Game performence after Nightfall

Cherrie

Cherrie

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2006

Echowald

Marked by [Fury]

Me/

My machine ain't a demon of speed by no means, but so far I played through Prophecies and Factions at 1280x1024 res, max textures, shadows, terrain ect etc with satysfying (for me, at leat) range of fps above 20 (a little below in big fights). After release of Nightfall, my performence dropped down in a way I could have never imagined - I was aware of the fact that it might run a bit less smoothly after looking at the box, but I thought getting all details to min would me max to expect. Currently Im running GW not only at min details, but with dx8 on, shaders off, 1024x780 res and it has..... 7 fps in fights.
By the look of it, its a sign to buy completly new machine, I know... but whats puzzling me is that what I have is generally above minimal req, and very close to reccomended.

moriz

moriz

??ber t??k-n??sh'??n

Join Date: Jan 2006

Canada

R/

post your computer's specs, so we can better judge what's going on.

anyway, there seems to be some problems with the way NF's graphics are made. alot of people with good computers are getting performance drops. strangely enough, my messed up computer with geforce fx5500 pci is doing just fine.

Mushroom

Mushroom

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Aug 2006

Alabama

Performance is down quite a bit. This is most likely because of the increased use at the moment. A lot more people are starting to play the game, as th ename is becomming more well known. And because of Nightfall, a lot of people have returned that stopped playing after finishing the first 2 games.

Add to this, the increased playing because of Halloween. A lot of people have been playing, in order to get the special items available only during this week. This will likely start to die off in the upcomming weeks as people finish this game, then move on to others (or back to Factions or Prophecies).

But expect another increase in users and decrease in performance come December, when the Christmas season starts (and the new players join who got the game as a present).

EternalTempest

EternalTempest

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

United States

Dark Side Ofthe Moon [DSM]

E/

I would also run defrag on your computer in case the updates caused the gw.dat file to become fragmented.

moriz

moriz

??ber t??k-n??sh'??n

Join Date: Jan 2006

Canada

R/

hmm, i never knew that a laggy server could result in lower fps. that should be mostly client-side, i believe.

Cyber Penguin

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jul 2006

Rohar's Roughnecks

W/Mo

it could be that the graphics card is overheating a little, that was my problem with the frame rate dropping below normal.

Cherrie

Cherrie

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2006

Echowald

Marked by [Fury]

Me/

Celeron 1.8G
GF 6600
1gb ram

My gw.dat is in 2 parts which contig refuses to merge. I defrag my disks at least once a week and keep my system clean. When gw is working, i have like 400 mb of ram left unused. as for overheating, im l-ing a program to test both GC and CPU just as I type.
And as i said, i was perfectly happy with the performance so far, and now its down like 2/3...

moriz, GW uses tcp/ip which does not tolerate any lose of information between client and server. Thus, if traffic is low and some packages are lost, server asks client to send them again and vice versa, client asks server to sent lost/corrupted information again. This is an extra work for CPU which has to count it, organise randomly recived info etc. I knew that can affect performance, but for Gods' sake, not to this rate!

moriz

moriz

??ber t??k-n??sh'??n

Join Date: Jan 2006

Canada

R/

ouch. that sucks. perhaps the servers are overloaded then.

anyways, i've figured out why my gw is not having problems: i rarely break 30 fps in an empty room, so the mass slowdown... really can't slow it down any further!

Spike

Jungle Guide

Join Date: May 2005

In front of my PC

Kai

E/Mo

how many memory on your gfx card cherrie. You cpu is rather slow though. But memory is fine.

ForgeWhelp

ForgeWhelp

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jul 2006

TGW

N/Mo

I'm running:
AMD 64 3000+
6600GT 128MB
1 gig RAM

I've been playing at max settings without complaints. And since late last week my performance has gone to garbage as well. And my vid card has started overheating all of a sudden. I wonder if new graphical elements were introduced putting a higher strain on ones system...?.

kelicula

Academy Page

Join Date: Apr 2006

Realm of Sanctity [Life]

E/Me

I too have had horrible lag after nightfall and halloween. I've defragged gw.dat, my computer even increased the ram used for the game. I might try to remove and then reload the client, but i'm at my wits end. My video card is fine, but this is getting depressing. Any ideas?

T1Cybernetic

T1Cybernetic

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Sep 2005

Wakefield, West Yorkshire, Uk, Nr Earth

Alternate Evil Gamers [aeg]

N/

My performance has gone down the drain a bit too and a couple of guild and family who play
have also said that since they started playing nightfall it's the same for them, you are not alone

It's worse in towns and outposts so i just put it down to all the people online at the same time
because if you go outside of town or go and find a "empty" district its pretty much perfectly fine...

Cherrie

Cherrie

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2006

Echowald

Marked by [Fury]

Me/

256 ram on my gf 6600 My MB has 8 AGP so it doesnt matter much if its 128 or 256 really :/ But as I said, I didnt have ANY complains before nightfall... Yesterday, I tried a mission with a friend and Ive basicly done it blindfolded... with 5 fps at 900x600 and min details!!!!!!! When I saw that, I was like... W.T.F ??
Anyhow... both fans (on my cpu and gpu) are working, plus my gpu has a HUGE radiator covering memory also. Ive toutched it and it was not much warmer than my body temp, same with radiator over cpu so Im guessing they are not overheating.

But

Im afraid its not only Nightfall for me. Desperate, Ive installed HoMM V to check performence and... its down too... I used to play it at 1280x1024 High details no anti aliasing and it was fine (not great, but fine) or 1024x780 and it was even smoother. Now, it's choppy even at 900x600 (or whatever the min is there) and min textures... AA of course is off... I have no idea whats wrong... Im afraid it must be some nasty hardware failure, but where? Im guessing its connected to GPU since I havent noticed any reduction in other performance.
Any ideas?

moriz

moriz

??ber t??k-n??sh'??n

Join Date: Jan 2006

Canada

R/

try another graphics intensive game that you own. if they run as before, then it's gw's fault. if not, then start checking hardware. unfortunately, that's pretty much outside of my expertise.

kelicula

Academy Page

Join Date: Apr 2006

Realm of Sanctity [Life]

E/Me

I simply lowered my resolution (1024 by 780) and that ended all my nightfall lag yesterday. I'm running on 40g hardrive, 758 ram, geforce 5200 graphics. I also downloaded the free trial version of diskeeper which will defrag the gw.dat file. Now, that's down to one. The forum for resolving lag is amazing so I would recommend reading through that, it helps.

Cherrie

Cherrie

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2006

Echowald

Marked by [Fury]

Me/

Kelicula, I lowered my res as well... from 1280x1024 I used to play to 1024x780, as well as textures quality - it didnt help much (got 2-3 more fps... on the other hand thats like 10% :/). I get 5 fps during fight at 900x600 so smthng IS wrong... Im reinstalling my system on saturday, gonna see if that helps, and buying new mb + cpu.

ForgeWhelp

ForgeWhelp

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jul 2006

TGW

N/Mo

Well I seemed to resolve my lag issues, I deleted the .dat file, re-DLed it and then -image it, then defragged the drive and then defragged the file. Maybe a couple more steps than needed but it worked.

But I'm still haveing video issues. I play HL2 at max settings no issues. But if I play GW at max settings it appears that my card overheats and my video freeze/hangs. I can play at lower settings while I wait for a new cooler for the card.

moriz

moriz

??ber t??k-n??sh'??n

Join Date: Jan 2006

Canada

R/

try adding a -mute to your GW command line. i wonder if it's actually something to do with the sound.

Retz

Retz

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Apr 2006

Ex Talionis [Law]

R/Me

I was experiencing similar trouble to this earlier, the game was simply unplayable. I fixed it using the -image flag, 30,000 files were decompressed and the game now runs flawlessly.

I suggest you at least try this. Start > Run... > "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image

ForgeWhelp

ForgeWhelp

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jul 2006

TGW

N/Mo

I now have 2 shortcuts. One with -image and one for playing. I'm lazy but it makes life better for me.

FYI -image is basically a one use per update. The game will not actually play with -image in the shortcut and will have to be remeoved once it is doen to play the game.

Shifty Geezer

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: May 2005

The Luckless Marauders [OOPS]

E/Mo

I posted a thread about this a few days back (and got no replies...*). I also contacted NC Support and they said it was a bug they were aware of. So no need to fix your gw.dat file - you just have to wait for NCSoft to fix the game. And that's not going too well given that now my level 12 warrior only does 6-8 damage against level 3 stone elementals...

Tell a lie. There were some replies after NCSoft contacted me
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...33#post2152233

Retz

Retz

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Apr 2006

Ex Talionis [Law]

R/Me

Shifty, have you noticed if your HDD works extra hard when playing?

Keilious Ahruhk

Keilious Ahruhk

Academy Page

Join Date: Mar 2006

Sydney

Venatio Illuminata [VEIL]

Mo/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Retz
Shifty, have you noticed if your HDD works extra hard when playing?
Funny you should mention that, cause starting a couple of hours ago, my RAM and harddrives started working extra hard, and I've been getting the same 7-10FPS problems as quite a few people.
Oh, and lots of Err-07s today too.
I'm running on 2 gigs of RAM, X1900XTX and PXE+HT, so... something's really screwy.

Oh, if it helps, GW is always setting its process priority to "low", and there's no way to change that. Maybe it has something to do with our problems. O.o

Shifty Geezer

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: May 2005

The Luckless Marauders [OOPS]

E/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by Retz
Shifty, have you noticed if your HDD works extra hard when playing?
I can't say I've noticed. The PC's on the floor so can't see the HDD light, and can't hear the HDD either. I'll try and have a look, but with such an inpotent Warrior at the moment I can't really play the game.

Retz

Retz

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Apr 2006

Ex Talionis [Law]

R/Me

If your HDD is working hard, what it's doing is decompressing files on the fly. This isn't good for performance -- at all!

Use the -image flag as explained earlier and you should see it decompress 20 - 30 thousand files. Once it's done (might take an hour or two) run the game again and you should notice that your HDD wont be working as hard any more and game performance will be back to normal.

To use -image:

1. Click Start and then click Run...

2. Click Browse and select your gw.exe program. It will be in "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars" by default.

3. The Run window should now read-

"C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe"

Modify the line in the run window to read

"C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image

4. Press OK, and let it do it's thing.

5. Once complete, run the game from your regular shortcut.

Keilious Ahruhk

Keilious Ahruhk

Academy Page

Join Date: Mar 2006

Sydney

Venatio Illuminata [VEIL]

Mo/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Retz
-snip-
Naw, I -image very often, that's not the problem. In any case, the harddrive thingie isn't happening anymore it seems, so we'll see.