[Dev] Overtaxation of PC Hardware

[AuctionGirl]

This game only uses about 15% CPU at peak times for me (core i-7 980x) but it will use upwards of 3gb of Ram. Although I can run this game for a month without restarting it and rarely crashes. One thing I do notice, is the longer I am running the game, the faster the stamina bar refills (doesn't really refill faster, but the graphics of it do) There has to be some sort of memory issue with that.

I was one of the alpha and beta testers for this game and believe me there has been ALOT of optimizations already, and I hope they continue. I could barely get this game running with a Quad Core/8800 GTX in alpha and beta finally got to play a little. There is hope

[Cairdeas]

I have a hardware Question.

It seemed to me int he last few years that playing a game maxed out seemed to be less taxing on a high end system then lowering the settings to try adn get a few extra frames. The biggest example of this being Doom 3. When it came out I was still using a P4 3.2ghz processor but I had an HD2500 ATI card with DVI>HDMI hook up. I've since upgraded but on Doom 3 If I didn't run it at highest specs the game actually ran choppier and slower then if I just maxed everything out.

Is the same true for most people playing XIV? I've yet to find the happy sweet spot in my settings for XIV and my current hardware (Phenom II x4 955B at 3.4ghz, HD5770, 4gb of Ram, 800PSU, Gigabyte AM3/+Mobo) and I've been trying to determine what the best possible settings might be for both looking decent but also getting the best FPS possible.

[AlexiaKidd]

I just had a PC built last week. I was told I could run FFXIV on max setting with this spec no prob and I tried and it struggles to hit 60FPS in empty area's and in towns drops to 20-30 FPS. Here is the spec:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
CPU Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper TX3
Motherboard: Asus M4A87TD USB3
Memory: 8.0GB Corsair DDR3 1600mhz XMS3 CL9
Hard Drives: Corsair 60GB Force SSD
Second hard drive: 2TB S-ATAII 3.0Gb/s
Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA Lightscribe
Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 6970 2GB
Sound card: Onboard 7.1 Audio Included
Case: Zalman Z9 Plus
PSU: 650W Corsair TX Ultra-Quiet

The only things installed on it atm is Windows 7 and FFXIV on the SSD, a friend came and overclocked it a few days ago and it made a slight difference. I have knocked some setting back down now to keep it running at a constant 60FPS but I was still very suprised I couldn't max it. I told the guys who built it and they were also shocked and offered to take a look at it because they thought there must be something wrong with the PC they built. They checked it over and everything was fine so they wanted to see it running FFXIV and they still couldn't understand why it couldn't run at 60FPS on max, they then said the game must have crappy optimisation and thought it was still in beta lol

[Kaedan]

I just had a PC built last week. I was told I could run FFXIV on max setting with this spec no prob and I tried and it struggles to hit 60FPS in empty area's and in towns drops to 20-30 FPS. Here is the spec:

Well, seeing as the average human eye won't notice a significant difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS... there shouldn't be a problem. This isn't a Fighting game or a Shooter.

That being said, it could probably be optimized a bit better. But they're probably waiting until they've fixed other things before working on that.

[Shipp]

Well, seeing as the average human eye won't notice a significant difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS... there shouldn't be a problem. This isn't a Fighting game or a Shooter.

That being said, it could probably be optimized a bit better. But they're probably waiting until they've fixed other things before working on that.

I really wish this old 30->60 FPS jump misinfo would die.

It's VERY easy to tell the difference between 30fps and 60 fps. I can tell when WoW dips below 60 easily, even if it's only to the 40's. 60+ starts getting harder to tell, but you usually can still tell until about 75-90.

Play a game at 60fps and then go log into XI which is capped at 29.9 (or somewhere around there). It is VERY noticeable. It's the difference of playing in the open field at 50+ FPS in XIV and then walking into a city.

[Rydin]

I really wish this old 30->60 FPS jump misinfo would die.

It's VERY easy to tell the difference between 30fps and 60 fps. I can tell when WoW dips below 60 easily, even if it's only to the 40's. 60+ starts getting harder to tell, but you usually can still tell until about 75-90.

Play a game at 60fps and then go log into XI which is capped at 29.9 (or somewhere around there). It is VERY noticeable. It's the difference of playing in the open field at 50+ FPS in XIV and then walking into a city.

Whole thing depends....
First, there is a difference between average frame rate and max frame rate......
avg 30 frames is playable for the most part while max 30 frames starts to be unplayable...
Also, have you done any double blind tests (that's funny) for frame rates?
I am a songwriter/producer...

Once there was this audio engineer.... One of the best in the industry.....
He was mixing a song form a major artist. He applied EQ to a guitar and started cutting mids and boosting the highs until it started to sit better and sound better in the mix.... until his assistant informed him that the EQ he was adjusting was actually on a track that was muted, so nothing was changing at all

My point is, when the mind knows something has been changed... the mind sees changes, even when there are none at all...
I don't think you could pick out the difference between 50-60 FPS and 70-80fps.... at least not with consistency....
My guess is, over a bunch of tests... you'd be 50% correct.... because they'd be just guesses...
Unless you're getting screen tearing from a 60Hz monitor and no triple buffering
99.9% of screens only refresh 60 times a second anyway

[DAOWAce]

Whole thing depends....
Also, have you done any double blind tests (that's funny) for frame rates?

I don't think you could pick out the difference between 50-60 FPS and 70-80fps.... at least not with consistency....
My guess is, over a bunch of tests... you'd be 50% correct.... because they'd be just guesses...
Unless you're getting screen tearing from a 60Hz monitor and no triple buffering
99.9% of screens only refresh 60 times a second anyway

Even on my 2004 LCD I can tell the difference between 45 and 60 FPS without having an FPS counter up. Above 60 FPS and it's pretty much impossible, on 60Hz LCDs at least.

If I hook up my CRT and throw it at 100Hz I could probably see differences between 60-80 FPS, but I may need a counter for that, who knows.

For games, I haven't even played SW:The Force Unleashed because it's locked to 30 FPS and the game is so incredibly sluggish it really irritates me.

As for FFXI, I was set on going back due to nostalgia since I finally re-purchased the game with all the expansions; I was just waiting for the time to do so.. until I remembered it's locked to 30 FPS (and the servers were still in Japan), so that killed my will to go back.

I cannot play a game below 45 FPS, I just can't. (although saying that, I played Crysis on an AGP system with an average framerate of 25. Crysis was good at masking problems with low framerates.)

[Lamhirh]

the point is not minimum requirements, but fact that most of game code seems to be lousy and badly optimised. Its easy to put some bad code and slap high mninimum requirements. Art is to put some effort, and optimise code, and reduce them. I can put on 4 eve clients, and it puts only a fraction of heat generated by FFXIV in the start menu. And that is a problem. Advancements in computers are encouraging lousy programming those days, noone really cares about saving some cpu/gpu cycles, or some kbytes or RAM, as they asume everyone have plenty of them, however with complication of todays game, those small 'imperfections' add up, creating a high strain in effect. Than game gets rushed up by marketing, and effect we see. for next 4 years, they will be slooooowly reworking and reoptimasing code, probably both in client and servers.

[Elkwood]

the point is not minimum requirements, but fact that most of game code seems to be lousy and badly optimised. Its easy to put some bad code and slap high mninimum requirements. Art is to put some effort, and optimise code, and reduce them. I can put on 4 eve clients, and it puts only a fraction of heat generated by FFXIV in the start menu. And that is a problem. Advancements in computers are encouraging lousy programming those days, noone really cares about saving some cpu/gpu cycles, or some kbytes or RAM, as they asume everyone have plenty of them, however with complication of todays game, those small 'imperfections' add up, creating a high strain in effect. Than game gets rushed up by marketing, and effect we see. for next 4 years, they will be slooooowly reworking and reoptimasing code, probably both in client and servers.

The problem is this game does not need to be slowly reworked it needs to be done by June, Summer here in the US especially a summer like we had last year with a vast majority of it in the High 80's to Low/Mid 90's where I live will be murder on my system. I mean Hell my wife made a comment about how cold the rest of the house is compared to my office right now, and I have only had XIV running today on my PC, this game is so Bad I can heat a 12x12 room to comfort in the winter time just playing XIV...

Now I am no expert on PC code but to me that's a red flag... I am sorry the answer to our problems should not be Drop more Cash into your PC and water cool it to resolve these issues. Right now between the hours of 11am EST and 8pm EST I will not be able to play XIV due to heat issues unless I run my AC 24/7 this summer which i am sorry i should not have to do because SE does not know how to code a game.

Now this was a HUGE issue in Beta and was discussed heavily on those forums with complete and total ignoring by SE, but this will fly no more. Devs have access to see these forums and Devs need to see that this is an issue. I mean hell i would settle for them acknowledging this as an issue, and an explanation that they are going to work on it. But if they continue to ignore this and release the PS3 version I probably just wont be playing this game, which blows cause then ill have to do more around the house, and at that point I will guess my $13.00 wont be good enough for SE.

[MonsieurVerde]

The problem is this game does not need to be slowly reworked it needs to be done by June, Summer here in the US especially a summer like we had last year with a vast majority of it in the High 80's to Low/Mid 90's where I live will be murder on my system. I mean Hell my wife made a comment about how cold the rest of the house is compared to my office right now, and I have only had XIV running today on my PC, this game is so Bad I can heat a 12x12 room to comfort in the winter time just playing XIV...

Now I am no expert on PC code but to me that's a red flag... I am sorry the answer to our problems should not be Drop more Cash into your PC and water cool it to resolve these issues. Right now between the hours of 11am EST and 8pm EST I will not be able to play XIV due to heat issues unless I run my AC 24/7 this summer which i am sorry i should not have to do because SE does not know how to code a game.

Err...how is it their fault that you CHOOSE to run your AC? O_o You can easilly tone down your OC and Graphics card and play with closer to defautl settings if you are so concerned about heat.