Re: Frame Rates

Here is my system:

Gigabyte GA-X38-D54 (775 Intel X38 ATX Motherboard)
Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 Gb/ 500G Harddrive
OCZ Tech. Vista Upgrade 4GB PC 6400 DDR2 Memory kit (Two 2GB DDR2 800 Memory modules)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz w/ Artic Cooling Freezer (CPU Cooler)
OCZ GameXStream 700W ATX 12v Power Supply
Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 Graphics card (My new card)

Here is my question/issue:

I just got my new graphics card which is much better than the one that i had (I don't remember the exact one because my brother put it in for me... an8600 something or other....lol). With my old vid card i got a 60fps, and with my new card it bounces between 58 - 60fps.. although the quality looks much better. Now I assumed that this would increase greatly with a better graphics card, but it has not. Is the fps in GW accurate? Is it based on your graphics card? Is there another way to gauge it while in game?

You have vsync enabled: limits the amounr of FPS to the refreshrate of your screen. Leave it on: it's there to prevent damaging your screen.

You most likely have v-sync activated. That will lock your frame rate to the refresh rate of your monitor (which is 60hz for a typical flatscreen monitor, i.e. 60FPS). I suggest you leave it that way, otherwise you'll experience screen tearing, not nice. Besides, your screen can't display more than 60 FPS if it's a LCD/TFT screen. anything between 30 and 50 is already plenty enough to play fluently.

Another way to test your FPS in game is by using FRAPS, btw, but it will probably show the same. I also have the same "problem" with it bouncing between 58-60. Not that you'd notice the difference anyway...

As they said, you have vsync enabled. And you may as well leave it that way as there is no point to turning it off, if it's an LCD monitor. (CRT monitors can look better at higher fps, because of flicker). There is be a long explanation about this, but it comes down to the simple fact that you would not see any improvement by turning off vsync and you may get artifacts like tearing that would make it look worse.

Where a card like the HD4870 improves things is in the quality, not quantity, of the display. You should be able to max everything in GW and still maintain 60fps. (I do, and it's real purdy. )

That's only horribly wrong. Playing without v-sync and exceeding your refresh rate with your FPS will not damage your screen.

V sync prevents tearing and as you dont need higher than 60fps in guild wars it is better to keep v sync on usually.

actually, if you're interested in playing competitively, it's best to allow GW to run as fast as it wants. why? because strangely enough, camera rotation speed is tied to framerates. the camera rotates much faster at 200 fps than it does at 60... or at least, it's much more responsive when fps is into the hundreds.

your system ought to get 250 or more fps if you turn v-sync off, whether you do that or not is personal taste imo........

This is true and it's because your LCD monitor only refreshes at 60 fps no matter what you do.
To put it simply, there is a thing in your video card called a "frame buffer". This is where the next "frame" of graphics is assembled before being sent to the monitor. This frame buffer is sent to the monitor 60 times per second (60fps) - because that's how often the LCD monitor is hard-wired to update. A program can recalculate the the frames more often than 60 times per second, but the buffer will still only be sent out at 60fps.
In some GPUs, the contents of the frame buffer can change while the frame is being sent - this can result in "tearing" and other graphics glitches. In some GPUs the frames are "double buffered" and the frame doesn't changed while it is being sent. In either case, the frame buffer is only sent 60 times per second and there is really no point in turning v-sync off as extra fps is wasted anyway.
(It may even be that running your game at more than 60fps just makes your GPU work harder, causing more heat generation, without any tangible benefit.)