Particle effects and massive slowdown

[Stromgarde]

Certain in-game objects, such as confluxes, avatars, and telepoint crystals hold the potential to cause crippling slowdown on certain common graphics card solutions. I myself have experienced this across multiple computers and operating systems, though at present I am using a Radeon X4890 which otherwise has no problems. This has been a known issue for some time, but I think it would be interesting to get an official perspective on the matter.

[Kari]

To add to this, someone else pointed out to me that this is a problem with newer computers utilizing the newest DirectX.
This game has been built to run on an older version, or somethin' along those lines.
Which makes sense, my old/crappy computer had no lag around Confluxes, but my brand new computer with 6x better specs does lag.

[Zenoxio]

Ah yes, earth weather. Dust storms kill my i7 computer.

[Wade]

Ah yes, earth weather. Dust storms kill my i7 computer.

Mine too, I have weather turned off. That and shadows. The Maws hurt though. Lots of lag around those.

[Stromgarde]

Aye, that begs the question though; Since downgrading DirectX on our newer rigs is infeasible, what is a reasonable accommodation? I think that if SE made available models that did not make use of those pesky particle effects, i.e. non-glowing confluxes/maws, that would go a long way towards pleasing a lot of people, especially considering that 'avoiding the problem elements' is flat out not an option.

[Fearforever]

Dust storms bring my i5 laptop with RadeonHD 4430 tons of lag, yet my FPS is at 28-30, also crags and maws drop it to about 10-15 yet my old PC with a 10 year old can handles it fine.

[Retto]

To whoever it may help, Nvidia does have beta drivers for 400 and 500 series cards that improves XI's general performance.

[Akiyama]

To whoever it may help, Nvidia does have beta drivers for 400 and 500 series cards that improves XI's general performance.

These drivers are actually no longer in BETA. I strongly suggest any NVIDIA 400 or 500 series players to upgrade their drivers to 266.58 as they massively increase the performance of FFXI (I get static 30FPS with all effects on in all zones).

* Below are English (US) driver links. For international versions, choose from here.

Driver 266.58 Download links for Windows Vista/7:
32-bit Windows Vista/7
64-bit Windows Vista/7

Links for Windows XP:
32-bit Windows XP
64-bit Windows XP

I don't think there are any ATI drivers for the newer cards that have a similar performance increase, unfortunately.

[Coldbrand]

It'd be nice if they added some proper PC support. It's pretty stupid that they still have the framerate capped at 30 and that a 500$ video card should play no better than the ps2 version of the game. I REALLY want them to get to this, regardless of how hard it is. It'd be an invaluable improvement, and I honestly think it's an important contribution that needs to be made to ensure the lifespan of the game in the long run.

[Akiyama]

It'd be nice if they added some proper PC support. It's pretty stupid that they still have the framerate capped at 30 and that a 500$ video card should play no better than the ps2 version of the game. I REALLY want them to get to this, regardless of how hard it is. It'd be an invaluable improvement, and I honestly think it's an important contribution that needs to be made to ensure the lifespan of the game in the long run.

I believe the 30FPS cap is related to DirectX 8 limitations rather than just the PS2's capabilities. Removing the 30FPS cap would require the whole game to be remade with a newer version of DirectX I imagine.