FPS going down in some areas

I have 2 cards currently installed, heres my system specs and graphic cards:

Pentium Dual Core 2.80 GHz 2.79GHz
2.00 GB of RAM
160GB Hard Drive

My cards are:
RADEON X300/X550 (what it says in properties > settings)
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500

Im currently using the RADEON one, but sometimes when I play in areas with alot of trees like The Wilds mission, And the first 2 missions after LA, or Vasburg Armory near Jayne (priest boss) and other random areas. I average 35 FPS only and around 20 in kaineng D1.

Is it because I have a crappy video card? or am I doing something wrong, I play in lowest settings possible btw.

You certainly are not useing a bad video card. In fact, either of those would have been "Uber High End" when GW first came out, so that is certainly not the issue. However, I would question why you have 2 video cards installed. By doing that (especially 2 cards by different manufacturers) you are increasing the workload.

I use a dual-monitor system (single video card) most of the time. But when I fire up GW, I disable the second monitor in software. THis frees up more video processor for running the game.

If one of the video setting is comming from the motherboard, disable that one. You will have to go into the BIOS of your computer. This will free up both resources and RAM. If they are both cards, pull one of them out. The X300/550 is the newest generation of the two you listed, so keep that one (the FX5500 is a good card, but a holdout from the AGP days, the X300+ series is a much newer one, designed around PCI Express).

check my reply here
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10032124

Guild wars has been out for approx 16 months, and both these cards would not have been classed as "Uber High End" as you put it, ATI x800/850 range would be high end cards, and the 6800ultra would be classed as Nvidia's equivalent.

And if those are the cards you class as high end then you have very low standards

On the problem in hand, I can only assume that the x300 is onboard, if so this needs disabling. AS said you should only be using 1 card, I think you may be getting confused on this, have another check just to be sure.

A 15 fps drop for either of those cards is normal, what resolution are you playing at, you have to remember both these cards will not handle higher resolutions with a decent framerate and AA and AF set.

thanks, i will pull out the fx5500 and see what happens.

heres current setting, currently only 1 monitor plugged in




i play gw on the resolution in the setting 1280x1024


EDIT: what video card would be the best to get in the 200$ below range? compatible with my system of course

wow, looks like your messed up there buddy! try uninstalling all GFX Drivers (nVidia and ATI, Get Driver Cleaner to do that) and make sure the Onboard is DISABLED in the Bios (DEL key when you first turn on your PC)

once your Sure that "OnBoard GFX/VGA" is disabled... start up inwindows, and install the correct driver for your remaining card (The GeForce) whilst the ATI is a better card, this will resolve your issues... OR, you could just remove the nVidia, and use Driver Cleaner to remove all trace of the nVidia Drivers, then install the latest Radeon Catalyst Drivers, and the update Your DirectX -- this should also solve your issues :/

At 1280x1024 that is respectable for the card. My x800 xt does 60 frames but it is "high end" AGP card.

If you want to budget a card there is a few things that need to know.

1) AGP or PCI-E?

2) Currency? Where are you buying?

3) What are your goals with the card?

A nvidia 7900/7800/7600/7300 series would do you well. I say nvidia because they seem better price to performance ratio.