Do You Get Good FPS (over 15) At The WG Auction House With MAX Graphics? Post Your Computer Specs.

My computer has :
BFG nVidia 9600 GT OC 512MB graphics
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16MHz with 6mb cache
4GB of 1066MHz DDR2 memory

I set everything to max, 1680x1050x2048x2048, AA x16, AFx16, Ambient Occlusion on, Gamma AA - Supersampling, etc.. I have to put it on "High Performance" image quality because campaign will lag too much. But even with these specs the AH lags like hell. I am in Windows 7 with all eye candy and visual effects enabled mind you.

So I'm wondering should I get better graphics card would that help any?

This game will work the same on ps2

Pretty much regardless of your system, whitegate will always screw you. ESPECIALLY the auction house and besieged.

Since when does this game have ambient occlusion? O_o

Nah, I run it at the same level as you and I don't get 30FPS at the AH. lol

I have a $1,700 computer system specifically for gaming and a 22mbps high speed internet connection and I still lag on FF and certain times. Mainly around the AH and in Campaign Battles. FFXI is a 56k supported connection, therefor the data transfer rate is limited to a certain bandwidth. When you get around busier areas it becomes harder and slower to process all that data between your computer, the ISP, the FFXI Client, and the FFXI Server. There's a lot of stuff being exchanged especially in more crowded areas.

Joke answer: FFXIAPP + Clear PC enabled

Real answer: toggle first person mode and stare at the wall while you browse the ah, should stop all the lag, at least it did for me.

Issue coming from CPU, just check your cpu charge. Should be maxed (=50% on a dual core / 25% on a quad core) while facing a HUGE amount of players (this include WG AH, but also Dynamis if your linkshell sux and still do cities run @40 :D, some campaign battle when crowded etc...). My framerate drop only happen when cpu charge is "full" (Q6600 @ 3.6GHz here).

A good test to do is facing away everyone (stare at the ground or a wall), checking CPU charge (should be very low), then slowly turning your camera and start facing couple of players => cpu charge will rise. Keep rotating the camera until the cpu charge is almost full, count the number of player there, you'll know approximately your limit.

I got same slowdowns while running FF XI @ 640x480 with all settings to low, or running it in 1600x1200 with everything maxed. That's a typical sign of what's called "being CPU limited".

Definitely not a graphic card issue (best way to notice that the graphic card is barely working when FFXI is on is checking how much VRAM is being used and how much heat is generated by the GPU). And well my GPU(idle) temp = GPU(ff xi) temp, so obviously graphic card ain't working a lot.

i was thinking 1gb of texture mem would help cuz the GPU is what processes the AA/AF/Ambient Occlusion settings, the cpu handles the rest.

so if i had a cpu that was like 5ghz with 8mb of cache i'd be rockin right lol. What I do is I bind all other processes, firefox winamp etc to affinity CPU #1 in task manager, and dedicate ffxi to cpu #0, and raise priority.

Rofl epic win.

Nah, your PC is up to snuff. You're really not going to be able to get 0 lag in whitegate at the AH, or any other severely crowded space. I run a pretty powerful PC and I still get lag with 80+ people on screen. CPU is not even close to being maxed, nor is the 1GB of graphic ram on my 4890 "Black Edition" video card. It's just the way that FFXI handles data to maintain backwards compatibility with grandma on her old netzero phone line. :D

Asking for a picture with CPU charge + WG AH (with people on sight). Really if you get a framerate lag it's just because of the CPU. Game ain't optimized yeah, so it just suck all your cpu ressources up. Just like some *** 2D 2007 danmaku can completely ruin a Q6600 @ 3.6GHz.

Here, screenshot 1 : People on sight, not really crowded AH, BUT framerate ain't maxed since CPU charge is capped (25%) (using a quad core once again :d)

Same scene, screenshot 2, facing away these people, cpu charge drop, still "high" but not capped => framerate is maxed.

So yeah sure my CPU ain't the "best" (i7 are way superior to old Kentsfield), still that game is very old and should never use cpu resources that much.

FFXI is just not optimized at all and will run like crap regardless of your computer.

Case in point, I upgraded in November to a top-of-the-line quad core machine with 8GB RAM, 2x nVidia GTX 260 + 8800 in hybrid SLI and I still can't turn on high-quality shadows because it lags my game to ***if I'm in a city/campaign/dynamis/etc.

The impression that I get is that the game was designed to run at ONE speed, the speed of the PS2 CPU. Any faster and your game starts "breaking the rules", making you run faster, etc. I would not be surprised in the least that the PC client inflates it's CPU usage to effectively underclock you to the same speed as a PS2. I've gone from playing on a 1.3GHz single core, to a 2.4 GHz dual core, to a 2.8GHz quad core and have never noticed anything more than a marginal performance increase.


True, as far as network speed goes you're going to be stuck as the same speed as the slowest person around you because of the queueing system S/E put in when the game was designed so that people on broadband wouldn't have an "unfair" advantage over people still on dialup.

Game is designed to run at a set speed for sure, but that should somewhere around 28.9 and 29fps (this has already been discussed here, and it's not really the point). The fact you're getting low framerate WHILE having all your cpu resources used just means that the game is poorly optimized and that the limitation is coming from your CPU (and not the network code). If you take a look carefully at my screenshot, you notice that network ain't used a lot.

I mean if the issue was the network, CPU charge wouldn't vary like that.

There is one odd thing I have noticed though. I built a project media box using an old barton core athlon 2500+ and a Nvidia Nforce 2 mobo with the default geforce 4mx graphics and 256mb of RAM (that's system RAM, not video RAM. I allocated 8 MB to the videocard) and it performed flawlessly. I was getting a steady 29 fps in outdoor areas like Bhaflau Thickets and Woajoam thingyland. But, the moment I stepped into a city, my framerates dropped to 15-20, even less at the AH. Still, I found it very odd that such an old system ran so well in this game, yet my newer, much more powerful laptop, struggles at anything above 1280X800 at max quality.

My only issue personally is the number of players displayed (or different mobs), anything else cannot reduce my framerate at all. So average framerate @AH, Dynamis, Campaign. Everything else is constant 29fps, event like Salvage, Limbus, Assault = low man, so no framerate/cpu charge issue :x

Since SE had plans to make ffxi for ps2 and we all know how much power the ps2 has, well its faults are gonna act the same way it does on any other system , regardless of the systems spec since its optimized for ps2. You might have a computer with 6 cores in it running at 4ghz each and still get framerate lag in crowded places since its fault is in ffxi's ps2 optimized engine , and SE aint gonna waste money to optimize it. Hopefully ffXIV will be optimized, if done right, barely any framerate lag will happen. But ehhhhh its SE were talking about here. >.>

meh

http://i27.tinypic.com/143j8mf.jpg
21-24fps

Active Shadows for everyone and you will cry even with a 2k $ PC D:

I have a Q6600 OC'd to 3.4 GHz, 4 gigs of pc6400 400mhz ram, gtx260 and a 780i evga mobo. I get 24~fps pretty steady at the AH. I drop to about 15-20 during dynamis and einherjar with 30+ people. The crappy part is ffxi only uses 1 core, so a faster dual core or single core will probably have better performance than my quad core.

I have same processor and overclock speed... and this pretty much hits the nail on the head.

It's why most older systems perform better then most dual/quad core systems.

FFXI is the only game that i've seen play WORSE on newer systems lol.

Gigabyte GA-X58-UD5
Intel Core i7 920 @2.66GHz 8MB stock (not modified yet)
3X2GB DDR3-1600 (8-8-8-24) Stock (not modified yet)
Asus GeForce 9600GT Silent 512MB
Seagate 1.5TB 32MB 7200RPM

Everything is maxed out. DrawDistance is set up at max. Resolution is 1440*900. I get about 15fps @ah, it's normal lol.

??? A single core of a Q6600, even at stock speed, outperform olds CPU from far... Been a long time since the "GHz race" is over. It's all about architecture and not raw clock speed.

Sure a faster dual core like an E8500 will outperfom a Q6600 in FFXI (since, when considering only 1 core, the E8500 is faster), but that's it.

its because of the 56k network cap.

when you are in besieged or campaign or w/e the game has to load so much ***it cant be done in the allowed network bandwidth = lag.

Again what about the CPU charge increase ? And notice that on AH screenshot amount of data received is fairly low (<1 KB/s). Definitely not a network code issue in that case. Network issue happen way after CPU issue.

could also be the graphics card drivers

quite a few of them seem to love to bring cpu usage up to 100% whenever a fire animation or brd song happens

edit: nvm just checked that screenshot no brd around lol

i'm suprised tho, id think a new cpu could run this game without ever getting maxed out

Well, Technically, most new ones dont get maxed out, because it only uses a single core... stupid SE not supporting multi-threading -_-.

yeh but atleast can assign ff to 1 core and other ***to the other cores so it gets its own to itself

By maxed I mean 1 core maxed off course. (that's why I said 25% for a Quad, 50% for dual)

As for the drivers not the reason, used like 30+ different nvidia drivers (from beta to WHQL certified or even drivers that SE "advised" to use), same result :p Game just poorly coded, lot of people on the screen = cpu charge spike = slower framerate.