System Hardware:
  • OS - Windows 7 64bit
  • CPU - e6700 ( Wolfdale ) 3.2GHz~
  • GPU - HIS Radeon HD 6750 ( OC'd )
  • RAM - 4GB DDR3 @ 1066MHz~
  • HDD - SATA 1TB
  • Diablotek ATX Mid Tower Diamond Case w/ 400W PSU

ATI Tray Tools & CCC Settings:
  • AA - Use Application Settings; Box Filter; Multi-sample AA
  • Surface Format Optimization - Enabled
  • Tessellation - AMD Optimized Enabled
  • AF - 16x; Quality w/ Trilinear
  • Triple buffering - Enabled
  • Texture - High Quality
  • MipMap - High Quality
  • V-Sync - Forced
* ATI Tray Tools nor CCC will force AA, AF, or V-Sync onto FFXIV for me; they don't work.

FFXIV Settings:
  • Fullscreen
  • 1600x900 ( Native )
  • 2x MSAA ( Game deteriorates above this )
  • General Drawing Quality 8 ( Game deteriorates above this )
  • Background Drawing Quality Max
  • Shadow Detail High ( Game deteriorates above this )
  • AO / DoF OFF ( Game deteriorates when on )
  • Texture Quality Max
  • Texture Filtering Max
  • Physics / Detailed Drawing On

Now whether I throw everything down or have it set that way, I have 20-30 FPS in specific parts of Ul'dah and 40-60 FPS everywhere else. I've seen a lot of people talking about the 'inevitable town opposed to everywhere else' FPS issue.

It's pretty well known about FFXIV's poor optimization due to having a single-player console engine. There's some tricks to the trade for performance so the game doesn't deteriorate which I listed above, but that's about all you can do. The optimization within FFXIV 2.0 will fix this. The Producer letters and whatnot explain this.

So towns are a lost cause. However for everything else, I enjoy the vibrancy of the higher frame rate, but the hectic fluctuation causes the luxury to stutter. Should I cap the game at 30 FPS or deal with a constant 40-60 FPS fluctuation; what would be best for ideal smoothness and playability?