I can play WoW in max settings (granted not most intensive game around, but WoD area is pretty intensive as far as WoW goes)
I can play Elder Scrolls Online max settings
Can play Black Desert Online max settings (and that is way better graphics than GW2)
Witcher 3 max settings, with hairworks fully on, downsampling, and still get pretty good FPS and Witcher 3 is vastly more intensive than GW2 should be
No idea why, cause GW2 is a lot of fun. But it isn't playable. I got WAY better FPS at release too, but after some patch, I always get 25-30 FPS and if I lower everything to minimum it only goes to 35-40 FPS (lower in cities). The best FPS increase comes from turning down character limit, but that completely ruins the game for me. At release though, I got 50-60 FPS...no idea what changed
i5 660 CPU 3.3Ghz
GTX 970 4gb
Windows 10
SSD 500gb
32gig DDR3 ram
And yet, FPS is super low. Its only playable on lowest settings, but when I go into a city or populated area, FPS still drops a lot.
It isn't my PC, I can play WAY better looking and vastly more intensive games than GW2.
I did some reading, and on the forums there are TONS of people complaining about low FPS, and it happened after a patch early in the year. So it isn't just me.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Comments
Played: Guild Wars, AoC, Lotro, CoH, Warhammer, Tabula Ras, Spellborn, Second Life, Rift, Aion, Tera.
Playing: Guild Wars 2, WoT
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
You're running an underpowered processor that is almost seven years old, with more ram than it can support. The i5 660 is barely, and I mean BARELY, better than an old Core2Quad Q6600@2.4 in terms of performance. In terms of value the Core2Quad Q6600 actually ranks higher than your i5. That isn't good...
Here is a CPU Mark Performance Comparison:
- The Core2Quad Q6600 has a CPU Mark score of 2989
- Your i5 660 has a CPU Mark score of 3295
- My i7 6850K has a CPU Mark score of 14322
I can run GW2 completely maxed out, with a GTX 960, and never drop below 60 fps ever. I don't experience any dips whatsoever, regardless of where I am/what I am doing/how many people are around. I have a worse graphics card than you, and the same amount of ram. I have the game running off of my storage drive, which is not an SSD. I am running Windows 10 x64.
Taking all of that into account I think it's safe to say that your CPU is bottlenecking, it's time for an upgrade.
And still (again) doesn't explain why FPS was 50-60 when GW2 was first released. I had incredibly good FPS. And my GPU was way worse too.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Can't be my PC. Wonder why GW2 runs so bad for me. I can't afford to upgrade my CPU, but literally every game I have plays way better, and that is far more intensive.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
This is one of many threads on the issue. Easy to find many threads about it. There are tons of people with good PCs with low FPS. Not everyone is effected of course. Wonder why the issue is so widespread.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Heck, for CPU intensive games...I play a super modded Rome 2, and modded Warhammer Total War with HUGE unit sizes (even more than base game), and both those are still fully playable and that is more CPU intensive than GW2 should be. And a lot of MMOs use the CPU a lot, and they still perform perfectly fine.
No idea why GW2 is only single game of hundreds that I have and played that isn't playable.
Like I said (again lol), at release...I got 50-60 FPS in GW2. Nothing changed that much. Now its below 30 in cities, and barely above 30 elsewhere. And if any people are around, the FPS tanks. Which I play WoW surrounded by hundreds of other players and that plays fine. In elder scrolls online, I went to a capital city and saw easily hundreds of players (even more than WoW) and my FPS barely dropped at all.
However, GW2 is super fun and I can hop in and play. But no idea why FPS is so bad. Its only game I have with bad FPS, and when it first released FPS was way better.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
I suggest to check/reinstall drivers for your GPU and Win10.
Also may be latest drivers are not the best for WIn10&GW2. Check forums.
It's still too new OS and can have glitches.
2nd:
GW2 has increased amount of players on the screen (they removed culling about 2 years ago), so you can have 150 ppl on the screen easily. It's very very CPU demanding. Quad-core is recommended.
GPU does not matter much for GW2.
But, in reality you do not need so many ppl on the screen, because anyway you cant see all of them in a big croud.
I set on my pc (Win7, core i7, old gtx 680): all settings ULTRA, even including antialisaing (render sampling = supersample)
The only things were reduced:
Character model limit = low
Character model quality = low
Do not afraid to set it, you will see NO difference, it's still very high quality, but fps will be 50-60
And you will see all "nameplates" still, so the croud will remain a big on the screen, just check "show all player names" in settings.
My result is around 50-60 fps.
Funny too because they did a lot of bragging about their artists yet when in low quality graphics,does it really matter?
The artwork or anything that would make you stand up and notice is VERY limited,like all our early game will see nothing but cheap generated land mass /trees/brush and static npc's waiting to deliver a quest on a automated rotation.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
What I wanted to say is that they probably meant that it's MORE CPU heavy than other MMOs that only focus on the GPU. Given that culling was removed as @StarS0ft pointed out and the specs of the OP this would be a logical reason why the OP is having issues with the game now.
- it's very CPU demanding on ULTRA-high graphics settings.
Of coz, if seetings are not Ultra-high, then it's not demanding game at all (nor CPU, nor GPU),
and yes it's really well-optimized game and can run pretty well on any PC.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
I always find these types of statements to be comical, you're acting as if you're the only person who has a clue and the rest of us are mindless buffoons.
You got it to run on a crappy laptop, good for you, what was your framerate and what were your settings? I can get it to run on a garbage system too, what is your point?
Lay off the high and mighty attitude, dude, we're just trying to help the guy troubleshoot his issue so he can resolve it.
A little mutual respect goes a long way, food for thought...
But there's no need to just guess. Try tinkering with your anti-aliasing settings, as that's pure GPU load. If turning anti-aliasing up and down doesn't budge your frame rates at all, you're looking at a CPU bottleneck.
This could actually have been a huge problem. Also, I noticed for some reason some cables/wires were loose inside my computer, and not fully connected. Pretty sure they were fully connected at one point, but guess they got loose somehow.
Well, now not only do I get 40 FPS in cities in GW2 (which is a HUGE improvement)...every other game is running way better too. Granted, I'm not playing on max in GW2, but its same settings as I had before. I did able to boost some settings up though, and not lose any FPS (maybe 1-2 at most).
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Specially when we talk about WvW