Quote Originally Posted by gintoki88 View Post
i reckon its a software cap on performance thats in the game, same here my gpu and cpu are no where near 100% during these areas and the fps goes to crap, yet when im not in a crowded area it can run at 100% it may well be a limitation of direct x 9, even unparking all the cores on the cpu doesnt really do anything.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...unt-of-players
I've seen AMD APU's and GPU's do this. When in high stress areas, they almost ratchet themselves back as a failsafe (protect against heat/overloading I'd imagine).

I had to download BAR-EDIT and PSCheck where I locked the APU's cores into their max state all the time (2500MHz, 4 cores, 12x multipliers). Horrible for battery life (if using a laptop), but it will keep you cranked as high as it will go and you should see gains in performance.

You can also download overdrive and play around with the CPU and NB voltages to try to force the clocks to max, though I've had some problems doing this (Too much voltage draw freaks the machine out and I do artifact and core dump if pushed too high).