FPS has dropped to half and don't know why....PLEASE HELP!!

first off, yes all drivers are up to date.
here are my specs:
ATI 7870 2gb video card
6GB RAM
2.67ghz CPU

I bought the new video card recently and tried out the benchmark at Maximum and got a score of 8301.

I had a problem where I had to reinstall W7. NOW when I run the benchmark I get around 4000 something. HALF of what I was getting. The game will seriously lag even if there's nothing going on around me.

I don't know what happened. I was running the game on Max when I got my new video card and it gave me nothing less than 47FPS wherever I was at. it was very smooth.

I've already tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Running the same settings as before and it is still happening. That's why I check it with the benchmark.

SO...somewhere something is going on that is causing my game to do this. I'm not running anything in the background either except XFire.

I'm going to be updraging my RAM to 12gb pretty soon; but I don't know if that will fix the problem. Especially since with what I have NOW the game was running flawlessly.

Is there maybe something going on with my BIOS or the RAM?

Also: I had to reinstall W7 because I bought some RAM and didn't know that you can't mix and match different RAM, so I had to have a tech person completely re-do my system. (I took out the new RAM and put the ones back in the order they were)

I'm going crazy trying to figure this out!


PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks in advance

Assuming no hardware issues: Make sure that you have the latest chipset drivers installed. This is something VERY often overlooked that can explain large performance differences between a fresh install of an OS with the same hardware as before, and an old install.

*Essentially your PCI-E controller / bus may be operating underspeed, choking your GPU and resulting in the poor performance that you're seeing right now. (the controller running at 1-2 lane mode instead of 8-16 can absolutely decimate performance)



If installing chipset drivers is something you've already attempted, if it did nothing to improve performance, and "if" that machine is Intel, try using the "-OVERALL" command line argument
Aka, "infinst_autol.exe -OVERALL"


Should you attempt the -overall argument, note that it's generally best to do this from safemode to minimize the chance of a lockup / something going wrong during the driver swap.



As a starting point, I'd recommend checking what speed your PCI-E bus is actually operating at under load (in FFXIV:ARR). Tools like GPU-Z can display this information.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Also, don't get dismayed if you see a low speed "on the desktop" before stressing your GPU. [Power-management can throttle back the bus rate] Check your motherboard manual to get an idea what the speed of the slot your Radeon 7870 should be running at ... though if you see 1x, 2x, 4x, that's the problem and why FFXIV is performing so poorly.



EDIT: Re-reading your post strengthens my belief that this is the cause even more, as you can pretty much count on the "tech-person" who reinstalled the OS not doing the above (they pretty much never do more than the video-drivers). So yeah .... definitely give motherboard chipset driver installation a try first and foremost.

Make sure your GPU is plugged into its own power source from the PSU. A GPU without enough power performs poorly. Same goes for a laptop. Make sure your laptop is plugged into a power source. Running off battery will destroy your FPS.

This is happening to me aswell since patch 2.15, I posted a thread about it in techical support. Especially in instances (Moogle fight is unbearable) everything stutters as if something huge is trying to load, although all my settings are on lowest possible. Nothing has changed on my settings or computer, just as I first logged in after the patch, FPS is just not responding.

I am on ps3 and I also experience a lot of lag but it happened only today never before and I am not the only one on my server (goblin) I have few friends with the same problem

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RaineMagus

Assuming no hardware issues: Make sure that you have the latest chipset drivers installed. This is something VERY often overlooked that can explain large performance differences between a fresh install of an OS with the same hardware as before, and an old install.

*Essentially your PCI-E controller / bus may be operating underspeed, choking your GPU and resulting in the poor performance that you're seeing right now. (the controller running at 1-2 lane mode instead of 8-16 can absolutely decimate performance)



If installing chipset drivers is something you've already attempted, if it did nothing to improve performance, and "if" that machine is Intel, try using the "-OVERALL" command line argument
Aka, "infinst_autol.exe -OVERALL"


Should you attempt the -overall argument, note that it's generally best to do this from safemode to minimize the chance of a lockup / something going wrong during the driver swap.



As a starting point, I'd recommend checking what speed your PCI-E bus is actually operating at under load (in FFXIV:ARR). Tools like GPU-Z can display this information.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Also, don't get dismayed if you see a low speed "on the desktop" before stressing your GPU. [Power-management can throttle back the bus rate] Check your motherboard manual to get an idea what the speed of the slot your Radeon 7870 should be running at ... though if you see 1x, 2x, 4x, that's the problem and why FFXIV is performing so poorly.



EDIT: Re-reading your post strengthens my belief that this is the cause even more, as you can pretty much count on the "tech-person" who reinstalled the OS not doing the above (they pretty much never do more than the video-drivers). So yeah .... definitely give motherboard chipset driver installation a try first and foremost.

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ok thanks for the feedback...I'm going to try that app.

also I *think* i might've already fixed it:
I uninstalled the video driver (which was current) and then reinstalled it again.
THIS time I ran FRAPS and lo and behold I was getting my normal FPS back!
I even teleported to places with lots of people and it held up!

I'm not sure about mobo chipset drivers. is that a BIOS thing? how would I check whats there and if it needs an update? when I do Windows Update it doesn't show anything critical to install....
??


thanks

ok well I was getting some good numbers with FRAPS, but when I ran the benchmark again, I got 5215......my original score that I got when I first installed my new 2gb video card was 8301(!!!)

so I dunno what else I need to do to get my score back up with the current hardware I have....

:(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scruffyotter

I'm not sure about mobo chipset drivers. is that a BIOS thing? how would I check whats there and if it needs an update? when I do Windows Update it doesn't show anything critical to install....

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Windows Update unfortunately doesn't really distribute these. You'll come out of the box with "something" pre-installed on the machine from the get go (off the installation disk for the OS), yet these drivers are Microsoft provided 'generics' and tend not to yield the best performance [especially on modern motherboards].


I'm "guessing" from your CPU speed that you have something like a gen 1 Core i7 920, or say an i5 750. Either way you *may* have an x58 motherboard, yet I'm just guessing really.


Assuming it's an Intel:
--Per where to download chipset drivers, you can get them either straight from Intel or from your motherboard manufacturer's site (eg, ASUS, Gigabyte, Tyan, etc). Here's a direct link off Intel's site. (again on the assumption that this is an Intel chip board)

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/2077...inst_autol.exe



You could run the above installer with the -overall argument to force driver replacement, and that'd "probably" get you up-to-date.. While attempting to install the chipset drivers on a non Intel chipset board "shouldn't" hurt anything ... I'd still highly suggest checking your mobo's manual first.

If you don't want to check the manual, or don't know what your motherboard is, CPU-Z can 'usually' (depending bios) tell you what your board and chipset are. [It's shown under the 'mainboard' tab]


Link to that tool for your reference:
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html


Far as BIOS, I'd honestly avoid doing a bios flash unless you're feeling adventurous. This is one of those things where the payoff in performance is usually near zero, and the main incentive is to update for stability issues or hardware compatibility (as in a card, CPU, memory, etc not being properly recognized).

Not really related to the op w7 problem , but i had this problem on windows 8.1 which dropped my fps to half it was on windows 8:

http://superuser.com/questions/67953...ying-processor

ok I tried both CPUZ and GPUZ but I'm not technical enough to understand what I'm looking at.

is it possible some software is bottlenecking the GPU and causing me to NOT get my full 2gb as I was when I first installed the video card??

the only thing that increased my benchmark score a bit was uninstalling and reinstalling the video driver. (which came out to 5200 something), but I want my 8301 score back!!

are there any other methods to try and figure out what's causing this??

thanks

can someone help me with this??

I'm really bothered that I'm not getting my benchmark score of 8301, compared to what I just got 5225

thanks!!!!!

ok i can see what my mobo is:
Alienware model
chipset: Intel
Intel i5 750 @ 2.67 ghz
W7 service pack 1
6gb RAm
ATI 7870 2Gb

does this help to narrow down the problem??

thanks

Quote:

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is it possible some software is bottlenecking the GPU and causing me to NOT get my full 2gb as I was when I first installed the video card??

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Programs running on the machine in the background indeed can use up video-memory, however the impact of anything other than a game is usually pretty trivial.

[Tools such as Sysinternals "Process Explorer" can display per process GPU usage and video memory usage]
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896653.aspx

-View > Select Columns
-Process GPU
-Check "GPU Dedicated Bytes" and "GPU Usage"

NOTE: dwm.exe is probably your biggest memory consumer other than the game. dwm is the Windows Desktop Window Manager / an OS component.


--1.5GB of video memory (aka, Geforce 580) is good enough for FFXIV:ARR in even 2560x1600 / 1600p, in all areas of the game. The highest that I've ever seen the game use is 1.2GB of vram with NVidia's drivers, so I think you're safe here unless you're trying to run multiple games at the same time or ludicrously high resolutions (such as a span across multiple 30" monitors).

I'd concern yourself more towards the speed of your bus or something power management related. If you want to check your used video memory though (for the sake of curiosity), GPU-Z can display this under the 'Sensors' tab ("Memory Used").

** Please note that alt-tabbing out of the game in "fullscreen mode" will cause incorrect results here [by forcing D3D device loss and resource unloading]. **


As long as your used memory is under the 2048MB limit of your Radeon, you're fine. A few hundred MB being used by desktop composition in Windows (before entering the game) is also perfectly normal. Unless video memory is saturated, there's almost no negative performance impact of using more.

Quote:

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ok I tried both CPUZ and GPUZ but I'm not technical enough to understand what I'm looking at.

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-In GPU-Z, look under the "Graphics Card" tab (the default on opening the application).
-A bit less than half way down the page, next to ROPs/TMUs, there's a section that reads "Bus Interface" on the right side of the dialog.
-Click on the "?" icon next to Bus Interface, a second panel will pop open (docked to the right of the initial).. Click "Start Render Test" in this new dialog.
-An OpenGL rendering 'test' will start, causing high load on your videocard. The displayed bus interface "should" increase.

For example, my system reads here "PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x16 3.0"

**As you have an older chipset, your system will likely display "PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x16 2.0" or "PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x8 2.0". If it's either of these, your bus is of suitable speed that it'd probably not cause you performance issues ingame.

If on the otherhand it reads.

"PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x2 1.1", "PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x2 2.0", "PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x3 2.0", "PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x4 2.0", etc.

>> Eg, anything under x8 2.0 and you have a MAJOR problem / your card would be severely bus choked in certain areas of the game.



EDIT: To be more specific rather than just telling you to look for the above numbers. With the age of your machine, its chipset should be PCI-E 2.0 capable. The 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, is the version of the PCI-E spec used. The x" number following is the number of lanes used.. The more lanes used, the greater the bandwidth available (more wires for the bus connection).

x8 is pretty much 1/2 the speed of x16, x4 a half the speed of x8, and so on. Internally in wiring, alot of motherboards divide up the physical slots into 'pairs', where use of an adjacent slot will cause sharing lanes between the two. Anyway, you should never get less than PCI-E "x8" for a videocard unless it's plugged into the wrong slot "or" your chipset drivers aren't functioning properly.

The top-most slots on your motherboard (physically towards the topmost of the case and closest to the CPU) are usually your fastest slots intended for videocards. Sometimes motherboards will have x4 slots that accept full cards, yet these are almost always the lower slots.


The performance difference between x8 and x16 in FFXIV is minimal, however by x4 and under, you'll hurt quite a bit.. (*Especially in the waking sands and the first boss in WP*)

Quote:

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scruffyotter

ok i can see what my mobo is:
Alienware model
chipset: Intel
Intel i5 750 @ 2.67 ghz
W7 service pack 1
6gb RAm
ATI 7870 2Gb

does this help to narrow down the problem??

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You have an Intel Chipset board. That means the driver installer that I linked earlier in this thread is appropriate for your machine. Have you used that installer and the "-overall" cmdline argument?

Quote:

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the only thing that increased my benchmark score a bit was uninstalling and reinstalling the video driver. (which came out to 5200 something), but I want my 8301 score back!!

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When you uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers, are you sure that the version reinstalled was the exact same version that was removed?

Quote:

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are there any other methods to try and figure out what's causing this??

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I can think of a few more things to try, but honestly a fresh Windows install should be running fantastic with that hardware, and with just the latest drivers installed. (no need for tinkering)


I'd still suspect the cause isn't something that's been done to the machine / put on it, yet rather that something is 'missing' that was installed before. With most machines that I look at for friends with similar complaints, the usual cause is missing / improper chipset drivers (hence why I'm pushing this so much).

thanks for all your help Rainemagus, but I still can't get my 8301 benchmark score back.
I tried unintsalling and reinstalling the video driver again and got a 5400 something score.

I think you might be right that there is something "missing" that was there before the pc crashed and had to reinstall W7.
I've double checked Windows Update and there's nothing there.
ALL drivers for everything are up to date.

I used that Intel chipset driver you linked.

the GPUZ thing reads: PCI-E 3.0x16@16x1.1.....is that a normal number? or does that show the problem (I did the render test and it moved to 16x2.0)

Also my PCI-E is 3.0, so does the second section of numbers mean anything?
I'm not about to reinstall W7 again....so I have to find some other solution..

let me know what you think of these numbers...

thanks

also I had to run Dxdiag, and it says my memory is 4096 RAM...but I have 6gb ram...is there a mistake?
page file 2667mb used, 5505mb available.

Default system BIOS too.

does any of this information help?

thanks

also there's one more thing I noticed:
I was playing Metro Last Light before the crash and had it at max and it ran smoothly.

NOW I had to reinstall it and I'm getting slower FPS and blinking shadows.

do you think this is related?
I'm guessing it's a possible software issue somewhere...I might be missing something..

I reallllly don't want to have to do another install of W7....

holy crap...I just checked through Control panel my RAM..it says I have 4gb and not 6gb!!
I think that's the problem.

I'm going to uninstall the ram and reinstall it and see what happens/.//

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scruffyotter

holy crap...I just checked through Control panel my RAM..it says I have 4gb and not 6gb!!
I think that's the problem.

I'm going to uninstall the ram and reinstall it and see what happens/.//

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Don't bother if its Windows 7 32-bit. Max RAM for it is 4GB regardless of what you have installed.

8GB for Windows 7 64-bit Home Basic
16GB for Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium
192GB for Windows 7 64-bit Professional or Higher

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ReplicaX

Don't bother if its Windows 7 32-bit. Max RAM for it is 4GB regardless of what you have installed.

8GB for Windows 7 64-bit Home Basic
16GB for Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium
192GB for Windows 7 64-bit Professional or Higher

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well I reinstalled the RAM in the right place and got my 6gb back...but running the benchmark gave me 5423 instead of the 8301 I originally had.
Also i have W7 64, but how do I check if I am running in 64 or 32 bit mode? is there a way to change it?

SO..fixed my RAM problem but I'm not getting my high score again.
:(

I just checked dxdiag and it says W7 64 bit Home Premiuim
and my display memory size says 4095....does that mean it's registering my 2gb card or not?

it says current display mode 1920x1080 (32 bit)


?????
help!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scruffyotter

well I reinstalled the RAM in the right place and got my 6gb back...but running the benchmark gave me 5423 instead of the 8301 I originally had.
Also i have W7 64, but how do I check if I am running in 64 or 32 bit mode? is there a way to change it?

SO..fixed my RAM problem but I'm not getting my high score again.
:(

I just checked dxdiag and it says W7 64 bit Home Premiuim
and my display memory size says 4095....does that mean it's registering my 2gb card or not?

it says current display mode 1920x1080 (32 bit)

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If you have Win7 64 bit then it was a RAM issue you fixed by reseating them. There is no switching modes. Win7 64bit will run 32bit programs (x86 architecture) and 64bit.

4096 dxdiag memory is a common dxdiag error and not your card. Use GPU-Z to check your VRAM it will be accurate.

1920x1080 (32 bit) = Resolution X by Y (32-bit = the color depth) 32-bit in simple terms means 24-bit (true color) supporting 16,777,216 colors with 8-bits for the alpha channel (Transparency). 24+8 = 32

Example, the Nintendo Entertainment System was only 8-bit, so it only supported a 256 color palette.

As far as why you are not getting your original score, RaineMagus gave a good general guide. If you feel you lack the experience. I suggest asking a local more tech oriented friend to help guide you first hand.

thanks for your help!
I'm feeling like I'm not getting the full 2gb usage out of the card, I just can't figure out why.

I'll look over the posts again and see if I can figure this out

thanks you guys for your help, I really appreciate it!!

oh yeah one more thing: I'm going to be jumping to 12gb RAM next week. should I figure out this benchmark score problem first before installing the new ram? just in case if I don't get the max out of the hardware...???

thanks

I don't understand the "-OVERALL" command thing. when I changed the file name of the chipset installer it acts like it's not an .exe anymore...what am i doing wrong?

Quote:

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I don't understand the "-OVERALL" command thing. when I changed the file name of the chipset installer it acts like it's not an .exe anymore...what am i doing wrong?

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--Shouldn't be renaming the file at all. Leave the installer with the name it had during download.


Command line arguments can be passed by creating a shortcut to the chipset installer, and appending "-OVERALL" (without the quotation marks) the end of the target field (in the properties of the shortcut after its creation).

EDIT: To be absolutely clear, you'll need a space between whatever is in the target field and that argument.


Alternatively, you can open a command prompt:
aka, start menu > run > cmd.exe

Navigate to the installer directory, and then type in:
infinst_autol.exe -OVERALL



For example, if a cmd window is started from run (like above), the base directory will be your user folder. Let's say that we had 'infinst_autol.exe' in \Intel\ on the desktop.

Quote:

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Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]
(c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\x>cd desktop
C:\Users\x\Desktop>cd Intel
C:\Users\x\Desktop\Intel>infinst_autol.exe -OVERALL

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Hope that helps.

Quote:

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oh yeah one more thing: I'm going to be jumping to 12gb RAM next week. should I figure out this benchmark score problem first before installing the new ram? just in case if I don't get the max out of the hardware...???

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To be honest I doubt that the 12GB of ram is going to noticeably improve your performance, unless by chance your current memory configuration is single-channel. More ram won't hurt performance, though I wouldn't suggest blind upgrading parts in the machine in an effort to resolve your current issue (as I doubt that it's hardware, nor necessarily needed).

-RAM in general is something where if you have enough (aren't using it all), then adding more will not give you a higher framerate. Sure the OS will use the additional memory, which "may" improve disk-caching and loading times in some respect (zone transitions) ... but that's about it.



**Since your i5 750 has a dual-channel memory controller, you need to have memory DIMMs installed in "equal pairs" if you want optimal performance (for bank swizzling).


This is something that you'll need to consult the motherboard manual for (on which slots comprise each pair). Far as your current "6GB" of ram, I'm assuming that you have two 2GB DIMMs, and 2 1GB DIMMs.

If you had 2x 2GB DIMMs, and 1x 2GB DIMM, this would be an inefficient memory configuration as the controller would be forced to drop to single-channel operation.


EDIT: CPU-Z can also tell you if your controller is in dual channel mode. Just check under the "Memory" tab. -- Channels #. This should read "dual".

Quote:

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the GPUZ thing reads: PCI-E 3.0x16@16x1.1 .....is that a normal number? or does that show the problem (I did the render test and it moved to 16x2.0)

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These are normal / expected numbers. Usually the bus would be throttled back even lower than 1.1 x16, down to say 1.1 x2 or x3 ... yet this really depends on the motherboard and bios support for power management.


Still, just because proper speeds are being achieved doesn't necessarily mean the drivers installed in Windows are the latest. Short of checking the date of your PCI-E controller drivers in device manager, I can't really say.

EDIT:

Quote:

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Also my PCI-E is 3.0, so does the second section of numbers mean anything?

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-The first numbers in GPU-Z are the card's reported maximum speed and protocol version. While the card may support 3.0, your CPU's controller can handle only 2.0. The second batch of numbers are 'actual' negotiated bus speeds (the real / true speed).

That you have PCI-E 2.0 isn't a problem. PCI-E 3.0 is essentially 'overkill'. With 3.0 x16 in use, the highest bandwidth that I've ever seen utilized by FFXIV:ARR was around 16%. Higher bus speeds can reduce load-stuttering, yet the general gameplay (at 60fps) is well under the capacity of 2.0 x16 or even x8.

Quote:

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also there's one more thing I noticed:
I was playing Metro Last Light before the crash and had it at max and it ran smoothly.

NOW I had to reinstall it and I'm getting slower FPS and blinking shadows.

do you think this is related?
I'm guessing it's a possible software issue somewhere...I might be missing something..

I reallllly don't want to have to do another install of W7....

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Improper chipset drivers *can* cause all sorts of artifacting or stability issues. It could be related. It could also simply be that the newest AMD drivers don't work correctly in Metro LL, and that when you played the game before you had older drivers installed (in the past Windows installation).

May be related, or may not be related... It's very hard to say just guessing on what's known here through the forums.

thanks again for all your help.

I'm going to try the chipset thing and see what happens.

well the chipset command thing didn't fix it. I think I'm gonna have to reinstall W7...sigh

Running
I7 4770k OC to 4.3ghz
16gb DDR3 1866mhz
Asus maximus VI formula
GTX 780 3gb SLI config. (means i have 2 cards in my system!)

No changes were made to the system, no new installs, no nothing. only the FFXIV patch/hotfix that hit the week of jan 27 2014. once it was installed my FPS dropped to ......14fps...... this is a patch issue, i get no issues with any other game. Please review this SE! :mad:

Do not reinstall W7, this is not a windows issue.

ok but how do you know it isn't?
(besides I don't want to reinstall anyways...)

EDIT: the reason I ask is : I was getting a score of 8301 when I first installed my 2gb video card, but now I'm getting around 5400 something.

so if it's the game that's lagging, why am I not getting my original high score on the benchmark??

so should I reinstalll W7 or not? I'm not sure what to do..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scruffyotter

ok but how do you know it isn't?
(besides I don't want to reinstall anyways...)

EDIT: the reason I ask is : I was getting a score of 8301 when I first installed my 2gb video card, but now I'm getting around 5400 something.

so if it's the game that's lagging, why am I not getting my original high score on the benchmark??

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This is very good judgement on your part. For your machine (not talking of the others that've posted) it can't be the recent patches, as these patches do not impact the old benchmark tool nor Metro.

Quote:

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so should I reinstalll W7 or not? I'm not sure what to do..

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While true what you prior said (that it's probably something with your installation)... I personally wouldn't reinstall the OS just yet, and would continue looking for the cause. Reinstalling isn't guaranteed to make the game work better either and may just take up more of your time / leave you with the same results that you're getting right now.


Check power-management:

Unlikely to make as much an impact as you're seeing, yet the usual default power profile for any new install of Windows is "balanced". Try selecting the "high performance" plan.


You can change the active power plan from:
-start > control panel > power options

OR, if the above settings were 'locked' by the person who installed Windows.
-start > run > gpedit.msc, Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Power Management > Select an active plan.


Check memory configuration:
-You mentioned not having all 6GB of your ram recognized on receiving the machine back. Additionally that someone touched your machine and did a "full rebuild". Make sure that your DIMMs are inserted in a proper configuration for Dual Channel operation, and verify the memory controller is indeed in Dual Channel mode (consult CPU-Z and the manual as mentioned before).

Single to Dual Channel mode can make a significant performance difference in games. Dual to Triple channel, not so much (already sufficient bandwidth).


Double check the version of your PCI-E controller drivers installed (make sure that the chipset installer updated correctly):

-Open the Windows Device manager.
Start > Control Panel > System > select "device manager" from the left tab.

-Scroll down and expand "System Devices".
-Look for *** PCI Express Root Port *** (*'s indicating wildcard / fill in the blank here)
-Right click on the above found item, select properties.
-Select the "Driver" tab.
-Look at the "Driver Date" and "Driver Version" field.

Is the driver date xx/xx/2006? If the drivers listed are 2006, then the Intel Chipset installer did not correctly update drivers.


When all else fails:

-Uninstall your current video drivers (using the control panel option, and then using device manager with the "remove driver" checkbox checked)
-Repeat until you only have a "Standard VGA" display adapter installed
-Reboot in safe mode.
-Clean old driver entries completely off the machine. (Eg, using DriverCleaner.NET, Driver Sweeper, etc etc, or one of the many available online "manual" deep cleaning guides)
-Reboot back to "normal" Windows (not safe mode)
-Reinstall latest display drivers.

-Recheck performance (of both FFXIV:ARR and Metro LL [your other installed game]).


If performance is still low, repeat the above and rollback to 'older' drivers. (perhaps the new drivers do not behave well with your hardware and the games you're playing)


Ask yourself: Is it possible that the drivers your prior Windows install had weren't updated? Newest does not always imply best, even if it often does.


Other thoughts:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2670838

Check if your machine has the latest DirectX platform update installed. If you had Internet Explorer 10 or later installed on the machine, then you'd have this by default.


Sometimes people using their own browsers, like Firefox, Chrome, and so on don't install IE10, and thus don't automatically get this update. This is known in rare cases to cause problems with AMD cards, or to fix problems with newer AMD drivers that addressed the issues that started after the platform update's release (eg, the fixes from AMD in their drivers caused new issues without the platform update installed).



EDIT: (more)

The technician who reinstalled Windows on the machine likely did NOT do an install using the default Windows disk (too time consuming to be worth their time), yet rather used a specially created install media or "cloned" an already configured image to the computer and then performed a peer2peer adjust [*cut the total install and update time down to 20 minutes or less*].

In any event ... it's hard to know how this image has been adjusted, such as if common drivers have been installed and updated on the base image multiple times, or if errors have been introduced from repeated slipstreaming of updates to keep their media 'up to date'. "fresh" in an install put on other than by yourself is, well, probably a different meaning of the word fresh.


--Fresh to a technician could be a base image that they've been modifying in a virtual machine for 'years'.

Le sigh...I did everything you suggested and I'm still getting the same 5500 score.
at this poiint I don't know whether resintalling W7 is going to do anything.
-I did the power mgt
-I did the driver cleanr
-installed new driver
-did the chipset thing

and still...nothing.

ALSO: I was actually on the phone with the tech guy and I was installing it myself with my Windows disc. after a certain amount of time, he said he was going to have the next tech guy take over my pc remotely and would finish the installing.
I didn't watch what he was doing as I assumed he knew what he was doing.

it's def. a Windows/software problem. I had the same new vid drivers when I installed the new 2gb video card. and that was when I got the 8301 score.
there must be something missing...
I'm going to try rolling back the driver to previous version, but I can already tell it's not going to work...

oh and thanks SO MUCH for all your help!! I would not have known these tips and tricks if it weren't for you.

ALSO: if rollling back driver doesn't help, I was going to call Alienware tech support and tell them my situation...I don't know what they can do about it though.

if everything fails, would an OS reinstall help??

ALSO: I figured out my RAM problem and fixed it: it reads the full 6gb Dual channel now

thanks again!

ok I tried EVERY suggestion you offered and NOTHING worked. very bummed and pissed.

I'm just going to call Alienware tech support tomorrow and bitch at them.

thanks though for all your help, it's greatly appreciated
:)

One thing that occurs to me that a remote tech might do when installing everything on a machine ... is adjusting video driver settings to his / her personal preferences (by habit), such as AF, AA, texture filtering quality, and so on. Like the tech might have cranked Anisotropic Filtering to 8x or 16x, as your card is capable of handling it in most games well.

While these settings should've been cleaned from a full driver uninstall and registry wipe (purge of the drivers)... If they weren't, then settings in Vision Engine would override some of the quality settings in the FFXIV benchmark. Which would of course yield what seems an artificially low score.

That all said, you've probably already checked this and my apologies if you have. Just trying to help brainstorm of what it could be. Texture filter overrides can also cause overlap flicker in games if the game only works with specific settings (expects the drivers set to "let the application decide"). Good example would be Alan Wake and playing with AF causing all plant sprites to have black backgrounds (not be transparent).

---As I don't own Metro LL, I can't comment on if this could be the cause of the shadow / texture flickering you saw.



Also of what you mentioned far as the techs helping with the Windows install. >>Remote Control<<


Do you remember what software they had you put on the machine?

If it wasn't just the built in remote desktop / RDP, it's possible that their remote control software installed something called a "video mirror driver" (such as the Mirage Driver). Usually those drivers aren't active other than when a remote control session is active, but IF the driver was constantly active, then it could badly hurt performance.

Video Mirror Drivers do what the name partially implies, they "mirror" rendering calls that are done to the screen ... yet don't actually 'draw' anything. Instead of drawing, the mirror driver just tracks which regions of the screen were updated. This permits for remote control software to know what regions of the screen have changed without polling (taking and comparing snapshots), which drastically cuts the CPU overhead. However, this concept isn't 'free' either ... it still has a cost.

The mirror driver is usually under the "Display Adapters" category in device manager.
If it's hidden, you can get it shown with something like the following from a command prompt..

Quote:

---

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc

---

-Then selecting View > Show Hidden Devices. The above env variable being set will extend the list of hidden devices shown (beyond what you'd normally see).


If you'd be willing to provide a list of installed software, I'd be happy to take a look through it and see if there's anything I recognize on there that might impact performance. I'm sure others would be glad to take a glance over the list too. It'd also be helpful in the chance that you DO reinstall Windows, and the game 'did' run fast afterwards. Since that list could be cross-checked against the fresh install to narrow down what exactly was done to the machine that hurt FFXIV.

To build such a list, you can use wmic (which is included with Windows). Like this from a command prompt:

Quote:

---

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]
(c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\x>cd desktop
C:\Users\x\Desktop>wmic product get Name, Version > dump.txt

---

It'll produce a file that looks something like this:

Quote:

---

Name Version
Ventrilo Client for Windows x64 3.0.8.0
Desktop Restore 1.6.3
Microsoft Office Visual Web Developer 2007 12.0.4518.1066
Microsoft Office Visual Web Developer MUI (English) 2007 12.0.6612.1000
Microsoft Office Shared Setup Metadata MUI (English) 2007 12.0.6612.1000
Microsoft Office Shared MUI (English) 2007 12.0.6612.1000
Microsoft Office File Validation Add-In 14.0.5130.5003
Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Tools 6.1.5294.17011
Visual Studio Tools for the Office system 3.0 Runtime 9.0.30729
Visual Studio 2012 x64 Redistributables 14.0.0.1
Visual C++ 2008 x86 Runtime - (v9.0.30729.4148) 9.0.30729.4148
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable - x64 9.0.30729.4148 9.0.30729.4148
... etc

---

-You could then open dump.txt, and copy/paste the contents into this thread.


Definitely give Alienware support a chance to look at the machine first before doing a reinstall solo. Nobody knows better than them what they put on there and changed (they probably have a list of what their techs usually touch).

WOW!!!!
I think I just found out what's happening!!!

I originally used the benchmark that's called Character Creation which gave me the 8301 score.

after the pc crash I downloaded another benchmark that was called Exploration.

just out of curiousity I downloaded the character creation benchmark.
and I got my 8000 score back!!

I noticed something was different because the black mage at the end of each benchmark does something different in each one. I thought to myself "doesn't he do a different Limit Break I thought"......

so basically that's it:
Exploration benchmark gives me 5500
character creation benchmark gives me 8000

!!!!!!!!!!!!

what is the difference between the two? How do I know which one is the correct one with the right score?

this is SO weird......

EDIT: so I looked at the version numbers for each benchmark and the Exploration one is the most current.
Why would my original score of 8000 drop to 5500?

Quote:

---

what is the difference between the two? How do I know which one is the correct one with the right score?

---

Perhaps just the scoring metric / weight was changed (lowered) to more accurately reflect true ingame performance. Eg, taking into account FATE's and other high population areas of the game. I've not compared the two benchmarks in terms of min, avg, max FPS, so I can't comment on if there's actual engine differences between the two ... yet it wouldn't matter either way (see below):


They're both "technically correct" in that any benchmark software only tells you how THAT specific benchmark performs (far as its scoring). They're intended to give you a 'jist' of if your machine is capable of running the game playable, or at all, and if your machine's performance is up to par compared to other people who have similar setups (eg, whether or not something is wrong with your configuration)... That said, neither will give you a very accurate idea of how the game itself will run (in all ingame situations), as the game is constantly moving / not a fixed target ... with population density in zones changing, engine changes each patch, and so on.


To be honest, towns, outposts, FATE's, etc, can bring even the highest end machines to their knees (machines which score ludicrously high on the fixed benchmarks). The only point of the game where the benchmark performance may be close to a reliable metric of true-ingame performance is in instances, where there's consistent caps on the visible players and monsters on the screen at once.


Point being, I wouldn't concern yourself over the benchmark scores so long as the actual game runs up to your standards.


--Also, glad that you figured out the cause of the score differences and that it ended up being something alot simpler than all suggestions I had made. (sorry for sending you on a witch hunt)