Guild Wars 2 Forum

I have GW2 working on my Macbook Air, but the performance is pretty bad. I'm getting 6-11 FPS.

My question is: is that all my video card can handle? Has anyone fine-tuned a similar machine and gotten decent performance? I'm able to play in the current setup, but it's definitely not the experience I was hoping for.

Any and all suggestions welcome - I didn't see a thread about optimization on the forum yet.

Here's some system specs:
1.7 GHz Intel Core i5
4 GB memory
Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
OS X 10.7.4

Regedit
FixedVShaderLimit 275
SafeVsConsts enable
UseGLSL enabled
VideoMemorySize 256

Fist of all I don't use an intel video card to place (since my switched over to an ATI).
Have you played around with the FixedVShaderLimit? 275 was the number that I found worked best for me and has subsequently seemed to work for other, however a crossover dev indicated that it could only need to be as low as 262. I think it's machine dependant so try lowering that number (you will have to do it in small increments and test it each time) and see if the graphics still stay fine at a lower number, that would increase performance a lot. Of course go too low and you will start getting texture stretching etc.

I personally don't play with UseGLSL in the registry (as in, I deleted the registry) because it doesn't actually fix any graphics problems it just makes the graphics look a lot better (for me), but that also comes with a bit of a performance dip. So if you can handle glowing things not being super glowy, get rid of it.

Those are the only two tips I can really offer you. Just play around with those settings and hopefully you can find a combination that works for your machine.
(When you're testing the FPS test it in a map with an open field or something, not in a major city. Major cities are unfortunately always going to give you a low FPS, there is simply too much happening in such a small space xD.)

Couldn't set you, your Video Memory Value higher?

And have you check out to run in Window mode with a smaller resolution?

I have the issue that Guild Wars don't use my GPU. But it seems to Use all Cores of My CPU with 20-50% of each one. The game run well after all. I think that this game (if the VideoMemory or the RAM is not the Limitation), with 20-25 FPS too.

Have you Disabled your Shadows (select none) ingame? And Set your Shaders to Low? Oh and Set your Reflections to "Terrain and Sky".

Thanks for the response! I'm posting some results in case they help someone else.

• Played a bit with the FixedVShaderLimit, and as high as 270, I was still seeing texture stretching - I ended up putting it back to 275.

• Deleting UseGLSL resulted in the login / update start screen not rendering correctly. I could see the background texture, but no progress bar, login controls, or start button, so that was a no-go.

• Changing the memory to 512 improved the rendering significantly (I was seeing through a few random polygons on my character before - not any more). It also seemed to improve the FPS from the 5-10 range to the 11-20 range, but I'll have to sample a lot more to be confident of that.