Three months in and I'm getting fed up with the regular FPS drops and stuttering. Since I'm not tech guru, I'd like to know if I meet the requirements for playing with Direct X 9 (although the FPS is quite constant for me with DX11, it doesn't feel as smooth as 9):
  • Windows 8.1 x64
  • Inetl Core i5-4210U @ 1.70GHz 2.40GHz
  • 8 GB of RAM
  • AMD Radeon R7 M260

I can run other games from 2013 just fine and can even run games from later on quite smoothly even when my computer is not supposed to, such as the teaser for Resident Evil 7 and MGSV (the latter doesn't reach 30, but it's pretty constant regardless with no noticeable drops).

Oh yeah, I should mention that I keep my FPS locked at 30 for all games if possible. I found out my GPU heats up much less that way with modern 3D games, thus making the framerate more stable. The same can't be said for FFXIV, however. It is locked at 30 and the only option I have on that could possibly take a toll is glare on minimum. Turning it off doesn't help.

I'm also using RadeonPro to try and optimize a number of options such as AA, which in-game has x4 as its lowest value. Trying to overclock as well, but the results are the same. I saw someone mention a program called Razer Cortex, but that made the drops more prominent.

The exact problem is that sometimes the game will run smoothly, then the FPS will drop whenever I'm facing the whole map (for instance, if I'm at the Immortal Flames HQ, facing the adventurer's guild will drop the FPS to less than 20, whilst facing the counter will push it back to 30).That's not permanent, but it might last two to five minutes sometimes. Alt+tabbing and leaving the game at 15 FPS (I have it set so it cuts it by half when the window is not focused) seems to solve it temporarily if I leave it that way for a minute or two.

Finally, since I'm no tech guru, I've no idea if the window mode makes much of a difference? I'm playing with borderless window.

I used to have a pretty bad laptop before I got this one (had 2 GB of RAM, for example, and I have no idea of the rest) and got to play the free trial just fine. This was two years ago, I think. So I bought FFXIV to play on my current one bc I thought there shouldn't be many problems, considering the previous rig had almost none. And unfortunately, getting another computer, or even a desktop, is not an option for another year, two, or maybe more.

Thanks in advance!