Curse

Tarzan The Chetta · Jun 08, 2007, 05:01 AM // 05:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazey vorstagg

My processor is an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ whatever that means.

I tried the game at lower res (800x600 to be specific, I normally run at 1250x 1024) and there was no noticable difference. I might try this ATI tool.

I'll be really angry if it is all my video card's fault. I only bought it two months ago and I was told is was a good card. If it is the video card however I can't change it (there's no room and not enough power) so I'll think hard about this new computer.

If I do get a new graphics card, can you recommend one? My budget is really £200 but I could wait for the Direct X10 cards to drop in price.

Thanks once again

If you want a recommended card for your system, Id say for right now and mainly GW any Nvidia 6000 series card or a 7600+ card. The 6800Gs I have, which is unfortunately out of stock atm, was 100 dollars and runs Gw fabulously. My old comp runs a 6200 oced and is quite good. Depending on your budget and slot for expansion id say any of these cards should do you good. As for a DX 10 card youll have to upgrade to vista and for optimal performance, and would probably want slightly higher end components to keep it all running smoothe.

Batou of Nine · Jun 08, 2007, 05:51 AM // 05:51

Here are some tips, some already covered, some not::

Defrag Hard Drive: This wont improve your overall in-game FPS, but it can help a bit if your PC is consistantly accessing the paging file (virtual memory).
Reduce background processes: It sounds like you do not have anything too heavy running or affecting your PC, so not so essential.
Turn off V-Sync: This will help your max FPS increase, essentially if V-sync is active it puts a cap on your FPS to reduced the amount of clipping/stuttering; if you can stand it, de-activiate this (in-game setting). This is one of the dramatic divides between budget cards and high performance cards.
Turn Shadows low: This can often give you back anywhere from 5-10fps. (in-game setting)
Turn Anti-Aliasing Low: Your video card is a budget card, therefore a lot of the bells and whistles that performance cards can handle are not an option for you; this isn't a noticable affect to most people anyway (in-game setting).
Turn Anisotropic Filtering Low: Same as above: This can be more noticable, but in the end if the user can handle far objects looking badly rendered, then by all means sacrifice this for a bit better FPS.
DO NOT MAKE YOUR PAGEFILE (Virtual Memory) INITIAL SIZE SMALLER THEN YOUR PHYSICAL MEMORY (RAM) SIZE!!!: Even when your system is idle, it often is utilizing around 50% of your physical ram, and in the end it is unavoidable that your PC will have to use virtual memory. If it is set so small, it has no room to go, and will make everything bog down to a crawl; everything. If you truely want to try to manually set your pagefile for effect/recommended setting, set the initial size at 1.5x the size of your physical memory, and the maximum at 3x. If you can affored the space, you can even set both the initial and max to 3x... So either "Initial(1024x1.5)=1536, Maximum(1024x3)=3072, or both @ 3072.
[[The reason for this is because the pagefile will allocate hard drive space to act as the virtual memory, and it increases incrimentally. Starting the initial size usage at a higher level will mean your machine will not be bogged down with the constant allocation of incriments, rather it will start high and most likely not have to allocate any more. In the end, if you do not know or feel comfortable with all this it is really recommended to just leave this at default or the "System Managed" size. Just felt like explaining all that, although this shouldn't hardly affect your FPS.]] The only real thing that memory will affect is your in-game load times; anything at all from loading maps, loading window panes, loading stats, loading whatever will be faster with more RAM, which 1gig should be sufficient.
Test: Trial and Error with in-game graphic options can often lend you some results. After trying the few in-game options i told you about, you should see some change. Although you have already tried changing resolutions to see FPS changes, you need to keep things consistant. Go into an uncrowded area (explorable or city), and after each change wait at least 30 seconds as you watch the FPS meter. I find it very hard to believe taht resolution changes did not change a thing. Very low resolution (i.e. 640:480) should obviously see a significant FPS difference from a high resultion (i.e. 1280x1024). You can always try turning off additional graphics options that i havent mentioned; it could help, ya never really know... GL!

It is nearly impossible for anyone to really give you any clear cut answer on why your system is not performing so well, but like most i can speculate. From your hardware specs, i would say one of your biggest bottlenecks is your CPU. I run a P4 3.2gig, Radion x700 256mb, 2gig ram, and i still only get about a 30fps average dropping to 15fps in densely populated areas. But the funny part is i know exactly why, i run my resolution at my monitors native resolution (1400x1050), simply because the very slight blur that off native resolution gives triggers my OCD

. Otherwise, at ANY resolution below that, it runs like a dream at 40fps++. And, yes, my card is a budget card too.

Your vid card should honestly be able to run the game at a comfortable 20-30fps, despite what others say budget cards can run GW quite well like mine. I would say that it isnt the vid card holding the fps down, rather a collection of issues form CPU, to memory allocation, to wahtever else.

As others have said, start saving for a new system. It isnt worth it trying to upgrade around your current system.

So i hope those points help. I realize a lot of it is common knowledge, but it helps to re-iterate details sometimes to help people think about what else they can do. GL and i hope you can get at least a few more FPS (until your new system at least

).

cheers

mazey vorstagg · Jun 08, 2007, 10:25 AM // 10:25

thankyou for all your pointers everyone.

I'll be trying them

mazey vorstagg · Jun 08, 2007, 01:48 PM // 13:48

Just incase it helps anyone or anyone is interested, lol. Here's some tests I did

Average FPS when:
Still (only me and henchies on screen) 28
Moving (no foes around) 16
Small Fight (4 foes) 13
Big Fight (10 foes) 7.5

I tried playing through a whole zone just now at 800x600 rather than the normal 1250 and the FPS difference was basically nothing. The rates came in at the same. I also fiddled with the graphics and I found that running medium mostly doesn't make it any slower than running low graphics.

I have noticed, however, that my CPU performance hits a constant 100% from the second I press the go button. I'm guessing it's been my CPU that's causing this.

Now, who would like to tell me all about the dangers and good points of overclocking?

Thanks

Mazey

tijo · Jun 08, 2007, 10:35 PM // 22:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazey vorstagg

I have noticed, however, that my CPU performance hits a constant 100% from the second I press the go button. I'm guessing it's been my CPU that's causing this.
Mazey

On a single core CPU and most dual core CPUs, games like GW will always use 100% of the CPU. It's just normal, the game is using every resource it can in order to give better performance. Your CPU isn't the bottleneck here.

I'm playing the game on a 1.6GHz pentium M and it runs very smoothly, if you want a comparison.

mazey vorstagg · Jun 09, 2007, 05:58 AM // 05:58

Ok, this is really odd. It seems like we've ruled everything out lol.
It can't be the graphics card becuase people with more budget ones can run the game smoother.
It can't be the CPU becuase people with lower speeds can run it smoother.
It can't be the RAM becuase it's never use to the full when playing GW
It can't be the resolution becuase changing it doesn't make a difference.

This is unfathomably odd. Seems as though we've met a dead end.

eggrolls · Jun 09, 2007, 07:22 AM // 07:22

Try adding -dx8 and -noshaders to your shortcut. If performance doesn't increase, add -nosound as well.

Do you have a spare hard drive or partition? If you do, format it and Windows. Then, on your fresh copy of Windows, install a lightweight firewall (or use Windows firewall) and the newest Catalyst drivers. Download GW and use the -nosound option in your shortcut. If the performance is still bad, then it's most likely your hardware. If it actually runs quite a bit faster, then install your sound card drivers, motherboard drivers, and everything else... one by one... and test your performance after each one.

lordpwn · Jun 09, 2007, 09:20 AM // 09:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazey vorstagg

It can't be the CPU becuase people with lower speeds can run it smoother.

Note that a 1.6 GHz Pentium M is probably at least as fast as a 1.98 GHz Athlon XP. There's a reason the Core 2 processors' design is based on the Pentium M architecture

I'd say we've at least ruled out your video card if dropping the resolution to its lowest setting had no effect on performance - the video card is the only part working harder at higher resolutions.

Did you try turning sound off yet? In a bigger fight there will be lots of sound effects which could cause a bad slowdown if there's some problem with the sound drivers.

Soulsmasher · Jun 09, 2007, 02:54 PM // 14:54

ATI will never admit it but the x1300 was never meant for gaming it was meant mainly for office work, and ATI tech support is less than subpar. I'm assuming you have a PCI slot if I remember correctly the 6200 does fairly well on Guild Wars and even a 9250 would work on Guild wars if your tight on money, just don't get a video card from BFG they are notorious for factory overclocking, XFX or PNY will do, for an ATI card Diamond is fairly good.

tijo · Jun 09, 2007, 03:48 PM // 15:48

The best advice i can give you if you want better fps, is to get a new computer. Preferably one you've built yourself if you can do that. Other than that, lordpwn may be right about the sound if it handled by your CPU diverting CPU resources from GW to sound processing. You can try adding -nosound to your shortcut path so it looks like "C:\Program Files\GUILD WARS\Gw.exe" -nosound instead of just "C:\Program Files\GUILD WARS\Gw.exe". Note that if you specified a different installation directory than the default one, the shortcut path will look different.

mazey vorstagg · Jun 09, 2007, 07:58 PM // 19:58

I think we've cracked it. Using Direct X 8 to render greatly improved performence.

Now I've got average:
Still: 33
Moving: 29
Fight: 15

It's good, although not perfect I'm happy with it.

Thankyou everyone so much

p.s. the audio was resticting a little bit too, so I've downloaded new drivers and reduced the quality.