Upgrading CPU, Advice Needed

My current system is:

Phenom II X2 555 OC'd to 3.8 GHz (Don't bother suggesting unlocking, already tried. The locked cores are unstable)
Asus M4A88T-V EVO/USB3
G.Skill DDR3 1600 2x2GB
XFX Radeon HD 6870
BFG 550W PSU
Windows XP 32-bit
other stuff

My benchmark score on high is 3324.

In-game, my settings are:

1920x1080 fullscreen (my display is native 1080p. Any other resolution looks like mud)
2x AA
General Draw Quality: 9
Background Draw quality: 4
Shadow Detail: standard
Ambient Occlusion unchecked
Depth of Field checked
Disable Cutscene Effects unchecked
Enable Hardware Mouse Cursor checked
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filtering: High

With these settings, I get 20-22 FPS while running around in the woods outside of Gridania. I originally assumed my CPU was the bottleneck, but according to the task manager, the CPU never reaches 100%; however, MSI Afterburner indicates that the GPU is running at 99%.

So my first question is, will upgrading to a Phenom II X4 955 improve my FPS at all? Even though my HD 6870 is running at 99% without maxing my dual core Phenom?

Secondly, I have a friend who also plays FFXIV and he swears up and down that FFXIV utilizes all 6 cores of his Phenom II X6. I've searched all over the internet for answers, but everything is dated around the release of FFXIV. Has the game been updated to utilize 6 cores? If not, why is the recommended AMD processor the Phenom II X6?

Last, is the HD 6870 simply not a strong card for FFXIV? I was surprised to see such low FPS with my system and my current settings. I know the card is a directX 10 card. Is the card being held back by running in directX 9 with XP instead of directX 10?

If it makes any difference, I don't see any improvement when OC'ing my video card from 900/1050 to 1000/1175...

I would like to order a Phenom II X4 955 or X6 1090T within the next couple of days, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Your hardware is fine and the game doesn't support more than two cores anyway. Set general drawing quality to 8(which looks exactly the same as 10... really) and the game will run with ~60 fps. Btw you can't measure your GPU-usage correctly. Don't believe what that **** piece of programm tells you xD. SE will most likely work on the performance once the gameplay is fixed. If you have lots of visual lags in the game then your hard drive might be too slow.

The upgrade would help - but not immensely. FFXIV is highly CPU dependant. You would see a huge increase in performance if you had the option to upgrade like an i7, but a quad core Phenom WOULD help, and FFXIV DOES use more than two cores. For example, I have an intel Q6600 quad overclocked to 3.0ghz, coupled with two 250GTS's, which are weaker than an HD 6870 - but I still get a better benchmark score than you.

I also recommend turning your general drawing quality down to 8.

Keep in mind that high resolutions are more dependent on the video card, while a lot of other graphics settings are dependent on the CPU. If you run the benchmark on low, you should be able to tell how much your CPU is bottle-necking you, because your score won't be that much better.

Lower your General Draw Quality to 8.

It may seem counter intuitive, but you will not only get better performance, but the game may even look better. Why? Because you drop your General Draw Quality to 8, and you will be able to raise all your other settings and STILL get a performance increase. (I dropped mine from 10 to 8, increased all my settings to max, including AA to 16x, but left Ambient Occlusion off, and my GPU went from 100% to about 80% usage, and dropped 10 degrees C, plus I gained about 20fps).

After you change your General Draw Quality and play with your settings a bit, then I would recommend re-evaluating what hardware you want to update. CPU, GPU, and HDD, can all affect that playability of FF14, depending on how, and how hard you pushing your system.

like everyone else has said, lower the general drawing quality to 8. No need to upgrade.