Proformance issues with my high end gaming rig, I need help.

[Liniont]

Ok so here are my specs.

Case: Antec Twelve Hundred V3 Black Steel ATX full tower with 7 fans
Motherboard: G1 Killer series "G1 Sniper" x58 chipset
CPU: Intel Core i7 - 950 Bloomfield 3.06Ghz LGA 1366
GPU: EVGA Geforce GTX 580 (Fermi)
PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold Series ATX 1200w
RAM: 16gb of G.SKill RipJaws DDR3 1333
SSD: Samsung 470 Series 64gb SATA II Internal Solid State Drive
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0gb Internal HD
Reader: HP 24x Multiformat DVD Burner
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit

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Ok so my first problem is this game gets my GPU hot even with all the fans at medium my GPU gets in the 70 to almost 80 degree's Celsius range during play, I'm not even sure how hot my CPU is but when I put my hand at the back of my tower all I feel is hot air and I have a huge exhaust fan on the top 220mm fan and 2 120mm fans in the back. I play BattleField and HQ HD Modding up Skyrim and they never put my GPU that hot.

my second issue is I frequently get lag and things load very slowly as well as my frame rate is crappy sometimes even freezing on a frame every so often when I get close to a camp and it always happens in the main cities.

heres my settings
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Full Screen
1920x1080 Resolution
2x MSAA
General Drawing Quality: 8 Standard
Background Drawing Quality: 3 Standard
Shadow: Standard to high sometimes (I've been testing this out)
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No ambient occlusion
no depth of field
cutscene effects are on (cut scenes glitch from time to time)
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filtering: High
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I also have my GPU forcing V-Sync because I had taring and I saw that this fixed the problem. I have the Anti-aliasing - Transparency set to Multisample and Triple Buffering is also on as well.

Could anyone help me set up my configuration so it runs as smooth as possible and still looking fanominal while not over heating my machine. I've seen some videos on youtube that look freakin amazing and I can't help but wonder, I mean my machine is a beast and I can't seem to get the stability and look they get and I don't hear of anyone elses high end machines getting hot like mine. What am I doing wrong because I'm frankly tired of tweaking settings to try and get it stable.

[Neptune]

What kind of FPS are you getting? And how much free hard disk space do you have?

[Aistaraina]

The simple answer? This game is terribly optimized. It is built on an engine that was made for the PS3, not PC. So, wait for v2.0 as everyone likes to say.

I play BattleField and HQ HD Modding up Skyrim and they never put my GPU that hot.

I find that hard to believe. FFXIV, for me, outside of towns, my 580 is constantly at about 70-75C with fans at ~53%, which is nothing to worry about by the way. That is still low. If you were hitting high 80's, start getting scared. In comparison, BF3 maxed out can hit 84C. Mind you, i've only got a top and front mounted 220, and a back 120.

my second issue is I frequently get lag and things load very slowly as well as my frame rate is crappy sometimes even freezing on a frame every so often when I get close to a camp and it always happens in the main cities.

Not sure why this happens, I had the same thing back when I had the game installed on my 2TB WD Black. I've sinced moved it to an SSD, and it's fixed the frame drop.

[Koryu]

If the game isn't installed onto your SSD, do that. This game thrashes HDDs like no business.

The heating is just the coding of this game. Poorly optimized graphics engine = more work for your GPU. Check your GPU load and compare with FFXIV to other games.

[Liniont]

I mostly stay in the upper 50s but in towns I get 40s, 50s sometime 60 but when I hit a higher populated area like an Inn or in Ul'dah at the Crystal thing (I forget the name) I've hit 3 to 4FPS spikes >.< I've never seen this happening to anyone else on youtube who sported high end gaming rigs. I was wondering if it was just me or is this happening to everyone else? out in the field I did a benchmark in La Noscra and I ran from bloodshore to Limsa and sadly I even hit 20fps at times. The optimization like someone else said is bad... and I can't install the game to my SSD it houses my OS and the OS takes up all the space. I have it on my 1tb HDD I suppose I'll have to get an SSD just for FFXIV just like I had a Hard Drive only for FFXI when I played it on PS2. It actually brings a little bit of nostalgia and warm fuzzies but anyway what do you guys think?

[Koryu]

Definitely an HDD issue. If you really want it to be baller' fast now, you'll want it on an SSD.

Otherwise, 2.0~

[Liniont]

I'll price one and give it a try how much space do you think should be sufficient for FFXIV?

[indira]

the game is running crappy since 1.22 came out not your computer.

its server lag

[Yves]

Your rig is running it just fine. Don't be alarmed by the temps - as people have said, this game is optimized very poorly. Your lag could be from a handful of things. I know people hate the questions buuuut...

1. Torrents?
2. Anti-virus?
3. Multiple programs? (Steam is actually a huge memory hog, for example)

Also, someone else pointed out that there is server lag since 1.22. I myself haven't noticed it but it can happen. Also...

1. What times does this occur? Some IP companies throttle down bandwidth at peak hours.
2. I am assuming you have a LAN connection but, is it possible you are wireless?
3. Do you have multiple people connecting via the router at the same time (PS3 online, another PC downloading, Netflix on a TV, etc.)?

Sorry, I am just looking for non-hardware bottlenecks first.

[Loth]

my second issue is I frequently get lag and things load very slowly as well as my frame rate is crappy sometimes even freezing on a frame every so often when I get close to a camp and it always happens in the main cities.

This is down to the way they have their texture files and engine set up.
Unless you are running the game off a SSD (or better) you will have slowdowns as the engine will semingly halt updating frames while it loads textures.

I also have my GPU forcing V-Sync because I had taring and I saw that this fixed the problem. I have the Anti-aliasing - Transparency set to Multisample and Triple Buffering is also on as well.

Turn off Multisampling that is why you are experincing those major slowdowns outside of towns.
Any place with foliage will have this effect with multisampling on.

Could anyone help me set up my configuration so it runs as smooth as possible and still looking fanominal while not over heating my machine.

Full Screen
1920x1080 Resolution
8xQ MSAA (2x MSAA)
General Drawing Quality: 8
Background Drawing Quality: 5 (3)
Shadow: Highest (Standard - high)
---
Ambient occlusion: Off
Depth of field: On (Off)
Disable cutscene effects: Off (On)
Enable hardware mouse cursor: On
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filtering: Highest (High)

*Your settings listed in parentese where they differ from mine.

Running a setup somewhat equal to yours these are the settings I use.
My video card is a GTX 570 so less powerful than what you are running.
With the settings listed above the temperature of the GPU is 60-70 degrees celcius.