Major FPS lag despite lowest graphics, at low resolutions, with geforce 760

Hey all,

I'm going to list my computer's relevant stats here in a minute, but first let me explain the problem. As I play the game, in some areas I have "fair" FPS - around 25-30 frames per second. However, when rotating the camera or going from point A to point B, seemingly at random, FPS will suddenly and drastically drop to about 7-12 for a few seconds, then come back into some range as before. This happens seemingly at random probably every 10 seconds or so while playing the game. It's absolutely nuts.

Now, here's what I've tried to address it:

• Upgraded video card. Some help, but not very much.
• Reduced graphics settings to "standard laptop". No change.
• Manually reduced graphics settings to lowest possible in every category. No change.
• Reduced display resolution from 2560x1440 (I run on a 27" monitor) all the way to 1280x1024. This astonished me: no change!. I thought if anything, that would certainly do it, but nope.
• Validated there are no unnecessary background programs running. There aren't.
• Updated all video drivers to latest stable available. No change.
• Tried beta drivers in hopes of finding some performance improvements. No change.
• Ran a special hard drive defragmentation program known as "defraggler". Finds fragmented files that Windows 7's defrag.exe will skip because they're over some threshold (if memory serves, > 1 GB). No change. That was a long shot anyway.

So about the computer itself. I started with the following configuration:

• Windows 7 x64 fully patched/updated, Microsoft Security Essentials (could this be part of the problem? Never affected FPS in other games...) installed/running
• ATI Radeon 6970HD video card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150517)
• AMD Phenom II Quad Core at 3.0GHZ: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103675
• Asus M4A79T motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131363
• 6GB DDR3 Corsair SDRAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145224
• 1TB Western Digital 7200 RPM HDD

I realize that the motherboard/processor are a little dated, but I wouldn't think that you'd have to execute a lot of code for this game on the CPU itself anyway. In fact, I non-scientifically verified that fact by watching graphs of what each processor core was doing while watching the game run in the background (using Windows Task Manager). None of them got above 50% usage, and there were no spikes that corresponded with lag.

The FPS drop itself isn't happening in any specific zone - it's all over the game, everywhere. I have extremely smooth framerates on the character select screen, but nowhere else.

One thing I conjectured would be that memory was a problem, but after looking at it in Windows Task Manager while the game is running, it doesn't appear to be. Even though this machine only has 6GB available, it's nowhere near maxing that out even while the game is running during a busy FATE scenario or something.

I figured the biggest win I could get with this configuration for the best amount of money would be a video card upgrade. So I drove myself down to Fry's and picked up an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 760 and installed the NVIDIA Geforce Experience app and latest drivers. There was a noticeable change, but it wasn't nearly as pronounced as it should have been. The framerate doesn't drop down as far, but it still drops significantly and at roughly the same frequency. After that I even installed beta drivers to try to see if there's a performance win - so far, nothing.

After installing the new card, I also reduced the resolution and graphics settings to the minimum possible again. And again, as before, regardless of the screen resolution, the framerates stayed the same. I don't have any option to "cap" my framerate set at all, and I've never seen it go above 32FPS with the graphics dialogue open. I can get that high for maybe one second while I have the graphics settings window open. The odd thing is that I get that exact same behavior at the same cap regardless if I'm running 2560x1440 resolution, or 1280x1024!

I think the video card is absolutely fine, and I have excellent framerates in all other games I play or have tried - AION, Starcraft 2, Guildwars 2, Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored, Far Cry 3, Crysis (original - even at maximum settings at 2560x1440!), Skyrim, and so on.

What do you guys think could be causing this? I appreciate your feedback - thank you.

Yo.
I remember testing this a lot during FFXIV 1.0.
I tested various resolutions, various settings, nothing changed the FPS. Turns out my CPU was bottlenecking the graphic cards. I slightly overclocked the CPU (was running a stock cooler so couldn't go too far up) and ta-dah, the FPS increased!

Give it a shot, overclock your CPU slightly and see if that improves your results. If it does, it's time for a CPU upgrade~

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeff-Lebowski

What do you guys think could be causing this? I appreciate your feedback - thank you.

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Have you tried turning off TOE/LSO on the network card? (Ipv4 tcp offload/large send offload) at the driver level or with netsh
C:\Windows\system32>netsh interface tcp add chimneyapplication state=disabled application="C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game\ffxiv.exe"

Have you tried turning off Windows Search Indexing service (I found this was running every 2 minutes while FFXIV was running for some reason), Also try unplugging any external hard drives (WD Mybook's come with a backup program that's even worse than Windows Search Indexing for sucking down cpu power. )
Try Process Lasso to see if that changes anything (put ffxiv as a game process, and it will change temporarily change priorities on unimportant things.) It's a commercial program but has a free trial, it worked pretty well on friends weaker athlon systems.

A couple of things here:

1. Conflict between different drivers (AMD/NV) - Uninstall your current drivers, run DriverSweeper (google) in SafeMode and remove all traces of your AMD and nVidia drivers. Also, although not necessary, ticking the "Clean Install" box when swiching between nVidia drivers is recommended if you have issues.

2. HDD vs SSD - Although this shouldn't be the issue, you could buy an SSD (180-240GB) where you install windows and games. The performance increase could solve your ingame problems (FPS lag due to poor HDD performance) but will most definitely increase your overall gaming and OS experience.

3. CPU problems - Most MMOs are very CPU demanding and this could perhaps be a problem for you especially since you bought quite a good GFX card. Since this solution demands a full upgrade I'm not sure it's a solution you would take into consideration.

1. I sure hope you removed the previous drivers, if you didn't; remove ALL video card drivers(besides integrated graphics that aren't available anyways), then install the correct drivers.

2. Your CPU. It is HEAVILY bottlenecking your GPU, either overclock your CPU to over 4.2ghz, or get a new motherboard and/or CPU. I used to have a 1090T@4.2GHz i.e. same as you but 6 cores at 4.2ghz, it's perfect, but you HAVE to overclock Phenom I/II processors or they're worthless. If your cooler can't handle the overclocking, get a new one, there are very cheap, although very good ones out there($50~)

@Kisai Tenshi: Windows Indexing is demonic. One should never use it, even if you have a slow harddrive, it bogs down your CPU and makes the windows registry more bloated than it naturally is anyways.

i have the same processor (phenom II black edition) and ive had mine overclocked to 4.3ghz for at least a year. no issues with any games, i get 50-60 fps most of the time. this is my card so.. http://www.hisdigital.com/un/product2-647.shtml

No issues with my 660 Ti card, before and after a clean install of windows (though i did have issues with other games just randomly freezing every few minutes for a few second which cause me to clean install windows) and only time i dip in DPS is in high populated areas, other than that i've hit 90 FPS with this card at max settings.

You guys know what's weird? I found a reply in another thread here that recommends disabling the Desktop Window Manager Service:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1335592

I went through that and my framerate DOUBLED. Seriously. It's running mostly fine now (a little laggy in certain places, like fates, but not bad at all). From that I gather that that specific service is probably more CPU intensive than it needs to be, and while an upgraded CPU wouldn't have a problem, I'm going to have to disable that service to run XIVARR decently because my CPU isn't great. Which makes a lot of sense.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and input!