FFXIV and HD 6990

[Onidemon]

40 FPS seems to be pretty okay with those settings.
you could allways increase it to 60, but you would need to set general drawing quality to standart (can easily go to highest with background tho), and perhaps turn the super-sampling off, i noticed that super-sampling AA allways put a heavy weight on my graphics which is why i allways have it off (atleast in FFXIV)

my settings are the same as yours.
besides i have background drawing quality at highest, general drawing quality at standard, AA at 16xQ CSAA (i don't know if ATI is x16 tho), and S-SAA off.
i hit 60 FPS on the fields, and in towns and camps it varies between 60-30 (mostly due to the low load of GPU in towns )
with ambient occlusion i lose around 5-15 FPS on fields, so i can easily use it aswell without much hassle, but i prefer to have it off since i don't see a too big difference.

PS.:

indeed you're running the game rather well, i forgot that you seem to play on 3 screens

Are you using DOF and AO?

[Black_Rose]

^
currently only DoF, but with DoF and AO and with the previously listed settings i can run on 55-45 FPS on fields.
FPS also get cut a lil in towns, but not as much as on fields.like 2-3 FPS less in towns.

http://s74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...0-22-39-00.png

with AO bushes/trees and other small objectss that hardly drop any shadows seem a lil darker.
it does look better, but i'm still not in for the FPS difference (also i get some random stuttering, it's not that annoying but when turning the cam for 180° it can easily happen), perhaps after a few things get optimized i'll activate it again.

[Onidemon]

^
currently only DoF, but with DoF and AO and with the previously listed settings i can run on 55-45 FPS on fields.
FPS also get cut a lil in towns, but not as much as on fields.like 2-3 FPS less in towns.

http://s74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...0-22-39-00.png

with AO bushes/trees and other small objectss that hardly drop any shadows seem a lil darker.
it does look better, but i'm still not in for the FPS difference (also i get some random stuttering, it's not that annoying but when turning the cam for 180° it can easily happen), perhaps after a few things get optimized i'll activate it again.

Is AO worth it? Whenever i turn it on the game becomes uplayable so i can't see the difference but looking at screenshots or video i don't see the difference with it being on or off.

As for DOF, it does make a huge difference IMO.... makes the game look 100 times better and more imersive.

[Black_Rose]

AO as is now, killing your FPS it's not worth it.
it does give a slight difference, but none that is worth it dropping another 5-15 fps for.

as for DoF, yes for those that can run stable with it it's worth it.
i'd still rather have a clear sight, but then again, with the textures blurrying out in the distance DoF surely does give a better view.
with General Drawing Quality and Background Drawing Quality both at highest the view with DoF is at best, but setting both on highest really drains your GPU.

[Onidemon]

AO as is now, killing your FPS it's not worth it.
it does give a slight difference, but none that is worth it dropping another 5-15 fps for.

as for DoF, yes for those that can run stable with it it's worth it.
i'd still rather have a clear sight, but then again, with the textures blurrying out in the distance DoF surely does give a better view.
with General Drawing Quality and Background Drawing Quality both at highest the view with DoF is at best, but setting both on highest really drains your GPU.

If SE programmed FFXIV properly and had it use your system's resources correctly, you think i could run it on absolute max settings? I mean Crysis and Crysis 2 both look better and i can run these on max settings with Eyefinity resolutions.

[Black_Rose]

probably.
as much i know about AO, i think it's done by the hardware itself if the game runs on DX9, so it would enhance the performance if the game would run on DX10/11.

as for the rest, there is a lot of issues, i think it's within the crystal tools engine, but i'm no expert so i can't verify this.
running FFXIV on max settings would probably be possible, tho some of those settings are purely made to make your system bleed.
the worst of all being general drawing quality, which is actually at max if you use it at 8 (standart), setting it higher just means that the quality will be multiplied with your current desktop resolution.
running at 8 is your exact resolution, running at 9 multiplies it with x1.5 and 10 multiplies even to x2.0, so it's like running the game at x2 of your screen resolution.

but i think those problems will slowly be resolved as have others since the release.
at the release the game performed very badly on my current system, but since then it has improved with every patch and driver update.