6950 Performance

[Neptune]

Yeah i went on ahead and did that ahh feelsgood.. see this is what i was expecting from a GPU upgrade lol.
Well now i feel pretty confident that i can max out all the mmo's to come
Tera/GW2/B&S

Yep you are set. Makes me kind of feel bad for newcomers to the game that would assume they could max drawing quality. When the game was released it didn't have that setting so when it came out we all quickly found out it was bs. But new players like you don't have that luxury. The luxury of quickly detecting SE's bs. lol.

[Capita]

Yep you are set. Makes me kind of feel bad for newcomers to the game that would assume they could max drawing quality. When the game was released it didn't have that setting so when it came out we all quickly found out it was bs. But new players like you don't have that luxury. The luxury of quickly detecting SE's bs. lol.

It's always had the setting, but it was under a different name. I forgot what it was called, though.

[indira]

you NEED you processor past 3.4ghz or have a SSD with ffxiv on it cuz it loads a tons of crap video card helps alittle but its mainly how fast you system can load to your ram. SSD you will get beyond 60fps

[Evangela]

Yeah i went on ahead and did that ahh feelsgood.. see this is what i was expecting from a GPU upgrade lol.
Well now i feel pretty confident that i can max out all the mmo's to come
Tera/GW2/B&S

your new video card should probably overkill all the mmo's in next few years except Final Fantasy Fourteen

[Capita]

you NEED you processor past 3.4ghz or have a SSD with ffxiv on it cuz it loads a tons of crap video card helps alittle but its mainly how fast you system can load to your ram. SSD you will get beyond 60fps

My Q6600 @ stock 2.4GHz runs this game just as well as my i7 920 @ 4.0GHz, both under GTX 480's and SSD (never drops below 60 FPS outside of town, and never drops below 50 FPS in town). Overclocking my Q6600 to 3.2GHz makes maybe a 3-5 FPS difference. Not even worth the extra CPU temps as it doesn't even go past 60% usage stock.

So no, you don't NEED to run your CPU past 3.4GHz. You do NEED at least a Quad Core if you're using a GTX 460 or better GPU. You also do need an SSD if you don't want to stutter around town, so I'll agree with that. That was actually probably my biggest upgrade. From a 7200 RPM HDD to an SSD is like day and night in terms of game performance, and gave the absolute largest performance gain by far.

-- First system --

Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz
4GB G.Skill DDR2
GTX 480
1TB 7200 RPM HDD

FPS min-max: 40-60, with periodic stutter to around 15 FPS in Ul'dah.
With SSD: 51-60, no stutter.

-- Second system --

i7 920 @ 4.0 GHz
8GB G.Skill DDR3
GTX 480
1TB 7200 RPM HDD

FPS min-max: 45-60, with periodic stutters to around 15 FPS in Ul'dah.
With SSD: 53-60, no stutter.

[Chrees]

For anyone with an ATI/AMD card, I would also give this a try. I've still got a 5770 myself, which I'm planning to upgrade around the end of summer, and this boosted my FPS by about 10-15 or so:

Just as a point of interest for anyone using an AMD/ATI graphics card.

I recently picked up the latest drivers for my card (In the AMD Radeon HD6900 series running on Windows 7 64-bit), along with the 'patch' released to help out with Brink and various other issues. Since installing these, along with fixing Brink (the program I originally installed it for) Final Fantasy XIV also runs a lot faster and quieter, not entirely sure about heat however.

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...win7-64.aspx#1 is the driver page
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...15ahotfix.aspx is the hotfix page.

At the very least, it may help out some of you for the moment. Along with that, I have found the game has been running better after certain patches and such, though that may just be placebo.

EDIT: Just realized that the hotfix was originally for 11.5. Not sure whether or not it was included in 11.6 as well. My bad! I'll do some more research and get back to you!

EDIT 2: Seems like the fixes were included in the 11.6 release as well. So if you have the latest drivers, you should be good to go. Carry on!

[Neptune]

Interesting. I've been running an SSD since day 1; I didn't realize it made that much of a difference. I figured it would only help out with between-zone loading screens.

[Khalus]

your new video card should probably overkill all the mmo's in next few years except Final Fantasy Fourteen

Most definitely, FFXIV is the new EQII. I've been playing the Extended server the last week since I upgraded to a GTX 580, and with everything on max I get an average of 35-48fps. For an MMO thats nearly 7yrs old, and with one of the best GPUs on the market, I was expecting a solid 60+, but ah well...not bad.

You'll have no problems playing the next generation of MMOs starting this fall, cause while SE doesn't quite understand it, many others do ~ its all about accessibility. Why do ya think WoW has so many subs {PCs that are a decade old can run it fine}, but anyway, you're set for the next 2-3yrs easy!

[Coldfire]

GW also runs on very old PCs and is super successful. Well FFXIV will appear on PS3 and that's what they put all their hopes on. But imho the PS3 is a disaster itself xD

[Heoki]

I don't know if this has been posted, but I did this to two of my 6950s and it was pretty awesome.

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/159