Possible to use more computer resources?

[Eldan]

FFXIV currently cannot use more than 2 cores of a CPU or more than one GFX card's capabilities. Slowdowns are probably caused by not maxing out your GPU. You essentially bottlenecked your computer when you bought a 460. If you put that much money into maxing your CPU and RAM, you should have done the same for GFX. Just sayin'.

At some point though, when 2.0 hits, they will have probably optimized to allow more than 2 cores and yadda yadda yadda like they should have.

[Soukyuu]

However when i am in Gridania i notice some slow down. It only happens in Gridania, im assuming because Gridania is full of tress and foliage and that is harder for my graphics card to do? im not sure. Anyways even when i am there and i see that my computer is slowing down, i look at my computers resources. And I have an octo core and the game is only using 10% of my CPU and only 1.5 GB's of RAM

Try monitoring your GPU load, if it goes down on slowdowns, then that's where the problem lies. SE has over 100k small files laying around your HDD, and HDDs suck when it comes to rapidly accessing them.

I have a 260GTX and I had this problem, it got fixed after I got a fast SSD.

FFXIV currently cannot use more than 2 cores of a CPU or more than one GFX card's capabilities.

What? Where did you get that from. My CPU load is evenly distributed on all 4 cores and as long as you play in fullscreen, you can use SLI/Crossfire (and that's not a limitation of FFXIV)

edit: only core-related problem i remember is not being able to run ffxiv on HEXAcore CPUs, but that was fixable by a custom start switch.

[Ekko]

it got fixed after I got a fast SSD.

^This, all of the slowdown were gone the day I changed to a SSD.

[Geesus]

^This, all of the slowdown were gone the day I changed to a SSD.

SS or it didn't happen. You 2 are the only 2 people I have spoken with over 2 years that say a SSD helped them with video game response. It may have helped with the bottle neck of your GPU but it's only a very expensive band aid not a true fix.

[Loth]

SS or it didn't happen. You 2 are the only 2 people I have spoken with over 2 years that say a SSD helped them with video game response. It may have helped with the bottle neck of your GPU but it's only a very expensive band aid not a true fix.

An SSD is a bandage, but a working one, there is no doubt about that.
The problem arise from the sub-system streaming data from the disk drive, and it is woefully inadequate.

The most common place to notice this is in town, where, if you are on a mechanical HDD you will notice a lot of stuttering, this is when the system is loading data, not because it is overburdened by the geometry.

I used to have a setup of two Raptor disks in Raid0 for my games drive, this had the stuttering, changing that for an SSD made it all but go away.

I agree, for FPS performance an SSD should not make a difference, however for this game it does, as it seems to halt other processes when loading data, and thus the stuttering occurs.
So, giving fast access to data via an SSD or even better a RAM drive is currently the workaround to the issue (hopefully fixed with the new engine in 2.0).

[Soukyuu]

SS or it didn't happen.

Because SS show how much more fluid the game runs on a SSD? ;x

You 2 are the only 2 people I have spoken with over 2 years that say a SSD helped them with video game response. It may have helped with the bottle neck of your GPU but it's only a very expensive band aid not a true fix.

FFXIV is an exception simply because it's has all files scattered across the HDD instead of having them packed/cached like all normal games do, which leads us to the GPU not getting the data it needs in time (= not a GPU problem) that's why you see the GPU load dropping.

You are free to believe what you want Geesus. Better yet, try it yourself.