Curse

Indolo · May 06, 2005, 03:34 AM // 03:34

Got the game on the evening of May 3rd and played till morning without any problems. The game was perfectly smooth and wonderful and I was in bliss. Started playing the evening of the 4th, and every so often (5-20 minutes), the whole game lags down for a 1-3 minutes. Things still happen, but it's going so slow in the game that it's hard to tell what's happening. I don't think I've noticed sound chugging though. It felt like a local problem, but I've tried everything I could think of.

I'm playing on a laptop, Pentium M 1600 with 512 RAM with a Radeon 9000 (32 MB). I have good cooling on it, though I don't think it's a heat problem as I've had it happen before my laptop's warmed up. I thought maybe it might be some sort of speedstep issue with my processor dropping down to 600 Mhz which is what the game feels like when it chugs, but researched that and changed my power settings so that it'd run full performance all the time and still had the problem. Tried disabling anti-virus, and killing just about everything I didn't need to have running and still had the problem.

Haven't noticed anything trying to steal processor time from the game in task manager when it's happening. Did notice that GW was running at low priority. Tried bumping it up to normal, but still had the problem.

My drivers are pretty much up to date, since I just reformated this laptop a month ago, but I just saw a new video driver, so I'll give that a shot. Noticed that I didn't have the .NET service pack, and since it's something I'd want anyway, I'll go ahead and hope that maybe it'll help, but I doubt it.

Oh, my network info: cable internet, last speed test gave about 460 KB down, 42 KB up. Using a NetGear WGR614v4 over ethernet (stopped using wireless for games after problems with FFXI).

Edit: One of the reasons I think it's a local problem and not network related is the game is still chuggy on the logon screen when it takes me back after logging a character out.

Sekkira · Mar 18, 2006, 09:44 AM // 09:44

In relation to this problem and people asking about this possibly being the connection. My girlfriend uses an fx5700 and we're both on the same connection. She has this issue, but I don't even when I used an fx5200. Currently I used a 6600GT.

TurkeyPuncher3 · Apr 25, 2007, 07:13 PM // 19:13

I think I'm having the same problem. Bought the game, played just fine for 2 days. Then on the 3rd day, I went out on a quest, and when I started to attack an NPC both the NPC and my character started jumping around. When I was just running to get to the NPCs for the quest everything was fine, but as soon as I started to attack everything involved went haywire.

I thought that maybe it was just because the game was updating, so I let it finish it's updates. A couple hours later, I come to try again... Yay! Everything's fine. 10 minutes later, it all goes down again, jumping npcs, etc. I try installing the .Net update, once again it seems fine for the rest of the day... Try to play the next morning, what do you know I'm jumping again. Deleted the gw.dat file, things are fine... Then I'm jumping again. I've opened up the port for GW, so I don't think that's the problem. My average ping is usually a little under 200, so I'm doubting it's a lag problem.

I have to admit, I'm almost to the point of ditching guild wars. I've looked through this thread and the rest of the tech help area, with no success. If it helps, here's my system specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+, ~2.8GHz
Memory: 1GB RAM
Hard Drive: 164 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6200 256MB
Monitor: Sylvania F74 CRT
Sound Card: NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio (integrated)

Tachyon · Apr 25, 2007, 08:09 PM // 20:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by TurkeyPuncher3

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+, ~2.8GHz

What cooling solution do you have on that 3200? I ask because if I push my 3200 to 2.8Ghz it starts to lose stability. That's with a Freezer Pro64 sitting on top of it in an Antec 900 case.

Also, you're using onboard sound. You could invest in a cheap but decent sound card, something like an Audigy will only be £10.

TurkeyPuncher3 · Apr 25, 2007, 10:36 PM // 22:36

Oops, just realized it's actually running at 2.2ghz

. Thanks for drawing my attention to that. As for the sound card, I just use headphones for everything, so what would I really gain by buying a sound card?

Either way, I don't think the problem is my hardware messing up. Other games (Star Wars Battlefront, Battlefield 2, Neverwinter Nights, Freelancer, etc.) all run fine, online and offline. I just popped that in there in case there's some known incompatibility with some piece of my computer.

Tachyon · Apr 26, 2007, 12:55 AM // 00:55

The soundcard will help quite a lot, even if it's only a cheap 2-channel one as it'll free up cycles that can be put into running the game. It's all about taking as much strain off the system and putting it on dedicated components.

I run an ASUS A8N-SLi board with onboard 7.1 audio and when my old sound card decided to give up I was forced to rely on the onboard for a few days. The majority of games lost FPS and became quite jerky until I dropped in a £12 Audigy, now it's back to smooth gameplay.

TurkeyPuncher3 · Apr 26, 2007, 01:10 AM // 01:10

I'm running at an average 30fps or so with the game at highish settings, 50 and above at low graphics settings. I don't really think the FPS is the problem... I'm totally confused now. I was just in a party with some other players, and none of them could see me jumping but I saw myself jumping all over the place. They also appeared to be jumping. Very strange :P.