Guild Wars FPS loss when minimizing in Vista

Im running Windows Vista Buissnes 32-bit and Guild Wars play perfectly at all high settings and I get 60-61 FPS with v-sinc on. When I minimize Guild wars and reopen it my FPS gets cut in half to 30-31 FPS. Then I have to restart GW to get normal 60-61 FPS. When I was running Windows XP this never happened. Is any1 else having the same problem?

edit - I got all the latest drivers.

When Guild Wars gets placed in the background, the process priority lowers to "low". Maybe it won't properly recover while maximizing again. Try to set it's priority manually to high.

Well I just gave it a try and still the same. I got nVidia 7700 512 MB, 2GB Ram, and Intel core 2 duo 2.0 GHz in my laptop. I contacted Anet support and they said they cant help me because im running Windows Vista. Thats ridiculous.

I'm experiencing the SAME exact problem as you. I am also running Vista, other than I have the 64 bit version. I still haven't found the problem myself, but I am putting my money on Vista's way of processing when minimized. Like the above poster said, its probably got something to do with priorities.

I wish A-Net would support Vista... It's been a while since it was released, about time IMO.

I notice no difference, and yes I run Vista also.

2 words. Who cares.

[QUOTE=weemanpow3 I contacted Anet support and they said they cant help me because im running Windows Vista. Thats ridiculous.[/QUOTE]

Last time I looked at the back of a gw box it doesn't say use vista imo vista = crap windows xp ftw.

Thank God I'm not alone I've been trawling the web to see if someone else has had this since upgrading to Vista, and this is the first time I've seen it reported.

I've got exactly the same problem as you, and (on the same physical hardware) I didn't get this under XP. My framerate is locked at my vSync rate (75fps), it doesn't change too much below that except in very crowded areas. When I minimise it and bring it back up, it tanks to 15fps or sometimes lower.

My system specs:
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit
2GB RAM
iNTEL Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz)
nVidia 7600GT (256MB)

I've tried running a bunch of driver version, including both the latest WHQL 162.22 and Beta 163.11 versions, with no difference.

It's a bit frustrating yes I've contacted them as well and received the same response, so you're not alone there. The good news is that EotN has Vista support, so in just a few weeks you'll be able to re-file that bug report and expect resolution.

Looking through the responders here, there's three points of commonality:
Windows Vista (not restricted to edition or bit type)
Core 2 Duo CPU
nVidia 7xxx series cards

Malice, can you let us know your system specs? It's quite likely it's something hardware specific, so it would be nice to see if that theory is supported by whether you've got any of the same two hardware elements in common with us.

I've tried yanking this around, setting it to High - GW sets itself back to Normal when it comes back up, it won't stay as a High priority process. It won't accept Realtime priority.

Best you check the Eye of the North system specs again then.

Thanks for sharing your valuable opinion! Now why don't you go hug all your friends in the Flat Earth Society.

Notebook specs:

Vista Home Premium [32-Bit]
Core 2 Duo @ 2GHz
2GB RAM
7950GTX

Just a bog standard notebook, nothing special.

Well that trashed my theory about it being to do with 7xxx series cards

Thanks for that. It's given me an idea tho - I have a laptop with Home Premium as well, which I will try. Perhaps there's something to do with "Home" that makes it Just Work. About to go out to see some sunlight, I'll try it later on.

I've discovered a workaround, which seems to do ok.

If you run the game windowed (e.g., "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -perf -windowed), then it works fine if you switch to another applicaiton. You still can't actually minimise this, it'll tank the performance again, but it will allow you to use other applications (such as Guild Wiki) as long as it's just in the background.

So - run it in a window, don't minimise it, and it'll stay with a good framerate. The kicker appears to be the minimise function, rather than using other applications.

Mine works perfectly fine, even going from minimized to window.

Cool as, that's also good to know - rule out all the possibilities.

One final question, if you can be bothered What driver versions are you using? I know a number of laptop companies do homegrown drivers, or sometimes lag behind the latest reference drivers. It may be that a new feature in one of the recent nVidia drivers has br0k3N Guild Wars.

Ok I've tried my laptop, with some interesting results.

My laptop is not a gaming laptop, so it's got some poxy nVidia 6150 with shared memory in it - still runs GW tho. When I fire it up, it seems to score about 15fps, give or take.

When I minimise and remaximise, it holds that same framerate - so it's consistently lousy. The drivers are the version that the manufacturer provide, so some poxy HP branded things that are designed to work with it. It won't accept the nVidia reference drivers from their site, oddly enough.

Perhaps it's a video driver issue. I'm sure all will become clear at the end of August when EotN ships and they actually need to support this problem.

I have exactly the same problem. I posted in a few older threads here and contacted support. Support passed it to the dev team and I never heared from it again. I had to disable FSAA altogether to get reasonable FPS back, because I minimize / switch to Windows a lot.

My system specs:
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit
nVidia nForce 4 SLI chipset
AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+
2GB DDR SDRAM
nVidia GeForce 7800GT
Creative SoudBlaster X-FI

/congrats on getting them to deal with it at all, the rest of us just got bumped off because Vista's not yet supported

Well, it's kind of good that there's more people with this problem, as it shows it's not an isolated incident. It's also interesting because there's little in common with our systems from a hardware perspective except nVidia cards - this sort of indicates it's a driver issue, and probably nothing we can do to fix.

Just out of interest - what detail level do you set your card to? Mine's set to "let the application decide."

I was checking nZone and I think I found your report of this: http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion...hp?t33610.html

I'm on Vista Home Premium, no such problem for me, I've even played 3 games at once fine, Soldat online, Guild Wars (Nine Rings title farming) and SWBF II collecting memory from the modtools for mapping/modding.

I'm using the drivers it came with, I'll get around to updating them when I can be bothered.

I have all my settings on high with 4xAA, get 60FPS in a quiet area, 20-30 in Kamdan Dist1.

Cool thanks. I had an update today from PlayNC, who said that MS have released two patches for Vista related to performance and compatibility.

I've installed all pending patches on both my Vista machines, so unless it's not a part of Windows Update I've applied them. I've gone back to them asking to confirm the knowledge base article numbers, so I can confirm for sure.

The problem could be (e.g.) that the Windows Update is incorrectly not showing those patches to be applied. It would be a rare problem but I'll be able to confirm for sure when the reply with the KB numbers.