Issue with FPS and consistency?

Hey guys.

I have a question. Please note that I am aware this PC is older, and never expected a lot, but am interested in getting what I can out of it, and I am not really sure what to expect. Thanks to anyone willing to read this.

I'll try to keep this short and will provide additional info if requested, but basically I am trying the game on an Asus A8N-E board, AMD opteron 180 dual core ~2.4ghz cpu, 4 gigs of ram, geforce GTS 450 (1gb card, 1gb shared). Windows 7, 32 bit.

Initially had 2 gigs of ram, benchmark with 1280x720 desktop standard returned 3229 at that point. Upgraded to 3 gigs first, went up to 3900, then upgraded to 4 gigs (system and OS recognized), benchmark score with the same is 4950.
Setting to maximum returned just north of 3500.

I realize that the benchmark is not a guarantee of how the game will run, necessarily, but was hoping it was at least a slight indication that I could get it to run smoothly at lower resolutions and low settings.

Problem I am having is with the FPS. No matter my settings (this occurred when I had lower ram too), the game dips heavily in some areas like most camps and towns, to like 9-10 FPS - even in camps without aetheryte or many people. Even at the lowest and ugliest possible, same deal. The sound also stutters and stuff at that point.
For some reason, the game runs really poorly in full screen, no matter the resolution. I have it running in 1280x720 windowed mode, since it's the best I can get it (desktop runs at 1920x1080).

I can generally get like ~20 fps when running around, set to desktop standard mode. Higher in closed areas, but much lower in towns and camps, and sub 20 in more open areas. Sorta thought I might be able to get a bit more.

I've tried every combination of resolution for desktop and game. Windowed or full screen, all effects off. I've turned everything in windows down and off. I've balanced my card for performance and tweaked every setting I can think of to bare minimum... still happens. Tried a couple different driver versions for vidcard too.

Any thoughts?
I am baffled why the game, when set to a very very ugly resolution and run at full screen, can run WORSE than higher resolutions windowed... and not sure why I can't get any more consistency out of the framerate, no matter what I set.

I've set up monitoring for the GPU, and it all seems fine when the game is running... so is the CPU killing it? Or any other ideas for what might be causing it to tank like that in some places?

Thanks for any ideas.

I thought I would add... I don't know if it is related or not, but has been a problem for just as long, and despite my changes in drivers or ram: the opening movie skips and the sound separates out from it and plays faster than the video. The longer it plays, the worse it gets until the sound ends a long time before the visuals.

Don't know if that's a symptom of the same problem, or what.
This issue is frustrating. I've read so much on it, and really feel like it shouldn't be acting quite like this, especially with it never getting more performance even in full screen or anything.
Playing tonight, it was averaging around 15 fps in most areas, no matter my resolution settings or windowed/full screen, etc, and with everything off.
Monitor says cpu maxed at 100% usage overall. Most either core varies is a few percent. I don't know how normal that is for this game...

I've been having many FPS issues ever since I started as well. Sometimes my animations and movements for skills never process until minutes later. NPC's also sometimes take up to 3-4 minutes to load up for me, and don't even get me started on FATE's...

Essentially here is a good slightly technical story about CPU's and GPU's.

"A computer is like a cardboard box inhabited by a pair of elves, Charles Pitchwife Underhill plus his younger sibling George Pekkala Underhill (both more commonly known by their initials).

Charles is smart, well educated, and fluent in dozens of languages (C, C++, C#, and Python, to name a few).

George, on the other hand, is an autistic savant. He finds it difficult to communicate with anyone other than his brother Charles, prefers to plan his day well in advance, and gets flustered if asked to change activities with insufficient warning. He has an amazing ability to multiply floating point numbers, especially enjoying computations that involve vectors and matrices.

When you run a program on this computer, Charles reads it and does whatever it says. Any time he encounters a graphics drawing instruction, he notes that down on a piece of paper. At some later point (when the paper fills up, or if he sees a Present instruction) he translates the entire paper from the original language into a secret code which only he and George can understand, then hands these translated instructions to his brother, who carries them out." - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/arc...-in-a-box.aspx

Basically your Charles (CPU) is busting his ass around the clock to get enough work for George to do but he can't.

What's worse is that your George (GPU) isn't all that fantastic either for FF14's rendering engine; lower the shadow quality (Medium), Disable Shadow Cascading, and disable Limb Darkening, SSAO. Also I bet you might even see an FPS increase by disabling Occlusion Culling. Disable Reflections and turn off Vsync and FXAA, set Grass to low or off, and set the game to fullscreen @ your resolution. Oh! and also disable Physics as those calculations are most likely done on the CPU side.

Once you get your FPS back up from that (if it goes up) you can slowly start turning things on / off.

I hope that helps; and it's 4AM here on the East coast so I am heading off to bed.

Bah nvm, its only 2GB for the min specs:

Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows® Vista 32/64bit, Windows® 7 32/64bit, Windows® 8 32/64bit
CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo 3GHz
Memory: 2GB (4GB recommended for 64bit OS)
Space required on HD/SSD: 20GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® Geforce® 8800 or higher, ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 or higher
Screen Resolution: 1280x720
Internet: Persistent broadband internet connection required
Sound Card: DirectSound® compatible sound card (DirectX® 9.0c or higher)
DirectX®: DirectX® 9.0c or higher



However your processor is a little slow compared to their requirements.

I appreciate the replies...

Is the CPU really so slow that I should see the results I have?
Shadows are off, physics are off, FSAA is off, everything is at bare minimum. Grass is off, nothing is on. The card is set for performance, even went to set all global settings to their minimum and off. Nothing else is taxing the computer.
I have nothing else to set to off. I set it to desktop standard, then dropped everything as low as it could go beyond that.

Despite this, even when it's in full screen (not borderless window, but true full screen), the FPS is still garbage, even at an extremely ugly resolution. That confuses me, I would think I would be able to see some improvement over a higher resolution window, but I don't.

I was running around outside of gridania earlier in the lowest possible resolution in full screen and it still wouldn't get above 15-17 FPS, which is the same result than I get in a 1280x720 window.

I just don't understand why I can't see any FPS improvement. I would expect to see this kind of FPS at medium settings and a decent resolution windowed, I get that. I figured thats what 4900 benchmark would lead to. What I don't understand is how it is that I can't get it any higher by dropping resolution, disabling things, or running in full screen.

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.