Amazing system, FFXIV taking FPS hit. Why?

[Khalus]

Side note, you can force 32x in the nVidia control panel.

Oooh, I have to try that...see what it looks like.

Don't see much difference from 16xQ CSAA, nor did my FPS change...

[Coldfire]

Both programs I've never even heard of lol. I think I might be in the clear. The only things I run on Windows are Firefox, FFXIV, a F2P MMO, a couple mainstream PC games, and then stuff like AutoHotKey and HWMonitor. If that's not going to give me a problem I think we're good!

JDownloader is affected since it uses D3D. Any other java application (applets as well) that uses D3D might have this issue as well.

[Loth]

Here is an article that explains the different AA settings, and shows that Nvidia 16xQ is equal to AMD 8xEQ.

[Archadius]

So I discovered that attempting to play on anything but the systems native display resolution (2560x1440) simply will not work. Even if you put graphic effects high, the game looks like crap right from the login screen onward. I also found similar results when I jacked up the ATI CCC settings but kept FFXIV on a reasonable level, coupled with a massive FPS hit.

So now, I'm currently running on native resolution, with 8 General Drawing, 4 Background Quality (I really noticed no difference between 4 and 5), Shadow Detail on high (again, no difference between high and highest) and Ambient Occlusion off. According to Fraps, my FPS is between 20-30. Doesn't make any sense. In addition, I find my FPS is better in towns than outside (shouldn't this be reversed?) AND I'm getting random lag spikes where my FPS will momentarily drop to 3 or below.

Thoughts?

[origamikitsune]

Well, if you are in Ul'dah it is strange that you are getting lower FPS outside town than inside... in general. That isn't always the case though, and turning your background draw down more helps increase the chances of that changing. Regardless, the common bottleneck in this game that people don't know about is HDD. Whole lot of HD read/writes, and this game doesn't do it efficiently. Those huge lag spikes are probably caused by that. As for the generally low FPS, I'll say it again. You're running a mobility, and that's probably where the issue is. It doesn't matter how awesome the rest of the system is, you are running a GPU that is designed for laptops. Its not going to give you the best performance out there, and short of replacing it there isn't much you can do, imho.

[Archadius]

Well, if you are in Ul'dah it is strange that you are getting lower FPS outside town than inside... in general. That isn't always the case though, and turning your background draw down more helps increase the chances of that changing. Regardless, the common bottleneck in this game that people don't know about is HDD. Whole lot of HD read/writes, and this game doesn't do it efficiently. Those huge lag spikes are probably caused by that. As for the generally low FPS, I'll say it again. You're running a mobility, and that's probably where the issue is. It doesn't matter how awesome the rest of the system is, you are running a GPU that is designed for laptops. Its not going to give you the best performance out there, and short of replacing it there isn't much you can do, imho.

Yeah it was Ul'dah. The other place was a remote location near the Isles of Umbra. The FPS thing makes no sense, maybe Fraps just lies.

HDD? As in Hard Drive? Not sure what my hard drive would have to do with this, could you provide some detail?

I'm confused about the graphics capabilities, this card was an UPGRADE from my old 2010 machine. I believe the old card was HD 5850 or something. Why would the new one have lower capabilities?

[Coldfire]

You sure the game is using the AMD card and not the CPU's IGP?
And the thing about the HDD is that SE screwed up (once again) and didn't implement an async preloading mechanism for the game. Means your game will stop if you see a new character until that character is fully loaded.

[Archadius]

You sure the game is using the AMD card and not the CPU's IGP?
And the thing about the HDD is that SE screwed up (once again) and didn't implement an async preloading mechanism for the game. Means your game will stop if you see a new character until that character is fully loaded.

How would I check/change/confirm if FFXIV is using my card or the CPU's IGP?

Good to know the HDD is an SE problem, they might fix it later I guess?

[Coldfire]

You should be able to disable the IGP in bios and plug the HDMI/DP-cable directly into the GPU. In AMD control center: if you click on Performance->(Clock controls->)AMD Overdrive you should be able to see the GPU usage while the game runs in window mode.
And I have my doubts about SE fixing the loading in towns issue before PS3-release...

[Archadius]

You should be able to disable the IGP in bios and plug the HDMI/DP-cable directly into the GPU. In AMD control center: if you click on Performance->(Clock controls->)AMD Overdrive you should be able to see the GPU usage while the game runs in window mode.
And I have my doubts about SE fixing the loading in towns issue before PS3-release...

Cable? O_o Running on iMac, the only cable is the power plug. Also, if I were to disable the IGP in the BIOS, wouldn't that make it so I can't view anything on screen if my ATI (bootcamp) drivers were ever corrupted/uninstalled?

That ATI CCC thing is so broken! I launched it yesterday and saw the AMD Overdrive option and went "oooo shiny!", so I unlocked it, and it turns out I can't even adjust my fan speed or anything, I think it's bugged :/ It also won't let me update to 11.6 (latest) drivers even though my card is supported in 11.6, it just freezes and I have to quit CCC. It was such a weird process to install the CCC too... I had to DL it, install a "package", then navigate to some remote directory, then find the "Core" folder and install AGAIN. So ridiculous.