Abnormally hihg CPU usage leading to slow loads?

[RiceisNice]

This problem occurs every now and then, and it's a bit irritating.

I'm using a pretty powerful setup on my rig right now, yet I still suffer incredibly long load times and animation/sound lags in player dense areas (and sometimes not even then), as well as my frames dropping below 30. I'm told it has something to do with my CPU (dual core 3.2, overclocking it to 4.0) yet I know people who use as low as a i3 2.93hz and do not have the same problem as me (same ingame settings and everything).

[Raist]

There is a lot in the game's coding that isn't getting managed by the GPU, so it gets offloaded to the CPU. You can try disabling/lowering some of the "eye candy" features to see if it improves a bit (shadows, physics, things like glare and such). Hopefully much of that will be addressed when the new DX11 client comes out (provided you have a graphics card that has the hardware support, if not then it will get emulated by the CPU again).

Lots of drive activity can sometimes throttle some CPU usage, depending on how the controller and it's drivers function. Making sure the drive is maintained well may help somewhat with that (check for errors and defrag it periodically if it is a physical disk--not recommended to defrag SSD's much, as it wears the cells out faster). Otherwise, cleaning up temporary files and reducing the sizes of the log files may help a bit. Perhaps adding more physical RAM if you can could reduce the virtual swap file usage as well (more important if you have less than about 8 GB's though). Setting static sizes for the swapfile size can help somewhat too.

Could also be tied in somewhat to your network driver as well. We see less and less hardware solutions in play, and more "soft" solutions. Your network card may have an option for offloading checksum and such in the properties that could be toggled off. If you find them and are able to change them, give the system a reboot to see if Windows enables the chimney in the TCP settings. Mileage can vary, but it may make a difference when pulling the larger chunks of data during loading.

[RiceisNice]

I've tried messing with the settings, none of them really helps. Most of my problem comes when it tires to load large player dense areas (and my load times and fps suffers because if it), but lately, i have that exact same problem occur on my estate, and its usually much worse (4-5 minute load time going into my house, and a consistent 25 frame when I'm normally at 60). It's also because of the fact that some other people I know who have worse specs and cpus than me are running the game consistently better than mine (even with player density). I have player destiny and max windows set to 10/minumum as well, but it still doesn't help my issue that much.

[Raist]

hmm.. longshot... but you could be spending extra cycles on security software. Could try adding exceptions for the game folders--not just the program files, but also the folder under your dcouments/my Games folder as well. If your antivirus is a bit heavy handed, it could be consuming some processor time perhaps.

[RiceisNice]

hmm.. longshot... but you could be spending extra cycles on security software. Could try adding exceptions for the game folders--not just the program files, but also the folder under your dcouments/my Games folder as well. If your antivirus is a bit heavy handed, it could be consuming some processor time perhaps.

I don't have any anti virus software other than essentials, I could try adding the entire folder to exceptions though.

[Jonny_Tapas]

I've shared in your pain, I have a rig that should be able to blast through this game no problem. Long loading times and NPCs failing to load for quite a bit after I've arrived at their locations were the beginning of a problem that was caused by a failing HD. I'm not sure about CPU throttling, I never really looked in that direction.

However in most cases of players reporting long load screens on a machine that should perform well in the game... the answer typically always fell in the HDD department. Weather it be age, failure, defrag or low IOPS.

Maybe share all of your hardware with the community and they could help you find a more direct lead to your issue.

In my case the game performs just fine once it does load, but loading is horrid. I'm not sure we suffer from the same issues, but maybe it's something you can look into.

[Judge_Xero]

Sounds like an unstable overclock/Ram overclock.

Try running it at stock.

Also an i3 is better than a dual core for FFXIV since it is Hyper threading friendly.

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OP you should list your actual specs. Unfortunately any type of build using a Dual Core does not fall into the "Pretty Powerful Setup"

i.e. Core2Duo 8800 < Pentium G3258 Dual Core < i5 4670 Quad Core < i7 5960x (8 Core - 16 Threads)

[GreatMonkey]

So i got that problem as well but only saw it after telporting to bew areas a lot (doing hunts) it turns out that the game dose not like my video card that much so i had to go into the video options and turn on config for low end systems (kinda forget what it is called) something called that. I cant look what it is called because i am at work right now. Can tell u later today once i get home.