Dual-Core Compatibility With Guild Wars?

My brother and I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. We've been experiencing some crashes with Guild Wars when either isolating Guild Wars to Core 1 or allowing Guild Wars to utilize either Core 0 or Core 1.

After a bit of research, I came across EQ2's Dual Core incompatibility where people have only allowed the game to run on Core 0. So far, we have not experienced any crashes. (More testing is required because these crashes occurred pretty randomly)

We know it's not hardware related because other games and Prime95 (16+ hours) tests prove that the cores work fine.

If you're wondering how the crashes are, I'll do my best to describe it. The game visually freezes, all animations and characters are frozen in place, but the sound keeps going. We can even move the GW mouse cursor around! (If this was hardware crash, everything would be frozen). Unfortunately we could not minimize GW and get back into Windows to shut the game off and are forced to reboot.

So does GW suffer from the same dual-core incompatibility of EQ or is it something on my end (which I sincerely doubt after several tests)?

Good question. Perhaps there is some code in GW that, while multi-threaded (to take advantage of hyperthreading, for instance), hasn't been properly designed/validated to run on a a true dualprocessor or multi-core system. I'd like to hear something from Anet on this one. Have you tried email their tech support? If you hear anything back, post their response here.

As you say EQ2 forced to use Core 0, I think you have tried that (you say you have isolated it to Core 1, but not 0). Sometimes the most uninimaginable things are the solution (I can tell, I worked for 3 years as an RMA pawn )

Also, not a solution but a help while you get this fixed: I play GW in windowed mode, with the GW window filling the whole Desktop wallpaper (i.e. the task bar is still on sight). So if GW freezes you can still kill it with the Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc in case right mouse button doesn't work). It also will tell you if only GW crashes or it is the whole Windows.

Hope this helps!

I should try that and see if I get that problem as well

Well, after some research, I believe the problem can be remedied with the AMD X2 driver which I originally overlooked. My brother stopped using SMP SeeSaw to manipulate GW.exe's affinity and so far no crashes. I will update with my findings later.

Update: No change. I did get an error in the error log though. This time, I managed to see the "error report" box before it sent out the report over to ArenaNet. I may consider doing a full reinstallation, in hopes it will help. (I doubt it though, but it's worth a try.)

Can it be a low power PSU? A X2 with some decent GPU (as I assume you have) can eat a lot of power out of the PSU. Recently I bought a new one, 420W and forgot all the freezing/reboot problems.

Email ArenaNet support and ask if they support Multi-Threading(which they probably don't) it'll save you a lot of hassle. You're most likely going to have to isolate it to a single core.

OCZ Modstream 520W PSU with a 7800GT. I'm doing some research on my end and trying a few things. I'll keep you all posted.

I'm leaning on the possibility of a driver conflict.

Hmm a good question to ask is anyone here running a single core P4 that has hyperthreading. It's the technology where the p4 cpu can run 2 instrucitons in 1 clock cycle in some cases. To windows it shows up as 2 cpu's as far as the os / software.

Anyone here running GW with a P4 that has hyperthreading? I running single core athlon but wanted to point this out / hope this helps in some ways.

I've been using GW on my 4400 x2 and haven't had any issues once I removed the -heapsize option that I had been using on other processor setups.

I did have some heating issues for a little while, but once I got my case fans working properly, temps have stayed in the 40s during gameplay and the GPU remains at about 55-65C, depending on ambient temp and what's going on.

I love how the game does seem to use both cores, at least the process manager shows that it does. At this point, it's great to have GW open, browser in the background to check skill information, Imageready to review elite skills map and handle screenshots, and never see a bit of delay when switching/launching apps.

No_Style: I've got the latest 77.77 with 6800GT and no problems at all. Also, very good PSU, I own a 420W too and it rocks!

In response to Eternal Tempest,

I have a single core pentium 4, 3.2 Ghz, that I play GW on. I always leave hyperthreading enabled and have not had any problems playing GW. I even turn the sound off in the game sometimes and run I-tunes in the background with no delay either.

I have a P4 3.4Ghz 800FSB HT processor. (The Dual Cores are just too pricey at this point in time.) It runs just fine. I never gave it a second thought that it would NOT run well. In fact I just added a 2GB PC-4200 ram kit from Crucial. Now it is even snappier! I wish I could have afforded TWO of the 2Gb kits. I would have felt Special.

On a side note: I looked real hard at the Ballistic PC-5300 2GB kit. I could not accept the $400.00+ price compared to the $238.00 regular Crucial ram. For my Dell Dim 5100 I do not believe I would have really would have seen any difference.

So far, none of the games out there support dual-core processors
AND THEY'RE NOT GOING MAKE GAME THAT SUPPORT IT,
at least not anytime soon (i say 3-5 years)

getting dual-core is really not needed, as it really runs on lot of power

3-5 years my ass. I can see multithreaded games supporting dualcores as early as 2006. You can count on that.

Part of the problem with dual core technology (not necessary an issue for running on the systems) is that the programs have to be developed for multi-threading to effectively use it. Multi-threading is a new technology. It won't really take off (just like 64bit) until windows vista where the average home users will have a 64bit os with dual(quad?) core system. Until then the most bleeding edge First Person Shooters / engines may start to use this feature but the bulk of gaming is going to be behind.

It's in the server business end of things but not in the consumer.

Anyway I can contact you to talk about X2 4400+ problems, since Im still getting them. I tried your name in game, but it does not exist.

OMG please be quiet, u dont have a clue what your talking about

Boy this is an old thread...since my last post I did add another 2Gb ram kit to max me out at 4Gb..hehe. I'll tell ya right now with Dual Cores they are great for when you are running more then one operating system. My good friend her in real life uses one for his computer security job and that processor really zips between the two.... I was amazed how fast it blew right through his applications.

I have an AMD Athlon X2 4400+

I run everything on max settings, and my processor never goes over 42degrees Celcius on stock cooling. I can easily minimize games, open them back up, etc.

Dual Cores are already being utilized in some programs, and games are sure to utilize them in this coming year. Vista?