Major stuttering issue

[Daggar]

Right, beenm searching around for solutions to this stuttering issue (the one shown in this video is similar - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8avJ2X3d2Q )

So far the so called solutions I have found and tried are

Disable gamepad via config
Uninstalled Avast
Checked and ensured I have no Infrared devices
Checked and ensured I don't have Virtualbox
Disabled all Human Input devices
Setting it to one CPU core
Complete uninstall/reinstall
Opened the required network ports
Disabled my firewall

And yet the problem persists. Can someone please help me figure out what the hell I've missed?

[RAIST]

Alot of times this is bound to driver issues...might help if you posted details about your core system specs, OS, vid/sound card models and driver versions. Could even be potentially bound to your network card/drivers/config as well.

[Daggar]

I must of been tired, can't believe I forgot that.

OS: Windows 7 64-bit
CPU: intel Core i7, 950 @3.07 GHZ
GPU: Asus GTX 560 ti, latest drivers
RAM: 16gb
Network: I'm with TalkTalk, which I doubt helps, but I've opened up all the ports and given it free rein to go through the firewall. Wifi Connection

All drivers are up to date to my knowledge.

[RAIST]

I must of been tired, can't believe I forgot that.

OS: Windows 7 64-bit
CPU: intel Core i7, 950 @3.07 GHZ
GPU: Asus GTX 560 ti, latest drivers
RAM: 16gb
Network: I'm with TalkTalk, which I doubt helps, but I've opened up all the ports and given it free rein to go through the firewall. Wifi Connection

All drivers are up to date to my knowledge.

This may be a large part of your problem. FFXI is notorious for having issues with the newer cards/drivers. It's been tested against an older driver on the 500 series, might want to try the recommended drivers (after a full driver cleaning, to avoid any mismatched versioning on the DLL's).

WiFi can be a bit iffy too....sometimes it can inject a spot of lag, but that's hit and miss depending on varying environmental factors. I'd look into driver issues first, as that is a common problem with older DirectX games in Vista/Win7. There may still be an active thread on the issues on the nVidia Forums in the 500 series GPU section.

[Daggar]

I see.. I'll check that out, a pain to have to downgrade my drivers though

Aren;t they releasing a new expansion soon though? Surely some fixes will come with that, else how will people on modern systems play it? Your typical internt user and player isn't going to want to have to mess around with all this stuff just to play a game

[Daggar]

So! Turns out those recommended drivers? Yeah, they aren;t compatible with 560ti, as it happens Square have no recommended/supported ones for my card. God forbid I was on a 670 or higher.

[Liuu]

Hey, this sounds like the problem I had when I came back to the game about 2 years ago. It was stuttering terribly, at the same pace, constantly while in-game. Like you I tried everything I could think of but nothing stopped it.

Basically I got around it by moving my PC toward my router and used a direct ethernet cable instead of wireless, it sorted it out completely. Its very strange though because my laptop and 360 can both play FFXI wirelessly without the same problem, it was just my computers wireless that was throttling it for some reason.

Give it a try if you can.

[Lojinxx]

Maybe I missed it but I didn't see you mention doing anything with your video card. . .

Your graphics stuttering shouldn't have anything to do with your internet connection. That video the OP posted is generated entirely client side and would not be cause by a slow connection. I had the same problem several years back. There's a 95% chance it's your graphics card drivers or the settings you have made in your graphics card suite. If being able to play without the stutter is really important to you I would try this.

1. Download the most recent drivers for your video card

2. Uninstall old->Install new(even if they're the same version, still try a reinstall)

If this doesn't solve the problem, you must likely have one of the many tweaks turned up too high. Don't mess with your resolution yet, but try this.

1. Go into your software suite i.e. catalyst control center or whatever you have for that card. Go to the advanced 3d settings or game settings etc. and turn down EVERYTHING. Many times an issue like this can be caused by one single setting being turned up too high. Turn everything to the lowest possible setting.

2. Start-up FFXI. If the problem is fixed read on. If not skip to #3. So you know it works now was because one of the settings was too high. Now you go through the long process of closing the game, turning one setting up, starting the game and making sure the problem isn't still there. It takes a while, but could help weed out your problem. At some point you will run into a setting that starts the problem back up. You can play with that setting to see if it can be half turned up, or maybe it just needs to be turned entirely off all the time.

3. If #2 doesn't work it's time to mess with resolution and FFXI config settings. I would first suggest turning down the background resolution through FFXI config to the lowest setting and see if that gets rid of the stutter. If it does, great, just move it up one setting at a time until you find the max it can be at. If that isn't it, try disabling mipmaps, turning texture compression and on-screen maps to "high" fonts to compressed, disable bump mapping and turn environmental animation to off. If this fixes it, reapply each setting one at a time until the problem starts again. When you find the problem setting leave it off and

Hope this helps.

P.S. if you do find the problem in your graphics card suite, make a profile fore FFXI so that when you play other games that don't have issues you can just max all the settings, but then switch to your lower settings for FFXI.