Fps in mmo cities?

[Zelg]

Hi all. I was curious if anyone knows if its possible to improve game performance while in the highly populated cities of an MMO. As of right now I'm playing Aion (waiting for guild wars 2 to come around) and i get a consistent 60 fps with graphics maxed out while running around questing but my fps will drop to about 20-25 in the more populated areas of a city. Its to be expected I know but I just want to know if theres something I can upgrade that will improve the loading of other players and increase my fps while around tons of players.

I've googled all I can stand and can't seem to find anyone talking about what can or can't imrpove this. I was thinking an SSD would help but now my understanding is that an SSD will only help with loading of the zones and games content and not the players.

My rig:

cpu: phenom II x6 1100t BE @ 3.8
gpu: powercolor hd 6950 2gb
HDD: seagate barracuda 7200 500gb 3.0 gb/s
MoBo: asus m5a88-v evo
Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws 2x 4GB

 

[Zelg]

Anyone out there?

 

[casualcolors]

SSD won't do anything. It's a shame that you actually have an expensive AMD CPU. The natural suggestion would be to swap over to Sandy Bridge, 2500k or 2600k specifically, but you're already invested in expensive equipment that isn't as up to the task of gaming, but isn't awful at it.

Make sure you don't have settings turned irresponsibly high. You can max out a lot of things, but there is never a reason to have anti-aliasing above 4x MSAA for instance.

 

[Zelg]

SSD won't do anything. It's a shame that you actually have an expensive AMD CPU. The natural suggestion would be to swap over to Sandy Bridge, 2500k or 2600k specifically, but you're already invested in expensive equipment that isn't as up to the task of gaming, but isn't awful at it.

Make sure you don't have settings turned irresponsibly high. You can max out a lot of things, but there is never a reason to have anti-aliasing above 4x MSAA for instance.

Thanks for the reply. When I put this computer together I was considering getting a 2500k and then began to hear the rumblings of AMD bulldozer and how good it was going to be. I've been kicking myself in the ass ever since.

Anyways, correct me if I'm not understanding though but having a better cpu would be a piece of hardware I could upgrade to improve fps in mmo cities? (aside from anti-aliasing). My goal is just to lessen the gap between my max fps while I'm out playing the game and while i'm in a city running around crafting or something. I'm having a usb problem at the moment so I may end up getting a new mobo at some point anyways and I think when I do I'd be going over to the intel side of things anyways.

 

[casualcolors]

Thanks for the reply. When I put this computer together I was considering getting a 2500k and then began to hear the rumblings of AMD bulldozer and how good it was going to be. I've been kicking myself in the ass ever since.

Anyways, correct me if I'm not understanding though but having a better cpu would be a piece of hardware I could upgrade to improve fps in mmo cities? (aside from anti-aliasing). My goal is just to lessen the gap between my max fps while I'm out playing the game and while i'm in a city running around crafting or something. I'm having a usb problem at the moment so I may end up getting a new mobo at some point anyways and I think when I do I'd be going over to the intel side of things anyways.

Well, in the future I would definitely recommend sticking with Intel for gaming builds, unless something revolutionary happens at AMD. As far as if it would* increase your performance? That is only a potential solution. You would do best to search for information regarding your processor vs. the intel cpu of your choice in the specific game you play. I can tell you that your fps drops in crowded areas is probably more related to your CPU than GPU, but that isn't to say that you wouldn't have the same experience on an Intel processor.

As far as things like 16x SSAA, yeah turn that down if you have it enabled. I won't go over the whole list of common graphics options from most to least intensive, but I will say that anti-aliasing is one of the things that people mistakenly turn up to max without understanding what it does or how hard it is on your GPU. From an image fidelity standpoint, there is very little discernible difference between 4x MSAA and 32x. The difference in image between those 2 is far more alike, than 0x to 4x, for example. Since you didn't post a screenshot of your video settings, I have no way to know how literally maxed you have everything, but if this pertains to you, then do with it what you will. If not, sadly I don't have much else to offer =(.

 

[Zelg]

Well, in the future I would definitely recommend sticking with Intel for gaming builds, unless something revolutionary happens at AMD. As far as if it would* increase your performance? That is only a potential solution. You would do best to search for information regarding your processor vs. the intel cpu of your choice in the specific game you play. I can tell you that your fps drops in crowded areas is probably more related to your CPU than GPU, but that isn't to say that you wouldn't have the same experience on an Intel processor.

As far as things like 16x SSAA, yeah turn that down if you have it enabled. I won't go over the whole list of common graphics options from most to least intensive, but I will say that anti-aliasing is one of the things that people mistakenly turn up to max without understanding what it does or how hard it is on your GPU. From an image fidelity standpoint, there is very little discernible difference between 4x MSAA and 32x. The difference in image between those 2 is far more alike, than 0x to 4x, for example. Since you didn't post a screenshot of your video settings, I have no way to know how literally maxed you have everything, but if this pertains to you, then do with it what you will. If not, sadly I don't have much else to offer =(.

Thanks again for your replies. I think you've given me the answers I've been looking for. I'll play around with the settings in the cities next time im in the game to see if much has an effect. Thanks again.

 

[Zelg]

Best answer selected by Zelg.