General Game Performance - Anyone Else Feel The Way I Do?

[Rydin]

Most of what you mentioned are networking problems, but if you look at the network indicator ingame, you will notice not much bandwidth is used by the game, take a character model that usually only takes about 5Mb to download because its the client that draws them.

yes... but if you're sharing internet on say a 10mbit connection...
and Another computer is using a bit torrent client... the download could be using 100% of the bandwidth
Also bad ping is bad ping... and if you've got like a 1 second ping to the servers.... you can kiss any type of lag free gameplay goodbye

Btw, if a HDD is almost full the loading lag isnt affected that much, the main problem there could be from a full HDD is fragmented data, because the CPU knows where information related to programs should be even with a full HDD, the CPU knows where all FFXIV data should be when you open the patcher, because the programs are connected.

absolutely not true.... the innermost sectors of an HDD have as little as half the data rate of the outer sectors.. which get written to first....

You are just somone that thinks they know everything, people have taken my advice on a SSD before now and have seen large loading lag reductions, believe me when I have the money I will be getting a SSD when I have the money, even if it is just a small one to put windows and FFXIV on, which is all you need.

Yes... when you start the game... it will load faster with an SSD... I'm not denying that....
but faster initial load =/= better performance....
I guess it can be viewed as a performance increase.... in a manner of speaking....

My profession makes me need to know how to diagnose problems based on little information, and because the op posted about loading lag, and said they have a decent PC, it is the most logical fix to invest in a SSD because the game has to load so much information from the HDD on the fly, if the op has a SSD I would then suggest a CPU upgrade because of the need for multitasking to play this game.

In my profession... I create music... and I've professionally made a few Virtual instruments and sample libraries... in which case, bit rates, data rates and hard drive speeds are paramount in what I do
I disagree with this.... if you have a very old HDD... you can get a modern caviar black AND a CPU for the price of a usable SSD... making it the better upgrade path....

Also here you mention 6GB as a good amount of RAM which is true but unless you run graphics design software of virtual machines, or other RAM intensive software you dont need it, RAM only slows a system down if you are topping it out by running multiple programs at once for example I have 8GB of RAM in the laptop I play FFXIV on when the system is running just firefox skype and background programs I am using 1.62GB of it therefore I will not notice a slowdown just running FFXIV on top of those, however with 2GB of RAM I would notice a slowdown because the system would be page filing so my system does not crash.

This is actually true... go figure

The only way I top out my RAM is when I am running 5-6 virtual machines which I do.

I can use all 16GB of my machine with one song playing... and all of the virtual instruments that go with it.... there this one... called Vienna... I swear to you it is 500gb of orchestra samples.... purely hi sample rate audio... it's nuts... you running VMware? my buddy does tech work for the City of Miami and he absolutely hates VMware

If you want to see the problem page filing has, top out your RAM, and you will notice the symptoms of topped out RAM, 3GB+ RAM you will not notice a slowdown, and it will definatly not increase loading times, and if you have any less than 3GB RAM you should really upgrade.

I also agree... damn... I can't make a habit out of this...

At the end of the day... a gamer with high end CPU, GPU, and RAM and an ok HDD is going to see better performance than a gamer with an SSD and mid range CPU, GPU and RAM.... Even any one of those is more important than an SSD....(Ram size more so than actual speeds, which still matter though)

Take an I7 990x, 12GB of DDR3 2000MHz, an ATI Radeon HD 6990 and an Intel or OCZ SSD....
I give this to you... but then I say one (and only one) of the items has to be downgraded....
Either the CPU goes to a core 2 duo....
or the GPU goes to a GTX8800
or the RAM drops to 3gb
or the SSD drops to a 7200RPM 32MB cache drive...

which one do you choose?
point made