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

[Vaer]

The annoying hitching is because of the "seamless" zoning where the town (especially Uldah) is split up into tons of other zones. When you trip a zone line especially near the Uldah Market Ward/Aetheryte, the game has to seek the HDD for all the textures for the armor and weapons everyone is wearing. The engine seeks the HDD a lot because of the convoluted millions of .DAT files file system that they brought over from FFXI.

I had the same fps hooking issue, and my PC has lower specs than yours. Bought a SSD (Takes up 12gb on my SSD) and the hitching is greatly diminished. There is an option in the settings that allows you to cap the game at 30fps if you want to do further testing. (Also helps heat)

The issue here is whether you want to invest in one keeping in mind that an engine overhaul is around the corner.

[Relic]

The symptoms you listed are the same ones I experienced for days before my hard drive died. Maybe FF14 was what killed it... After that I got a SSD, installed FF14 on it, and haven't had any issues since.

[Technyze]

You could have the best computer ever made and this game would still run like crap for you. 2.0 can't come any sooner.

[Colino]

You could have the best computer ever made and this game would still run like crap for you. 2.0 can't come any sooner.

Pretty much this.

[Fear]

Like others have said its the poorly done coding which makes it so damn hot, my GPU (asus 6950HD) sits on 65-77c on FFXIV but I can play other games maxed out like BF3 and Skyrim HD packs on around 60c with the dual fans on 60%