Lag, Glitches, and Loading Oh My...

Hey guys.

Before I begin let me read you the specs of my computer to eliminate relpies asking for them:

AMD x2 4400+
2 gig ram
120gb SATA HD
ABIT 3200 Crossfire Mobo
ATI x1900xt

Onward we go.

I have been having a couple problems with guild wars on my computer. #1 is that even with my system it still seems to lag pretty hard (in the cities) but I could run WoW with over 100 FPS in the major cities and no lag at all.

#2. EVERY single time I have to load something, my screen flickers black twice. I have no idea why, all I know is that my brothers doesnt.

#3. EVERY time I get done with the loading, the people all around me appear black for a couple seconds. Again...my brothers doesnt, and his system is considerably worse than mine.

Lastly #4. I dont know why, but everytime I go out of game my processor is running at 100%. It could be a problem with my processor because I think it does this in every game. Is this simply because guild wars doesnt support dual cores? Even when I set the affinity to one core it still does it.


Ok guys, I know its a number of questions but id really appreciate some answers.


Thanks much

100 per cent or close is normal with GW

as for the lag/black i have no idea but even on the other pc

amd 2100+
half gig ram
5600 ultra

i dont get those problems.

Update your vid card.

I have my screen flicker black twice, but only when I first log in, or start up my DVD player. I've never figured out the reson for this.

#3 - I get the same thing, usually the first time I load in after restarting the game. It seems to be normal.

I'm running an AMD processor with 2 gigs or RAM and an ATI card (don't remember which one). It seems possible that this is a problem with AMD processors, or ATI cards.

When I used PowerDVD, my screen on my laptop would flash black once when the program started. The reason why? Could have to do with the way the video was rendered with that program.

With those specs, I don't see why your processor would be running at 100%. Did you max out all your settings, including the AA? That would explain the heavy processor usage.

Also, I am not sure if you are saying your problems are faulted to Anet, but just in case. You said your brother's PC does not have those problems, so that would indicate it's something to do with your PC.

Update your video card if you haven't. Make sure you are running DirectX 9.0c, latest version (there are updates for it).

Screen flicker: Drivers. Might be a general issue with drivers, wait for ATI to update them, if you have the latest ones already.

100% CPU - All games work like that. Very few reduce that when minimized.

Black textures: Slow bus/pipeline/hard drive/ram. Simply put, textures don't load fast enough. Try also defragmenting your disk.

On paper, your system looks fine. But simple numbers don't solve all problems. Often there is a bottleneck somewhere which causes issues. Not much more to be said here, since they are system specific.

Do you have any applications running in the background? Like, bittorrent or something. Even Winamp could cause those problems.

Also, try defreagmenting your drives.

Since the problem arises only on your PC and not your bro's, I'd assume there's something wrong with your PC.

Maybe.....try asking your bro? XD

I agree, from the description of the problem, it sounds like a problem with the graphic card, perhaps some heat issues even?

Yah my graphics card is almost x2 better than my bros. I think it could be a processor issue. I dont know but everytime I open a window like say my backpack while running it skips and then loads. When I do this on my bros computer though it continues running smoothly.

Its so wierd. I have twice as much ram as he does, a processor almost twice as good as his (mines a +4400 dual core, his is a 3500+) and a video card thats about twice as good. Even wierder my computer is newer and far less junked up. He has bittorent, limewire, tons of spyware and other goodies im sure. and he plays with steam, limewire and AIM all running in the background with much smoother gameplay!

Computers suck...and rule, but mainly suck.


Any other ideas?

How do you know your video card isn't faulty? Or that your drivers are up to date? People are giving you suggestions, but either you are not trying them, or not telling us how it went. We cant help you if you keep comparing your PC to your brothers. Why? Because there can be numerous things going wrong, faulty hardware, corrupt drivers...

First the screen flicker could be down to either the resolution being differnet between guild wars and your desktop, as someone already said, or the Refresh rate in game being different than that of your desktop.

On the 100% CPU front that isn't right, your processor is dual core and GW only runs on one core so the max CPU usage you would have from GW is 50% so something else is causing this to shoot up to 100% Check what else your running and close down other programs to the bare minimum and see what happens.

Clem

Agreed on both of these points, plus, one thing I would recomend everyone here do is, on the Guild Wars desktop item, goto properties and on the commange line, add -perf after the command line ("D:\Games\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -perf), this will show you at the top of the screen the Triangles being rendered, the FPS and the bytes per second being recieved...

Do this on both machines and keep an eye on the Bytes per second and see how those are and the FPS too, if your brothers machine is doing better on the FPS its your graphics card, but the bytes per second is your connection to the ANet servers, simple as that

Ok. defraged GW and update my drivers and nothing changed. The monitor resolution and GW are also equal to one and other.

The main thing that I would like to get fixed is how everytime I open up my backpack or skills while running, the game skips, or lags..just for like a fraction of a second but it still very annoying.

Plus its just driving me wild that my system is over 2x better than my bros and his appears to run smoother overall with the exact same graphic settings as mine.

The screen flickering thing is also pretty annoying as well. Because I know my monitor and game resolution are the same as well as the refresh rates. Makes me think its my graphics card, but when I ran 3D Mark it said that everything was normal.

I honestly think there is a problem with my processor, but I know if I call AMD they'll just say "oh yah thats normal" blah blah. So instead I was wondering if any of you guys knew of a good free CPU tester.

Also, to Chop it off. How do you know the bag lag is a bug? It doesnt happen to my brother comp when he does it. Mine also does it whenever I open the skills menu, or hero menu to.



Lol I swear he is so lucky, his computer is so mucked up with crap and it still runs better than mine.

Thanks guys

could be worth looking at things outside the game, ad-ware/spyware could be an issue (possibly), other programs that loaded up upon startup, maybe try closing anything u dont need and see if the prob changes any. (and also any thing that is connected to the comp that isnt needed)

Also try lowering the gfx options in GW and see if that changes anything.

Adding -perf in the shortcut after the path might help i only understand fps but im sure the other figures are useful for something.

Also.... computers do suck! god forbid u actually make a choice to work with them for a living (like me lol)

thats all i can think of atm, but let me know if any of that has any effect at all, it might not but its always worth thinking out of the box for example, my bros comp stopped turning on one day, no startup jus the click from the button going in and then... nothing. There was no change in anything aswell literally turned off for the night, turned on in the morn. After calling the company and them telling us they would have to charge us as last time it happened they couldnt find a prob and lots of time inside and out of the comp it turned out to be one of the USB cable connected to the comp causing the prob somehow!!!!