Why is my performance not as expected with a brand new rig?

[Jamesst.7523]

Are you 100% sure? because I'm gonna take action based on your opinions , I';ve searched google for the board and cant find people talking about it in the first place

[Ashantara.8731]

@Emberstone.2904 said:Ensure your processor isn't thermal throttling.

Bad advice during extremely hot summer days. Better to keep the system safe from overheating.

[Emberstone.2904]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Emberstone.2904 said:Ensure your processor isn't thermal throttling.

Bad advice during extremely hot summer days. Better to keep the system safe from overheating.

... What? If his processor is thermal throttling, it will be at 100 C as it's an Intel processor. I said to make sure that isn't happening. I.E. make sure it isn't running that hot. If it is running around 100 C, then clocks will drop. You do not want thermal throttling.

No idea what you think I said, but it's actually bad advice to not check if it's thermal throttling.

[Emberstone.2904]

@Emberstone.2904 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Emberstone.2904 said:Ensure your processor isn't thermal throttling.

Bad advice during extremely hot summer days. Better to keep the system safe from overheating.

... What? If his processor is thermal throttling, it will be at 100 C as it's an Intel processor. I said to make sure that isn't happening. I.E. make sure it isn't running that hot. If it is running around 100 C, then clocks will drop. You do not want thermal throttling.

No idea what you think I said.

@Jamesst.7523 said:Are you 100% sure? because I'm gonna take action based on your opinions , I';ve searched google for the board and cant find people talking about it in the first placeYes, you need a Z370 motherboard in order to overclock an i7-8700K. I personally use an Asus Prime Z370-A, probably one of the best boards for the money in terms of the quality of its VRMs, or voltage regulator modules. They're what's responsible for supplying your processor with power, and bad VRMs lead to unstable overclocks and potential board death due to heating the motherboard components too much.

(Sorry for the double post. I meant to add it as an edit to my previous one, but didn't realize I was in new-post mode and not edit mode.)

[Jamesst.7523]

So in order to overclock my i7 8700k I need z370 motherboard , and not any other. is that right?

[Ghostrider.6879]

@"Jamesst.7523" said:Are you 100% sure? because I'm gonna take action based on your opinions , I';ve searched google for the board and cant find people talking about it in the first place

https://ark.intel.com/products/133348/Intel-H310-Chipset

Just check the spec~H and B series chipset/motherboards are more of a low/mid range board that don't have too many advance features.That said an i7 8700k should run this game fine out of the box since gw2 is really about cpu performance.But if you are into overclocking you will need the Z series board plus a good after market cooler (water or air), plus a good PSU.

[Jamesst.7523]

Well the problem is that its not running it at the expected performance level COMPARED to other setup with lower specs... so Idk what's going wrong at my end , that's the reason I started this thread , I found about the OC issue during the day replying to others helpful tips.Once I turn on the CPU hungry effects in the game (Charcter Model limit) from Low to any other setting, fps drops a ton. even at Low setting , it still drops significantly with most HoT places , LA , the home towns of the races , Some PoF areas.Core Tyria runs pretty smooth...so Idk whats the issue here

[Malediktus.9250]

Yes, you need a Z-chip motherboard to overclock Intel iX-xxxxK processors

You could see if your mainboard has multi core enhancement. It forces all cores and cache to run the max turbo clock. But seeing that mainboard is one of the cheapest available it probably wont. Generally speaking mainboards below 150 USD are garbage for overclocking (even if the specs look right on paper, the caps, vrm and other power supply components are usually trash).

Also make sure your RAM is running in dual channel (check the mainboard manual to see which RAM slots are correct for two sticks of RAM). It costs a lot of performance if it does not.

Unrelated to GW2 I wonder why you would pair a 1060 3GB (it does not only have 3GB less RAM, but also less cores than the real 1060) with a 8700k. Generally you do not spend more money on the processor than on the graphic card. At least if gaming is your goal.

[Emberstone.2904]

@Jamesst.7523 said:Well the problem is that its not running it at the expected performance level COMPARED to other setup with lower specs... so Idk what's going wrong at my end , that's the reason I started this thread , I found about the OC issue during the day replying to others helpful tips.Once I turn on the CPU hungry effects in the game (Charcter Model limit) from Low to any other setting, fps drops a ton. even at Low setting , it still drops significantly with most HoT places , LA , the home towns of the races , Some PoF areas.Core Tyria runs pretty smooth...so Idk whats the issue here

Can you please tell us what temperature your processor is running at when playing? Your issue could just be a simple case of clocks dropping while playing due to heat.

[Chip.9267]

Try an older nvidia driver. Use 388.13 Nvidia drivers.Https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7rxnsb/serious_framerate_drops_after_updating_to_nvidia/

[Zedek.8932]

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:3gb on a graphics card could be bottle necking if you're playing open world-esque games. While GW2 likes single core performance it still needs to store a fair bit of texture information on the graphics card memory. I could be wrong on what GW2 wants! This is more from learning about Skyrim's need for higher memory on graphics.

GW2 does not remotely consumes that much VRAM.

@Jamesst.7523 said:Are you 100% sure? because I'm gonna take action based on your opinions , I';ve searched google for the board and cant find people talking about it in the first place

What is HWinfo64 (there should be a mobile version out there, too) reporting about your clock speeds?

The problem is widely known.

@Emberstone.2904 said:No idea what you think I said, but it's actually bad advice to not check if it's thermal throttling.

He probably meant to mess with thermal throttling manually. I am not sure if that is even possible for us consumers.

The problem is widely known. When I am in Core Tyria and get stable frame rates I almost forgot how GW2 looks and plays like when it's not going rollercoaster with the fps.

My system can also handle EVERYTHING on the market easily - except for GW2. I showed screenshots once where core 7 and 8 were idling even (base clock and almost no multithread usage) while core 1 and 2 were in turbo (which is like 3.6 GHz on a Ryzen 7 1700X and we all know that is not enough for this game). CPU temperatures are fine, 60°C under full load, a DarkRock3 is doing that job pretty well even with the summer ambience temperature. My 3 case fans were cleaned and the entire system is in good temperatures. My GTX1080 runs with 40-60% Direct3D usage, it's basically chilling while the game is being rendered, nothing is coming even close to the orange marks. My 16 GByte RAM are clocked 2.4 GHz. Game is running from a hard disk because I don't think that matters at all, and while my twin-Western Digital Reds won't win any speed competition, it does not matter, that's what loading screens are for. Game is running connected via Ethernet right into my modem (not even a router) because I have no other devices that connects to it. Upstream and downstream are both as expected (1.5 / 50 MBit/s). My mainboard is a MSI X370 CARBON for AM4.

But still I can't get stable frames. I have reflections turned off, I have one of the biggest consumers turned off - Anti Alias (I like the crisp look of the games). Shadows on medium. Yes, I have maximum character models enabled but since I play alone, there is no crowded place expect for the cities. Still I get pop-ups of buildings after a map has loaded, I run into invisible walls what later turns out to be a whole building in the crystal desert. After Alt+Tabbing, I have to turn and tilt the camera by 360°, else every slight camera turn will result in massive fps problems for 2 seconds, as if some buffer has run empty.

If you let HWinfo64 running for a while, you get an average value. They are on my system like 30-60%. I could easily double the performance on what I can offer to the game, but it does not happen.

GW2 is a 1970s' LADA engine in a Mercedes chassis. It looks and plays nice (albeit the look is dated, compared to the almost same-aged FF14), but under the bonnet it's coughing and puffing...

Excelsior.

[Gehenna.3625]

Ehh, there is one more thing that I know of that can be a bottleneck for performance. It surprised me when I found out it was my bottleneck but I'll share it just in case it may apply.

It's about the monitor you have and the cable you use to connect to it. Apparently modern day graphics cards have a lot more stuff going on like AA and much more and that means more information needs to be sent to your monitor. Now I have a 4k monitor with a 1070 Graphics Card but my games were feeling sluggish and somehow didn't quite work right...until I changed from a HDMI to a DisplayPort cable (1.4 though 1.2 should be fine) and changed the settings on my monitor accordingly. The change was frankly baffling.

Now you run at 1080p you say and I'm not expert enough to know if that makes a difference in your situation but for me it made all the difference. Since the 1060 is also the current generation it may be relevant. So that's just the experience I had with this. I have no idea if it would make a difference for you but there it is.

[maddoctor.2738]

I suspect your GPU is the problem. 3GB in 2018 is too little

[Malediktus.9250]

@maddoctor.2738 said:I suspect your GPU is the problem. 3GB in 2018 is too little

Not in GW2 if he plays at 1080p without even supersampling activated

[XenoSpyro.1780]

DirectX 9. 2007 engine. Very bad multi-core optimization that causes main-thread to be choked by anything, like dozens of playermodels. And you're just going to have to deal with it, like the hundreds of "why does my game run bad on my $3000 supercomputer" threads before yours.

[yann.1946]

Check which gpu you're pc is using. I ones didn't plug my screen on my graphics card and my pc shifted to using the one in my cpu instead of my 1070

[Emberstone.2904]

@maddoctor.2738 said:I suspect your GPU is the problem. 3GB in 2018 is too little

I barely break 1GB of VRAM used on max settings, with supersampling.

[Magnus Godrik.5841]

Your gpu may he holding your cpu back. And if you oc your rig make sure you do it manually. That auto shit sucks. To get its full potential as far as processing you need memory thats fast otherwise your never hit that 4.7. On my rig i needed xmp memory modules to hit 5. I didnt like the the temp so i dropped it at 4.7 with a steady temp of 65 under full load. Your monitor can affect this as well especially refresh rates and resolutions. The chip maybe fantastic but it cant reach its full potential on gaming with an outdated card.

[Awe.1096]

This is a known issue. All the answers telling to get better gpu/cpu/memory/whatever wont do a thing. You could run GW2 on a NASA supercomputer and you still wont get constant 60fps in all scenarios. It is just a way GW2 is coded. The answer is hidden somwhere in the source code and it is hard to tell how much work a potential fix would require. In a bad case scenario they would have to rewrite the entire core of the game engine. Might not be worth the effort.

[Emberstone.2904]

@Magnus Godrik.5841 said:Your gpu may he holding your cpu back. And if you oc your rig make sure you do it manually. That auto kitten sucks. To get its full potential as far as processing you need memory thats fast otherwise your never hit that 4.7. On my rig i needed xmp memory modules to hit 5. I didnt like the the temp so i dropped it at 4.7 with a steady temp of 65 under full load. Your monitor can affect this as well especially refresh rates and resolutions. The chip maybe fantastic but it cant reach its full potential on gaming with an outdated card.

I wish people would stop saying the GPU is the problem. If I can max the game on a Radeon HD 7950 (midrange card from 2012) and achieve 60 FPS in most of the game, excluding world events, then a 1060 3GB will have no problem.

No, the VRAM isn't holding him back. I'm just finished a full-map Octovine in Auric Basin and I'm at 1.3GB of VRAM used on my GTX 1070. 3GB is plenty.

The issue is elsewhere.

[Jamesst.7523]

Thank you all for your kind answers and help. I think I realized I need a better motherboard or a Z series one to overclock my CPU.Apparently its running at 4.3GHZ after enabling the CPU ratio to 47 on the Motherboard settings.@Malediktus.9250 Would you please explain to me a bit more details about the 4.3GHZ thingy being the 4.7? I don't understand it how the 4.7 Ghz turbo is 4.3 at all cores...And from what I understand correctly , if I only enable 1 core, at 4.7ghz as you said, will the game run smoother?? That's something Im looking forward to hear more about from you. and thank you all for your kind help again , @Gehenna.3625 I'll try what you said, but could you mention some statistics about how high the FPS went up after you tried something other than the HDMI. Thank you so much

[Emberstone.2904]

@Jamesst.7523 said:Thank you all for your kind answers and help. I think I realized I need a better motherboard or a Z series one to overclock my CPU.Apparently its running at 4.3GHZ after enabling the CPU ratio to 47 on the Motherboard settings.@Malediktus.9250 Would you please explain to me a bit more details about the 4.3GHZ thingy being the 4.7? I don't understand it how the 4.7 Ghz turbo is 4.3 at all cores...And from what I understand correctly , if I only enable 1 core, at 4.7ghz as you said, will the game run smoother?? That's something Im looking forward to hear more about from you. and thank you all for your kind help again , @Gehenna.3625 I'll try what you said, but could you mention some statistics about how high the FPS went up after you tried something other than the HDMI. Thank you so much

When you overclock, instead of just setting one core to 4.7 GHz, just set them all to a 47x multiplier with once you get your new motherboard, set a manual voltage of around 1.25v to start with, and increase it as needed. Keep an eye on your temperatures, though. The 8700K can get really hot when you start overclocking.

Back off on the overclock when you start passing 80 degrees Celsius under load.

On a Z370 motherboard, this will allow all cores to hit 4.7 GHz instead of just one. If you have the thermal headroom, you can increase the multipliers to 48 (4.8 GHz), 49 (4.9 GHz), and so on to get more performance. But only if you aren't already passing 80 degrees Celsius. If you let your chip get too hot when overclocking, you can run into thermal throttling (it slows down under load) and potential premature death of the processor.

As long as you keep your temperatures below 80 C under load and voltage below 1.35v on an Intel processor (AMD Ryzen processors should stop at 1.4v, for anyone else reading this), you won't have to worry about your processor dying due to overclocking. Been overclocking for years and kept to those rules, and have decade-old systems that are still running in tip-top shape.

[Jamesst.7523]

So @"Emberstone.2904" The setting I manually did on the motherboard "CPU Ratio" was merely useless? because From what I understand I need to adjust voltage in order to reach the 4.7 on all cores, I'm sorry for being a bit stupid but I need to make sure of every piece of information cuz I cant find answers on google

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

If GW2 is the only game you play then yes, don't worry about VRAM or a new GPU. The same can be said about getting a new spanking motherboard just to crank a few more hz. Some poor optimizations seems to be at play with drivers or whatever software (maybe monitor and its cables?). If you play other games, then it makes sense to go this route of a new motherboard (and even graphics card). Modded skyrim/fallout eats up VRAM for example.

I just feel like you will be disappointed after applying so much effort for a single game only to get maybe 10 frames (inconsistently mind you). Buy at your own risk.

D:

P.S. it would help to have the full rig info in the OP.

[Emberstone.2904]

@Jamesst.7523 said:So @"Emberstone.2904" The setting I manually did on the motherboard "CPU Ratio" was merely useless? because From what I understand I need to adjust voltage in order to reach the 4.7 on all cores, I'm sorry for being a bit stupid but I need to make sure of every piece of information cuz I cant find answers on google

If you're not on a Z370 motherboard, it won't allow you to adjust the CPU ratio (frequency) at all. It was probably just a "ghost setting" left over from another BIOS version for a different motherboard, probably just copied onto yours just to cut costs, but isn't actually enabled to do anything.

Voltage is necessary to ensure stability. The faster you run your chip, the more power it needs to stay stable, or you might run into crashes because it isn't getting enough power to sustain the frequency.

Voltage that's too low won't stop you from setting the frequency and seeing it reflected in Windows. Low voltage will just make your system unstable. So as you overclock, you'll need to increase the voltage if you see crashes. The way this process works is like this:

Increase frequency. Do you crash when stress testing? If not, increase frequency if you have temperature headroom.

If you increase the frequency and see a crash, that's when you up the voltage slightly to see if the instability goes away. Keep upping voltage and frequency like this until your chip is unstable no matter how much voltage you apply (never go past 1.35v on an 8700K, though. That's your limit), or you reach 80 degrees Celsius when stress testing.

A good program you can use to stress test is called AIDA64. It will run each core at 100% and make your processor get pretty hot just for the sake of seeing how hot it gets and if it'll crash. I usually run 10 minute stress tests when overclocking as I up the frequency and voltage to see if I get any immediate crashes, and when I settle on what I think is my best overclock, I'll let it run for an hour or so. If you crash, either increase voltage, or back down on the frequency.

If you start running too hot, back down on both voltage and frequency.