FPS Issues in GW

I'm not exactly sure what's causing this but lately in GW I'll be holding a steady 8 to 10 FPS despite the fact that WoW will hold 60+ and other applications run as smooth as possible. I'm on a Intel Pentium D, 2Gb RAM, GeForce 7800 GT, raid-0 hard drive, and windows xp pro. I checked my drivers and directx and they're both up to date as well. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance

What sound card are you using?

Turn off all the sound, or add the -nosound flag to your shortcut, See if the fixes the problems.

I'm actually using onboard sound atm at the lowest quality setting, I'll give that a shot tho

Another suggestion in relation to Hocksters post is to untick the EAX in game if you have it ticked. Even though your onboard may be EAX compatible, using it will suck quite a few resources.

Try using the contig program in the stickied topic, I was having bad FPS issues because every time the game tried to load textures etc off the HD it would thrash. Even if it doesn't solve the problem, it should help.

Defragged w/ contig, turned off EAX, even reinstalled and -image'ed, still having this weird fps problem. I'm beginning to think it's hardware related, but that doesn't explain wow's good fps...

I'm having a similar issue with my machine. I also have a 7800 (GS, not GT) and sometimes I'll be getting 70+ fps and then the next time I load the game, I'll get 10-15 fps. I defrag weekly, don't use EAX. This is a brand new video card. I've tracked the core temp to make sure I'm not overheating (35-40^C range - slowdown isn't until 115^C). nothing running in the background. Any ideas would be helpful.

did you add -nosound to your shortcut

right click gw icon, add -nosound at the end of the end of the target box, example:

"M:\Games\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" - nosound

see if that gives you good frames, report back

been there, done that. Same result. Thanks, tho.

instead of using -nosound, use -mute. -nosound just reduce all sound to 0, while -mute turns off the game's internal sound engine.

No luck. Backed my driver down to 84.43 and it worked for a little while and suddenly dropped from 60+ to 20 fps.

One thing that may cause the problem is not enough system ram. You did not post how much system ram you have so I am unsure if this can help out. Here is a little info on how Windows works. First Windows needs a certian amount of wywtem ram to run properly (I think the minimum is 256 megs). When Windows runs out of system ram it goes to what is called the Paging File on your Hard drive, shich it uses as "Virtual Ram". This "Virtual Ram" beign on the hard drive is much slower than the main system ram and can cause major slow down even on a machine that can be concidered high end. What to do is first check to see how much system ram you have. Then anything below 1 gig upgrade to at least 1 gig. I personaly run 2 gigs on my laptop and gaming machine so I see at least 70+ fps at home and 40+ on my laptop. Try this and see if it helps out.

Mega Mouse

Thanks, Mega Mouse. I appreciate the help. I've got 3gb of RAM, so that's not the issue.

Of course, you couldn't know this because I didn't say it, but I worked in PC support for IBM for 10 years, so I know plenty about troubleshooting both hardware and software issues, which is why this one baffled me.

Ok, Here's the deal.

The issue with my 7800GS and low frame rates is it's operating temperature. It consistently runs (with no tweaks or extra fans) at 35-38C. I did some searching and it turns out there's a "cold bug" with some 7800 chipsets. I loaded Rivatuner and dropped my fan speed to let the core get hotter. The instant it got above 40C, my frame rates jumped up to what I would expect (50+ fps @ 1600x1200 with the highest settings and 16x AF). Once it jumped, I set my fan back to normal and the temp dropped down to where it was before and my frame rates actually held. However, if I quit the game and restarted, my frame rates were back down to 8-10 (24-25 at 800x600 with the lowest settings). I'm waiting to hear back from BFG tech support regarding a possible BIOS update that would fix the problem, but at least I know how to work around it.

So to the OP, I would recommend trying this out and seeing if it works for you.

Thanks all.