Wondering about lag/computer specs

I recently bought this game. I’ve been enjoying it so far but the lag is starting to make it unbearable. It’s often very choppy and will only run smoothly for a minute or two when I first log in and then it’s all downhill from there.

The game says my wireless connection is excellent. I've ran other MMOs perfectly before.

My computer’s specs are 4.00 GB RAM (with 3.80 GB usable) and an Intel® Core™ i3 CPU M370 @ 240 GHz 2.39 GHz. I did a ping test to North American servers and the minimum was 26ms, maximum was 74ms and an average of 31 ms. Not exactly sure what these mean and if low is good or not. All the graphics in-game are turned to the lowest settings. I have my computer’s visual settings set for best performance. Battery is on high performance mode. I ran a disk defrag and a disk clean up. I have around 200 free GB on the hard drive. I gave FFXIV high priority when running.

Welcome to Eorzea!

Hmm, I'm not too sure what could causing your lag issue - as it's something of a 'catch-all' term used to describe a multitude of issues with just as many different causes. There is an acknowledged problem with network lag in the game at the moment though which is believed due to network problems that are out of SE's hands (apparently this affects the US server more than the JP ones). Whether that is true or not I'm not sure.

However I think in your case your laptop might not be powerful enough to run the game (specifically, the video card - I'm not sure about the specs for your laptop but I'm going to guess it's probably using so-called 'on-board' video which is fine for running videos and the like or Facebook games, but graphic intensives games like FFXIV really need something much more powerful.)

But I'm sure there's someone else here who is far more knowledgeable on this subject than me who would be able to give you sounder advice, as I admit hardware is not my strongpoint. :p

EDIT: another thing you could do to test to see if it is indeed your hardware at fault is to download, install and run the official Benchmark program in both modes and see how well it runs the demonstration scenes. The FFXIV Benchmark can be found here: http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/benchmark/en/index.html

What graphics card do you have? I believe this game is very dependent on the graphics card and processor so one or the other is probably the culprit.

There's the possibility that there may be something running in the background without your knowledge that may be causing the slowdown as well.

I think it's your hardware. And I would like to share my experience.

I'm playing on a laptop with 2gb gt555m (144 shader cores only), i7 processor and 6gb ram. The graphics and gameplay is smooth (laptop standard settings), but when I'm in marketplaces or towns with many players the fps drops dramatically.
That's why I'm selling this laptop to upgrade to higher specs. I'm planning to buy a laptop with video card 2gb gt765m (700 shader cores) because can't own a desktop at the moment.

And yes in order to play and enjoy FFXIV you need a good machine. But if you are a casual gamer you should be fine with my specs. But with your specs I think your laptop will have a hard time. Let's upgrade! :)

a laptop with an i3 is gonna have a bad time

and sinse you didn't mention which gpu card you have im guessing you have onboard graphics which isn't gonna cut the mustard

Yeah, your laptop is struggling because of the hardware. FFXIV is demanding, even on the lowest settings.

My laptop is my only computer which can run the game, it has a core i5 m450 with an Nvidia Geforce 310m GPU, 4GB RAM, and a 7200 RPM HDD. Loading zones is slow because of the GPU being underpowered and it struggles to push 24FPS in low population density areas, 10-16 in places like Mor Dhona (with the character model draw count set to low). And it still gets control input lag at the lowest settings possible.

I'm mainly a PS3 player (FPS dips on PS3 and it struggles when a lot is going on at once, but it's far better than playing on my laptop even if it isn't as pretty. Yes, lowest PC settings is visually better than the PS3's, aside from shadows at lowest PC settings lol).

Your computer isn't strong enough. I've got a similar one sitting on a bookcase shelf. It can not run this game properly.

In general, MMO's are very processor-dependent. If you look at your Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) while running the game, you'll see that it is taking up a high amount of processor power and memory. That being said, you wouldn't be too far off from manageable. 2.39 Ghz is certainly on the low-side for this generation, at least 2.9 or higher would be sufficient. 4GB RAM is ok, but 6-8 would be preferred, and RAM is fairly cheap now, even for laptops. Unless of course, you're out of space for more sticks. And your GPU, you can get away with a Gtx 560M, probably lower and be ok.

You can buy a laptop with these specs for ~$800. I'd recommend buying or building a desktop if you have the space for it, as you can probably get that for closer to $500 or less.