FFXIV Only - Low Benchmark Score and Low FPS on decent settings. Puzzled.

[ninesunz]

Catalyst Control Center settings:
Anti-Aliasing - Use application settings
Anisotropic Filter - Use application settings
Tessellation - AMD Optimized Unchecked and Use application settings Unchecked; Level Off
Catalyst A.I. - Performance
Enable Surface Format Optimization - Unchecked
VSync - On
AA Mode - Multi-sample AA
Triple buffering - Checked ( Same results )

Turn off your AA

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

Hi OP. It *may* be driver related, but it may also be the power of your graphics card.

I had two machines, i forget the specifics right now, but it went like this.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
AMD PhenomII X4 940 w/ four processors at ~3.0 GHz.
8 GB of memory
NVidia GTX 560
Ran game at 10-20 fps on lowest settings, options turned off, smaller resolution, full screen

AMD Athlon II X2 250 w/ two processors at ~3.0 GHz.
8 GB of memory
NVidia GTX 560
Ran game Around 30+ fps (but not 60) with mid resolution, drawing qualities of 9 and 4, x4 AA, high textures and texture filtering, no extended draw distances, stuff like that.

Same video drivers on each.
Picked up dufferent drivers for the Phenom machine, beta drivers at the time, and now I'm able to push things back up. When I reinstalled the non-beta drivers, everything went down the tubes again.
Only on the Phenom machine.

I play on the Athlon 64 X2 machine pretty comfortably.

A GeForce 7600 on either machine can't get me to 20 fps unless.general drawing quality is set to 2 or 1. I can get 60 fps in an abandoned ward with draw qualities set to 1, everything turned down.

Update:
Benchmarks on High (haven't managed graphic card settings beyond slapping it into the machine and letting the drivers do the work). Both using the same maker of GTX 560.

Phenom machine (4 CPUS @ ~3.0 GHz) benchmark High (using the beta drivers):
Score 3236, Load Time 11726 ms
Athlon machine (2 CPUS @ ~3.0 GHz) benchmark High:
Score 2635, Load Time 15484 ms

Hmmm...
*kicks roommate off the Phenom machine and scoots over*

[Bulwarkz]

You'll find that Processing power is BIG factor in this game.

Trust me on this one, I was running a Core 2 Duo @ 3.2GHz with a more powerful video card and got all kinds of stutter and a low benchmark of 2800. I bought a new CPU (Intel i5 Sandy)and my benchmark jumped to 5000 with higher in-game settings.

You can get performance out of better video card, but your CPU will kill your performance even if you spend the money. This isn't true with all games, but it certainly is with FF XIV. There is usually a better balance, or most games are GPU heavy. FF XIV is the opposite.

I was under the impression when I did my research and decision making that a Dual Core running at 3.2GHz was better than a Quad Core running at 2.5GHz as multiple cores are like having 4 horses pulling a cart instead of 2. The 4 slower horses may be able to pull more weight, but the 2 faster horses are going to go a lot faster with less of a load. In computing terms, relating that to things such as programs running in the background in addition to the game, the specific game would run faster at 3.2GHz if multiple programs weren't needlessly running.

[Bulwarkz]

Turn off your AA

I don't see an option to turn off the AA, while Multi Sample AA is the lowest setting for performance.

[rhelik00]

The graphics engine for this game is un-optimized for PC use. From what I understand, it was mostly a revamp with FFXIII's engine that works better with console's more processor/less memory route. Hence why processor power is such a factor for FFXIV and not the other games that you can play with high settings.

2.0 is supposed to be rebuilt from the ground up to rectify this.

[Holy_Dragoon]

I was under the impression when I did my research and decision making that a Dual Core running at 3.2GHz was better than a Quad Core running at 2.5GHz as multiple cores are like having 4 horses pulling a cart instead of 2. They're going to run at the same speed, but are able to pull more weight. In computing terms, I related that to things such as programs running in the background in addition to the game.

An easy mistake to make, especially if you have been out of the Hardware Game for a while. Things have pushed well beyond the GHz race that is for sure. While they still hold some relevance, the architecture of the CPU can have major impact on performance these days. You can see this by comparing AMD 6 core processors and Intel 4 core processors. The Intel ones are still coming out on top.

Additionally the 6450 is a touch on the low end for AMD GPUs, but if I were on a budget and needed to do hardware upgrading, I would suggest a CPU first.

[Bulwarkz]

The graphics engine for this game is un-optimized for PC use. From what I understand, it was mostly a revamp with FFXIII's engine that works better with console's more processor/less memory route. Hence why processor power is such a factor for FFXIV and not the other games that you can play with high settings.

2.0 is supposed to be rebuilt from the ground up to rectify this.

Thank you this explains a lot, this is why I was puzzled and explained the 4 slow horses against the faster 2 pulling the same cart analogy. I wouldn't want to scrap this entire build based upon one game. I was hoping for a solution or fix without doing so.

[Holy_Dragoon]

The graphics engine for this game is un-optimized for PC use. From what I understand, it was mostly a revamp with FFXIII's engine that works better with console's more processor/less memory route. Hence why processor power is such a factor for FFXIV and not the other games that you can play with high settings.

2.0 is supposed to be rebuilt from the ground up to rectify this.

This is also accurate, current gen consoles are built on CPU and Core processing first, GPU and Memory second. Most console > PC ported games reflect this in some way, but FFXIV shows it in spades due to the Crystal Tools originally being developed for PS3, which is processor oriented.

[Bulwarkz]

An easy mistake to make, especially if you have been out of the Hardware Game for a while. Things have pushed well beyond the GHz race that is for sure. While they still hold some relevance, the architecture of the CPU can have major impact on performance these days. You can see this by comparing AMD 6 core processors and Intel 4 core processors. The Intel ones are still coming out on top.

Additionally the 6450 is a touch on the low end for AMD GPUs, but if I were on a budget and needed to do hardware upgrading, I would suggest a CPU first.

Thank you. Friday I may get a Quad Core that fits my Socket type. I really enjoy the game and it seems inevitable. However as others are explaining about the game's current CPU development architecture, if 2.0 is optimized better than in the long run it may of been for nothing.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

I was under the impression when I did my research and decision making that a Dual Core running at 3.2GHz was better than a Quad Core running at 2.5GHz as multiple cores are like having 4 horses pulling a cart instead of 2. They're going to run at the same speed, but are able to pull more weight. In computing terms, I related that to things such as programs running in the background in addition to the game.

T'was my understanding too.

I think I will run benchmark on both machines to see wut up. Not into computers the way I was and even then not very good.

Think I benchmarked with a literally defective 285GTX that could only play when underclocked by 16% or so. Thought it was cooling or psu, but discovered these cards are just have a lot of bad eggs.