Stuttering especially while in town.

Both my wife and I have fairly high end systems and can run most games at the highest settings, but no matter what settings we choose for this game we get a lot of "stuttering" particularly in towns. I notice a lot of hard drive caching going on during those times, I am not sure if its related. it's really annoying and takes away from the immersion in the game.

But just to give you an idea
AMD 955 quad core
4GB of DD3 1600MHz RAM
ATI 5770 graphics card 1GB of RAM

my wife has
Intel Core i7-720QM 1.6GHz Quad-Core Processor
8GB of DDR3 1066MHz Memory
ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics (1GB DDR5 discrete graphics memory

Yep, same happens to me, but its more noticable on login for a minute or two. I figure it is unoptimized coding, but im no programmer. Would be nice to see this fixed.

I use a PC that is definitely no slouch as well.

Intel Core i7-720 2.66GHz Quad-Core Processor
6GB DDR3 RAM
Palit GTX460 Sonic Platinum

Yeah, it's pretty annoying and would be great if it could be optimized...

My specs:
GTX470
Intel Core2Quad@2.83 (Q9550)
4GB RAM (DDR2)

I got a decent PC, Duo 2.66ghz , 6GB DDR2 Ram, and 9800GT. Yet I rarely ever have this problem, every once in awhile when I first start the game up and I run down a hill or steps it happens, but I usually adjust my camera angle and it stops. (assuming we are talking about the same stuttering)

No it is not the same

What kind of settings is everyone using?

I also get a lot of this stuttering in town areas, though it's much better since I went from a 2.5 dual core to a 3.1 quad core!

Regarding the HDD caching, I wonder if using one of those fancy new Solid-state Drives would help? They're supposed be ridiculously fast.

Yeah there are 2 different stutterings. Once with the camera, I usually getting this while running thru certain terrains and it has something to do with the camera angle. It annoys the crap out of me, when I'm running and my Lalafell + Name jumps up and down.

The second stuttering occurs usually in towns. I noticed this in Gridania the most. I'm somehow getting the feeling that some small area's are instanced. For example, if you run from the carpenters Guild to the Adv. Guild people are dissapearing if you run down the little slope. And at that point a little stuttering occurs.

Also I think the game doesn't use all of my PC's capacity somehow. My CPU is running around 50~70% perfomance and my graphic adapter as well. I've got standard graphic options. But once I turn on those heavy shadows and stuff the perfomance breaks in too heavily.

But even if I'm scaling down the graphic adjustments to a minimun, the stuttering and etc still occuring. It's really strange, I can't really tell. Maybe the GUI and stuff will be overhauled. But we'll see :)

Make sure you have the game on optimal settings, I use the settings from this link and it works wonders for me. http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/11691...ettings-guide/ Read up on anything you may not understand if there is anything or just scroll down to the bottom of the first post for optimal game settings. Hope this helps, this is the only info I can give.

Ya I get the name jittering too when moving around but thats a different problem.
I have tried all kinds of different settings and even set things to the lowest level it really doesn't make a difference. the framerate on the game is high i can get 40's and up with the highest settings but the stuttering will take it down for just a split second and then its back up in teh 40's. I notice it outside of the towns but it's less apparent there and it does seem to ease up after a while which tells me it's some sort of caching issue.

I was chalking this up as lag due to characters all congregating in the same place BUT it doesn't happen when I'm in the market wards at all, even a really full one.

I've messed with the settings and eventually resolved to put up with it or just stop running to where ever I am headed for a moment until it "calms down".

The game, in its currently state of development, suffers off poor programming/optimization. The only thing you really can do at the moment is to encourage it with stronger hardware. While being heavily GPU bound it is also heavily CPU limited, believe it or not, my i7-2500k bottlenecked my GTX580 in this game up until i overclocked the CPU to 4.5Ghz, especially in citys. Right now i can maintain a steady 60 FPS in citys, outdoor, near camps, no matter how many active PC/NPC are around, its running perfect.

My detailed system specs as reference:

Intel i7-2600k at 4,5Ghz
Nvidia GTX580 at stock
DDR3-1600 (8GB)
Samsung MLC-64GB SSD
(a dedicated SSD drive for the installation does real wonders for the load stuttering in citys)
Windows 7 x64 HP

Game settings:

Display Mode: Full Screen
Windows Size: 1920x1200
Multisampling: 4xMSAA
General Drawing Quality: 8 (Standard)
Background Drawing Quality: 5 (High)
Shadow Detail: Highest

Texture Detail: High
Texture Filtering: Highest

Ambient Occlusion is still a no-go (I wonder why, its not that demanding in other games).

Within the Nvidia control panel it is recommended to force vsync and activate triple buffering for ffxivgame.exe. Helps big time with the extreme tearing the game also suffers and improves performance a little bit in fullscreen mode.

Obviously, the hardware requirements are in no relation to what you actually get to see on the screen in terms of graphics, Square Enix needs to work on the engine, it doesn't help at all if the game is limited to PC enthusiasts who got 3k€ machines, they really need to make it run better on mainstream PC's. Releasing a next generation game that is expected to run for 5-10 years, may it be multi-platform or not, with not even DX10/11 support and native x64 binaries is a shame also.

With best regards

I've been having this problem like a lot of people, and again mainly in the towns. Even when there is no one about. But I'm sure this was not happening to me from the beginning (starting from Phase 2 beta). Then November onwards the stutting started to happen. I've lowed the specs, but it does not always solve the problem. My PC specs are in my signature atm.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Validas

Regarding the HDD caching, I wonder if using one of those fancy new Solid-state Drives would help? They're supposed be ridiculously fast.

---

Pretty expensive too and I have only seen ones for 150GB, the file transfer speed is very quick but maybe not quick enough to justify the price. (for me anyway)

Is everyone with this issue running Windows 7? I had been running Vista for couple years and it was going great. A couple months ago I had upgraded to Windows 7. When running under Windows 7, I had noticed this issue. I also had noticed it when running The Last Remnant with Windows 7 Release Canidate and Server 2008 R2. I currently have Vista and 7 installed (both 64-bit). I can bounce between the two, using the same settings and Windows 7 will have HD thrashing when the game first loads up. Once things start getting cached it's fine. I've tried using the same chipset and AHCI drivers in Vista and 7, but 7 continues to have problems while Vista is fine. No other game or program seems to have a problem. They test about the same using HD Tune. I think there's an issue with FFXIV and Windows 7. I've tried a bunch of different options and drivers and nothing is fixing the issue.

First off: After the recent Earthquakes, and the servers being shutdown I know that this post is a little of time, so I post this ready and so I do not forget to post it. My hats of to our Japanese friends and wish them all the best.

Since my last post I had started experimenting with the setting to try and reduce the stuttering problem, and have resolved it some what. The solution is going to be different for everyone though. I made some changes in the Catalyst Control Center under 3D application settings, as well as up my ffxiv settings back up. Here is just an example of my settings

CCC 3D Settings

Use application settings - Boxes ticked
Texture Filtering Quality - Quality
Enable Surface Format Optimization - Already ticked
Mipmap Detail Level - Quality
Wait for vertical refresh - Performace (always off)
Anti-Aliasing Mode - Performace (Multi-sample AA)
Triple buffering - box not ticked

FFXI General Settings

Display Mode - Full Screen (my native is 1680x1050)
Multisampling - 4x MSAA
GDQ - 8 (Standard)
BDQ - 3 (standard)
Shadow Detail - Standard
Texture Quality - High
Texture Filtering - Highest

Framerate never drops below 30 and sets at 40 fps in towns, a little less in the crowds but it seems to compensate for that somehow and runs smooth. I'm also using Gamebooster v2.2 to shutdown unnessary background apps.

I am just testing a reply and this message has no relavance to the topic.

I spent $140 in a 60GB SSD and i no longer have that jumpy-ness when in town or coming to an aetheryite(sp?), i noticed the problem when i began to stutter and jump real bad and my HDD light was lit up solid, couple seconds later it was fine, but it became unplayable arrive to the adventurer's guild. Originally i didn't think it would make a differance so i bought a drive big enough to fit in my PS3 comfortably incase it had no effect, but it did, so i will have to look into more of a 128GB for FFXIV's future expansions to fit.

AMD Phenom II X6 1090 @ 4.2ghz
8GBs RipJaw 1333 @ 6-6-6-15
Radeon HD 5970 O/C 850/1200
Noctua NH-D14
Corsair F60 60GB SSD

I tried the settings above and the only thing that made it bearable was to turn off any anti aliasing. It's still stuttering in the cities but not as bad, doesn't seem to be caching the hard drive as much.

Apparently, FFXIV uses a lot of caching (to the point where some people will crash as they reach the 32bit memory limit on the cache file size) and so the stuttering is most notable 1.) when you first log in and it has to write everything to the cache file, and 2.) when you are in town presumably because there is more data there to cache; outside of town where the landscape is copy-paste a little more it isn't noticeable. The easiest fix (in theory) is to get a hard drive that isn't going to cause a choking point for the system. I run a beast of a haitachi drive, and I notice the problem for about 10-15 seconds when I first log in, but nothing beyond that. I have heard that some people who have switched to solid state drives do not have this issue at all.

yup I thought about a bigger hard drive, but with a baby on the way I can't really justify it for a game I play maybe once a week. we already invested 1700 in a new laptop for my wife to play (which is never does now) and 400 for some cpu and motherboard upgrades for me to help with the issue. Sadly it only helped a little due to my older sata hard drive.

It would go a long way to help stuttering if they would just have the game load characters/models with low res/quality, placeholder resources upon coming within range of the camera, rather than trying to load the actual textures and such used to make characters/gear. Many other games do this quite well and maintain a much smoother feeling environment.

Also, regarding the stuttering of the character/name that was mentioned here and was also detailed in a patch not or something recently. This issue is mostly gone from their update for it, but I've noticed a worse form of it if you have the camera at certain angles. I've noticed if I run down a slope with the camera fairly perpendicular to the character (no "looking down" on the character, directly behind) then I don't see many problems. But if I run the same slope with the camera say, 20-30 degrees above horizontal I get a nasty stutter that is almost like the rubberbanding effect Aion shows when you have some lag.

I noticed this same problem, but only AFTER turning on 16xQ CSAA. When I turned AA off again, the stuttering just disappeared. This only occurs at that 20 - 30 degree range. Thought about filling out a proper bug report, but I feel lazy.

I'm also getting this stuttering when running through the environments and especially cities, and sadly solid state drives do not solve the issue, at least not for everyone. I have an Intel X-25M 80 GB SSD, and it gives me just as bad stuttering in FFXIV as my 7200 rpm SATA drive. I didn't get this stuttering in the beta or early release. I think it started in early November, although my computer was broken at the time so I never knew if it was caused by a version update or conflict with my new hardware. Since then I've tried several different GPUs and hard drives with identical outcome. I want to get back into the game, but the stuttering kills the immersion.

The jittering camera when running on sloped terrain is a seperate issue and it seems to have improved lately, but that was never nearly as annoying as the general stuttering. Hopefully Square Enix can fix it at some point in the future...

CPU: Phenom II x4 @3.7 Ghz
GPU: Radeon HD 5750 / Radeon HD 6850 / GeForce GTX 460
HDD: Intel X-25M 80GB SSD / WD 500GB 7200 rpm SATA

I have this same issue as well. Believe it or not, defragging the drive I installed the game on helped. It's definitely not an issue with raw FPS because the stuttering is obvious at a constant 50fps. I have a Western Digital Caviar Black HDD, one of the best in its class. Having to feed the game SSD's or 10k+ RPM HDD's is unacceptable if Square truly wants to capture the market. Aren't all stock PS3 HDD's 5400rpm anyway? /smh

cpu: i7 860 2.8Ghz (quad)
gpu: GTX 280
ram: 8gb ddr3
hdd: WD Black 500GB 7200rpm

a 5770 is ok gfx card, but this game take a better one for you to not get stuttering while in crowded places.

I have the same problems with stuttering in towns. My comp is: i7-950 3,07GHz, memory 8Gb, nVidia GeForce GTX480, 1,5Gb
Yesterday right after patch 1.17 the problem looked like gone, but today - its back. It kills the wish to play.
(((

It seemed to start around the time they split the cities up into sections or something like that to relieve the lag caused by overcrowding months ago. While it seemed to make things load faster, the end result was that horrible stuttering. I really hate it myself and can't stand to be in any city for any good length of time now because of it.

It's been around since forever.

Yes, it's a huge problem for me too. Out in the field everything is smooth, in town there's significant stuttering.

Same issue here only happen once i log in or go into a city i have not yet gone once it loaded into the memory it gone but it's pain in the ass to feel the lag everytime you log in.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tahlia

It seemed to start around the time they split the cities up into sections or something like that to relieve the lag caused by overcrowding months ago. While it seemed to make things load faster, the end result was that horrible stuttering. I really hate it myself and can't stand to be in any city for any good length of time now because of it.

---

Above describes my situation and feelings as well, and I think you are right about the cause. The worst stuttering seems to happen at identical points or passages, and it happens everytime you run past/through that point/passage. Ahead of that patch, I believe SE said they would also "section" the aetheryte camps, and I get the same stuttering at the camps even when they're completely empty.

It seems not everyone is having problems with this type of stuttering, which is very strange since it doesn't seem hardware related. I suppose some people may simple not notice it even if it's there, but I have a hard time believing that... It's pretty extreme.

This is also an issue for me. I have 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM, an nvidia 480 1.5gig card, and a 6 core AMD Processor. My comp can handle this goddamn game I'd think. I'll be upgrading to 8 gigs of RAM soon. It seems to be character models loading that causes stuttering for me. This needs to be optimized badly.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Coldbrand

This is also an issue for me. I have 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM, an nvidia 480 1.5gig card, and a 6 core AMD Processor. My comp can handle this goddamn game I'd think. I'll be upgrading to 8 gigs of RAM soon. It seems to be character models loading that causes stuttering for me. This needs to be optimized badly.

---

Other than adding a SSD to run the game off of, you will not see any noticeable difference adding an additional 4 gigs of memory.
The stuttering is caused by disk loading.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by snibe

Both my wife and I have fairly high end systems and can run most games at the highest settings, but no matter what settings we choose for this game we get a lot of "stuttering" particularly in towns. I notice a lot of hard drive caching going on during those times, I am not sure if its related. it's really annoying and takes away from the immersion in the game.

But just to give you an idea
AMD 955 quad core
4GB of DD3 1600MHz RAM
ATI 5770 graphics card 1GB of RAM

my wife has
Intel Core i7-720QM 1.6GHz Quad-Core Processor
8GB of DDR3 1066MHz Memory
ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics (1GB DDR5 discrete graphics memory

---

If you changed any hardware recently, you might have to "refresh" windows.
Start>Control Panel>Performance Information and Tools>Update my score or refresh

I had some screen tearing issues before I did this and they were fixed afterwards. I had replaced my memory, which was causing the issue.

I get it a little bit in Limsa Lominsa when i first log in but besides that this game runs pretty flawless on my system.

Self Built Custom PC
CPU: Intel Core i5 760 Quad Core @ stock speed
Mobo: EVGA P55 SLi E655 with E72 bio's
RAM: 4GB G.Skill DDR3 1333MHz
HD: Seagate 7200RPM 32mb cache 1TB SATA II 3gb/s HD
GPU: Single EVGA nVidia 560 GTX Ti FPB 1024MB GDDR5 OC'd to 925Mhz
PSU: XFX Black Edition 850W Modular PSU

GPU Usage hits 99%
CPU usage hits about 50% all four cores

Highest graphics settings with 4XMSAA with Depth of field Average around 30-40FPS In and out of towns

just started having stuttering issues today after the patch. my system can handle the game on max setting just fine and im not quite sure what the hell happened x.x

For the camera stuttering, try going through your video card and turning on vertical synch. This should help with it, since it's a problem with the graphics card dealing with the vertical changes of your images on a 3D plane. In other words, when you first see something off in the distance, it's really small. As you get closer, this same image will get larger, and will appear to take up more pixels on the Y axis. This is where vertical synch comes into play, because it determines if the image is actually taking up space on the Y axis, or is it simply getting closer, and there really is no change on the Y axis at all.

This happens more in towns, because you have buildings with complex textures, signs, more people, and sometimes even banners that can mess with this. In the outside world, you have the terrain, trees, and monsters. A lot less for your video card to deal with.

I have been collaborative and constructive in the past, provided all the technical information 7 months ago, and still no progress. Hoping the next patch to fix this. I'm tired of this issue, it makes the game look like it is still in an alpha stage. I believe this is a top priority issue for SE development team, before adding new content, even before correcting in-game bugs. Many people experiencing this issue discredit the entire game based on this. It kills the will to play. The game has to be playable with specs equal or above requirements, period. I proceed with a bug report in the most formal way to get a formal follow-up and reply on this from the development team. Regards, and good luck fixing this issue.

Link to NVidia post dating October 2010: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=184501

Other reference for SE: t837502:21cb

Platform: Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 64bit (build 7601)
ISP: Videotron
Type of Internet Connection: Cable
Internet Connection Speed: 8 Mbit/s
Date & Time: any day, any time
Frequency: everytime
Character Name: Kassad Merrick
Race: Human
World: Bodhum
Class/Skill Rank: N/A
Physical Level: N/A
Area and Coordinates: in town (any), near aetherites
Party or Solo: both
NPC Name: N/A
Monster Name: N/A
In-Game Time: any
Steps: Run around towns, for example Uldah. Walk around The Quicksand for example, around Roarich, anywhere in town. Result: Stuttering, especially while in town.

System Information: note the behavior is KO with (1280x720) and (1920 x 1080) resolutions, which are supported @ 60Hz by Nvidia


-=-=-=-=-=-=- System Information -=-=-=-=-=-=-

Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 64bit (build 7601)
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 760 @ 2.80GHz
Number of Processors Logical Core Count 4 Physical Core Count 4
Physical Memory 4094.055MB
Virtual Memory 2047.875MB
DirectX Version DirectX 11
Graphic Device(s) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465
+Video Memory 993.438 MB
+Shared Video Memory 1791.027 MB
+Display Mode 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
+Driver Version 8.17.0012.7061

EDIT: same behavior with driver version 8.17.0012.7533

Well I just tried to get rid of the stuttering with a SSD. Deinstalled the game and installed it on the SSD. It's not the primary partition tho. It's just a data partition for now. On a side note, reinstalling the game didn't fix the directx crash stuff.

I couldn't switch the IDE mode in the BIOS to AHPI(?) can't remebemer the right letters right now :P My windows kept crashing everytime it tried to boot.

Tomorrow I will kill my windows, install the naked Win 7 on the SSD + FFXIV on it and every other application goes on the secondary partition. Since I will do a tabula rasa, I hope that will fix some issues.

Boooo. Gotta get all my serial keys together now >< got damn it.

I'm anxious that the stuttering occurs cause of the RAM limitations and not the slow HDD poking... I doubt SE will change those RAM limitations >_>;

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bethor

I couldn't switch the IDE mode in the BIOS to AHPI(?) can't remebemer the right letters right now :P My windows kept crashing everytime it tried to boot.

---

AHCI, and changing that will cause your Windows to crash unless you install the drivers.
So, if you are doing a clean install tomorrow, the fist thing you should do is set the controller to AHCI in BIOS and then proceed to install.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bethor

Tomorrow I will kill my windows, install the naked Win 7 on the SSD + FFXIV on it and every other application goes on the secondary partition. Since I will do a tabula rasa, I hope that will fix some issues.

---

Here is a good guide on tweaks to do with running your OS on a SSD.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bethor

Boooo. Gotta get all my serial keys together now >< got damn it.

I'm anxious that the stuttering occurs cause of the RAM limitations and not the slow HDD poking... I doubt SE will change those RAM limitations >_>;

---

I ran games off a raid setup of Raptor disks and experienced slight stuttering when first entering a new area with lots of people. After changing to a SSD I no longer experience any stuttering related to disk loading.

Oh wow thanks a lot for that guide, it seems to be really helpful. See I didn't knew you had to install extra drivers for it.
I'll play around a bit.
Hmm I hope I can just copy & paste the FFXIV gameclient and updates. But I will look onto that once I've gathered all those drivers, serials and programs on a seperate partition. Saves me some work with burning a DVD for the backup XD