Horribly Low FPS

I have a Samsung ATIV 4 with an Intel i7, 8 GB of ram, and a 64 bit operating system and I average on 3-5 FPS whenever I play FFXIV on my laptop which is unbearably slow. I literally can't do anything in the game. I have tried to set the graphics in game to the highest, the lowest, and everything in between and can't get the FPS to be higher than 5. It used to be much better, but it has suddenly gone down and I can't figure out how to get it back up to even 20 FPS. I know my laptop isn't the best for graphics, but when I play other games, I don't have any problems with being able to play like I have had with this game. I am so frustrated with the whole thing and would love any suggestions you guys can give me.

Is it a dedicated/discreet GPU, or an integrated? What's the size? 1GB? Are you running anything in the backround? Are you running in windowed mode? Have you checked for updated drivers on your GPU? Have there been any updates you performed right before the drop? Are other applications affected by the same drop in frame rates? Have you tried uninstalling/reinstaller or reformat? Is the GPU and CPU running at 100% when FFXIV is running (GPUz or performance monitor will tell you this)?

I have an Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 which is integrated. It has 1792 MB available. Usually I don't run anything in the background, but the FPS doesn't change the few times I have done so. I've also tried running in windowed/full screen and also no change there (although I prefer to run it on full screen). Drivers for GPU are up to date. When FFXIV had their last update was when I started to notice the drop. I haven't uninstalled and reinstalled yet, but that was next on my list of things to try. I'm at my parents for the week so I don't have my disc and registration code with me, otherwise I would have done that first before posting here. With Chrome and FF open, performance monitor spikes average at about 61. Hopefully I'm giving you all the right info... I'm not the most computer savvy and it doesn't help that I just recently switched from a mac either.

Is it happening all over the world or just in certain zones?

It happens all over. Where people fate grind it tends to be a few frames lower, but not that much of a difference.

I hate to say it, but integrated cards simply aren't capable of pulling FFXIV. They were only designed for very basic 3D applications, such as Windows AERO. You're going to need something with a fair bit more power to see reasonable performance in this game.

You can see the minimum and recommended requirements here: http://www.ffxivinfo.com/systemreqs.php

Note that the minimum requirement for a video card is an GeForce 8800 series or Radeon 4770.

Integrated GPU's run really rough with FFXIV. That your card is a little over 1GB is good, but the integrated card is trying to load everything at once (your OS, FFXIV, your web browser, etc). The biggest problem with integrated cards isn't it's raw potential, but it's bus speeds. The bus on the card simply isn't fast enough to render FFXIV and have any kind of quality.

Has your computer ever run FFXIV above 3-5 fps? Is this a new issue that has crept up recently?

Yes it had run around 20 FPS, which isn't great but it's manageable. I played when it was version 1 and required higher specs, but it worked better than it does now. This afternoon it went up to 12 for a few mins and then fell back down to about 7.

I just ran the benchmark that scores your computer on how good it would be for this game... and scored 825ish. So that's obviously the problem, like Lurkios said. It's just that it used to work fine (well, fine for me, but probably horribly for others with good graphics) a few weeks ago and now not so much.

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Originally Posted by hrhbrittney

Yes it had run around 20 FPS, which isn't great but it's manageable. I played when it was version 1 and required higher specs, but it worked better than it does now. This afternoon it went up to 12 for a few mins and then fell back down to about 7.

I just ran the benchmark that scores your computer on how good it would be for this game... and scored 825ish. So that's obviously the problem, like Lurkios said. It's just that it used to work fine (well, fine for me, but probably horribly for others with good graphics) a few weeks ago and now not so much.

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Though 1.0 required higher raw specs, you have to keep in mind that ARR runs off a whole new engine with DirectX 10.1 balancing. It could be that your GPU isn't able to render 10.1 as efficiently as it was able to render 9x and 10 (1.0 versions). 12 FPS is still really choppy. I'm not as stringent as others in their FPS values. I prefer 30FPS (others consider anything below 60 as unacceptable). 12 is still really really low.

You can try to reload your drivers or reformat your machine to see if you can improve your frame rate. If this doesn't help though, it's black Friday soon and there are some SCREAMING deals for laptops that I've seen.

It seems that there have not been any further posts about this concern being an ongoing issue. Because of this, we are considering it to be resolved. If this does continue to be a concern, please create another thread to further discuss resolutions or contact the Support Center at support.na.square-enix.com for assistance.