Performance issue \\ AMD Athlon II X4 640 \\ ATI 6950 2GB DDR5 \\ 6GB DDR3 \\

Hi All,

I have a few screens to show exactly what is wrong, but first my system setup.
By the looks of it my PROC is a huge bottleneck in FFXIV (However the system monitor tool does not reflect this).
I can't seem to get decent performance even on lowest settings, 30< FPS in Town.
Other then that it takes no less then 20 seconds for NPC's to pop up with Low and High settings.

I really don't know what is causing this bad performance, anyone tip's are more then welcome?
Please let me know if more information is required.

So far I have tried (Without major improvements):

• Custom Drivers
• FFXIVPriorityBooster
• InjectSMAA_by_mrhaandi_1.2.

In Game FPS Capped on 60

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System Information
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Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.110622-1506)
System Board: MSI 870A-G54 / MS-7599
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 6144MB RAM
Page File: 2222MB used, 10061MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
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Display Device
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ATI Graphics Driver 11.12
Card name: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (ASUS HD6950 EAH6950/2DI2S/2GD5)
Chip type: ATI display adapter (0x6719)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6719&SUBSYS_03BA1043&REV_00
Display Memory: 752 MB
Dedicated Memory: 2032 MB
Shared Memory: 2815 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1076 (32 bit) (59Hz)
Monitor Model: SAMSUNG 40"
Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)

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Screen Shots
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Click the images for a clear view.

• Windowed
• Multisampling: Off
• General Drawing: 8 (Standard)
• Background Drawing: 3 (Standard)
• Shadow: Off
• AO: Off
• DoF: Off
• Texture Quality: Low
• Texture Filter: Low

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/9177/ffxivlow.jpg

• Windowed
• Multisampling: 4x MSAA
• General Drawing: 8 (Standard)
• Background Drawing: 3 (Standard)
• Shadow: Off
• AO: Off
• DoF: On
• Texture Quality: High
• Texture Filter: Highest

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/391/ffxivhigh.jpg

• Windowed
• Multisampling: 8x CSAA
• General Drawing: 8 (Standard)
• Background Drawing: 5 (High)
• Shadow: Highest
• AO: Off
• DoF: On
• Texture Quality: High
• Texture Filter: Highest

Overclocked/Shader Unlocked to 6970 :
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/7186/ffxivhigh8x.jpg

System Monitor with last FFXIV running:
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/9365/systemmonitor.jpg

Just to let you know the snow is a big issue when it come to lag :) and town always had lag issue even with the best video cards some people have very good card that get very good FPS.

Very true, but the fact that the performance does not improve the slightest on low settings is strange.
But either way, the snow is more annoying then anything, there should at least be a toggle for it to enable or disable, same goes for weather effects.

<30 FPS in town actually sounds about right. I'd turn off depth of field maybe?

My specs:

CPU 1055T @ 3.5 GHz
RAM 8G @ 1333 MHz
GFX 5850 1GB OC'd @ 870 MHz core / 1150 MHz memory
HDD 1TB WD Caviar Black

That's about all that's relevant.

I run the game as such:

• Windowed @ 1080P
• Multisampling: 8xQ MSAA
• General Drawing: 8 (Standard)
• Background Drawing: 5 (High)
• Shadow: Highest
• AO: Off
• DoF: Off
• Texture Quality: High
• Texture Filter: Highest

I also capped in game FPS to 30.

In towns I sometimes get below 30, more so when it's Ul'derp where everyone gathers.
Loading times you can't do much about. Unless you get an SSD drive where FFXIV is installed in that drive. Any mechanical drive will load much slower.

Edit: People/NPC loading is due to the limitation of the game not popping more than 40?-ish characters on screen at any given time. So sometimes for other people to load, you'd have to run away and come back. Same thing with the wards. It takes me at least 10s for the retainers that aren't "starred" to pop.

Did you install the performance drivers or the normal ones?
And changing the quality doesn't affect some stuff. Like polygone count for example. Does the fps increase in fullscreen mode?
And don't forget to set all gaming settings on AMD Control Center to default.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Illusion

Very true, but the fact that the performance does not improve the slightest on low settings is strange.
But either way, the snow is more annoying then anything, there should at least be a toggle for it to enable or disable, same goes for weather effects.

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Oh boo hoo your system can't deal with 60 FPS in densly populated areas. Who cares really? Cap the game at 30 FPS and leave it capped. Performance in towns isn't important. Performance out where you fight should be your concern. Does it run adequately in these locations? If so that's all you should be concerned about.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laraul

Oh boo hoo your system can't deal with 60 FPS in densly populated areas. Who cares really? Cap the game at 30 FPS and leave it capped. Performance in towns isn't important. Performance out where you fight should be your concern. Does it run adequately in these locations? If so that's all you should be concerned about.

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Did you see me Boo Hoo anywhere?
Is it really so hard to read and understand my point?

Well I'll try to make it a bit easier so you can understand, Settings in game are there normally to increase performance or increase graphics looks and some times decrease performance, however it does not seem to have any influence on my system, my question is what could be wrong.

Please if you can't discuss normal like a grown up don't even bother.

Coldfire:
I have tested several drivers however what performance drivers are you talking about?, ATI control panel is all set to app controlled
In or outside Cities, its not reflecting the performance increase it should be.

I dont think this would completely solve your issue, but are you using a regular HDD, or an SSD? Before I switched to an SSD, walking around town was abyssmal between the load stuttering and low framerates even with one of the fastest HDDs available on the market. With the SSD, there's only very rarely some load stuttering in towns and everything looks and feels great. There's always a framerate hit with my settings at what they are and all the people in towns, but i'm still getting above 30 more often than not, and easily above 60 outside of towns.

If changing your settings still isnt improving performance, I would double check in your video card driver settings to make sure you're not inadvertently hard capping your FPS to 30 or something on the driver level.

There's an AMD performance driver with all kind of game fixes that the normal driver doesn't have. http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...iewdriver.aspx

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Illusion

the fact that the performance does not improve the slightest on low settings is strange

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Exactly. I'm running the game with:
- e6700 ( Wolfdale ) 3.2GHz~
- HIS Radeon HD 6750 ( OC'd )
- 4GB DDR3 @ 1066MHz~
- 1TB Sata HDD

I have CCC settings at:
- 8x AA w/ Edge Detect 24x
- 16x AF
- All Details at High Quality, w/ VSYNC forced and Triple buffering
- Adaptive Multi-sample AA

FFXIV Settings:
- Fullscreen
- 1600x900 ( Native )
- 2x MSAA ( Game tends to deteriorate above this )
- General Drawing Quality 8 ( Game tends to needlessly deteriorate above this as well )
- Background Drawing Quality Max
- Shadow Detail High ( Max should work fine, just preference )
- AO / DoF OFF ( Game needlessly deteriorates )
- Texture Quality Max
- Texture Filtering Max
- Physics / Detailed Drawing On

Now whether I throw everything down or have it set that way, I have 20-30 FPS in congested towns ( basically just specific parts of Ul'dah ) and 45-60 FPS everywhere else. It's pretty well known about FFXIV's poor optimization due to having a single-player console engine. It doesn't matter how good your hardware is. There's some tricks to the trade for performance so the game doesn't deteriorate which I listed above, but that's about all you can do. The optimization within FFXIV 2.0 will fix this.