Guild Wars 2 - Maxing FPS

[Meehael]

Hello,

I had i3-2120 CPU and GTX 560 GPU until recently. The game ran at about 15-25 FPS in Lion's Arch at highest graphics settings. Now, I've upgraded my PC with i7-3770 CPU. Now, I have about 45 FPS. If I lower shadow details and reflections some, I get about 50 FPS. What could be the bottleneck? Is it possible for the CPU to be bottlenecking the GPU? How can I test it?

I have yet to try setting the lowest graphics details and then check the FPS. If having 50 FPS even after that, does that mean that CPU is definitely the bottleneck? That would really be disappointing.

If the GPU is the bottleneck, would GTX 770 help in having a constant 60 FPS?

Windows 7 64 bit
Intel i7-3770
MSI GTX 560 1GB
Asus P8H61 MOBO
16GB RAM 1600 MHz

All at stock speed.

Thx!

 

[sweenish]

I believe that the CPU tends to be the bottleneck in MMO games.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

If the GPU is the bottleneck, would GTX 770 help in having a constant 60 FPS?

It's probaby the GPU that is limiting your FPS. Changing setting like shadowing, detail, distance, etc. is having a direct impact on FPS. Have you tried overclocking your GPU with a utility like afterburner?

Yes a 770 will increase your fps alot http://www.anandtech.com/show/6994/nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-review

 

[JeffMD]

No, gw2 is cpu bound by a large part. Even the most monster system still gets throttled during lions arch and wvw battles.

The biggest offender is the # of models setting. Medium was the default for the game I believe (You normaly did not have access to this setting), and you start seeing huge performance drops setting it any higher (it goes to players and NPCs, so even in lions arch its a difference of ~10fps) . You can consider the # of models and model detail settings as the most advanced settings because of their impact on performance.

 

[zinfamous]

GW2 is heavily CPU bottlenecked as stated and like JeffMD says, you want to reduce the onscreen model setting.

If you are in any crowded open-world event, you will get a slide show regardless of your hardware due to the models on screen. It will still present problems, but lowering that is key.

I would also consider lowering some of the detail settings.

The other gameplay problem that high model number presents is that you can't easily see the AoE effect circles that you need to be dodging if you've got a mob of people flashing particles everywhere around you; so setting this to minimum also helps improve your general effectiveness as a mindless 1 spammer in those crowded events.

 

[Meehael]

I've done some tests an hour ago while not being in LA.

What I noticed is that even on lowest settings, max FPS was capped at 50. As soon as I set Frame Limiter from 60 to Unlimited it jumped to 60 and with Vsync off to 100! It seems that limiting frame rate to 60 actually limits it to 50 :S. So, now I use Frame Limiter = Unlimited + Vsync = On (Refresh Rate = 60 Hz). I've reduced Shadows to High, Reflections to Terrain & Sky and Character Model Limit to Lowest (Character Model Quality is at Highest, tho). I've disable anti-aliasing, because it makes the game blurry to me, but it didn't affect performance for the better. I have about 60 FPS in a non LA/WvW area, while about 50 in LA.

If I set the lowest possible settings, I get 60 FPS in LA.

So it could be that the GPU is the bottleneck? I understand that if I set the Character Model Limit to highest that the CPU couldn't handle that anymore, but with the current settings, a better GPU would help?

Thx

 

[NoSoup4You]

The Character Model Limit setting has the biggest performance impact.

I just logged in and ran from the bank in LA to the trading post, at full max settings I get between 24 and 31 fps. Once I get inside the TP building the framerate jumps to 40.

I ran it again but this time with Character Model Limit at the Lowest setting, everything else including Character Model Quality at max. With those settings I get between 47 and 63 fps in LA, inside the TP building it jumps to 70. These are the settings I normally play at.

When I dropped all settings to low I got from 60-100 fps while running through LA, once inside the TP it was at 120fps.

Hopefully these marks give you some reference as to whether it's worth upgrading or not.

 

[hans030390]

Overclock your CPU and perhaps don't use absolute max settings.

 

[Meehael]

OK, thanks, guys.

I'll stick to my GPU for a bit longer, then, since GW2 seems to utilize CPU way more than GPU.