New player and bad game performance...

I just bought the game today and ran the benchmark and got this score:

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...9-47-00-48.jpg

[8000 and over] Extremely High Performance
Easily capable of running the game on the highest settings.
[5500–7999] Very High Performance
Easily capable of running the game. Should perform exceptionally well, even at higher resolutions.
[4500-5499] High Performance
Easily capable of running the game. Should perform well, even at higher resolutions.
[3000-4499] Fairly High Performance
Capable of running the game on default settings. Consider switching to a higher resolution depending on performance.
[2500-2999] Standard Performance
Capable of running the game on default settings.
[2000-2499] Slightly Low Performance
Capable of running the game, but may experience some slowdown. Adjust settings to improve performance.
[1500-1999] Low Performance
Capable of running the game, but will experience considerable slowdown. Adjusting settings is unlikely to improve performance.
[Under 1500] Insufficient Performance
Does not meet specifications for running the game.

Now according to this chart on the benchmark, I need over 8000 to run the game on maximum settings. Forgive me, but didn't this come out in 2010? The i7-3770k is overclocked to 4.5Ghz and the GTX 670 is also overclocked (1325mhz boost core clock, 1895mhz memory clock). Looking at GPU-Z, I was actually being bottlenecked by my GPU.

Can someone explain to me how a 2 year old game can bottleneck an overclocked GTX 670? Exactly what kind of computer do you need to run this on maximum settings? Am I doing something wrong in the benchmark, or have some setting I'm overlooking? Appreciate any help. I made my character and went in game to see if it was just the benchmark that was having problems, but on maximum settings I was actually below 60FPS and my GPU temps were pushing 80c and that's with water cooling.

At this point, though I love Final Fantasy, and I love the beginning and the graphical quality, I don't think I can risk frying a brand new GPU (somehow) on a 2 year old game. Any ideas?

Fact is, this game's graphical engine is finicky and does things in the least optimized way possible, so it often draws upon massive amounts of power to do half of what it could.

That said, the benchmark is also a huge liar and spits out incorrect values, do not believe in it. Just a quick test and raise quality progressively to be sure you don't fry your board.

Edit: That said, certain configurations in the game's graphical engine are ALSO liars and do not work, some will drastically icnrease performance if you switch from software to driver mode, like Anti-Aliasing.
I turned off XIV's AA and activated my driver-powered AA, and good god, now even Ul'Dah loads with decent speed.

Thanks for the reply. Is there a list of recommended settings for high-end systems somewhere? Or at least some known 'finicky' settings that should be set or avoided being set a certain way? I'll force AA through the NVidia Control panel and see if that makes any difference on temps. Would appreciate any more advice =)

2.0 is revamping the graphics system. I would just wait until that benchmark comes out.

Not saying it'll actually score any better when the time comes, but I see little point in optimizing for a system that's going away.

Then again, I play this game just fine on a rig that only scored in the low 2,000s, so I don't see what all the fuss is about. Since when did "Easily capable of running the game. Should perform exceptionally well, even at higher resolutions." equal "Bad game performance"?

Turn off Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field.

Put Detail and Drawing at Standard, since the increase in quality is negligible.

You have a nice build but it's not as good as you think. Just because it's 2010 game it doesn't mean a mid range OC build will max out the settings. Think along the lines of Metro 2033, and try playing that on max settings even on just 1080p.

When you're playing with 690 sli on a 3960x at 1440 resolution and you can't max out settings still then you can complain.

No offense.