FPS Issue with the latest patch [merged]

#1 - Sept. 10, 2014, 2:56 a.m.

Ok so i just came back from a small break and after installing the latest patch i went down to 15-20 fps in general. It does not matter if i’m in the citys or in www. I just want to know if anyone else is having major fps drop in general. I’ve tried different driver versions and it’s only in GW i’ve got this issue.

Before installing this patch i could run GW without any problems at all and i even tried lowering everything to the lowest, nothing happend.

21 days later edit….. What have ArenaNet told us ?

After 9 days we got this;

I merged two active threads, and we appreciate the reports.

If you’ve recently noticed an drop in FPS, please post in this thread with the following:

Your location
Time and date of incident (plus time zone)
Game World
Map
Brief description of what you’re seeing
Ticket number, if you submitted one.

Thank you much!

(Since latency is a different issue and is not always related to this problem, I made a separate thread for that.)

Hmm don’t know what to say…

After 14 days we got this;

Submitting a ticket is the best way for us to collect this information from players, but on top of the information requested by Gaile, it would be incredibly helpful to get system information as well: OS, CPU, GPU, RAM, Mobo, and whatever else you feel like sharing. It would also be helpful to know what your FPS was originally, and what you’re seeing now, or if there is anything in particular that causes these FPS drops or if they’re consistently low.

Remember, the more information that you’re able to provide the more helpful this will be to us in investigating this issue.

Stalling the issue much ?

16 days;

Hey everyone,

I appreciate the wealth of info that you’ve all provided and rest assured, we’re still hammering away at this issue though we can’t say for certain when we will have a fix rolled out as these types of issues can often be very difficult to repro in house.

That said, we’re still investigating the issue but in the mean time, if you haven’t already, I’d advise turning on Vertical Sync or setting the Frame Limiter to 60 FPS as this does appear help (at least for some).

I’m sorry I don’t have more news to provide at the moment though I would advise checking back with this thread for more updates on the issue.

Holy moly!

17 days;

Just curious to see the response here – is there any change in performance when playing in FullScreen mode? We’ve seen this issue occur mostly in “Windowed” and “FullScreen Windowed” and we’d like to see if you all experience any difference while playing in FullScreen mode.

Thanks again everyone!

I’m curious aswell..
____________________________________________________

26 days edit; Nothing at all from Anet, not a single update or answer since my last little edit.

32 days edit; Still not an single answer or update.

34 days edit; Finally something!

Chad.9038:
We’ve been taking this performance issue very seriously and have spent the last few weeks trying to isolate the various causes you guys are experiencing.

Performance is very tricky because there are so many variables as to why the game could be running poorly, especially if it used to run fine. It hasn’t been affecting everybody and some of the folks experiencing issues have found them to be due to outside forces such as poor hardware cooling. We know this is a real issue from the things you guys have posted here and have been trying to find the root of the problem. Simply put, it’s been taking time to identify what the issues could be and trying to reproduce them in-house has proven quite elusive.

We’ve identified a number of serious issues some of which were introduced into the 9/9 build and have code changes on the way to address them. We don’t expect it to fix everyone’s performance problems but we certainly hope it will help the majority of you on this thread. I will follow up when the code changes go live and hope that you guys will report back as to whether they are making a difference or not.

I want to give props to you guys for helping each other out and providing helpful insight into this problem. I know it can be really frustrating, it is for us too so please bear with us. We sincerely want to make your playing experience the best we can.

Gaile Gray

#85 - Sept. 18, 2014, 6:42 p.m.

I merged two active threads, and we appreciate the reports.

If you’ve recently noticed an drop in FPS, please post in this thread with the following:

Your location
Time and date of incident (plus time zone)
Game World
Map
Brief description of what you’re seeing
Ticket number, if you submitted one.

Thank you much!

(Since latency is a different issue and is not always related to this problem, I made a separate thread for that.)

Ashley Segovia

#134 - Sept. 23, 2014, 3:51 p.m.

Submitting a ticket is the best way for us to collect this information from players, but on top of the information requested by Gaile, it would be incredibly helpful to get system information as well: OS, CPU, GPU, RAM, Mobo, and whatever else you feel like sharing. It would also be helpful to know what your FPS was originally, and what you’re seeing now, or if there is anything in particular that causes these FPS drops or if they’re consistently low.

Remember, the more information that you’re able to provide the more helpful this will be to us in investigating this issue.

Ashley Segovia

#147 - Sept. 25, 2014, 9:23 p.m.

Hey everyone,

I appreciate the wealth of info that you’ve all provided and rest assured, we’re still hammering away at this issue though we can’t say for certain when we will have a fix rolled out as these types of issues can often be very difficult to repro in house.

That said, we’re still investigating the issue but in the mean time, if you haven’t already, I’d advise turning on Vertical Sync or setting the Frame Limiter to 60 FPS as this does appear help (at least for some).

I’m sorry I don’t have more news to provide at the moment though I would advise checking back with this thread for more updates on the issue.

Ashley Segovia

#157 - Sept. 26, 2014, 12:51 p.m.

Just curious to see the response here – is there any change in performance when playing in FullScreen mode? We’ve seen this issue occur mostly in “Windowed” and “FullScreen Windowed” and we’d like to see if you all experience any difference while playing in FullScreen mode.

Thanks again everyone!

Chad Taylor

#251 - Oct. 17, 2014, 11:08 a.m.

daimasei.4091:
Labjax.2465:
P. S. No Red tag! :P You need to get one…

Agreed. I just realized he was Chad because his post wasn’t a bunch of whining :P

100% legit now

Chad Taylor

#260 - Oct. 21, 2014, 5:47 p.m.

Chad.9038:
We’ve identified a number of serious issues some of which were introduced into the 9/9 build and have code changes on the way to address them. We don’t expect it to fix everyone’s performance problems but we certainly hope it will help the majority of you on this thread. I will follow up when the code changes go live and hope that you guys will report back as to whether they are making a difference or not.

Fixes have gone live. Please report back if it affects any of the issues you guys are experiencing.

Chad Taylor

#274 - Oct. 22, 2014, 12:14 p.m.

arjov.8649:
ehm , button for “high” texture settings is grayed out together with high character textures… is this your magic fix? no seriously are you trying to scale the graphic this way?

Serbianwolf.1652:
“High-res character textures” is greyed out and unable to change(check or uncheck). Also, “Textures:” field is empty, making me be able select only medium and low.

What is the meaning of this anet?

This was intended…sort of. “High-res character textures” will no longer be available for low performance CPUs(most dual core) since it can be incredibly demanding on performance; on CPUs like these it will make the game unplayable. The grayed out texture quality bit was unintended and will be fixed.

This was a very minor part of the changes that went in, none of which I would qualify as “the magic fix”. As I mentioned it’s been incredibly difficult to ascertain what some of you are experiencing and thankfully our changes helped some of you, but for others it did not. We will keep working on it, chipping away at the issues we find.

Thanks all for your feedback and apologies for the hiccup. I will keep you posted if we find a smoking gun.

Chad Taylor

#277 - Oct. 22, 2014, 1:04 p.m.

Serbianwolf.1652:
Well, at least we got our response; which I deeply respect. Just to confirm this Chad, blank tab under “Textures:” is part of “intended development fix” or bug?

Thanks in advance!

bug

Chad Taylor

#278 - Oct. 22, 2014, 1:06 p.m.

If you are still seeing performance stuttering or fluctuations please try running the client with “-nosound” and let me know if it helps.

Chad Taylor

#280 - Oct. 22, 2014, 2:09 p.m.

Labjax.2465:
Chad Taylor.3487:
If you are still seeing performance stuttering or fluctuations please try running the client with “-nosound” and let me know if it helps.

Where do you put the “-nosound” to try it?

1. Create a new shortcut for Guild Wars 2 or make a copy the existing one with a different name.

2. Then right-click on it and select “properties”. A window should pop-up with a edit box titled “Target” that shows the Gw2.exe.

3. Add [ -nosound] after the exe without brackets. Make sure there is a space before the dash.

4. Click OK and launch the game with the shortcut.

5. Verify it worked by ensuring the game isn’t outputting audio.

Chad Taylor

#293 - Oct. 23, 2014, 4:10 p.m.

Dr Cynosure.1840:
Chad Taylor.3487:
arjov.8649:
ehm , button for “high” texture settings is grayed out together with high character textures… is this your magic fix? no seriously are you trying to scale the graphic this way?

Serbianwolf.1652:
“High-res character textures” is greyed out and unable to change(check or uncheck). Also, “Textures:” field is empty, making me be able select only medium and low.

What is the meaning of this anet?

This was intended…sort of. “High-res character textures” will no longer be available for low performance CPUs(most dual core) since it can be incredibly demanding on performance; on CPUs like these it will make the game unplayable. The grayed out texture quality bit was unintended and will be fixed.

This was a very minor part of the changes that went in, none of which I would qualify as “the magic fix”. As I mentioned it’s been incredibly difficult to ascertain what some of you are experiencing and thankfully our changes helped some of you, but for others it did not. We will keep working on it, chipping away at the issues we find.

Thanks all for your feedback and apologies for the hiccup. I will keep you posted if we find a smoking gun.

You say that low performance CPU’s no longer can use high-res textures, i completely understand. But what i don’t understand is why i can’t? I have a quad core CPU, it’s a Intel® Core™ i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz. I’ve been running the game fine for the last 2 years. Can you help me?

Your processor is dual core with hyper-threading. In Windows Task Manager this appears as 4 boxes but its not actually 4 cores, just 4 hardware threads. The texture quality drop down fix is on the way so you will at least be able to use “High” textures again.