Guild Wars 2 and m17x r2 not playing well

I have seen there are infact a few threads that talk about guild wars two and the m17x r2 but they are usually referencing a specific card or what not. So I would like to open this thread up to any and all questions regarding guild wars 2 and the m17x r2 as long as the mods don't mind.

I personally have been having a really hard time getting guild wars two to run for an extended length of time. So please let me explain what's going on. For starters I'm running the latest release drivers as well as the latest release caps. Anyways, I downloaded and started playing gw2 and first thing I noticed was it was very laggy. The menu screen said I was getting only 26 fps at "auto-detect" settings. So alright, I turn off the shaders and shadows and poof I'm running 60fps. Mind you I'm running crossfire turned on. After about 15 minutes or so my frame rates drop again to about 30 fps with lower frames here and there. So I drop the graphics settings all the way down and run at native rez and I'm once again running at 60 fps. Again 15 or 20 minutes later frames drop if I continue to play through they will eventually drop to about 5 fps. I monitored my temps and noticed I was running 100c on both cards as well as the cpu. So I took apart my laptop, scraped off teh crap alienware put on, but my own artic silver 5 on and crankered her back up. Now I'm running a nice 80-85c top end. With laptop cooler I don't break 75c if I leave it at stock clocks. But again the frames rates drop. The only solution I have found to the problem is to reboot the system. Simply closing gw2 doesn't do it, I have to complete a full reboot. Now I have tried disabling crossfire and running single card thinking maybe I fried a card. But to no avail. Problem is still there. So pissed as I was, I dual booted my macbook air (specs in my sig) and installed gw2 on it, just to see if it could run it and how well it would run it. So get into the game, "auto-detect" settings are at the lowest setting, understandable since it just barely meets the requirements, mind you I'm dual booting into windows. Start playing the game and I'm getting 35fps. I was shocked. It was smooth never a glitch. Just difficult for my eyes to see. But I'm coming back here to get help from the pros because I didn't spend over $5000 on my laptop to have it be outdone by my mac, of all things. At this point I am willing to try anything. Tomorrow I do plan on doing a full system restore and installing everything from stratch as I usually do about once every 6 months. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you.

 

GW2 is crap on crossfire and they will most likely never optimize it for CF since its recommeded to be played on Nvidia systems. Your better off on a single card but the 5xxxm series is not going to do the job. I play it on a single 6990 on my r2 with 920xm non sdd on high most of time at 25-35 fps with CF its 13-18 lol when i can play bf3 on ultra at 60fps running CF. But in places like lions arch i have to turn shadowing off to be in 2x fps or ill be at 10fps. cards temp stay in 7x

 

Wow, I just realized I have my video cards listed wrong in my sig, I actually have the 5870's, but anyways. I'm gonna do a full wipe and try and reinstall fresh because as I said it doesn't matter if I'm running one or two cards, after about 15-20 minutes it's almost unplayable. I'm so fed up with having ati video cards in my gaming machine because there are so many things I can't run on my laptop that i can on my little one I'm seriously considering putting in two nvidia cards. But that's a little down the road and off topic. It's nice to know I'm not the only soul out here with one that can't seem to get it to work right in crossfire at least. I just feel as thought after spending as much as we have we shouldn't have to disable one of our two video cards. Thank you Stealth for your input, I'll keep the tread updated if I find things that work better than others.

 

I've had amd in all my laptops I've ever had and never experienced any problems

 

I know this is not a lot of help but I have a 7970 in my desktop and have been playing GW2 all week and for hours at a time. I have not had a single crash. It does not even get hot.
When my R2 is back up and running I will test with the nvidia 285s it has now and then again with the 7970 I'm putting in it.

 

OP, try downloading HWINFO and setting the GPU speed to manual/full speed. Your symptoms sound like thermal throttling, even with your re-paste job. Wouldn't hurt to try it, anyway.

 

For those who aren't already aware (and if it's posted on another thread I'll apologize in advance, but wanted to keep it contained here as well)

A new CAP has been release specifically related to Guild Wars 2 performance improvements.

Can be found here:

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

I've downloaded and installed it, but haven't had a chance to try it out with Guild Wars 2 yet.

Just thought you all might like to know.

 

Im running on my nvidia 9600mGT and i get 30-40fps then 15-30 mins into play it drops down to 15fps, all clock speeds are normal as reported by gpu-z.

Rebooting brings it back up to full speed again.

 

beat me to it greywolf

 

So i just found out about 2 days ago that guild wars 2 has a glitch when you press M ingame it apperantly kills the FPS. MY crossfire works perfectly fullscreen until i press M to see map it just dies down to like 9fps lol i have to restart game to fix it.I havent checked up on issue lately im just letting you guys know they might have fixed it in a patch idk.

 

Sry for waiting so long since posting. I was in the field and couldn't play. I have been running HWINFO and running fans at max. Generally my temps dont rise above 75c, I also have throttlelock set to 24x without overclocking to help prevent throttling. When running on a single card I get performance that is respectable but it doesn't stay that way for long. I'm gonna install the new caps and see how that works. Wish me luck and I'll report with what happens after caps.

Edit 1: So I installed the new caps and while I'm getting much better frame rates I'm having some graphic glitches. Shadows aren't working properly with crossfire on. With crossfire off it all seems to work just fine as long as I keep the settings at a reasonable level.

 

Len, sounds like we have basically the same machine. I've had similar problems to the ones you are describing, and the FPS fluctuations happen regardless of how high the graphics levels are set. I am too lazy to fix the temp issue--I just run it at low graphics levels to reduce heat--but I may just bring it to some local guys to re-thermal it. I'm currently on 12.8, but I see there is now a beta 12.9 along with the new CAPs a previous poster mentioned.

Anyway, please post if you solve the problems, and I will do the same.

UPDATE: I installed the new CAP update and it did indeed improve FPS issues in the game. I have not noticed the random dropping in FPS game in my play session today. I'll give it some more tests to ensure that this is a consistent result. I have not checked on shadows yet.

 

Okay, so after some extensive play time the new caps do a much better drop at managing the fps. I do get some pretty nasty shader flicker but it's only in a few places per zone. Which I can deal with since the game is runner much smoother now.

@Fezziwig, repasting overall has been the biggest improvement I have made to this laptop. I believe you too will see a benefit. I'm still within warrenty so I don't dare so the cooling mod just yet. I try not to install beta drivers unless there is a problem that I simply can't bare. Kinda like Skyrim, I gave up completely on ever playing that game with dual cards. But this thread wasn't for that game. The game is running much better with the cap I hope they put out new drivers to fix some graphics issues. I personally feel as though dual 5870's and a 920xm should be able to push 40 fps on good looking settings. I normally turn off all shaders regardless of what game I'm playing.