For those of you having crashes with GW2

[mouse24]

Alright guys. I have been talking to the "customer support developer" people and I felt I should post it here since maybe someone will come looking and this might help them (for me it did absolutely nothing, and for some reason I crash at exactly 48 minutes and 20 seconds in, every. single. time.)

But when contacting customer support they do want speccy logs aswell as a crash report which you can find in your gw2 folder in your documents. aswell as a picture of the installation path. (just so you don't waste 3 days on support because they didn't tell you that you needed those things in the first message back)

Heres the letter I received.

Spoiler

Hello,

Thank you for bringing this issue to my attention today.

If you are running an Nvidia card with Nvidia Control panel or ATI card with Catalyst Control Center, please try disabling Anti Aliasing,

We have also found tweaking some of the settings in your Cataclyst Control Center and the game may help, please try the following and let me know if you notice any differences.

Go to your CCC, 3D options tab:

-In your Engine Control center set your wait for vertical refresh to "On, unless application specifies"
-Check the box for Triple Buffering under your OpenGL Settings

In your game settings:

-Set your frame limiter to 60
-Turn on Vertical Sync

If this does not offer any resolution, we would like to get more information about your system's hardware. There is a free program called Speccy that will create a detailed report about your computer’s components which can help us diagnose the cause of this issue.

It did nothing for me and I told them as such if they have anything else to report I will surely update this thread with additional info.

Edit: it was also suggested by a member of the community to turn down and OCs you might have on your video cards back to stock settings (this did extend my play time but it would still crash eventually)

 

[mouse24]

So I recently got word back from tech support and they said I was missing some of my motherboard drivers, told me to go to my motherboards website and download everything listed under drivers.

Now I was fairly confused as I doubted that was needed, so I go to the website and look under drivers, I see a few things listed, the only things I knew I didn't have were

an item listed as (AppCharger) its apparently some sort of "driver" that allows apple devices to charge faster, I do not need this as I have never owned an apple device in my life.

My onboard drivers (which I doubt you can install if you are using a graphics card like I am, would probably just spit out some generic error message). Not that you would want to anyways.

A sata raid driver (not using raid and I doubt I ever will)

And lastly an "AMD all in 1" gonna be honest with you guys, no idea what this one is... But I am fairly sure its largely unnecessary as no other game/stress test I have crashes on me.

 

[mouse24]

Ohhh gooood, they recently shot me back a message saying that the reason my performance is so poor (10 fps on medium/high, changing to low results in the same fps even in unpopulated areas) was because my ram was running at 533 instead of the 800mhz its supposed to, they claim that could reduce my performance down to half of what it should be... Naturally I shot them this link and told them to read it over carefully then to transfer me over to someone who knows what they are talking about: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6 (I realize the chart only goes to 1333 but going from that to 2133 is less than 1 fps difference so it would not be a noticeable reduction in performance) (my cmos battery died and I haven't gotten to the store to get a new one)

-.- there are hundreds of posts on there forums about crashing/low performance/ etc and they haven't said a single thing in there support posts about it.

Edit: realized I forgot to include my specs
[Specs]
Athlon 2 x3
6870 1gb Twin frozr 2
4gb DDR2 800mhz (at 533 as previously mentioned.)

If anyone else feels like posting feel free.

 

[Eroge]

Even the cheapest $110 core i3 will give better FPS in an MMORPG than -any- AMD processor, even the most expensive Phenom II and FX series.

I have: AMD Athlon II x4 640 3ghz, GTX 460 1GB SE, 8gb DDR3 1333hz and I get under 20fps in GW2 while my video card sits around 50% usage

I have a feeling GW2 tech support won't be able to help you

 

[mouse24]

Uh, oh.. kay... You should not be getting that low fps. You neglected to tell me what settings/res you were playing at. A gpu upgrade would do you well some time in the future though. The one you are running now is equal to a 5770/7750.

Take a look at minimum specs and tell me I should be having crashes/low performance.

Heck I get better performance out of GTA IV, and that sayin' somethin'

(what drivers are you using? I got a 5fps boost when I switched over to 12.8)

 

[AntiZig]

Hello, firstly, I wouldn't badmouth GW2 support as it seems to me you don't fully understand what you're talking about either. (you linked them DDR3 benchies for SB, while you yourself are running AMD rana on DDR2. talk about irrelevant)

Firstly, your CPU is horrendous for gaming, which is why you're getting such low fps, but that's besides the point as I doubt that would be causing the crashes.

Secondly, when you say crashes are you saying only GW2 crashes or your whole PC?

Thirdly, your ram is being reported to be running at 533mhz by what? speccy? CPU-z? If it's the latter, in such case it's running over spec as 533 is actually 1066mhz. Seeing how you're claiming it to be 800mhz ram, that would mean you're running in overclock, which can cause problems. I'd say run memtest to be sure.

Anet support has said plenty, everybody is well aware that they still have plenty of optimization work to do as the game doesn't tax the GPU enough as it is right now. However, by nature of it being an MMO it will always remain CPU bound, so having an unbalanced system such as yours isn't the best gaming solution for this particular application.

 

[mouse24]

I posted my ram running at 533 because it was rated at 266 in CPU-z and I knew people were gonna say "266? lol quit living in the stone age, theres your problem"

Sorry for the confusion. My CPU isn't THAT bad to be getting 10-15fps on medium/high in unpopulated areas. Changing to low incurs the exact same fps.

It crashes my entire system (it acts exactly like a typical driver crash) however it is the only game in my repertoire that does this, I have ran stress tests for hours and it didn't crash. I also ran memtest to completion aswell as windows memory diagnostic.

Oh and how are DDR2 and DDR3 irrelevant in terms of gaming performance per mhz? Either way this is the only game I and various other people are having trouble with.

Here is one such thread with somewhere around 500 post of people complaining about system crashes and low fps even though there system far exceeds mine

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/tech/Crashing

I try not to bash tech support because they do everything in there power to help but its just comments like "running ram at 533 vs 800 reduces performance by half" that just get to me. If I was any less knowledgeable I would believe them and thing "oh I should upgrade my motherboard" which yes I do need an upgrade... But it wouldn't fix my low fps going from DDR2 to DDR3, most definitely not.

Edit: and I have not personally see one such news post about anet saying they are working on the crashing issues. If you can link me one I will be a happy camper.

 

[AntiZig]

what you linked to them is irrelevant because it does not apply to your CPU and also there were no tests that tested ddr2 vs ddr3 (which is the argument that they were making). By design, ddr3 will have 2x faster I/O bus clock than ddr2. Which basically then results in faster transfer rate at lower memory clock. But you are correct that if you take PC2-8500 and PC3-8500 the transfer rate is still the same, thus performance difference is null.

I've seen a post when people reported crashing in the forum, and anet employee replied saying this is a known issue and they are working on it. But I cannot find it now. I mean whatever gets reported, they are aware of it, but "working" is when they finish whatever else is on their list before that particular issue.

To your point, bad performance right now is hitting high end and low end rigs alike. I believe it's due to lack of proper testing on different hardware combinations, because beta tests were closed, even though they gave out invites by thousands.

 

[mouse24]

Hmm kinda good news:

Tech support went over my logs again and noticed they were all audio based crashes. They suggested I remove my headset driver (corsair 1500s) and physically remove the headset, I was hesitant as that would mean I would have subpar sound quality but after doing that I was able to play for I think 3 hours... maybe more I dunno without a single crash. Plugged the headset back, installed drivers, and bang crashed within 20 minutes.

So... I dunno who I'm supposed to shake my fist at (anet or Corsair) but all in all, a nice catch by the support staff.

So not entirely happy but I suppose 2 reboots each time I want to play (to uninstall drivers then reinstall when I'm done) is better than each 20 minutes.

Still low fps but uh.. I think I can manage ... for a little while atleast.

Edit: just talked with them and they said it was something I would probably have to talk to the guys over at corsair about... :/ dang.

 

[AntiZig]

meh driver incompatibility. Well, do come back when you speak to corsair and leave a note of what their feedback is. I'm curious to know how they will respond.