Serious unexplained framerate issue

[BangoSkank]

Hi, I just purchased Guild Wars, and my computer is very capable of running it smoothly. Unfortunately my frame rate is utter crap, for no reason whatsoever. Playing at max settings and playing at minimum settings yields the same result. I am hoping this is a common issue.

I'm running:
Intel Pentium 4 3ghz
1.5ghz DDR1 Ram
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GS
Negligible sound card

This should be able to handle the game at medium settings with a very high framerate. But nope. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Working on defragging game files now, also cleared registry and making sure I'm not overclocked. Thanks in advance!

[Kael Valeran]

What OS? Also, have you updated your graphics drivers? how come you have 1.5ghz ddr1 ram, is it 1.5gb you meant?

[Age]

I would imagine with a P4 3ghz with 1.5 mb of ram it would be XP.You might want to lower your settings to get the best performance out of it.That is probably your problem.I know you said you played it at min settings for about how long as GW can get laggy.

[RoyHarmon]

A couple of things I would suggest:
1. Defragment your hard drive.
2. Add Gw.exe as an exception for your antivirus scanner(s).

Also, a more controversial option is to disable virtual memory on your machine. Some say it helps, some say it's not worth the alleged risk of system crash. I've never really noticed it doing anything, since any version of Windows that I've used insists on using a page file regardless of system settings.

And as suggested by Kael Valeran, if you haven't installed the latest drivers, that might help, too.

[raspberry jam]

What framerate do you get?

[Alaris]

Do other graphics-heavy games run fine? Maybe your graphic card or driver is dysfunctional. Updating the driver could help.

[Soulstorm]

Guild Wars is a very old game, and an 8600 card should be well capable of handling it even at highest settings.
This is almost certainly a virus scanner interfering or a graphics driver needing an update.

What OS are you on? WIth 1.5 GB of RAM, I'm guessing XP, which should be fine.
-But if you're on Vista or later, you need more of it.