just about any other MMORPG).

Back on topic, it really depends on the CPU. If the i5 has a slower per-core speed, it might not be worthwhile to change. OF course this also depends a lot on the other specs, the CPU bus, memory, memory speed, the graphics cards, motherboard, etc.

But rule of thumb for GW2, and most MMORPGs you'll want better CPU than GPUs since it the GPU only handles the more simple tasks of drawing stuff, it's awesome at doing the same simple tasks a thousand times at once, but it's still the CPU that has to tell the GPU to draw them and when. And that's why the CPU is so important in MMORPGs, the more objects (players) you need to draw, the more it will pull on the CPU.

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

@crepuscular.9047 said:CONCLUSION: upgrading from DX9 will only provide minuscule improvement with massive financial investment. (which would send a development studio bankrupt and the game shutdown)

Yes. Same with remove bugs from the game. Something Anet neither doing. And thats fine so we can get new shinys every week in ingame shop* B)God even WoW has DirectX 11 support

*yes i know different persons

[TheQuickFox.3826]

@"ReaverKane.7598" said:[...]

Well, there's a thing to gain with DX11 and DX12 that would benefit GW2 immensily. The DX11 and 12 has better support for multi-threading, which, given that we're unlikely to go past the current single-core speeds, would be ideal to get more out of this game, since it is better using multi-core cpus.

Well, I guess ArenaNet could just add an option to use a DX11 renderer besides the current DX9 one. Just to end this discussion.And when everyone sees that this alone will not give any performance improvements (maybe even a downgrade over the current tried-and-true DX9 ones) we could go to the REAL discussion about rewriting the game engine to make better use of the GPU and multithreading and if the community is willing to pay the price for it in money and development time. My guess is that a decent engine rewrite will take at least the amount of time and money that is needed for an expansion and a living world season.

Are we willing to pay this as community as a whole? I am willing, for sure. But will the casual players pay for this, getting nothing else? No new zones, missions, specializations etc. Just a more efficient engine? Are we willing to risk another content drought while ArenaNet is rebuilding their engine? What will this do to the casual player base who just come to play the new Living World maps? What will this do to the part of the hardcore player base who have done everything already. I can see the amount of "there is nothing left to do" threads already.

[Dvalin.5428]

Playing the game with

GeForce GTX 970 4GB.Intel® Core i5-4990 CPU @ 3.30GHz.16,00 GB RAM.

And it runs horrible...

[theSacred.1942]

Since GW2 is mostly single core heavy due DX9 you should 1st check witch CPU have higher single core performance.

@crepuscular.9047 said:CONCLUSION: upgrading from DX9 will only provide minuscule improvement with massive financial investment. (which would send a development studio bankrupt and the game shutdown)

Just to remind, Blade and Soul that was released in similar time as GW2 is switching from UE3 to UE4. Updating from DX9 to DX11 should be much easier and cost less than that. As for low level API, DX12 is no go since its chained to Win10 so only real choice would be Vulkan available on all platforms (not sure how it look on Mac).

[ReaverKane.7598]

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:

@"ReaverKane.7598" said:[...]

Well, there's a thing to gain with DX11 and DX12 that would benefit GW2 immensily. The DX11 and 12 has better support for multi-threading, which, given that we're unlikely to go past the current single-core speeds, would be ideal to get more out of this game, since it is better using multi-core cpus.

Well, I guess ArenaNet could just add an option to use a DX11 renderer instead of current DX9 one. Just to end this discussion.And when everyone sees that this alone will not give any performance improvements (maybe even a downgrade over the current tried-and-true DX9 ones) we could go to the REAL discussion about rewriting the game engine to make better use of the GPU and multithreading and if the community is willing to pay the price for it in money and development time. My guess is that a decent engine rewrite will take at least the amount of time and money that is needed for an expansion and a living world season.

Are we willing to pay this as community as a whole? I am willing, for sure. But will the casual players pay for this, getting nothing else? No new zones, missions, specializations etc. Just a more efficient engine? Are we willing to risk another content drought while ArenaNet is rebuilding their engine? What will this do to the casual player base who just comes to play the new Living World maps? What will this do to the part of the hardcore player base who have done everything already.

Haven't we already? I mean HoT released with barely any content, at the same price of the original release (which actually had been selling for 1/5th of the Expansion price a few months earlier). The whole point of HoT was to create systems and a ground work for the future content. Which they failed spectacularly, i might add, the real groundwork was laid by Living world which only started months later.

Its not a question of whether we're willing to pay for the difference, but more of a question, will the game be able to afford not doing it? There's 2 expansions between now and the game's 10th anniversary (if it makes it that far). In 2 expansions the game will be a decade old, and if we think it's starting to show it's age now, imagine in 2 expansions from now.I'll grant you that DX12 isn't a great improvement, but DX11 was, and it's still 2 versions above what GW2 is using... Basically GW2 was already using an outdated API when it released. In terms of OS, we're using Windows XP technology at this moment.That's the time when Dual core was the "edge" of technology, and when 64Bit systems where a thing of rumours.That's the standard for what this game was built. And in a few years time it will be even more outdated.

One of the reasons why WoW is still ahead of the pack, even though it's 14!! years old now, is that it has been constantly updating itself in terms of technology. And they don't reduce their content for that. I'm not a fan of World of Warcraft, but credit where credit is due, and they have managed to keep their game up to date, even with an outdated engine.

GW2 had a HUGE windfall from PoF, that's price paid for the future tech improvements.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@"Nuka Cola.8520" said:This game is running on an Egyptian relic known as DX9. Forget about performance.

Aw, this is so nostalgic. I still remember when people were crying their little eyes out because games were moving to DX11, and it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, extremely slow graphics pipeline, and why couldn't they stay on good, high performance DX9!

Anyway, point being: DirectX 9 actually has nothing -- zip, zilch, zero, nada -- to do with performance limits in GW2.

This.

Any skilled programmer could just tell the GW2 renderer to use DX10/11/12 instead of 9 and it would fix nothing. But actually offloading much of the rendering and customization code to the GPU instead of the CPU would help a lot but this is a giant task requiring changes all over the engine. But we want advanced character customization, fashion wars and the dye system which all are heavy on the CPU now. And the more customized everything becomes the harder it becomes to let the GPU handle it. CPU's are good in doing advanced tasks, slowly. GPU's are good in doing simple tasks, really fast.

And herein is also my answer for the topicstarter: Guild Wars 2 is generally very much CPU dependend. You generally get the biggest performance improvement by getting a CPU with a high per-core performance. GW2 can benefit of multicore processors but only on a limited base. You will get better performance on a 3 GHz dual core than a similar 2GHz quadcore for example.

You did not mention your GPU. Of course, this is also important. If you just have a crappy graphics chip, you can definitely get a big performance boost by getting a (laptop with a) better GPU.

Well, there's a thing to gain with DX11 and DX12 that would benefit GW2 immensily. The DX11 and 12 has better support for multi-threading, which, given that we're unlikely to go past the current single-core speeds, would be ideal to get more out of this game, since it is better using multi-core cpus.

You are not exactly wrong, but you are definitely not right: newer versions of DirectX do have improvement that help with multi-threaded games. DX12, with the radically different rendering model, especially, helps here. So, in that sense you are correct.

Where you are misunderstanding is this: those changes eliminate bottlenecks in the DirectX layer IF AND ONLY IF the game engine already has multiple threads submitting scene data to be rendered, AND if those threads are spending time blocking on internal locks in the DirectX layer and/or on engine-level inter-thread communication.

Yes, it would take a significant rework of the engine. But maybe that's a worthwhile endeavour. Blizzard seems to think so, and when they implemented DX11 the game saw massive improvements in performance (WoW suffers from the same CPU bottlenecks as GW2 and just about any other MMORPG).

Simply changing to DirectX 11, or 12, will make no difference. Those massive improvements in performance came from internal architectural changes that enabled better use of multiple threads in the engine. They were not inherent in DirectX 11 at all, and the same architectural changes with DirectX 9 would give close to, if not exactly, the same benefits.

Likewise, GW2 could update their engine to use threads better -- in fact, they have done so over time -- without changing the DirectX version, and get better performance. You are mistakenly confusing the DirectX version and the things it enables for things that are inherent to it.

(or, at the very least, you are quite confusingly using "DirectX 11" to mean "internal engine architecture changes that have nothing to do with DirectX 11, but may be performed at the same time as changing the 3D layer")

But rule of thumb for GW2, and most MMORPGs you'll want better CPU than GPUs since it the GPU only handles the more simple tasks of drawing stuff, it's awesome at doing the same simple tasks a thousand times at once, but it's still the CPU that has to tell the GPU to draw them and when. And that's why the CPU is so important in MMORPGs, the more objects (players) you need to draw, the more it will pull on the CPU.

At max settings, and 1440p, GW2 will happily use around 70 percent the capacity of an NVIDIA 1080Ti; until you get into that sort of GPU power, the usual performance tuning rule applies: first, find out where the bottleneck is, second, fix that bottleneck, and then move on to the next one.

So while this is true, it is also entirely possible for the GPU to be the limiting factor in performance for folks.