Low FPS making it unplayable - Any fix?

TheScavenger · January 2015

On highest settings, I get 18 to 20 FPS in charr city
On performance settings, I get 28-30 FPS in charr city

On lowest everything, I still only get 31-32 FPS in charr city.

I play 1920×1080, and this is a brand NEW install as I just recently re-installed my PC. Everything is fully up to date for drivers and windows updates.

When I played at release (I had to buy GW2 again, I lost my old account, cd key, email and username/password…not a big deal)…I also got VERY low FPS. No matter the settings, from highest quality to performance my FPS was always low in this game.

I use CCleaner and everything is cleaned. Hard drives aren’t fragmented at all since its a new install.

I have Geforce 660GTX 2GB
i5 CPU (its the really old oldest generation of i5 and it was rather crappy as I got an off-brand non-intel one…could this be why GW2 FPS is so low?)
no SSD drive
8GB DDR3 ram
Windows 7 64bit

Anyway I can make better FPS? I can’t buy a new CPU or any new hardware, because I’m really poor in real life and I lost my job a year ago. Haven’t been able to find another one yet, no one in my area is hiring at all. Once the medical laws from the president went through, everyone stopped hiring where I live. Can’t even get a fast food job (no mcdonalds/burger king here, its all family businesses where I live. Its a small mountain town. Internet connection is good because of Google though. We're one of the lucky ones for that)…so I have no way to upgrade my PC at all since I can’t afford it. I already pay a lot of other bills, and I only get a certain amount of money every month from the government. I can't afford a PC upgrade at all...it all goes to bills+food and I only have 50-100 dollars a month extra to spend. Even then, I want to save that as sometimes my bills are higher (when it snows and summer time) and I end up losing my saving money

On performance the game looks so ugly, and my FPS is still really low, so I just set it to highest quality for low fps but it looks nice.

Is there anything I can do to increase my FPS? I’d greatly appreciate any help Being stuck with a max of 30 FPS on lowest settings is really sad

I just bought the game, and such low FPS makes it unplayable.

Its weird though. I can play Skyrim with 30-40 FPS with highend ENB+high res textures+climate overhaul that adds a lot of plants and that is way more intensive on my PC. I can play any other MMO and game and get nice FPS...not greatest, but I can play any modern game at 40+ fps without mods on high/highest settings.

Only game out of the many I played with such low FPS is GW2 DayZ is actually low FPS too, but its still fully playable at 35-40 fps average. GW2 goes down to 24 in Charr city on lowest settings.

vadio123 · January 2015

First all check if you computer not using onboard gpu

If yes - Disable it

Second update you gpu driver / chipseet as great to

Third awalys run as admin or disable UAC

Four Turn off shadow in grapich option

Electro057 · January 2015

I'm surprised you're running into any issues :S I've run it on four different machines now with no trouble, including a laptop.

I'm thinking it may be your CPU, especially since you didn't list clockspeed or the specific model. There were multiple first gen i5s and not very many were good.

Muke · January 2015

Ran GW2 maxed out in pvp zerg battles and Lion's Arch on just a i5 and 8gb 1333mhz ddr3 ram, gtx 660ti before I built a new game machine.

There is something wrong with your hardware gpu if you can't run it maxed out.

TheScavenger · January 2015

Originally posted by Electro057
I'm surprised you're running into any issues :S I've run it on four different machines now with no trouble, including a laptop.

I'm thinking it may be your CPU, especially since you didn't list clockspeed or the specific model. There were multiple first gen i5s and not very many were good.

Well, its a brand new install of Windows and my drivers are 100% up to date. Including GPU drivers.

My CPU is 3.3 Ghz, so guess its fast. But it was a really crappy one when I first got it. I forgot what model it was, but someone on here that is a tech person found it on amazon (was hard to find) and he said "didn't even know they made them that crappy"

But none of my other games or MMOs have any issue. The single game with FPS problems is GW2. Oblivion plays at 40+ fps with heavy mods (and that is FAR more CPU oriented, and my Oblivion looks better than vanilla Skyrim...not as good as modded Skyrim)

Even at release of GW2 FPS was so low. I thought it was just release problems, but actually my FPS is even worse now than it was at release.

TheScavenger · January 2015

Originally posted by Muke
Ran GW2 maxed out in pvp zerg battles and Lion's Arch on just a i5 and 8gb 1333mhz ddr3 ram, gtx 660ti before I built a new game machine.

There is something wrong with your hardware gpu if you can't run it maxed out.

Well, I want to get a GTX 770 4gb...but I can't afford it. It never went on sale either, which sucked.

Electro057 · January 2015

The thing I don't get is my last rig had an AMD Bulldozer, a Radeon 6990 with 2 gigs of ram, and 8 gigs of DDR3 and it played the game just fine. Even my bros laptop with an integrated Nvidia chip played the game on high with a pristine FPS. So I can't help but think something is up, I've never experienced FPS issues or lag in Guild Wars.

Neverwinter Online? Aion? I've gotten some -lag- issues (not FPS) but never GW2.

irnbru69 · January 2015

Control Panel > Power Options, Or goto your Start Menu and type power options.

When you have the power options open make sure your pc is not on balanced setting, Put it on High Performance mode.

There is another thing you could try, its called core unpark, unpark all of your cores so they are always active. Just search for core unparker via google.

Defrag your PC try Smart Defrag.

EDIT:

I ran this game on a 9800GTX with single core cpu, you really should be getting more FPS. I know you said you done drivers but try IOBITS Driver Booster, its totally legit and free it will resolve any driver issues.

TheScavenger · January 2015

Originally posted by Electro057
The thing I don't get is my last rig had an AMD Bulldozer, a Radeon 6990 with 2 gigs of ram, and 8 gigs of DDR3 and it played the game just fine. Even my bros laptop with an integrated Nvidia chip played the game on high with a pristine FPS. So I can't help but think something is up, I've never experienced FPS issues or lag in Guild Wars.

Neverwinter Online? Aion? I've gotten some -lag- issues (not FPS) but never GW2.

Yeah, I dunno why GW2 is so bad on my machine.

I can play ESO (its brand new) at 60 FPS

I can play SWTOR at 60 fps

WoW is godmode FPS (not that intensive lol)

I can play Age of Conan at max settings at 40-50 FPS

I could play Secret World at 50-60 FPS

I can play SWG fun fun at 60 FPS

Every MMO except AoC (and even then it was good) is 50+ FPS.

I can even play EVE at 60 FPS

ON TOP OF THAT

I can downsample ESO and STILL get 50+ FPS. Can downsample WoW and its still godmode FPS. Can't downsample AOC. Secret world looks uglier downsampled. EVE I downsampled and still get 60 FPS

mystik13 · January 2015

Run gpuz and check whether your gpu link width is running at the maximum supported link width (probably pci express 2.0 x16)

GW2 is directx9 and cpu bottlenecked probably upgrading gpu isn't going to help much.

TheScavenger · January 2015

I'm running driver booster thing that was recommended.

My CPU drivers were really out of date. Which is strange as I got the newest one from Intel site, so...that means the site wasn't up to date or the drivers are REALLY hard to find

My hard drive drivers were out of date too

My sound drivers are VERY out of date

Those are the only three very out of date devices. Except sound drivers are most out of date. Even though I got newest ones from the site.

TheGoblinKing · January 2015

There's definitely something wrong with your machine. I am running an i7 with the GTX 580 and I can run it on max settings absolutely zero problems and get Max Frame rates

TheScavenger · January 2015

Drivers fully up to date definitely 100% now. Driver booster found all.

Heavily modded skyrim saw a 10-15 FPS increase.

GW2 saw none.

But like I said, I can downsample ESO, EVE, WoW and even downsample Skyrim (without ENB only) and they all play fine. I get 50+ fps in all those mentioned MMOs.

Why is every MMO play at 50+ FPS downsampled, even intensive ones like ESO...but GW2 can't even barely pass 30 on my machine on lowest settings? Even ESO sees FAR more FPS. Even with ENB+SweetFX attached or downsampled (I can't do both).

I can downsample a lot of games for 35+ FPS...but GW2 sees really bad FPS. Its only game I've played with such FPS.

TheScavenger · January 2015

On the bright side, my PC runs a lot faster now with up to date drivers and so far Skyrim and ESO both have seen massive FPS increase. GW2 is only one with no difference, and in fact, its laggier now...

elitero · January 2015

Can you post a screen shot of your in-game settings for Video please? and if possible dxdiag?

Something like this -

------------------

System Information

------------------

Time of this report: 1/26/2015, 16:13:57

Machine name: NOBATMANNOHERE

Operating System: Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64-bit (6.3, Build 9600) (9600.winblue_r3.140827-1500)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: MSI

System Model: MS-7916

BIOS: V1.7

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz (4 CPUs), ~4.5GHz

Memory: 8192MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 8142MB RAM

Page File: 4218MB used, 5202MB available

Windows Dir: C:Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

DX Setup Parameters: Not found

User DPI Setting: Using System DPI

System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)

DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled

DxDiag Version: 6.03.9600.16384 64bit Unicode

---------------

Display Devices

---------------

Card name: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series

Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x67B0)

DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)

Device Type: Full Device

Device Key: EnumPCIVEN_1002&DEV_67B0&SUBSYS_E285174B&REV_00

Display Memory: 7911 MB

Dedicated Memory: 4071 MB

Shared Memory: 3840 MB

Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor

Monitor Model: ASUS ML239

Monitor Id: ACI23F8

Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)

Output Type: HDMI

Driver Name: aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx32,aticfx32,aticfx32,atiumd64.dll,atidxx64.dll,atidxx64.dll,atiumdag,atidxx32,atidxx32,atiumdva,atiumd6a.cap,atitmm64.dll

Driver File Version: 8.17.0010.1333 (English)

Driver Version: 14.501.1003.0

DDI Version: 11.1

Feature Levels: 11.1,11.0,10.1,10.0,9.3,9.2,9.1

Driver Model: WDDM 1.3

Graphics Preemption: DMA

L0C0Man · January 2015

I have a similar setup to yours and runs significantly smoother than what you describe.

What do you mean by "off-brand non-intel one" when you refer to the CPU?. I do remember reading about cases of fake CPU being sold online as OEM (basically lower speed CPUs altered to be identified as higher end ones), if that's your case, it might be a big reason why GW2 runs that slow, as the engine depends a lot on the CPU, much more than similar games, so a bad or slow CPU will bottleneck the game much more than a slow GFX card, for example.

TheScavenger · January 2015

Holy mother of pearl. After updating all my drivers with driver booster...Skyrim WITH ambient occlusion AND depth of field...is now running at an average of 50 FPS!!! With AO and DoF on, on top of ENB I was getting only 30-35 FPS on average. And intensive mods AND tons of foliage all over the place

And my video settings are all whatever high quality preset is in GW2. I also switch to performance preset and the FPS increases by 3-5.

And holy mother of crabbypatty...I can play Witcher 2 with max settings WITH ENB+Sweetfx+AO and DoF at 40 FPS...that was UNPLAYABLE before driver updates. I couldn't even run it at medium barely now game is maxed out

My life is complete, hell has frozen over...Skyrim is fully playable with no lag

And DayZ (standalone) now plays at 50+ FPS instead of dropping to 20-30 in cities...holy mother of crabbypatty of pearls...it is a sign of...driver booster is epic as hell

And GW2 is still crappy FPS ROFL

TheScavenger · January 2015

Every single game I have, even Arma 3 is maxed out with high FPS and only single game is GW2

Oh well, this thread was epic just because of Io Driver Booster. Don't even care I wasted money on GW2. It was totally worth it, now every single game is maxed out with 40+ FPS

Witcher 2, maxed out

DayZ, maxed out

Arma 3, Maxed out

Skyrim with heavy mod list+tropical skyrim maxed out

Age of conan is also maxed out and I downsampled it as well

Every game except GW2 is maxed out

I'm super excited Sorry for all the posts...its just...now every game I like to play is maxed out and playable and skyrim my favorite one I can actually play with enb+heavy mod list without lag and FPS drops.

Holy mother of crabbypatty this is the best day ever.

L0C0Man · January 2015

Great that you're getting better performance on your games..

To troubleshot GW2 a little bit more, try to do some benchmarks. I like this one: https://novabench.com/index.php that way you can see your CPU speed and check that it's running at the proper speed.

Also, check your CPU temperature, google any CPU temperature app and run it on your computer while you play GW2 and see if the CPU temperature climbs (if it taxes your CPU more, it'll make it hotter). Some bios and motherboards will throttle down the CPU and make it run slower if they notice that it gets too hot. Actually happened to me on Rift, the game started to go unbearably slow, then I noticed that the throttle down feature on my bios was set at a lower temperature than it should, making the CPU half as fast as soon as it got to a certain temperature.

TheScavenger · January 2015

I doubt its a heating problem. Its solely only GW2, and I have FAR higher end games running (Witcher 2 at max is something I doubt few can do lol, and I thought my PC sucked until I updated the drivers)...and ESO downsampled at max is more intensive than anything GW2 can do.

I asked on the forums, and a lot of people are having this issue. High end systems, but stuck below 30 FPS. One has a system similar to mine, and only getting 17 FPS. Another has a far better CPU (an i7) and still really low fps. Another has a newer i5 than mine and still really low FPS. Seems there are 3 threads recently about this (including mine) on the official forums. And a search takes this problem all the way back to release.

We do all have Nvidia cards (the ones with this issue), and almost all of them are running i5 CPUs except one guy. And that is about the similarities end. But everyone with low FPS has highend systems, and everyone plays other games fine except GW2 is really low fps for them.

Tells me its related to GW2, and their programming. But doesn't seem to effect everyone, seems a minority. Something GW2 doesn't like in our hardware.

Just in this day I posted, seen 4 people+myself with this issue...so 5 in total. All highend systems, can play other games fine...but not GW2 which gets stuck below 30 fps for all 5 of us.

someforumguy · January 2015

Seems to be a problem with GW2 not recognizing your hardware properly. You might want to post about this on GW2 forums. It is a better place to start anyway. Sometimes people come up with a temporarily fix in the game's configs until devs find a final fix.

TheScavenger · January 2015

Originally posted by someforumguy
Seems to be a problem with GW2 not recognizing your hardware properly. You might want to post about this on GW2 forums. It is a better place to start anyway. Sometimes people come up with a temporarily fix in the game's configs until devs find a final fix.

that could be it. Something me and the 4 others (so far) might have in common for such low FPS on a higher end system. None of our video cards are exactly the same, none of our CPUs are the same...but all 5 of us have Nvidia and i5 processors (well one has an i7)...might be something else going on too.

In any case, even warband plays 100% perfectly now with a 450 battlesize when before it was really laggy at that.

Siveria · January 2015

The problem is your videocard, you need a better one, there is really not much else to say, the 660 is weaker noticably than the 560 gtx. However here are some options you can lower in any game to improve performance: Ambient occlusion (this effect is a massive resource eater and I personally don't notice much with it on or off in terms of graphics quality) Turning down shadows (or even turning them off) will help alot, I generally shut shadows off in games even thou I have a 970 4g from MSI, unless its a game where shadows can help me (like say, FEAR series, knowing a enemy is around the corner cuz you see his shadow can save you), but for a game like guild wars 2, shadows really don't do much other than add to realism a bit. At that res you could also shtu anti-alazing off, you won't notice it tooo much at 1080p, Higher res you go the less AA you need usually. Lowering res can also give a huge improvement.

However if you wanna keep your current settings and get a higher fps, only real way to do it is upgrade your cpu or videocard.

someforumguy · January 2015

Originally posted by Siveria
The problem is your videocard, you need a better one, there is really not much else to say, the 660 is weaker noticably than the 560 gtx. However here are some options you can lower in any game to improve performance: Ambient occlusion (this effect is a massive resource eater and I personally don't notice much with it on or off in terms of graphics quality) Turning down shadows (or even turning them off) will help alot, I generally shut shadows off in games even thou I have a 970 4g from MSI, unless its a game where shadows can help me (like say, FEAR series, knowing a enemy is around the corner cuz you see his shadow can save you), but for a game like guild wars 2, shadows really don't do much other than add to realism a bit. At that res you could also shtu anti-alazing off, you won't notice it tooo much at 1080p, Higher res you go the less AA you need usually. Lowering res can also give a huge improvement.

However if you wanna keep your current settings and get a higher fps, only real way to do it is upgrade your cpu or videocard.

Maybe you didn't read about the performance of his pc with other games. Based on that, it makes no sense that it is just GW2 that performs poorly. Unless GW2 isn't recognising the hardware properly. That game is very scalable in performance, while he mentioned that even on low settings he got bad fps in GW2.

elitero · January 2015

If you post your Ddiag and a screenshot of your ingame video settings I can try to help, otherwise I think this is just some thread to rant about gw2 performance.

TheScavenger · January 2015

Oh, an important fact.

I had a Geforce 260GTX 896 MB when GW2 first came out.

When I upgraded to the 660GTX 2gb (my GPU is factory overclocked btw, forgot about that)...GW2 FPS stayed the same, and other games saw huge performance increase.

That and of course updating all my drivers today...its like I have a brand new 1000 dollar PC. EVERY game is performing so amazing, except GW2 lol

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