Framerate issues with a laptop that shouldn't have them.

Hello,

First, I tried searching the forums but couldn't find anything similar to this, here are the specs of my laptop:

i7-3610QM
8GB DDR3 1866
GTX 660M
128GB M4 SSD
Killer wireless card
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

So I've been playing this on my new laptop. I'm running it at 1920x1080, background resolution at 2048x2048, and some of the other stuff up. I'm running into framerate issues whenever there is a crowd, or sometimes areas that have a good amount of objects. I'm pretty sure my laptop should be able to run this game without FPS drop in areas like PJ. My friend has a laptop a couple steps down from mine, with an ATI card, that doesn't lag anywhere. I know there is the new graphics option to prevent the 600 series from having random crashes, but is there something with the 600 series that causes this lag, or maybe just FFXI doesn't like nvidia drivers? Has anyone else had this same problem? Even when I turn settings down, it still lags. I'm tempted to try running FFXI on the intel graphics to see it if runs better >.> I can keep the 30fps when I'm out soloing or something, but if there is more than 10 people it drops to around 20ish. I know I'm being picky, but I thought a $2200 laptop in the year 2012 would be able to pwn this game XD Maybe it's because XI is older DX? Is there a way around this problem?

Thank you for the help in advance.

I get pretty much the same thing when there's a big crowd and I'm running an Intel Core I7 3820 @ 3.6 Ghz (3.8 turbo) along with an AMD Radeon HD 7970 with 3GB of video memory. and a crap ton of RAM (>8 GB)

I think the main reason is the old coding of this game. When I was monitoring my CPU using the task manager, I noticed that it was putting heavy usage on just 2 of the logical cores (1 full core since the core I7 3820 has 4 hyperthreading cores)

This tells me that the game's code isn't multicore optimized, and not optimized to fully utilize modern graphics cards, otherwise it should stay at 30FPS 100% of the time, even in massive alliances.

We do apologize for the problems you are having with the game. The lockup / crash you are experiencing could be caused by a video card or display related problem. When you encounter a video card or display related problem, please check to make sure of the following:

1. You have a compatible video card, check system requirements on the game packaging or www.playonline.com
2. You have the latest video drivers in the correct language and for the correct operating system.
2a. nVidia - http://www.nvidia.com
2b. ATI - http://www.ati.com
Additionally, please make sure that DirectX 9 is fully up to date.

Finally, we would like for you to disable all non OS essential processes on your system temporarily for troubleshooting purposes. Please press the Windows Key and "R", then in the dialog box type msconfig and press ok. Select the startup tab and choose Disable All. Once this is completed select apply and then restart your system. After which we would like you to try playing the game again to see if the issue persists. If the problem persists, please provide an updated Msinfo32 report showing the changes you have made.

Specifically we would like for you to make sure you have temporarily disabled any processes related to anti-virus or firewalls for testing purposes. If you have trouble disabling these processes, please try temporarily uninstalling them for testing.

If none of these fixes resolve your issue, please reply back with you DirectX Diagnostic as well, so that we may look into your system configuration.