Quote Originally Posted by Atomic_Skull View Post
It doesn't do everything on the CPU, it just only uses DirectX 8 functions. If it was software rendering then it wouldn't need T&L, wouldn't use DTX1 texture compression, and it wouldn't use Shader Model 1.0 (disable any of those things and FFXI will not run) In fact it would not need a 3D card at all and could run on an old S3 VGA card.
It may not do everything, but it does a lot of stuff using the CPU. In fact it mimics what a PS2 does, which is render and apply textures to the graphics using the "CPU". The PS2 does not use it's main CPU for that as it's not fast enough but it has two very powerful programable Toshiba DSPs (Vector Units) inside of the CPU die just for that. Also, there's a graphics chip there called "Graphics Synthesizer" which does lighting and particle effects after the bulk of the rendering is done and sent. Data rate on that system is like 35GB/s so it does not suffer slowdown/framerate drop with too complex geometries (like dust, rain, snow, confluxes, telepoints).

So the game stutters when you stand by a conflux because DX8 is a old unwanted API, Nvidia and AMD do not care about it at all. The game uses it to perform the lighting and particle effects that on the PS2 would be done in the GS chip.

Newer graphics cards are not capable of processing DX8 data natively, which means the driver will push the conversion task onto the CPU (which is already busy doing the rendering of the ~125 player characters standing around Joachim at Port Jeuno or those transparent shades of the veridical confluxes) because the graphics card need the data to be translated for it's native format prior to processing...
You end needing a (|Incredibly Tough|) PC to play decently.


I'm not posting this just to disagree or anything of that sort. I can only agree that the PC version of the game need to abandon that "PS2 compatibility" model so it can finally run in the PC in a more efficient way.

I have a GTX280 on my PC... (it's G200 based, so not as bad as G400/Fermi based cards for FFXI)
I can hear it whistle when I stand by a veridical conflux...


They would maybe get working on that if they see this thread. One can hope lol