Guild Wars FPS Problem

Hey there guys,

Its been a while since Ive been on these boards, but Ive run into an issue and cant seem to solve it. I acquired the original Guild Wars (all 4) and installed them on the computer that I am currently using. Its not a super great computer (a Dell Dimension 3000), but I put a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT, 2 gigs of RAM, and a 350 watt PSU into it and it runs most games that I have tried pretty well on medium settings. I ran it through System Requirements Lab's CanIRunIt tool before I bought Guild Wars and it came up as "Recommended" stats for the game. However, I installed the game, and performance is abysmal. The fastest I can get it to run is ~9 FPS. Ive googled the everliving crap out of it, and I cant seem to find a solution.

Specs:

Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.80 Ghz
2 Gigs of RAM
GeForce 9400 GT (although, in system information, its still showing my onboard card. Im running my monitor off of the GeForce though. Strange)
350 W PSU
Dell Monitor (1280x1024)

There must be a bottleneck somewhere, as I cant see anything wrong with these specs. Any help would be much appreciated.

Zach

P.S. This is the second forum I have posted this on, so I have already tried:
-disabling the onboard in the BIOS (not possible, it can only be set to "onboard" or "auto")
-setting the NVIDIA control panel to "Performance"
-Turned off Anti-aliasing, both in-game and on the NVIDIA control panel
-turned down the audio settings

None of these has improved the FPS, which hovers right around 9 or 10.

Thanks guys.

Almost certainly you onboard is being used, if the Nvidia isn't listing that is your problem (+ once you sort it, update drivers)

Make sure you DISABLE onboard in BIOS.

That's my diagnosis too.

It really should be possible to disable the onboard in BIOS.

Since you say that's not possible, try the "auto" setting and double check the motherboard's owner's manual to see if it has funny slot/IRQ issues.

Venganza and Chthon are probably right. I quickly checked and there is no way to "disable" your onboard card (see verified post from Dell forums), so leave it on "Auto" and follow what the post says, especially that:

You also might want to make sure your monitor is plugged into the nVidia card's port and not the onboard one. Also, what are the other games you tried?

Ok, disabled in the Device Manager (The Monitor was plugged into the NVIDIA card the whole time) restarted the computer, no improvement, still wont go above 9 FPS. And Ive played EVE, CS 1.6, TF 2, Lotro, Warcraft. Eve is the one I play the most and it gets consistently 50-60 FPS.

You could try - in-game, go to Options, then the Graphics tab, and then near the bottom there is an "Auto Detect" button. Hit that and see where it puts your graphics settings.

Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.80 Ghz
350 W PSU

i would say the power supply is to low for that card also u can try to turn vertical sync off

also how many hz is your Monitor also i had a old pc kinda like that and whats happed is you graphics card is to big for your processor to handle thats what the final conclustion was on my pc i went to a nivida 9500gt on it and it was worse than a 5500 nivida

u can also run evga percision to over clock or under clock your graphics card and check the temp

Vertical sync is off. What kind of PSU should I look for, wattage wise?

500w and i still think problem is processor since its single core thats were its choked

I ran GW on a single-core processor for 4 & 1/2 years and never had frame rates as bad as 9.

Mate, Ive run my system through several calculators, and the system, with the card, only uses about 300 Watts, so I should have plenty with my 350 W PSU.

Also, I have had plenty of people tell me theyve played on a single core CPU as well.

well im saying what happed to my pc i had same graphics card in my old pc it was junk then when i got this dual core pc it worked 100x better your proccessor isnt able to process the graphics card u are using its above your proccers speed causing it to bog the card down and have low fps

other problem Dell.....

350W should be sufficient. Seems like you tried a lot of different options to no avail. What about all those background programs running (if any)? What version of nVidia's video drivers are you currently using?

Here's also a thread about a similar problem. It might be worth it to try the different parameters mentioned in the first post. I don't know what the -image does, but the others are self-explanatory.

Also, what OS are you running? If running Vista or Win7, maybe you can try disabling the Aero desktop (fancy graphics) or run the game in XP compatibility mode. Also, check if GW isn't running in low priority mode in the task manager (something that sometimes happen with alt-tabbing or running in window mode).

You could also run CPU-Z and compare the results with your computer's spec sheet to make sure everything is running correctly (or post screenshots of the results here). I'd be surprised to find the problem there though since you say other games run fine.