Quote Originally Posted by Raist View Post
Many of the newer cards do that for power management--when you go back to desktop, it lowers clock speeds (and sometimes voltage). Poke around in your graphics card's control panel or your OEM's main power management app and you may see options to override this so it stays full power all the time. The nVidia control panel list it specifically as Power Management--forget if the ATI CCC has it labeled as clearly. In older systems, people sometimes needed to use 3rd party tools to do it (like using ATI Tray Tools to manage clocks/voltage instead of the driver's built-in ATI Overdrive).

The game also has an option for reducing frame rate when the game is not in focus (when you alt-tab out, or if running in windowed mode you switch to another window it will cut frame rates really low). In the main section where you set basic display settings, down at the bottom under where you toggle frame rate caps, there is an option for limiting frame rate when the game looses focus. Forget the exact wording--don't have access to the game ATM to get it specifically.
Exactly. Try using something like MSI Afterburner (if you have an ATI card). You can watch the load jump and fall (you can also use this app to modify voltage settings and set your own clocks if you want). You can lock your states if you want to, but your card is doing what it should be doing. Not drawing as heavy as it doesn't have to render XIV right away and de prioritizes it as a backround app when tabbed out.