I just wanna know whether this is normal.

Thanks in advance.

My PC specs:
Windows XP professional
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
1792mb of RAM. (1.75gb)
Nvidia 6800 GS 256mb
Onboard realtek 97 audio

All drivers updated.

Ingame settings:
I set all the textures to max, smallest UI, no AA, 1280x1024 (same as my desktop settings), shadows OFF, sound quality FASTEST.

Is it normal for my guildwars to drop to 20fps ~ 30fps in busy towns like Kaineng AD1? Outside i get 70+ to 120+fps. I tried -nosound and i got 40~50fps in Kaineng AD1.

Im sorry if this has been asked before, but im irritated by the sudden choppiness of the game when i enter busy towns.

Its quite possible that your internet is lagging a bit, and your computer is capable of processing more info then your internet is capable of sending in.

I doubt its those kind of internet lag, like warping around, frozen screen and chat/skills/interface lag.. what i get is sluggish and choppy performance and low fps.. lowest being 15 in busy towns. Outside of towns the fps increase very quickly..

No its not normal i have almost the same system and i run everything on max 4aa 16af with 70+ fps in towns and ~100 outside...
Whats your connection ?

Im not sure if this helps..

Starhub Maxonline 4000: Up to 4000Kbps, up to 256Kbps upload.

I tested my internet connection online and the throughput is 499k.. under Cable/ADSL.

i have my graph maxxed and i get no lag only in busy towns then i have15-20fps

I get 20~30fps once i finish loading a busy town/outpost like Kaineng Centre. After awhile it might rise to 40. But i i dont think 20~30 is what my pc is capable of bringing out.. :s I might be wrong though.

Lag is often a problem in the busier towns like Kaineng. This is probably the largest town in the game, and frequently is the busiest as well. And even if the people moving around are behind walls, they are still being tracked and that can bring performance down drastically.

When I visit most towns, it takes 2-5 seconds for my character to come up. But when I go into a town like Ascalon, Lions Arch or Kaineng, this can increase to sometimes 20 seconds, when there are a lot of players in the town at the same time. In these cases, I often pop over to "International District" if I only want to visit merchants and get/close quests. There are frequently a lot less people there, so things move much faster.

Perfectly normal for your setup. Onboard sound is what is really killing you in towns, that's why you get such a dramatic increase in highly populated towns: onboard takes away precious CPU cycles.

So if i upgrade my soundcard to something that's good or optimised for gaming, i should get a considerable performance increase right? I like it how guildwars run when i have -nosound on, its very smooth. But i can't play without sound.

Getting an external sound chip would help you out. The reason -nosound gives you more frames is because your CPU has alot less things to do. An external sound chip would off-load some of that work from the CPU, freeing it up for more important things.