Help I have a Headache

[Reincarnated.1754]

I am getting real bad headaches playing this game.

Any one (anet) have any ideas where to start looking for the problem?

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Processor 3.20 GHz16 GB RAM64 bit windows 10 Pro 1003NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970Broadband 120 Mbps +

5 FPS

https://img.techpowerup.org/180611/capture602.jpg

[Deathanizer.3716]

First idea is video card fan died

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

Ramp the model count sliders right to the bottom, see how that goes.

[Optimator.3589]

Time for a new rig, mate. CPU from 2010 in a game that's rough on single thread performance...you've gotten your money's worth, time to move on.

[Ray Koopa.2354]

Phenoms indeed have lame performance with the game. I could rarely get 60 or even 30 FPS with everything else being top class. You can tweak a lot so please post your graphics settings.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Some paracetamol could help you with your headache.

A faster CPU could help you with your performance problems:Intel Core i7-6700KIntel Core i7-7700KIntel Core i3-8350K

These are all excellent for use with Guild Wars 2 because of the high, per-core performance.

Or tune some of the graphics options:

[Deathanizer.3716]

A not ideal cpu is not causing 5 fps you guys.

This is not a CPU heavy game OP something else is causing the lag.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@Deathanizer.3716 said:A not ideal cpu is not causing 5 fps you guys.

This is probably true, but can be easily enough verified by the OP: @"Reincarnated.1754", display all cores separately in Task Manager, run the game, switch back to verify if you have a single core hitting 100 percent consistently.

If not, it isn't a CPU performance problem. If you do, it probably is.

This is not a CPU heavy game OP something else is causing the lag.

Once you eliminate everything else, today, the bottleneck for GW2 performance will be a single thread, and that thread handles (among other things) character model placement. This is why the advice to ramp down the number of displayed character models is given, and sound: it reduces the work done on what is otherwise the blocking point for many users.

That doesn't mean there are not other potential bottlenecks: you could hit GPU limitations (eg: 1440p on an NVIDIA 680MX hit internal GPU memory/fill bandwidth limitations.) Any reasonably modern NVIDIA 9 or 10 series GPU, though, is quite unlikely to be the bottleneck.

GW2 also has four total quite busy threads, which means if you have less than four cores available you will potentially hit performance bottlenecks as work fights over the available cores. This rarely comes up because, well, who owns a CPU with less than 4 cores these days?

Anyway, point being: your statement is only true if you are very careful to define the conditions around it, under which it will be true. It is definitely not true for everyone.

[Reincarnated.1754]

Thankyou guys for all your comments.First, upgrade is out of the question, Retired old man, don't have income for new machine.Have been playing guild wars 2 since it came out with this machine,Never had verry good FPS, but was in range of 25 to 35. which was ok.This problem is in last few months.

I have played with these settings, and nothing makes any difference.https://img.techpowerup.org/180612/capture604.jpg

Here is a few more settingshttps://img.techpowerup.org/180612/capture605.jpghttps://img.techpowerup.org/180612/capture606.jpghttps://img.techpowerup.org/180612/capture607.jpg

My Graphics card never breaks a sweat, never has.https://img.techpowerup.org/180612/capture608.jpg

I have no idea what all this means, may be someone does ;)https://img.techpowerup.org/180612/capture609.jpg

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:Once you eliminate everything else, today, the bottleneck for GW2 performance will be a single thread, and that thread handles (among other things) character model placement. This is why the advice to ramp down the number of displayed character models is given, and sound: it reduces the work done on what is otherwise the blocking point for many users.

SlippyCheeze, you mentioned something on sound.I fried my sound chip on my motherboard a little while ago.I replaced it with some old card I found kicking about in a draw.Could this be the problem?

Tim

[Reincarnated.1754]

@"TheQuickFox.3826" said:Some paracetamol could help you with your headache.

TheQuickFox, Forgot to mention, this is what my shelf looks like next to my computer :)https://img.techpowerup.org/180612/capture610.jpg

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@Reincarnated.1754 said:

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:Once you eliminate everything else, today, the bottleneck for GW2 performance will be a single thread, and that thread handles (among other things) character model placement. This is why the advice to ramp down the number of displayed character models is given, and sound: it reduces the work done on what is otherwise the blocking point for many users.

SlippyCheeze, you mentioned something on sound.I fried my sound chip on my motherboard a little while ago.I replaced it with some old card I found kicking about in a draw.Could this be the problem?

Ah, no. I meant "sound" as in "is good advice", rather than anything to do with sound playback.

From what you posted, I'd definitely turn down character model display to the minimum, and that should help a little, but that's about all I got for you, I'm sorry.It does look from the graphs like you are mostly CPU-bound, which is why your graphics card isn't working that hard: it can easily keep up with what the CPU is telling it, but the CPU is maxed out trying to draw stuff.

[Optimator.3589]

I don't mean this question to be insulting, but is GW2 the only game running so poorly all of a sudden, or is this a general system slowdown? It is possible that you have some sort of malware or bloatware slowing things down. Over the years, I've reinstalled operating systems for many people who had mucked up their systems by installing all manner of browser toolbars, "computer optimisers", and the like.

[Ray Koopa.2354]

I looked at your settings. Some tips from my experiences with a Phenom X4. Some of these settings should only affect the GPU, but they turned out to stress my old CPU aswell. Some are pure GPU optimizations, just in case.Antialiasing: Use FXAA. You won't notice the difference, and it's not worth the small additional strain.Reflections: Put to off if it gets horribile in some places (got place to test it is the oasis area in Desert Highlands with the many palm trees reflecting in the water). Terrain & Sky is fine though.Render Sampling: Native sampling should be the ideal choice for your system.Shadows: This setting seemed to really stress my old CPU. Do not use Ultra and High here. Go to Medium or even Low, and if you don't like seeing shadows appear or disappear out of a sudden, even use None - you get used to it and it looks better than Low IMHO.Shaders: You typically want High for a good looking game, but given the circumstances, give Medium a chance.Character Model Quality. Put to Low. For testing, even try Lowest, but that looks silly as it never displays other player's models.Ambient Occlusion: Turn off even though it should only affect GPU - burned around 5 FPS on my old system even when the GPU still idled around.Best Texture Filtering: You really never want to use this silly setting. Turn it off and override texture filtering in your nVidia control panel to be Anisotropic 4x or 2x. What this option does is force the highest available filtering, like 16x, simply burning performance for no reason (you won't see the difference, and if you do, 8x will definitely suffice).I can't see the remaining options. Depending on system, you may want to run in real fullscreen and toggle VSync on or off.Despite logic and what the game claims, running Windowed Mode with VSync off gave me insane framerate drops. One would guess the Windows Desktop Window Manager would already force a level of VSync to your game, but GW2 seems to dodge that, and turning VSync off made the game choppy like hell.

Other than that: Get rid of any stuff running in the background, automatically starting with your PC, and update your drivers where possible. Also turn off your AV for a test and see if it kills your CPU (bad AVs typically do).

[Ashantara.8731]

@"Reincarnated.1754" said:I am getting real bad headaches playing this game.

Any one (anet) have any ideas where to start looking for the problem?

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Processor 3.20 GHz16 GB RAM64 bit windows 10 Pro 1003NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970Broadband 120 Mbps +

5 FPS

https://img.techpowerup.org/180611/capture602.jpg

1. Configure Windows 10 properly. There is so much crap running in the background that you don't need and is clogging your system performance.
2. Adjust your graphics card settings (forgot how the successor of AMD Catalyst is called).
3. Adjust your in-game graphics settings. Particle effects and player model count (as well as reflections) do not need to be max'd.
4. Make sure you have unparked all CPU cores and that you have set the correct number in the Windows settings (look here).

[Ray Koopa.2354]

He owns an nVidia card.Anyway, the successor is called AMD Settings though, simply.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@"Ashantara.8731" said:

4. Make sure you have unparked all CPU cores and that you have set the correct number in the Windows settings (look here).

This is a popular, but ultimately unhelpful, thing to do. There is no significant advantage to this, especially now, since the OS and firmware have been updated to account for the very few cases it used to make a difference.

[ProverbsofHell.2307]

Have you tried just a dash of muscle relief cream on your forehead?

[Reincarnated.1754]

@"Optimator.3589" said:I don't mean this question to be insulting, but is GW2 the only game running so poorly all of a sudden, or is this a general system slowdown? It is possible that you have some sort of malware or bloatware slowing things down. Over the years, I've reinstalled operating systems for many people who had mucked up their systems by installing all manner of browser toolbars, "computer optimisers", and the like.Not insulting, I have seen other peoples computers :)Don't Play any other games.Only use "Microsoft Edge" it hasn't been out long enough to be hacked as much as the others.Only install programs from original creators (checked), or those I have written my self.I even try to remove the shite MS Keeps adding to the data collection OS (Cortana) :)Done a full scan of my system.@Ray Koopa.2354 said:I looked at your settings. Some tips from my experiences with a Phenom X4. Some of these settings should only affect the GPU, but they turned out to stress my old CPU aswell. Some are pure GPU optimizations, just in case.…………………….>>>>>>>>>>>I'm going to ask my son to help me with your suggestions.@"Ashantara.8731" said:

1. Configure Windows 10 properly. There is so much crap running in the background that you don't need and is clogging your system performance.
2. Adjust your graphics card settings (forgot how the successor of AMD Catalyst is called).
3. Adjust your in-game graphics settings. Particle effects and player model count (as well as reflections) do not need to be max'd.
4. Make sure you have unparked all CPU cores and that you have set the correct number in the Windows settings (look here).

1,2,3. Trying to find them out. :)

4. I looked at the page about un parking CPU cores, the guy talks about Intel CPU?

..

Thanks again guys,I'm going to ask my son to help with the above.If that fails, I do still have an old SS drive in my case with the operating system and GW on before I upgraded to my current SS Drive and had this issue.All was acceptable when that drive was running, so if swopping out these drives fixes the issue, then I will do a new install of windows on the current SS Drive.This of course is a last resort.If that don't improve things, ………A…t……kit…ns…………s..t……th……fan………

[Ray Koopa.2354]

That will only decrease loading times, but not FPS throughout it. But it you have an SSD anyway instead of an HDD, go for it.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Reincarnated.1754 said:

@"Ashantara.8731" said:

1. Configure Windows 10 properly. There is so much crap running in the background that you don't need and is clogging your system performance.
2. Adjust your graphics card settings (forgot how the successor of AMD Catalyst is called).
3. Adjust your in-game graphics settings. Particle effects and player model count (as well as reflections) do not need to be max'd.
4. Make sure you have unparked all CPU cores and that you have set the correct number in the Windows settings (
   look here
   ).

1,2,3. Trying to find them out. :)

4. I looked at the page about un parking CPU cores, the guy talks about Intel CPU?

That "guy" is a woman, namely me. ;) And yes, Intel, but I am certain there are similiar settings options for AMD, no?

[Ray Koopa.2354]

Well yes, but by default the operating system doesn't limit them anyway, so im wondering what you mean with that?

[maddoctor.2738]

Because your settings all look "proper" and there shouldn't be such a performance drop, is there an on-board GPU on your system?AMD Phenom II X6 1090T do not have an integrated GPU so what's your motherboard model?

Also, remove Supersampling, go under Render Sampling and select Native, then disable Antialising, you have it on SMAA Low, try setting it to None.I have an R9 390 and my GPU is over-working with supersampling and antialising on (80%+ GPU LOAD) so I find it weird how your GPU is only at 19% load with those settings on.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Also, remove Supersampling, go under Render Sampling and select Native, then disable Antialising, you have it on SMAA Low, try setting it to None.I have an R9 390 and my GPU is over-working with supersampling and antialising on (80%+ GPU LOAD) so I find it weird how your GPU is only at 19% load with those settings on.

To me, that reads as "the CPU can't deliver frame data to the GPU fast enough to keep it busy, even when the GPU is being hugely overworked for each individual frame it renders". Basically, the GPU is pretty idle because it has nothing to do ... not because it is super-fast, but because something else is even slower.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"Ray Koopa.2354" said:Well yes, but by default the operating system doesn't limit them anyway, so im wondering what you mean with that?

You need to learn to quote to whoever (and what part of their post exavtly) you are replying to, because I have no idea what your comments refer to (unparking? hyper-threading?) and most likely others don't, either.

And since you "don't know what I mean by it", simply check my previously posted link.

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Because your settings all look "proper" and there shouldn't be such a performance drop, is there an on-board GPU on your system?

That's an excellent thought. Perhaps the OP has selected the wrong GPU in their nVidia Control Panel. :+1:

[Ray Koopa.2354]

@"Ashantara.8731" There's no need to quote the previous post. Mentioning members would be a good idea though on this forum as it otherwise doesn't seem to notify them.You should've quoted the link you mentioned though because i read the "previous" link and it didn't add anything new to what i said, and I'd like to understand.You suggest to simply select the number of virtual cores the user has (including HT cores), which is the default if you don't check that option. It doesn't prevent parking cores even if you check it, so I'm not sure what that would help with.Please link to sources which claim otherwise.