I’m playing Guild Wars 2 on a powerful setup — 32GB RAM, Intel i9-9900K, and an RTX 4080 — but in the Janthir area near the Harvest Den waypoint, I’m only getting around 25-30 FPS. My CPU and GPU usages are surprisingly low during this. Other demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Monster Hunter World run flawlessly at max settings with over 60 FPS on my system. I’ve tried lowering graphics settings drastically in GW2, but that barely improves the frame rate to 45-50 FPS. I play at 2560×1440 resolution. Is this low performance normal for GW2, or am I missing some setting or fix?
5 Answers
Also, watch out for any upscaling settings or strange resolutions in your game options. Some players reported weird default resolutions or upscaling modes that throttled performance. Double-check that your resolution is set properly (2560×1440) and look for any options like ‘best filtering’ — sometimes disabling that and setting filtering manually in the NVIDIA control panel can improve performance. Lastly, try toggling on or off settings like EffectLOD and model limits to see what impacts you most since GW2’s optimization is patchy in newer zones.
Guild Wars 2 is known to be quite CPU-intensive and doesn’t make good use of multiple cores, so even if you have a beefy GPU like the 4080, the older i9-9900K might still be a bottleneck. A lot of players have only moderate frame drops with the 5600X and 3070, but 30 FPS in that spot sounds unusually low. Make sure your RAM is running in dual channel mode at full speed because slow or single-channel RAM can drag performance down significantly in CPU-bound games like GW2.
Places like Janthir can get performance hits if there are many players around, especially just before events like convergences when lots of people gather near waypoints. Even if they’re not visible, the game’s logic processing for that many players can drag FPS down. So low FPS in those crowded spots isn’t unusual. However, your stable 25-30 FPS with low GPU and CPU use still sounds odd. Maybe try verifying game files or a reinstall to rule out corrupted settings? Sometimes the game’s engine or drivers get weird and cause performance problems.
I’ve got a similar CPU (I5-8400) with an older GPU and I still get 80 FPS medium settings and only drop to 45 when a lot of players gather. GW2 runs on a very old engine that’s primarily single-threaded and extremely CPU-bound, so having the latest graphics card doesn’t help much if the CPU can’t keep up. Your 9900K is getting a bit dated, especially compared to newer CPU architectures optimized for gaming. Sometimes newer AMD processors with big cache (like 5800X3D) outperform Intel’s older chips in GW2 because of how the game uses CPU cache.
Yeah, hearing that it’s single-threaded and CPU bound makes sense, but still frustrating given my other games run fine. Maybe it’s just time for a CPU upgrade if I want buttery smooth GW2.
One big performance killer in GW2 is reflections, especially water reflections. Since the map has water everywhere, having reflections on can tank your FPS. Try turning reflections off or setting them to ‘terrain only.’ Also, lower the character model quality and the effect levels to low or lowest. Those tweaks can help a lot. Oh, and make sure Vsync is off both in-game and in your GPU control panel — it can limit your FPS more than you realize.
I did turn reflections off, and also set models and effects to low. The frame rate improved a bit but still way lower than expected.
I checked my RAM setup and it is running dual channel at full speed, so I don’t think that’s the issue. It’s just baffling considering other CPU-heavy games run perfectly fine.