FFXIV & R9 290X Troubles

[Morgwyn]

Excuse my English - it's not my native language

Problem:
I'm not able to play FFXIV with my "new" Sapphire Tri-X R9 290X.
There are 2 things that happen:

1. The Game does not start.
   Press the "Play" button, the launcher disappears and nothing else happens.
   After restart my System (win 8.1) sometimes, once in a while, i have luck and it works. But now there is Point 2.
2. Where are the frames going?
   The game will not run smooth. Frames are jumping between 130fps and 1fps, horrible. Changing graphic options and/or set a fps limit make no difference.

I tried different graphics-driver (stable, beta, older ones, etc.) and operating system win7 (64bit). Nothing helped. I set up my System (win7 64bit & win8.1 64bit) several times, because I thought something could have went wrong.
Other games work perfect - no problems.

No component is overclocked. Hardware runs standard clock.

Graphics-Board: Sapphire Tri-X R9 290X
CPU: AMD-FX8350, 8x4.00GHz
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 (BIOS up to date)
RAM: GeIL EVO Corsa 2x4GB, DDR3-1866, CL9-10-9-28
Power-Supply: Thermaltake 750W

With my old Graphics-Board (AMD 7970) I had no problems.
Hardly ever FFXIV stopped working with a windows message.

What am I overlooking?

I hope someone can help me to escape from my personal FFXIV gaming hell
Thank you for every Idea & Tip!

Uninstall FFXIV and deactivate my SquEx- Account is neither an idea nor a tip

[RobbieH]

If you got the game on Steam disable Steam for this game, or go to the game folder and open the boot folder, start ffxivboot.exe

if you use SweetFX remove it, disable FRAPS, MSI Afterburner and similar Software.

Also, if the Steam version check for integrity of the game files, however this may cause the whole game to download again, and the patches when you login on the launcher, leave this for last.

EDIT: Did you uninstall the old drivers before installing the new card? Download Display Driver Uninstaller, uninstall the driver normally, Start Windows in safe mode and use DDU, use option to reboot after clean, install the latest driver (BETA at the present time) and reboot again.

[Morgwyn]

No Steam.
No SweetFX, FRAPS or software to overclock anything (or overwrite BIOS settings).
Yes, old drivers were uninstalled, system restarted before setup new driver etc.

I've set up the hole Operating System more than once with win7 64bit and win8.1 64bit the last 2 days (i must have been bored or in desperation)

[Squa11_Leonhart]

is your edition of windows a N or KN version?

[Morgwyn]

Both "standard".
Windows7 Home Premium & Windows8.1 Pro

[RobbieH]

Create a new windows user account (administrator account) and try to play from there.

However since you mentioned you installed two OS, it means this probably won't work.

The other things i can think off are the Power Supply and BIOS settings.

Did you install just the GPU, Auido and Chipset/SATA drivers or did you install the whole drivers thing? Can be an issue with another driver, updated drivers don't always mean stable under some configs.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

won't be the media feature issue then,

Do any processes in task manager sit in a busy state when the game fails to lauch?

[Morgwyn]

Nothing - the Process dies and nothing remains in the taskmanager. There are no (other) processes busy.
Only processes of the operating system and the driver of my logitech hardware were up - with standard processor load.

With the Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 the game worked on the same system. I changed to Sapphire Tri-X R9 290X - every other Game I've tried worked fine, only Final Fantasy 14 said "What? THIS graphics-board?! NO, none of my business!" I felt like that
When the Game was merciful and I could run it, there were 1-10fps, for very short moments (one step) 130fps. I overclocked CPU, underclocked CPU, standardclock, TurboCore on, TurboCore off, Cool'n'Quiet on, Cool'n'Quiet off, switched RAM clock from 1866 to 1600 to 1333, I thought perhaps they conflict each other in some way (for FFXIV), but nothing made a difference.


So, and now it gets really bizarre.

In my distress I activated IOMMU in BIOS.
Since then Final Fantasy XIV starts without problems and I have more than 30fps (Revenant's Toll at "PrimeTime") with a R9 290X (deathsman humor). Somewhere out in the sticks of Mor Dhona (i hope this is the correct phrase) up to 150fps and more (Game Graphic-Options at Maximum, Resolution: 1920x1080, fullscreen-windowed, and CPU @ 4,1Ghz = TurboCore on, CPU load was about 48% in Revenant's Toll).
How can that be? I thought IOMMU is for visualization.
Interested in what would happen, i turned off IOMMU again. Game starts, same funereal frames (30+), nothing seems to be changed back to the previous dilemma.
What did IOMMU? Or better, what does FFXIV in the System so as IOMMU makes/made a difference? Now I am totally confused.

A half year ago, on the second PC (win8.1 64bit, also 2 Monitors) I had the problem that only FFXIV crashes the drivers for mouse (roccat) and keyboard (razer synapse) when it get started or switch while playing on the desktop (unnecessary if fullscreen-windowed or fullscreen). And yes, no other Game or Software managed that too at the same time or rather ever.
After many raging moments - I decided to setup win7 (64bit) again
With win7 this issue never took place.
2. PC:
Graphics-Board: GTX 480 at that time (now the Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 from the other system)
CPU: AMD-FX8350, 8x4.00GHz
Mainboard: MSI 990FXA-GD65
RAM: GeIL EVO Corsa 2x4GB, DDR3-1866, CL9-10-9-28
Power-Supply: Coolermaster B700

Some things are going terrible wrong I don't understand I never had such evil troubles with my hardware in any other game.
And it's hard to find tips because everybody has another strange problem with FFXIV.

Sometimes it seems this is the first (one year old) game i know, you should better NOT play with current hardware unless you are a hard- & software specialist.

[Morgwyn]

Create a new windows user account (administrator account) and try to play from there.

However since you mentioned you installed two OS, it means this probably won't work.

The other things i can think off are the Power Supply and BIOS settings.

Did you install just the GPU, Auido and Chipset/SATA drivers or did you install the whole drivers thing? Can be an issue with another driver, updated drivers don't always mean stable under some configs.

No, not two OS at the same time (clean installation - formatted entire drive)
My user account is an administrator account.

• I tried the whole driver-set from AMD main page (beta, current and previous) also the set from Sapphire main page (current, previous);
• The single graphics-driver from AMD (beta, current and previous) and Sapphire (current and previous, sapphire offers no betas) both with the standard drivers from windows
• Then the graphics-driver from AMD (beta, current, previous) and Sapphire (current, previous) with chipset-drivers from AMD (beta, current, previous) and Gigabyte (only found current and seems to be the same like AMDs)
• and so on...

And the same Scenario with different BIOS versions (beta, current, previous)

I used a Recovery Image i made from a new and "clean" win8.1Pro-Installation otherwise I would have gone insane of uninstalling and perhaps producing further sources of error.

I really did not test all these things again with win7, three hours updating are not funny I only tried with beta & current driver-versions.

Benchmarks (FurMark, 3DMark) worked all the time also other games I've tried!
The newer the driver-versions the better were the results.

Only FFXIV told me "No Way!"
Yes, I had to reactivate my SquEx Account a lot of times because you get restricted if you try to log in on every 3rd new system irrespective of your IP

EDIT:
The FFXIV Benchmark ran the first Scene smooth afterwards hardly ever a new frame.