Major FPS drop/screen stuttering after upgrading video card to GTX 770.

[Zand]

Anyone have an answer for this?

I definitely want to try a few of the more recent suggestions. I'm wondering if I'd be able to install a new copy of windows on my old HDD, which was previously wiped, and install the new NVIDIA drivers without having to worry about my AMD drivers on the SSD. This way I can swap cards without the hassle of having to uninstall/reinstall new drivers. Anyone know if this is possible?

[montecchia]

sure you can.

[Syx]

I want you to download and install CPU-Z. Run CPU-Z then run FFXIV. What does the Core Speed read at the bottom? I had a similar problem where my CPU wasn't reaching it's normal speed. The bus multiplier was locked at x16, which was killing my performance in FFXIV. You may want to reset your BIOS to the optimized default settings and test it again.

[Zand]

Ok, so I have officially tried everything suggested in this thread. And to my surprise, I actually got some results this time! However, I'm not sure what made the difference because I tried multiple things at once.

I started off by wiping my old drivers and and doing a custom installation with only the NVIDIA graphics driver and PhysX. Afterwards, went into my NVIDIA Control Panel and turned off Ambient Occlusion, changed power management mode to Max performance, and then turned on Triple buffering/Vertical sync. Lastly, I tried doing what Syx suggested by downloading CPU-Z and checking my processor's core speeds. That was a complete fail because the program wouldn't install properly after 5 attempts. Instead what installed was just about every piece malware under the sun. Anyway, after removing all the malware and useless junk I just decided to go ahead and update my BIOS. After the BIOS update, I crossed my fingers and fired up FFXIV. To my surprise, I saw a noticeable difference but still traces of that screen stuttering I mentioned in my original post. So then I remember Lurkios mentioning "Borderless Window" and I give that a shot. After switching to Borderless Window the stuttering basically became non existent, and the all around performance became significantly better.

So my question is, why does Borderless Window make such a big difference over Full screen? I thought it would have the opposite effect. Another thing I noticed with Borderless Window was occasional screen tearing, which I'm OK with, but still found strange. Also, is there a way to ALT+TAB with Borderless Window enabled? I tried Window key + D but that just minimizes every window and has everything reappear once I click something. (By the way, all of this was done with the GTX660 card that my friend lent me, not the GTX770)

[Squa11_Leonhart]

Afterwards, went into my NVIDIA Control Panel and turned off Ambient Occlusion

There is no AO profile for FF14 for this setting to take effect

and then turned on Triple buffering/Vertical sync.

Triple Buffering is a OpenGL setting, so no surprise it wouldn't do anything

Lastly, I tried doing what Syx suggested by downloading CPU-Z and checking my processor's core speeds. That was a complete fail because the program wouldn't install properly after 5 attempts.

Syx probably meant GPU-Z, cpu-z is not made for monitoring graphics cards.

Instead what installed was just about every piece malware under the sun.

Unusual, but not surprising, the cpu-z installer does have some adware bundled, which is why i only ever grap the zip version

Anyway, after removing all the malware and useless junk I just decided to go ahead and update my BIOS. After the BIOS update, I crossed my fingers and fired up FFXIV. To my surprise, I saw a noticeable difference but still traces of that screen stuttering I mentioned in my original post. So then I remember Lurkios mentioning "Borderless Window" and I give that a shot. After switching to Borderless Window the stuttering basically became non existent, and the all around performance became significantly better

Your guess is as good as mine, usually its the other way round.

[Yamitri]

I run on a GTX 550Ti and found that i could only install partial drivers of all the Nvidia software included, because it wasn't very.. windows friendly. I found that just having the basic driver and none of the addons, it works great. I think Nvidia just has a problem with the cards in general. FFXIV runs fine on my system and card now, but i play in windowed mode because once you are in fullscreen it goes stupid.

[Andrewzz]

Lastly, I tried doing what Syx suggested by downloading CPU-Z and checking my processor's core speeds. That was a complete fail because the program wouldn't install properly after 5 attempts. Instead what installed was just about every piece malware under the sun.

Try to download and use the no installation (Portable) program, and download it from a good source (cpuid.com is the main page)

[Appleh4x]

Borderless windowed mode is actually not as high as your native resolution. If you have 1920x1080 fullscreen normally, you would have to open the ffxiv config file, manually put in 1920 and 1080 for the resolution, and the set the file as read only under properties when you finish so the game doesn't default it back to the lower value. I only know this because I use sweetfx for better AA and had to do this for borderless windowed to work properly with it.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

Borderless windowed mode is actually not as high as your native resolution. If you have 1920x1080 fullscreen normally, you would have to open the ffxiv config file, manually put in 1920 and 1080 for the resolution, and the set the file as read only under properties when you finish so the game doesn't default it back to the lower value. I only know this because I use sweetfx for better AA and had to do this for borderless windowed to work properly with it.

Borderless window does not change the screenmode.

[Syx]

I'm not sure how you got malware from cpu-z, unless you were just randomly clicking download links without a care in the world. FFXIV is CPU dependent. If there was a misconfiguration in your BIOS restricting the CPU from reaching its maximum frequency your performance would nosedive. Playing in any form of Windowed Mode will also degrade performance. You should still monitor your CPU frequency to make sure it is reaching at least 100% of its advertised speed.