Possible to use more computer resources?

I was just wondering something, This game runs fairly well on my new computer i just got specifically for FFXIV. However when i am in Gridania i notice some slow down. It only happens in Gridania, im assuming because Gridania is full of tress and foliage and that is harder for my graphics card to do? im not sure. Anyways even when i am there and i see that my computer is slowing down, i look at my computers resources. And I have an octo core and the game is only using 10% of my CPU and only 1.5 GB's of RAM when I have 24 GB's of RAM available to use.

So my question is, is there something wrong with my computer? or is the game for some reason not using all the available resources at its disposal and if it isn't how do i get it so my game uses more resources so it runs smoother?

Sounds like overkill for the CPU and RAM requirements of this game. Maybe it's the video card that's maxed out?

Maybe? After getting the best CPU and most RAM I could I didnt have all that much money left over for the best video card. its a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460, it has 4,095 MB's of memory, and has 2,048 MB's of dedicated memory

FFXIV currently cannot use more than 2 cores of a CPU or more than one GFX card's capabilities. Slowdowns are probably caused by not maxing out your GPU. You essentially bottlenecked your computer when you bought a 460. If you put that much money into maxing your CPU and RAM, you should have done the same for GFX. Just sayin'.

At some point though, when 2.0 hits, they will have probably optimized to allow more than 2 cores and yadda yadda yadda like they should have.

thx eldan, thats what i been reading that the previous producer and dev team screwed up the engine and servers. So just wait until 2.0 when we get a brand new engine and servers and hopefully it will be fixed is what im thinking?

hmm also maybe this game isnt optimized for windower? because i just noticed that when i play the game in full screen mode the game runs perfect even in gridania. I had to switch over to full screen mode today cause apparently patch 1.20b killed my windower program <,< and i cant use SE's windower............because there windower is freaking horrible

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Originally Posted by Norack

Maybe? After getting the best CPU and most RAM I could I didnt have all that much money left over for the best video card. its a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460, it has 4,095 MB's of memory, and has 2,048 MB's of dedicated memory

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your computer has 4Gb of ram or your Video Card? also any game should run better in full screen because it doesn't have to deal with the desktop and all that jazz on the screen.

Turn depth of field and Ambient Occlusion off. I'm running on a beast system that can almost max Witcher 2 and before I turned depth of field and A.O off, FFXIV was running terribly.

The game is terribly optimized and does not efficiently use the resources required of it. I expect this to change in 2.0 but until now turn off Depth of Field and A.O. You'll be fine after that. Also more cores doesn't necessarily = more performance. You more than likely have an AMD FX 8150 or 8120 which don't run too well on single threaded applications. Regardless, your system theoretically should be able to handle this game fairly well. The 460 is a solid mid range card (on the low end of mid-range) and your CPU is up to snuff. It just comes down to optimization which the current build lacks. The devs clearly recognize this though and it should be fixed with the new engine in place for 2.0.

Again, you could buy another video card but it will not give you that much of a performance boost for FFXIV at the moment due to the optimization issues. If you play other games on your PC on the other hand, I encourage you to buy a 560 or 6870 (or even 6950) if you are looking for solid mid- mid-high range performance.

From the sound of it, you are expecting too much from your system.

Currently you are limited by your video card, the GTX 460 while a good mid-range card does have its limits, so you might want to lower some settings if you want to play in windowed mode.
For us to advice, you would need to list the resolution at which you play and the settings of the game.

As to you getting the best CPU, I assume from what you write you got a FX-81xx, and sorry to say, but that is NOT a good CPU for gaming, the older Phenom II line is actually better at gaming, and both are overshadowed by Intel i5 2400 and above when it comes to gaming that are well threaded, and if limited to 2 cores even the i3 21xx is better.

If, as you say, this PC was build specifically to play FFXIV you went way overboard with memory, 8 GB is currently the sweet spot.
However, you can put some of that memory to good use, if you make a ram-drive and run FFXIV on that. You should see a good speedup in towns unless you are already running on a SSD.

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Originally Posted by Norack

hmm also maybe this game isnt optimized for windower? because i just noticed that when i play the game in full screen mode the game runs perfect even in gridania. I had to switch over to full screen mode today cause apparently patch 1.20b killed my windower program <,< and i cant use SE's windower............because there windower is freaking horrible

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The game really does suck on windower i get lower FPS

I have

2x MSAA
8 General Drawing
3 background drawing
standard shadows
Depth of field On
Ambient occlusion off
texture Quality High
Texture Filtering Highest

i have a 450GTS and get a nice 25-30FPS in city and higher outside but i do only have a 1440x900 if you have higher then that then that your issue.

People we're complaining that the game was using 99% of their GPU, and people are complaining that it's now not using the remaining 99% of there CPU? 99% of my brain is being used trying to see past the irony... and 99% isn't enough.

I run the game at 1920 X 1080 resolution. I guess I overstep when saying I bought the best CPU, I bought the best one that I could afford its a AMD Phenom II X6 1090T. Also I found a new windower program and am currently using that and it is running almost like it does when in full screen with 20-25 fps in very crowded areas and 30+ fps when running around outside now. I am just nit picking lol I just like playing games like solo play on consoles I guess. I just have to get use to it i guess, or wait till 2.0. I am not so much worried about the drop in FPS as the fact that on the back of the game it recommends a quad core? but is a singlethreaded game <,< that makes no sense to me. And they recommend 4 gigs of RAM but no matter what my game is always using 1.5 gigs of RAM. Like when the game runs smooth like a console game it uses 1.5 gigs of RAM, when it obviously needs more, it just uses 1.5 gigs of RAM and never uses more. Just curious as to why they recommend 4 gigs when the game cant use more than 1.5? idk though <,<

I also hope that in 2.0 they make this game 64 bit compatible, and not just make this game run on WoW64, that would be so sweet.

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People we're complaining that the game was using 99% of their GPU, and people are complaining that it's now not using the remaining 99% of there CPU? 99% of my brain is being used trying to see past the irony... and 99% isn't enough.

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What?

Im not complaining im not mad that the game isn't running perfectly. Im just wondering why it only uses so much of my CPU and RAM when the game recommends more. For Example it recommends 4 gigs of RAM, but the game only ever uses a maximum of 1.5 gigs of RAM for me. I'm just like "Hey you know I have an extra 2.5 gigs of RAM you can use if you need it" and the computers going "No I need the extra RAM but im not going to because im going to show you I can run using only 1.5 gigs of RAM" or something <,< idk lol.

Other thing is, when buying a Nvidia GPU, the card mem isn't what gives you the bang for the buck. I mean it does for some parts but your bang comes from your mem interface; that 128bit, 256 bit or 320+ bit rate. This is where you will notice the processing power of your GPU. Again this is primarily on Nvidia cards, don't follow ATIs cards to much as I'm not a big fan of their architecture. So yeah you may have fast clock "speeds" but if your processors are crap in speed, that's gonna be your bottle neck.

Best way to explain is, your mem int is the amount of lanes on a highway. Your Clock speeds are your "speed limit" on said highway. Sure your speeds maybe 75mph but if you only have 2 lanes for your cars or your GFX info in this case, you will still have a traffic jam no mater how fast you increase the speed "limit". So if you have a low # mem interface your hurting yourself. That and the fact as others have mentioned, a 460 is a nice card but struggles in game right now. If you can just hold off till 2.0, I wouldn't stress getting a new one really. ;)

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Originally Posted by Norack

However when i am in Gridania i notice some slow down. It only happens in Gridania, im assuming because Gridania is full of tress and foliage and that is harder for my graphics card to do? im not sure. Anyways even when i am there and i see that my computer is slowing down, i look at my computers resources. And I have an octo core and the game is only using 10% of my CPU and only 1.5 GB's of RAM

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Try monitoring your GPU load, if it goes down on slowdowns, then that's where the problem lies. SE has over 100k small files laying around your HDD, and HDDs suck when it comes to rapidly accessing them.

I have a 260GTX and I had this problem, it got fixed after I got a fast SSD.

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Originally Posted by Eldan

FFXIV currently cannot use more than 2 cores of a CPU or more than one GFX card's capabilities.

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What? Where did you get that from. My CPU load is evenly distributed on all 4 cores and as long as you play in fullscreen, you can use SLI/Crossfire (and that's not a limitation of FFXIV)

edit: only core-related problem i remember is not being able to run ffxiv on HEXAcore CPUs, but that was fixable by a custom start switch.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

it got fixed after I got a fast SSD.

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^This, all of the slowdown were gone the day I changed to a SSD.

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Originally Posted by Ekko

^This, all of the slowdown were gone the day I changed to a SSD.

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SS or it didn't happen. You 2 are the only 2 people I have spoken with over 2 years that say a SSD helped them with video game response. It may have helped with the bottle neck of your GPU but it's only a very expensive band aid not a true fix. ;)

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Originally Posted by Geesus

SS or it didn't happen. You 2 are the only 2 people I have spoken with over 2 years that say a SSD helped them with video game response. It may have helped with the bottle neck of your GPU but it's only a very expensive band aid not a true fix. ;)

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An SSD is a bandage, but a working one, there is no doubt about that.
The problem arise from the sub-system streaming data from the disk drive, and it is woefully inadequate.

The most common place to notice this is in town, where, if you are on a mechanical HDD you will notice a lot of stuttering, this is when the system is loading data, not because it is overburdened by the geometry.

I used to have a setup of two Raptor disks in Raid0 for my games drive, this had the stuttering, changing that for an SSD made it all but go away.

I agree, for FPS performance an SSD should not make a difference, however for this game it does, as it seems to halt other processes when loading data, and thus the stuttering occurs.
So, giving fast access to data via an SSD or even better a RAM drive is currently the workaround to the issue (hopefully fixed with the new engine in 2.0).

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Originally Posted by Geesus

SS or it didn't happen.

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Because SS show how much more fluid the game runs on a SSD? ;x

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You 2 are the only 2 people I have spoken with over 2 years that say a SSD helped them with video game response. It may have helped with the bottle neck of your GPU but it's only a very expensive band aid not a true fix. ;)

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FFXIV is an exception simply because it's has all files scattered across the HDD instead of having them packed/cached like all normal games do, which leads us to the GPU not getting the data it needs in time (= not a GPU problem) that's why you see the GPU load dropping.

You are free to believe what you want Geesus. Better yet, try it yourself.

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The game is terribly optimized

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To fix this statement...it is optimized for the system in the recommended specs, just not what people may own.
-> Little scalability with hardware.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

People we're complaining that the game was using 99% of their GPU, and people are complaining that it's now not using the remaining 99% of there CPU? 99% of my brain is being used trying to see past the irony... and 99% isn't enough.

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The problem is that FFXIV places an artificial limit on itself on Windows. After a certain point, no matter what you do to upgrade your system, it can no longer speed up anymore because of it.

FFXIV runs with 4 cores (so quad-core makes sense) on my system but only ~700MB of RAM - Windowed Mode + 1400x900.
The 700MB doesn't vary much over the course of a game.

The HDD issue is related to this memory usage. Keeping memory usage constant while you move around implies you are freeing up RAM all the time (which isn't bad by the way). So if you move X distance forward such that the things behind you gets removed from RAM, and then you reverse direction to move X distance, the game has to reload all the same data from the HDD which is painfully slow (small cache).

Then there is the issue where the game's self-limitations depends on the maximum resolution of other people's computers. Notice how it uses 1.5GB on systems at 1920x1080 and only 700MB at 1400x900? Given that the max memory addressing on 32 bit is 2GB (the "large address aware" flag is not set), there appears to be a maximum resolution that the engine is capable of but that max. may not be on your system. The point is that the remaining RAM that could have been used on my system, is not used.
-> The 4GB RAM recommendation is 2GB for game + 2GB for everything else. This recommendation is based on a 32 bit Windows though.
-> If the game runs too close to the 2GB limit, you'll probably crash. See this old thread - http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...dressing-Limit

For memory limits:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...mits_windows_7
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=vs.85%29.aspx

Another advice I can give - Turn off Windows Aero.

i5 2500k OC@4.5ghz, 8Gb RAM, 2x 460GTX SLI, i run game windowed on a 19" monitor cuz thats all i can use (limited for space) i also dual box and get 45-60 fps everywhere on both accounts, game is set at standard settings while i dual box. if i solo play i turn up to max and leave the field depth and occ off and have no issues 50-60 fps everywhere. i also used to run on a regular hdd and had stuttering in towns, switched game onto a ssd and never seen it stutter since.

i run win7 64, have aero turned on and while dual boxing cpu is running around 50-60% memory 40%ish bout 45-50 degres temp, gpu's 60-70 degree and 30-40% useage @ standard settings

game is a tad fugged imo i am hoping 2.0 solves the latency/lag and also the badly optimised cpu/gpu usage along with the slow ass npc responce times lol

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Originally Posted by tymora

Another advice I can give - Turn off Windows Aero.

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This only gives you a small performance increase if you are running windowed. When an application is in fullscreen mode, Aero isn't being rendered. Aero used to be rendered at all times in Vista, but with win7 they fixed it.

I have a 24 core MacPro... I have to physically limit the game to just 15 cores or else it will crash at boot. So, no it's not limited to four cores.

64bit addressing on Windows under Direct3D 9 is probably slightly more demandng than 32 bit addressing, as D3D9 requires a context switch between each opteration. BTW, the physical RAM limit in WIndows is 4GB. Though it can address up to 64GB. And each user process can use 4GB of that. 32GB is not limited to 2GB. Windows XP limits the usermode to 2GB, and the kernel mode to the other 2GB. Vista/7 I beleive increase it to 3GB for the user partition.

If you have enough RAM (like 8GB+) the game will take advantage of Windows disk cache. This will automatically cache the files on the HDD in RAM for quicker access. So there isn't much need for an SSD.