Is normal to have really big fps drops in Cities near Crystals or Markets?

My specs:

I7 4770k
GTX 760
8 Gigs of ram
Win 7 64 bits

Many times when I'm near the market or crystals in cities with many people around my framerate takes a big hit and goes down from 60 to 30's or 40's.

In the open world my framerate is 99% of the time 60 fps steady.. my temps are really low so that's nor the problem.. latest drivers also

Is this normal? or it's only my problem?

Yes this is quite normal. Since every PC (Player Character) has its own textures (armour) and cities can have 30+ characters standing there at the same spot it is extremely taxing for the CPU/GPU to process/render everything.

Every other MMO out there has the same problem so this is not exclusive to FFXIV.

I'm asking because a few people said that they had 55-60 fps even with all those people in the market or crystals.. I was wondering if that was true

damn, i got a GTX 780 SC and a 2700k @ 4.8ghz and it dips to 30's 40's in towns aswell, was thinking of switching to a 4770k but looks like it will still dip in frames :(

My i7 4770k is not overcloked btw.. maybe with that I could keep the framerate > 50

The bottleneck doesn't seems to be GPU or CPU in your case...more likely is hard disk.
Unless you are on SSD, or are using RAM disk, it's easy for FPS to drop, because of all those texture/model/animations to load from HDD with all those players zapping in and out of your screen.

You can test the crystals in towns in areas where there isn't a lot of people around you. Some you look at and fps plummets. Some you look away from and fps plummets. Which makes no sense at all. Some i can look at and point the camera above it or left or right of it and watch the fps plummet. I'd say it's either a lighting or shadow programming issue. My bet is on lighting. I'm hoping a driver update or that S/E works to resolve this issue.

I would highly suggest checking the checkbox for occlusion culling. There is no need to render objects that are not visible. I've noticed no degradation of graphics and fps is quite improved. Most especially in the low fps areas.

Don't need an SSD or ramdisk for this game. HDD usage seems to be 1/4 as demanding games where an SSD is most helpful.

No reason to O/C the vid card as it will only help minimally. Also you mentioned latest drivers. I hope that doesn't mean you're using the latest beta driver 331.40 as that's one of the worse beta drivers released in quite a while.

I use 2 560ti's in SLI mode with all settings maxxed. I have occlusion culling checked and i don't use FXAA. I do instead use SMAA as it's a superior form of AA and doesn't blur the image. 30s-40s in the crowded areas is about what i get. 90-130 elsewhere.

I have two gtx 780s that are overclocked and an i7 3770k running at 5ghz.

With SLI on I score 23000 on the benchmark. My fps in open world and dungeons is anywhere from 120-220. In a city like Quarry Mill at prime time I have seen fps go as low as 15 with it averaging around 30.

I Have to turn SLI off because it causes absurd microstuttering (goes from normal speed to slow motion randomly). The game feels horribly optimized, I see maybe a 10fps game from lowest to highest settings in a populated city.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elysium

I'm asking because a few people said that they had 55-60 fps even with all those people in the market or crystals.. I was wondering if that was true

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You can't really use FPS alone as a benchmark, you'd need to also know what resolution and graphic settings they have to be able to compare.

Example: My 4-year old 1st gen i7-920 and GTX 295 sees me a fairly consistent 60fps, even around aetherytes... but I'm only running on "Standard (Desktop)" and windowed 1680x1050 resolution. If I try and run on higher graphics settings it doesn't run so well...

So what I'm trying to say is if people are quoting FPS, they need to say resolution/settings as well otherwise it's just numbers that can't really be compared.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by catch22atplay

Don't need an SSD or ramdisk for this game. HDD usage seems to be 1/4 as demanding games where an SSD is most helpful.

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Completely agree (and resource monitor can confirm this). Although you've given me a crazy idea to create a 10GB RAMdrive and try it anyway, just for a laugh to see what the load time is like! :D

We are not talking about loading screen time here, this thread is about stuttering near Aetheryte and Market.
I suspect RAMdisk will help.
I only have 8GB RAM, not enough to try it out, otherwise I would test it out myself long time ago.

Would be nice if someone have about 16GB RAM can try it out and show the difference.