Curse

Sa Lumnitae · Jan 12, 2007, 03:54 AM // 03:54

This is the oddest thing I've ever encountered, and (of course) it seems to only happen on MY system.

The System
AMD 3200+
Abit KN8 Ultra with onboard nForce4 Audio
1GB PC3200 RAM
nVidia 7600GT
AGM 1440x900 Widescreen LCD

The problem
Things are fine. I can peruse the cities and towns and have beautiful frame rates, even with 4xAA turned on. Rates hover in the 40s with people on screen, and as high as 200 when I'm staring at a wall. That's what I expect.

I go outside of any outpost or town, and encounter my first foes are when the issues start. I slay them. They die. So do my framerates. They NEVER return to pre-foe levels. They will not climb past 40fps no matter what I'm looking at or where I am. Looking straight into a wall, or striaght into the sky at the exact same spot that gave me 220fps pre-foe will result in 40fps post-foe.

This happens in Prophecies, Factions, and in Nightfall.

Things I have tried

Uninstalling and reinstalling drivers. No effect.
Defaulted my system clock speeds back to default. No effect.
Overclocked them back. No effect.
Defragged my .dat file. No effect.
Made sure nothing else was running in the background. No effect.
Disabled the nView enhancements to the game, such as Anisotropic filtering being forced. No effect.
Redownloaded the client. No effect.
Turned off 3D sound. No effect.
Monitored temperature levels of the 7600GT for overheating. Did not occur.
Monitored temperature levels of the 3200+ for overheating. Did not occur.

My Thoughts
Well I'm plum out of thoughts. I don't know where to start looking next. This does not happen on friends' systems who also have Guild Wars that I've asked. The system *can* handle the game just fine. It shows that by running at very high framerates until I meet my first foe. And then the frame rate never exceeds ~40.

Are there any known compatibility issues between GW and hardware that have yet to be fixed? Are there any software packages that when installed can interfere with GW's performance, such as virus scanners, copy protections shemes, etc?

It does not act as if the hard drive is being hit for cache, or that the system is "busy". The frame rates just never elevate back up, regardless of the video settings in GW or in the global driver settings. AA can be cranked or off, AF the same, screen resolutions lowered. The result is the same: a fast performance before my first foe is reached. And then the game basically plays like dung, with rates dropping to 12 in town and never climbing past 40 again.

Any thoughts to help me out?

X-Bomb · Jan 12, 2007, 04:12 AM // 04:12

sounds v familar, try this:

right click gw icon > properties

In the target box add -nosound to the end

run to a mob and see if ur frames stay or drop, if they drop then u know its the sound, post back when u are done

Sa Lumnitae · Jan 12, 2007, 04:44 AM // 04:44

So far so good. The frame rates seem to stay high and accurate.

What's going on? What part of the sound is causing this?

Hockster · Jan 12, 2007, 06:50 AM // 06:50

That onboard audio chip is a piece of junk. In the game options tun down sound details until you get an acceptable performance level. Or spring for a decent addon card.

Sa Lumnitae · Jan 12, 2007, 02:08 PM // 14:08

The nForce4 chipset is a not a piece of junk. That doesn't answer my question anyway. What would be causing this?

Hockster · Jan 12, 2007, 03:19 PM // 15:19

Onboard audio is typically a less than ideal solution. You want the exact cause? Ask the Anet coders.

You've been told what the problem is. The resulting solution is up to you. Turn off/down the sound, or get a better audio card. Assuming you've updated the drivers of course.

X-Bomb · Jan 12, 2007, 03:48 PM // 15:48

i have a nforce chipset in my brothers pc and it runs gw better then on my pc which has its own soundcard (audigy 4). I honestly think the problem here is the way the sound is implemented in gw. some pcs just dont seem to like the sound engine. Your best bet to fix this is to contact gw support, ive tried this on 2 occassions and gave up after they couldnt give me a straight answer to the problem. Incidently i only bought my audigy 4 card after i had framerate problems with my onboard, buying this new soundcard didnt fix anything.

If all else fails, the only way i have figured out how to get framerate back up is to do the following:

start > control panel > sounds and audio devices > [AUDIO TAB] click advanced in the sound playback section > [PERFORMANCE TAB] Set Hardware Acceleration to None

This will give better framerate, although still not the best, and it also has some other side effects which you will find out about.

If you ever find out the solution, please feel free to send me a pm about how you did it:P

Sa Lumnitae · Jan 12, 2007, 04:52 PM // 16:52

I am going to have to contact GW support. It's not an issue about onboard vs expansion sound cards. There is a hangup somewhere between audio and video.

Changing hardware acceleration isn't something i should ever have to do. I've done that before in other games to fix issues, and it's a pain when you forget to turn it back on.

Did you get a human response via GW support or was it automated? I hate automated tech support with a passion.