Curse

Aurora Blackdawn · Dec 31, 2006, 06:24 PM // 18:24

I've got a Radeon X1600 512MB AGP card in my PC and guild wars has been extremely choppy. I'm using an Intel motherboard with a 3.2 Ghz P4 Processor and 1 GB RAM. Oddly enough I've been running GW on my laptop with a Radeon X300 card and it has been perfect so I know that the problem isn't my internet connection. I'm also running Oblivion on the X1600 at high graphics with absolutely no problem. If anyone has run into a similar problem or knows of a thread addressing this issue, help woud be greatly appreciated.

Wilhelm · Dec 31, 2006, 07:48 PM // 19:48

I recently bought a x1650 Pro, which is similar, and had choppiness for a few days as well.

I used to have to run the game on low settings, on 800x600, since my computer wouldn't allow more. I then beefed up the grapics to max everything, and found that the game runs 60-80 fps at the highest graphics, and 40-50 at low....odd eh.

So maybe pump up the graphics? Worked for me. hehe

Zoo X · Dec 31, 2006, 08:36 PM // 20:36

ive got x1600 Pro AGP and as far as i can tell you my pc is not as "strong/fast" as your p4 3.2, and, ive never had a single problem with GW releated to the G card

Aurora Blackdawn · Dec 31, 2006, 09:19 PM // 21:19

I'm willing to try anything at this point. I maxed all the graphics and it continued to run the same...but with really nice detail. lol

Josh · Dec 31, 2006, 09:36 PM // 21:36

Try different ATI Drivers.

Aurora Blackdawn · Jan 01, 2007, 01:59 AM // 01:59

I installed the latest driver for the X1600. Are there different drivers that can be installed?

Josh · Jan 01, 2007, 02:00 AM // 02:00

Try earlier drivers, or even the Omega Drivers.

TB_ · Jan 01, 2007, 05:39 PM // 17:39

The 6.9 Catalysts were the last good set, anything before or after is something to avoid for now.

MegaMouse · Jan 01, 2007, 09:33 PM // 21:33

SOmething else to try is lower your sound settings to fastest and turn off the hardware accelleration. That seems to work for a lot of players.

Mega Mouse

Bill Adama · Jan 02, 2007, 11:11 AM // 11:11

my X1600 pro seems to work way better on higher settings too. Did have a problem with chop and the evil Repairing Data Archive. All due to the fan that was lazy (20%). ATI Tool helped me overcome it by increasing fanspeed. Now it works like a charm.

Aurora Blackdawn · Jan 03, 2007, 04:57 AM // 04:57

Both are great suggestions. I lowered the sound to fastest and it did seem to get better. I just did a fresh install and may have gotten the wrong drivers for my integrated sound card. Not sure about the fan speed because it runs well on other games. I'll have to use that tool though to see what everything is set at. Will update on the results of these.

Ghozer · Jan 03, 2007, 07:01 PM // 19:01

The reason that the ATI's work better on high settings is they are designed, and optomized that way, so you can use higher settings at higher frame rates..

one reason I like ATI...

Aurora Blackdawn, I would suggest downloading ALL the latest drivers, for your motherboard, Sound Card, GFX Card, and also get the Dec06 release of DirectX... Then get DriverCleaner, and remove all ATI, nVidia and Intel Drivers, then re-start, Once restarted back into windows just cancel any driver boxes that pop up and install your new drivers rebooting after each set..

do them in this order...
Motherboard
GFX
Sound
Direct X

Then make sure everything is how you want it (sound settings, and screen resolution etc) and start up guild wars, you should be fine now

Aurora Blackdawn · Jan 05, 2007, 03:38 AM // 03:38

Thanks Ghozer, I'll do that. I reinstalled the sound card driver as suggested above and the problem stayed the same.

SiCoTiC · Jan 05, 2007, 04:25 AM // 04:25

I have the same x1600 and im using the Omega drivers ver 3.8.291, i have not really had too many probs with either the card or the drivers. One notable problem is that having AntiAliasing on while running in windowed mode causes a serious amount of game slowdown, results in massive loss of framerate (runs at 3-5fps) and causes gw to be unplayable.

Check that there is nothing devious running in the background on your machine that could be chewing up ram or processor time, have a look to see if you have much space left on the drive windows is using for virtual memory, my gw uses around 350mb of ram and 350mb or virtual memory while idle in a district.

I have mid range Amd X2 4200+ based machine and run at my monitors native res of 1440x900, i find that playing gw on max game settings and max driver settings can cause slightly choppy play (jumping through 10-30fps) especialy when playing HA, unchecking "Always show nearby names in PvP" helped a little, but dropping my driver settings down a bit helped a lot. Try dropping the driver settings to mid range and application controlled, dropping them to min is usualy fruitless because of the way the cards and drivers are constucted they run better at mid->high than at low->mid

The most likely culprit of your problem that i can think of are the motherboards chipset drivers, i remember once forgetting to install the agp drivers for an older machine and racking my brains at why everything was so choppy, but if oblivion etc are playing fine then i cant think of anything that could cause specific aplication slowdown on that scale.

Edit: just had a thought, is gw located on a diferent hard drive to the games that play ok?