New PC / Performance issues

Hi there, I just recently purchased a new PC-in-a-box if you will. I've had some pretty bad luck in the past building my own PCs, so I decided to just buy one all ready to go.

After looking at the specs, I was under the impression that this rig should be capable of running FFXIV no problem. I'm not looking to crank the graphics up to maximum but my goal was to play around high settings (Some tweaking is fine) with a stable frame rate of above 30fps 99% of the time.

So, this is the PC I purchased: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...HQNW93DCAJQDE4

and these are the results from a high (desktop) benchmark:

FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Character Creation)
Tested on:11/6/2014 3:38:51 AM
Score:3031
Average Framerate:24.782
Performance:Fairly High
-Capable of running the game on default settings. Consider switching to a higher resolution depending on performance.

Screen Size: 1920x1080
Screen Mode: Full Screen
Graphics Presets: High (Desktop)
General
-Enable HDR rendering and improve overall graphic quality. : Enabled
-Disable rendering of objects when not visible. (Occlusion Culling) : Enabled
-Use low-detail models on distant objects. (LOD) : Disabled
-Cache LOD data only when necessary. (LOD Streaming) : Disabled
-Real-time Reflections : Normal
-Edge Smoothing (Anti-aliasing) : FXAA
-Transparent Lighting Quality : High
-Grass Quality : High
Shadows
-Self : Display
-Other NPCs : Display
Shadow Quality
-Use low-detail models on shadows. (LOD) : Enabled
-Shadow Resolution : High - 2048p
-Shadow Cascading : Best
-Shadow Softening : Strong
Texture Detail
-Texture Filtering : Anisotropic
-Anisotropic Filtering : x8
Movement Physics
-Self : Full
-Other NPCs : Full
Effects
-Naturally darken the edges of the screen. (Limb Darkening) : Enabled
-Blur the graphics around an object in motion. (Radial Blur) : Enabled
-Screen Space Ambient Occlusion : Strong
-Glare : Normal
Cinematic Cutscenes
-Enable depth of field. : Enabled

System:
Windows 8.1 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (9600.winblue_gdr.140221-1952)
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz
8111.594MB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745(VRAM 4095 MB) 9.18.0013.4460

Benchmark results do not provide any guarantee FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn will run on your system.

FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Website http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com
(C) 2010-2013 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved.

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http://sqex.to/ffxiv_bench_na #FFXIV Score:3031 1920x1080 High (Desktop) Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745


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I've also already logged into the game proper and just standing in mist with no one else around I was getting about 25fps. This isn't an upgrade at all from my Asus laptop and I'm very disappointed with the results to say the least.

My question here is, am I missing something? Should this rig not be producing better results? There's some frame rate issues to be expected during say S Ranks or Odin but just standing in mist, by myself getting 25fps... that seems very off to me.

My old rig that had the processor burn out on it was capable of playing ARR with ease. I don't know remember my exact specs but I know my GPU was a GTX 560 and my processor was an I7- Bloomfield 920 - This guy: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115202

And I had that rig built... well over 5 years ago and that performed leagues better than this PC is performing now. So, if anyone could help me out, I'm hoping there's something I'm missing, something I haven't fine tuned or just something.

Thanks in advance for the help.

turn off realtime reflections and toggle the occlusion culling and shadow lod settings.
also turn on the (lod) setting.

a 560 is in most cases more powerful than a 645

http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index...eforce-gtx-560

numbers to look at

Pixel Fillrate
Memory Bandwidth
Texture Fillrate


FTR, what exactly burnt in the old rig? and how?

my 920 is still going strong overclocked to 3.8 after all this time.

Benchmark wise, you aren't too far off the mark against the two systems I run with at home (older systems, had to make some compromises to stay above the 40FPS mark everywhere).
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/co...cmp[]=2296
(your card is pretty close to my laptop's, but I'm running an I7 that just edges out your i5)

Surely good enough for the game to have decent frame rates if you're willing to drop just a little bit of the eye candy. Start with the laptop preset and see how your frame rates are doing--should be able to peg pretty high most everywhere. Then toggle on some of the higher quality items you would prefer to have to see how things hold up. Forget what the laptop preset has for the shadows, but those can sometimes be good items to turn off or at least lower the quality on---all the players, npc's, landscape items... can put undue strain on things when there's a lot going on. Glare may be one for you to tinker with too. Sometimes it can be a bit strong for my taste (ie: distracting). Reflections is a tossup.. I turned them off myself, and don't really feel I've missed much tbh... but then again, I came here almost straight from about 8 years of abuse from XI too.

Oh, and go through the driver settings for your graphics card--where you can, set them to program control. You can get some odd behavior when some of those are set otherwise.

Unfortunately the GTX 745 is a very low spec Graphics Card. That's about as much as you can expect to get of it playing FFXIV.

The CPU in your computer will run the game very well though.

To get the performance you were hoping for you would need a GTX 750ti/R7 260 (roughly $100 Video Card)

Switching to a lower resolution would probably be your best bet to get better frames with the GTX 745, since it has such a low pixel rate it's not a matter of turning down graphics so much as lowering the number of pixels it has to render (lower resolution = lower pixel count/detail)