Why can I hardly run this game?

I just built this PC in May. How come I can hardly run this game? I need to play on absolute lowest shadows, no multi sampling, and everything else on "standard". Even with these settings (which make the game look disgusting) I'm not breaking 25 FPS. Did I build a pile of junk? What the hell does it take to run this game at max?

AMD FX 4-Core Processor
CoolerMaster 500w Power Supply
nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti
asrock 970 Extreme3 motherboard

Turning your settings down to medium should be fine with no aa, no AO, no DoF, you should be ok. the 550 is a pretty budget card. There's a reason people pay $500+ for video cards.

Check your gpu and cpu usage while playing. What resolution areyou playing at? 1920x1200 is going to be really high for a budget card.

The 580 handles most stuff on high at 1920x1200, no ao, no dof, 8x aa. the 550 is nearly half as powerful in every category:
http://www.hwcompare.com/9684/geforc...force-gtx-580/

Good news is it'll probably run ARR beautifully.
bad news is this version of the game is so badly optimised that even after two years you need a beast of a machine to max it out.

Well SE did say the current system is not as smooth as it could be.

(I agree, they use a lot of visual tricks to make textures look better then they really are - and even then it still has some lag)

And their extra options (DoF, ambient) and such are very laggy when (from at least other games experience) it shouldn't be so bad.


As Yoshida would say, "please look forward to it" [2.0 - new engine].

the AMD FX 4 core is actually a dual core with 2 virtual cores, also due to its poor architecture its actually worse for gaming than the Phenom 2's. this game "in its current state" runs like crap on anything with less than 3 physical cores for whatever reason, i believe your issues stem from your CPU Or you have your General Draw Quality jacked up to 10 (high).

i can run this game in windowed mode at 1080p with AAx4 DoF On and everything at high save for General Draw Quality which should always be set to 8(standard) on a 460GTX that's 3 generations old already.

well you do have a AMD, but this game does a ton of media loading as you move around,whats your HDD read speed? a SSD will make things 100% better.
your card is good.

or wait till ARR then it should run alot better.

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Originally Posted by Valmonte

the AMD FX 4 core is actually a dual core with 2 virtual cores, also due to its poor architecture its actually worse for gaming than the Phenom 2's. this game "in its current state" runs like crap on anything with less than 3 physical cores for whatever reason, i believe your issues stem from your CPU Or you have your General Draw Quality jacked up to 10 (high).

i can run this game in windowed mode at 1080p with AAx4 DoF On and everything at high save for General Draw Quality which should always be set to 8(standard) on a 460GTX that's 3 generations old already.

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I beg to differ. My kids have Core2Duo machines with 4gb ram and GTX280 and run all medium at 50-60fps at 1920x1080. Two identical machines run on the same settings and both get great frame rates and look good.

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Originally Posted by indira

well you do have a AMD, but this game does a ton of media loading as you move around,whats your HDD read speed? a SSD will make things 100% better.
your card is good.

or wait till ARR then it should run alot better.

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thats bullocks im playing XIV on a WD: Cavier black 7,200 RPM Drive and the only time player popping occurs is when the game reaches the 40 player limit.

OP post the resolution you play.

Though it's probably the video card if you're playing over 720p.

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Originally Posted by nasomi

I beg to differ. My kids have Core2Duo machines with 4gb ram and GTX280 and run all medium at 50-60fps at 1920x1080. Two identical machines run on the same settings and both get great frame rates and look good.

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if your aiming for high setting, Dual Cores wont cut it.

Turn off ambient occlusion. Your system should handle the game fine, but Ambient occlusion will bring top end systems to their knees with little visual gain.

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Originally Posted by auritribe

Turn off ambient occlusion. Your system should handle the game fine, but Ambient occlusion will bring top end systems to their knees with little visual gain.

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its bugged has been since launch, it works great for the first few minutes then it just get progressively worse and worse til the games practically unplayable.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valmonte

its bugged has been since launch, it works great for the first few minutes then it just get progressively worse and worse til the games practically unplayable.

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Sometimes I think square just leaves the option there in the settings to troll people. I wouldn't put it past them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nasomi

I beg to differ. My kids have Core2Duo machines with 4gb ram and GTX280 and run all medium at 50-60fps at 1920x1080. Two identical machines run on the same settings and both get great frame rates and look good.

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Keep in min when you're spitting out GPU brands that the 2nd digit is a more accurate measurement of the raw power of the video card. The first digit (2) is the generation of card, but the 2nd digit (8) shows that it was a high end card during it's generation. Yes, it's an older card, but its a powerful older card.

2-4 Entry level / Consumer / bejeweled
4-6 Middle end Most games will work but not with everything maxed out
7-9 Max out everything, full anti aliasing and potential for multiple monitor rendering

Not entirely accurate, but that's the gist of it. Point is, the 280 is a powerful card so it should be no surprise the game runs well on that.

As far as cores go, most games even now still don't have a need for anything past two cores, last I checked. Still, we're getting to a point where games are starting to use those so whatever I'm saying will be meaningless in the coming months.

Here are my settings:

CPU Q8200 quad core 2.3 GHz
4 Gb RAM
550ti

windows 7 64bit

1920 x 1080 windowed
2x MSAA
gen draw qual 9
bck draw qual 3
shadow 3
amb occ OFF
texture qual high
texture filter standard


Game runs fine for me. Got anything running in the background, ie some crappy anti virus program. I use AVG.
Maybe the issue is with the AMD.

Turn your general draw quality down to 8. Anything over that and it runs like crap regardless of your system. You should nearly double your FPS doing that.

General Draw Quality at 8 means the engine will render the frames at your screen resolution ie 1920x1080, with it set to 9 it renders the frames at 1.5 your resolution so 2880x1620 and that is a lot to ask of a 550 TI.

So, turn it down GDQ to 8 and you should be fine.

Edit: never mind, was not the OP :o and I am too tired, good night all.

The reason you're having trouble is obvious: replacement refs.

General Drawing is too high. Run it at -8 and you should see a huge dif in FPS.

I started this game with a similar set up and it ran pretty good at "Standard" and decent enough maxing it out without AC and DoF checked.

My PC went from being able to run it at max, to barely running it at high.

Like my FPS dropped to 10 at high (from 60+ consistently at max).

I swear to god this game.

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

My PC went from being able to run it at max, to barely running it at high.

Like my FPS dropped to 10 at high (from 60+ consistently at max).

I swear to god this game.

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yeah, 1.15 or 1.16 actually made the game worse FPS wise but increased overall UI responsiveness.

Yeah :/ Kinda disappointed seeing as I haven't had to drop settings at all since I made my new PC.

I guess that's out of the window though. I was honestly considering not logging in again, and just waiting for 2.0, but I want to see what happens at the end.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valmonte

thats bullocks im playing XIV on a WD: Cavier black 7,200 RPM Drive and the only time player popping occurs is when the game reaches the 40 player limit.

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*
smooth 60 fps on my rig with a corsair force red drive SSD maxed out 1920x1080 regardless of what im doing. no way your getting that maxed on a 7,200rpm way more people on my server also all bunched up in ul'dah.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valmonte

yeah, 1.15 or 1.16 actually made the game worse FPS wise but increased overall UI responsiveness.

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nope, been smooth since day one on my pc, just the connection was hell of slow & laggy back then. the game did DX error though back then alot.

Using fraps to record the game at 60 FPS, I discovered that the UI elements (action bar, log window, status icons, etc) all update every other frame. So the UI is capped at a constant 30 FPS. This isn't a problem just an interesting observation.