Improving FPS

Not sure if this is the correct section for this but you can move this if it isn't.

I bought a new computer, and it runs GW even worse than my old one. ~~ Here is a screenshot of the graphic card and such.

[img=http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/8863/infob.jpg]

It's not very good, I know, but is there anyway I could improve my FPS further? I have turned all graphics settings from GW to the lowest possible and I still find my FPS hovering around 20 or even less. I run it in fullscreen and 1680x1050 resolution.

If you need to know anything else (or if you think this is a useless thread) just tell me. Any help appreciated.

Try lowering your game resolution for starters.. I've noticed a huge difference between 1440x900 and 1024x768 (I play windowed so the aspect ratios don't matter..)

want better FPS, get new VGA card, the one that you have now is slow.
and lower resolution to 1440/900 or 1280/800 and graphics to medium.
should help a lot

You have a fairly low-power CPU, with integrated graphics. Guild Wars is going to be both GPU- and CPU-limited with that setup (CPU mainly in towns with lots of people).

For a short-term fix, run at 1280x800 using the nVidia drivers to scale (you may need to create a custom resolution) with no anti-aliasing. 1280x800 is the same ratio as 1680x1050, but only approx 60% of the number of pixels. That might be enough to run at over 20FPS most of the time. If you need to, you could drop it to 1152x720 (47%) or 1024x640 (37%).

Long term, you need to buy a discrete graphics card, and maybe a faster CPU. I run an 8400GS in my server, and it's capable of doing 2xMSAA @ 1440x900 at a constant 30FPS (paired with a Q6600 - fairly fast quad-core CPU). An 8400GS would probably cost you about US$20 ...

Specific settings that might help:

1. Turn off shadows entirely.

2. Turn off anti-aliasing.

3. Reduce shaders to medium or low. Medium looks almost as good as high.

4. Reduce terrain textures to medium (low is [B]really[B] ugly).

5. Reduce the number of reflections.

6. Try running in DirectX 8 with no shaders by modifying the Guild Wars shortcut - add "-dx8 -noshaders" (without the quotes). With this you lose the shaders entirely (so things like fire look worse) and you don't have post-processing effects available.

7. Use D3DOverrider (search for it with Google) to force triple buffering (and leave vsync on).

I lowered my resolution now, and it now runs always a bit higher than 30 FPS which is already enough. Thanks for the tips (especially resolution and the "-dx8 -noshaders"), it's running quite smoothly now even though it looks really ugly.

So closing this thread is fine for me. I got what I asked for.

yeah you got ripped off with that computer. if you can still return it, do so.

I got this for 50€ from a friend. And this is supposed to be for working purposes only, not for gaming. So I don't feel like I got ripped off.

ah in that case, then don't return it

i assumed "new" as in store-bought. i was pretty surprised that stores still sell these things.

omg 6150?

lawl i didn't even think they made those anymore 0o

But yeah, lower ALL the graphics things and resolution until you get a comfortable setup with good FPS

What is causing it to look "ugly"? If it's the resolution scaling, make sure you've got the latest supported nVidia drivers, and that it's using nVidia scaling (maintaining aspect) - assuming you're connected via DVI.

Since you're running with -dx8 -noshaders, try playing around with other settings to see if you can improve the look. For example, you should be able to run with high character textures, medium terrain textures (which is what I run on my laptop) without blowing out your framerates or stuttering. Similarly, you might be able to support terrain & sky reflections.

Just get into a low-framerate area (e.g. port town with fireworks going) and play with the settings until it's at least 15FPS consistently. That should give you playable framerates everywhere in the game.

Yea, my graphics are still toned down to the minimum. I could try setting them higher, but I have already played the game enough so I have seen pretty much everything. I'm fine with it atm, thanks.

Only three real options.

1. Run everything on the lowest possible settings, resolution and all.
2. Swap your old computers graphics card into this one.
3. Buy a new graphics card for this computer.