Did anyone notice a recent performance reduction?

I have a Phenom II X4 @ 3.6 GHz with a Radeon 6850, 4GB DDR3 and run Windows 7 64bits.

I play @1680x1050 all max and in game 4xAA.

Currently using the Catalyst 11.4 driver ( I'm Dragon Age 2 so installed this a couple of days ago, but the problem was already there).

I generally run Vsync and the FPS just stays (or should I say used to stay) at 60 fps. whenever I didn't run vsync my frame rate used to be 100+ and in places like UW/Prophecies sometimes even spiked to 300fps.

Now, (last couple of weeks) I've been noticing slowdowns and jerkiness - sometimes in battles the frames go under 30 fps.

Lowering resolution does noting. Even lowering detail doesn't do much.

I've rolled back drivers to earlier versions, I've downloaded GWs again, I even did a fresh install of windows.

To make things harder to understand games like Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age 2, Starcraft 2, Mass Effect 2, etc, all seem to work just fine and even get higher frame rates than Guild Wars!

My connection is generally between <100-200ms.

I even feel like my parents PC (which I sometimes use when I visit them) Athlon X2 6000+ paired with a 4850 delivers better frame rate - I will test it this weekend.
Anyone noticed a similar thing?

Hate to say this but id guess its down to lag more than anything.
The last week ive had weird lag spikes , even the point of farming vaetires and flashing skills then im on the rez shrine rdy for action and having died.Even doing snowmen and watching everything slow down soon as whirling defence activates.
Even switchin outposts/districts were giving me spikes over 2k and most likely the cause was everyone going enmass out to farm grog and clover.
Check the forum as there was a post recently about fps and was saying your better at 60fps as the processor and graf card isnt having to do extra work etc rendering details.

More lag spikes here recently, last week or two. Only two or three rubber banding incidents. Noticeable but minor problem. Performance as per usual excellent otherwise. Maybe they are working on the servers.

Sync on, all else maxed. Radeon 4850. 6 gig of RAM of some sort, and I have a motherboard too! Running Vista 64 (hiss boo). Maybe it's Windows 7? ... Nahhhh!

I have
Phenom II 3.00 x 4
win 7 64
8 gig
6850 Saphire toxic (everything maxed) 1080
New ATI catalyst (driver from january range)

But I do get lag .... I notice lots of orange in the corner everywhere

I have noticed the frame rate drop but then rebounds ~ it has to be lag. With the 7 heros everyone is trying new areas especially elite ones lag will increase (FOW,UW Duncan, Elite Faction Missions, DOA ect...)

ever since the bloody derv update i cant do leg surv for vaettir for this very reason...so im not playing (personally) until its fixed...not only the lag...but i get constant kicks, and when i get back in im back at 0XP...pisses me off and its NOT my end.

Guess it is all the people returning with the 7 heroes update.

Hope they can put some of the money people (including me) spent on merc heroes making sure the servers are up to the demand.

I'm at my parents house and this PC is indeed faster, which is odd since it is an Athlon X2 6000+ with a Radeon 4850.

So definitively something is wrong with my 6850 and Guild Wars, although the other games work fine.

defrag the gw.dat file

Power Defragmenter 3.0
(add in Contig in same folder as Power Defragmenter)

I'll give it a try when I'm back at my place.

Have you tried Viagra?

But seriously, it seems that every time there's an update or event, there are people complaining that their game lags etc. since. I'm reasonably sure that ANet probably has cut back on the resources available to GW1 and it probably will cause some performance issues on occasion. But, there are also many other factors involved, such as your own ISP, the route your signal takes to get to GW, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.

That didn't solve it . Ty For the suggestion.

Might be some problem with something else. Maybe it is just drivers for the 6850 that aren't working to the fullest for guild wars since it is an old game.

Update to this thread:

Feeling ever more frustrated, I decided to unplug every cable and use the 4850 in here to play Guild Wars. Before I did that I just removed and re-seat the 6850. That seems to have sorted the problem.

I just don't understand how whatever problem that was affecting GWs didn't affect my other games though.

Victory dance.