Quote Originally Posted by Kittra View Post
I'll just say, that a new CPU (something in the i-series range) would unlock that video card's potential quite a bit. At the moment it looks like you're "CPU bound" meaning your system can't excel any further because the CPU is a bottleneck on performance.

That being said, in the end you'd probably end up replacing the Motherboard and Memory at the least with a new CPU which is almost equivalent to buying a new PC these days.


*EDIT* If you can afford it (and a new PC is in your future anyways) I would highly recommend an i5 with a motherboard and memory to support it. I have some friends who swear by the i5s and from what they've shown me, their performance is equal or surpasses my i7 systems. An i5 will also unlock that GTX 760 and allow it to push it's limits to the max.

I don't actually find that much of a difference in game play with a SSD over a Mechanical other than loading times, and it shouldn't effect your fps at all so if you want to skimp somewhere, this isn't a bad place to do it. Although others are right when they say that a cheap 40 or 60 GB SSD, just for the game, is pretty nice if loading times bother you.

*EDIT#2* Just for clarity, I wanted to say that unless you're going to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $4000 on a PC, you will always experience fps drops in extremely crowded areas of the game. No matter how good you consider your PC, it's just something about the way this game is coded that will always cause a performance drop under certain circumstances.

You'll definitely see an improvement with a new system, I just don't want you to be under the illusion that upgrading will suddenly fix "all" of the problems you experience. It will just improve your situation and provide a "richer" experience than you're currently experiencing.

The only other thing I can think to recommend is to maybe wait a couple months for when the PS4 comes out, and then just start searching for FFXIV:ARR PS4 review videos and see how it's graded on performance. In the long run, a PS4 is going to be way cheaper than buying a new PC to play this game.
Kittra, you are quite right and I appreciate the "bringing me back down to earth" points you make. A new system with all the bells and whistles will still have some fps drops in cities and crowded areas.

In any event, it looks like eventually I'll upgrade this PC. I might overclock this E8500 to 4.0ghz from 3.2 and see what kind of difference that makes.

Thanks again peeps