Performance and Graphics issues

[AnchorZulu.5026]

Me and my friends are trying to figure out what needs to be upgraded/what's wrong with my PC in terms of GW2. Certain problems I've been encountering:

- Mount glitch where mount doesn't appear and you can't move.

- Big boss rendering (i.e. Everyone sees the flame effigy but it takes me about 10 seconds for it to finally appear)

- structure rendering in general (i.e. in my guild hall there's a bunch of statues and it's like walking through an invisible maze trying to get to the nodes.)

- fps choppiness especially with groups of people (while this is probably normal for many, mine just gets ridiculous.)

- loading screen freezing, but can still hear my character and attacks. This forces me to restart.

 

I'm upgrading my RAM from 8 to 16 gb, but I have a GeForce 960 and a great internet connection, so i'm not sure where everything is stemming from. People are saying to put gw2 on its own SSD? I'm hoping more RAM may fix the problem but...any suggestions?

 

I built this computer on the basis that it met all the spec requirements for GW2, so it's disheartening to see me having more problems than my friends are.

 

My processor: AMD FX-8320 Vishera 8-Core 3.5 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W FD8320FRHKBOX Desktop Processor

 

Thanks!

[ArmoredVehicle.2849]

More than 8GB in your system won't help with GW2 (unless you're running a bunch of other memory intensive programs in the background). The only weak spot in your system is the CPU which the game heavily depends on, upgrading to Ryzen or 8th Gen Intel would be the optimal choice, keep in mind though that doing so will require you to buy new Ram since they use DDR4.

 

A cheaper option would be to get a 4th Intel Gen i5 or i7 CPU which were the last to use DDR3, due to their slightly old age you can probably find a used one at a good price. Motherboard for these CPU's are still widely available and they're still quite capable processors.

 

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

@"AnchorZulu.5026" The delayed loading of NPCs, bosses, walls, and so on is generally caused by weak disk performance. The map loader first of all loads the key "permission" geometry data that shows the client where you can move, where the walls, floors, and ceilings are, and so on. Afterwards, it loads things like *your* character (whose appearance may already be cached in memory if you have enough of it), the "core" visible geometry, and then "accessory" visible geometry, NPC models, character models, mount geometry, mount skin geometry, and so on. But after a certain time of having the permission geometry loaded, it will dump you in the map anyway. If the disk is a bit slow, you'll see the sort of oddity you're seeing. (It may also be that your current disk is in poor health in some way that is making it slower than it would otherwise be.)

 

Either an SSD or a more modern spinning-rust disk will help, as both allow the game to load faster. The SSD will offer objectively better performance, while a spinning-rust disk will offer a superior price-capacity-performance compromise. Either way, but especially if it's a small SSD, *add* it to your machine rather than *replacing* anything with it. (If you do want to replace the disk, the process of migrating will be slightly painful, although there are tools to make it easier.)

 

> @"ArmoredVehicle.2849" said:

> More than 8GB in your system won't help with GW2

 

It will not help FPS issues, but it will allow the machine to cache/buffer more disk data and therefore improve loading times(1). Data loaded from cache is faster than even the fastest of SSDs.

 

(1) If you're going back and forth between two maps a lot, and they can both fit in in-memory disk cache, there will be no disk transfers needed. For other reasons my machine at home has 64GB of memory, and while playing GW2 and bouncing around a lot, I have seen the total-size-cached get well beyond 40GB. The first time a map loads, the disk goes berserk, but the second time it is almost idle, and loading times are faster.

[AnchorZulu.5026]

Thanks a bunch for the responses, guys. I was hoping it wasn't my processor so I wouldn't have to go through a lot of building process, but I'll definitely look at something like the MSI z370 and switch over to Intel since I've heard gw2 is more friendly with them than with AMD. Hopefully I'll be able to just switch over my power supply, HDD, and SSD while I get more ram and start using partpicker for any compatibility problems I may run into.

 

Thanks again!

[MrFayth.3546]

Gw2 loves single threaded performance, bottom line.

 

Intel has had stronger single threaded performance for years, mostly due to AMD design decisions(bulldozer, the CPU you have now, was the start of them focusing nearly exclusively on multi-cores/threads).

 

Though your CPU is strong in highly multi-threaded workloads, Gw2 performance will still be reliant on how quickly it can render its main thread.

 

[Here's a good comparison on raw single core/thread rendering](https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r15_single_core-7 "Here's a good comparison on raw single core/thread rendering") which is totally dominated by Intel until you get down the the Ryzen 2700x , which is still nearly double the score your CPU achieves in Cinebench.