Any way i can make FFXIV run smoother?

Is there anything i could get for my PC that will help it run smoother. Because at top resolution (1440 by 900) it lags a lot and on the lowest resolution it still lags but the lag is on and off. I'll show you my specs.

CPU: AMD Athlon Dual Core Processor 4450e
CPU Speed: 2.3 GHz
RAM: 3.0GB
OS: Windows XP
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5450 (I got this like 3 days ago just so i can play this)

First thing is to lower shadow quality. It doesn't really adversely effect the visuals but it makes a big impact on resource usage. Also, try turning anti aliasing options lower, or off entirely. in the game itself you can try things like turning character shadows off, the dust effects (its only from footsteps) and turning extended drawing off too...

If those don't help enough you can also turn off the physics effect, though that tends to make everything look very flat (as does the character shadows, tbh.)

You might also look into upgrading your RAM. you can probably get 4-6 gigs without too much of an investment, or 8 if you want to splurge a bit.

alright i'll try those out thanks

Forgot to mention general drawing quality and background drawing quality... but this effects visuals in a big way, so only resort to it if you are desperate. (I can get the game to run on my laptop which is pretty outdated... but it looks like a kid ate some crayons and threw up on my screen.)

also texture quality and texture filtering are pretty standard ways to improve performance though again it will effect your visuals too.

All of these options are found in the config program, seperate from ffxiv itself, if you are having trouble finding them. (I am sure you already know that, but I don't want to assume and then leave you lost while trying to look for these things.)

Oh one more question. does the video size actually effect how smoothly it runs. cause i have my game in a window instead of full screen and it seems like the only thing that changes is the window size. my monitor can only go up to 1440 by 900 so if i put it up to that is it still gunna run the same but it's just gunna take up the whole screen?

Your going to also have to play with the catalyst versions, unfortunately. Just tonight I went from 11.1a which was ok, to 11.6 since it was the newest and had decent reviews. turned out to be garbage for me. Next on the list was 11.5b and this is the best one I have tried. Night and day difference for me in regards to smoothness. I also only have a amd 6850

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Adamsapple

my monitor can only go up to 1440 by 900 so if i put it up to that is it still gunna run the same but it's just gunna take up the whole screen?

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Set it in the ffxiv config program to be windowed or full screen. Even though I have a 24" 1920x1080, I only play at 1600x900. Since we have no alt+tab atm ><; Your going to have to play with the settings, and bear through the multiple log on, and off's till you have the best setting for your system ><;

Also for catalyst I use "Use application settings" for everything.

Why do people always buy crappy video cards for a highend-graphics game like FFXIV? xD
Minimum for this game is a midrange GPU and not lowend. The CPU and RAM are fine.

catalyst conversion?

Go to:

http://support.amd.com/US/Pages/AMDSupportHub.aspx

Plug all your info in (Desktop graphics, radeon series you have, they type of card you have and OS 32/64bit) and it will spit you out the most recent catalyst software suit.

Edit:
this would be your here (Windows XP, and a HD 5450) I'm guessing you have a 32bit os:
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...eon_xp-32.aspx

If you have a 64bit
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...eon_xp-64.aspx

But again if you don't get the results your looking for try other versions. Ultimately I think you will have to play just about the lowest settings with your card. Your card can run the game, but to be honest it will look worst then XI lol. I came from a mighty mighty hd4550 lol, and it was crap, utter crap, but it ran the game. Got to about rank 30, then I could not take it anymore.

You need to upgrade to Windows 7 64bit. Especially if you upgrade your RAM, as you can only access some 3.2gb on a 32bit system. And even if you have access to 64bit XP its not really worth it anymore, cause XP is no longer supported by Microsoft, nor most newer games properly and Win7 is basically the second coming of XP & sliced bread at running games and apps...

Or if you wanna do a completely new system, there are builder kits with the new Intel Sandy Bridge or AMD CPUs and all the components you need to get up and running, ~sans a monitor, GPU and OS for $250~$400 all the time through Newegg and TigerDirect. They are a mid-range starter PC, based on the best parts out there, and will run XIV and other games better than what you are now.

oh! yeah i have that catalyst program it came with the graphics card and i messed around with the settings and it actually works pretty well now and it doesn't look like FFXI.

Some tips to improve performance:
Don't set General Draw Quality over 8 (There is little to no quality improvement, and none at all if you use any AA)
Don't use Ambient Occlusion
Play with your AA settings (Some cards seem to have a preference where 2x or 4x AA actually performs better than none)
Play with shadows (shadows are the easiest thing for the brain to gloss over because you rarely if ever focus on them directly)
Force vertical sync in your catalyst/nVidia control panel
Run Full Screen Mode (this will increase performance noticeably unless you have a REALLY good system)

Best way to improve performance is buy a new system / upgrade, but of course that costs money.