General Game Performance - Anyone Else Feel The Way I Do?

[nasomi]

$199.99 - evga intel x58 micro atx board
$39.99 - microatx case
$294.99 - intel i7 950 3.06ghz quad core
$81.99 - 6gb gskill ram
$79.99 - ocz 700w psu
$100 - evga GTX280

That's what i built last december for ffxiv when my old q6600/4gb/8800gts 320mb was strugglign to play @ 1920x1200.

I run windows 7 x64. I have a 300gb 7200rpm hdd from 5 years ago. I get 40fps in uldah and 60fps everywhere else. I have everything set to average/high, and I run 1920x1200 windowed only. I spent $800 on my system, and I could have skimped a lot of places and saved $200+ and still had the same system essentially.

If your system can't handle it, $600 will get you one that can play it beautifully. Also, I'm driving 3 28" lcd's, have a hundred chrome and ff tabs open, 2-3 rdp sessions, a movie playing, and a pile of other crap going when I play, and my system is barely batting an eye. It's been 8 months since I bought my box, you can get the same thing for a lot less now I'm sure.

[Rydin]

$199.99 - evga intel x58 micro atx board
$39.99 - microatx case
$294.99 - intel i7 950 3.06ghz quad core
$81.99 - 6gb gskill ram
$79.99 - ocz 700w psu
$100 - evga GTX280

That's what i built last december for ffxiv when my old q6600/4gb/8800gts 320mb was strugglign to play @ 1920x1200.

I run windows 7 x64. I have a 300gb 7200rpm hdd from 5 years ago. I get 40fps in uldah and 60fps everywhere else. I have everything set to average/high, and I run 1920x1200 windowed only. I spent $800 on my system, and I could have skimped a lot of places and saved $200+ and still had the same system essentially.

If your system can't handle it, $600 will get you one that can play it beautifully. Also, I'm driving 3 28" lcd's, have a hundred chrome and ff tabs open, 2-3 rdp sessions, a movie playing, and a pile of other crap going when I play, and my system is barely batting an eye. It's been 8 months since I bought my box, you can get the same thing for a lot less now I'm sure.

Exactly my point.. High End CPU, Mid-high end GPU... good amount of RAM....
regular old HDD....
I'm telling you... the HDD is not the bottle neck for most systems like the industry would have you believe
And honestly.. if someone got an SSD... I'd say you'd benefit more putting just your OS on it and leaving everything else on an HDD

[Coldfire]

ffxiv does not work like other games that just load everything into the ram. The loading is mostly done at runtime(and when it's doing that the game just stops). So saying the HDD is not a bottle neck is simply a lie. We had many of posts from people with highend systems that upgraded to a faster HDD to get rid of the stuttering in town. And putting the OS on the faster HDD is pretty obvious.

[Rydin]

ffxiv does not work like other games that just load everything into the ram. The loading is mostly done at runtime(and when it's doing that the game just stops). So saying the HDD is not a bottle neck is simply a lie. We had many of posts from people with highend systems that upgraded to a faster HDD to get rid of the stuttering in town. And putting the OS on the faster HDD is pretty obvious.

You can get that improvement with any modern high performance HDD... not just SSD

[Coldfire]

The SSD was the example for a modern HDD. It seems you really didn't understand what we were talking about. I'll try to sum it up:
1. the game loads character data in sync which causes the game to stop for that moment
2. there's many small files for each character that needs to be loaded
3. a fast SSD fixes this issue
4. an async method would fix this too and SE should implement that
Nobody ever said you need an SSD to play this game with full fps. That is one aspect. There is also other things that make the game feel sluggish:
- the delay for actions
- the high polygon count
- etc.

[Rydin]

Nobody ever said you need an SSD to play this game with full fps. That is one aspect. There is also other things that make the game feel sluggish:
- the delay for actions
- the high polygon count
- etc.

And those things dwarf character data loading....

It seems you really didn't understand what we were talking about.

I do... I just think you overestimate the importance of an SSD

[nasomi]

My ffxiv folder is on a 300gb hdd, yes, but it's sitting on my desk with a sata > usb adapter. No enclosure, just sitting there, and it's loud. So I can hear every time it spins up and does stuff, and trust me, it isn't all that often, mainly when I just arrive somewhere via teleport, or when I zone. It'll spin and crackle and do a little dance and it's very noticable, but it's not that frequent. I honestly don't see an SSD giving a noticable performance gain. I think most lag people notice is from bottlenecks on SE's server's and network bandwidth. When I walk up to a place and stuff loads it's not the hdd, it's the network and SE's systems sending me data.

[Coldfire]

You sure you listened to your HDD properly? <.<
'Cause there's quite a mass of people on these forums telling otherwise. It seems you people still fail to understand our discussion. We are NOT TALKING ABOUT AVERAGE PERFORMANCE. Sorry for the caps but otherwise you won't read it(seriously). We were talking about exactly those moments when the game loads new characters.

[Rydin]

You sure you listened to your HDD properly? <.<
'Cause there's quite a mass of people on these forums telling otherwise. It seems you people still fail to understand our discussion. We are NOT TALKING ABOUT AVERAGE PERFORMANCE. Sorry for the caps but otherwise you won't read it(seriously). We were talking about exactly those moments when the game loads new characters.

I know what you're talking about... I've seen people walk in Ul'dah and even though the frame rate is still high, the game chugs along.... I'm just saying... GPU and bandwidth/ping can attribute to that as well

[Coldfire]

Just try to run from the aetheryte to the weaver guild in Ul'dah and you will know what we are talking about.