[Dev] Overtaxation of PC Hardware

[Elkwood]

Ati is perfectly fine, I've had more issues with Nvidia than I did with Ati/Amd -- the only reason developers still deal with Nvidia is because they're very quick to sponsor and supply newest hardware.

Also you don't have different preferences, your line of thinking comes to:

"Ati drivers sucks, Nvidia ftw."

If you had something like "I prefer Nvidia because their drivers in my opinion are better designed" then it would be talking about preference -- a lot of 3D modelers prefer ATI over Nvidia lately as well.

This thread isn't about it, but saying Ati sucks basically you knew would start a "debate".

It is my opinion but fine since you want my exact reasoning I saw many different revisions when playing FFXI because ATI refused to include drivers for 2 years until 173.18 that ran the game fine. Meanwhile people who were running Nvidia based cards with near identical specs had almost no issues with the game. I had a ATI and Nvidia card for many years and watched how it performed compared to its counterpart. It was my choice to move away from ATI at the time and I stand by it. Sure if I go with ATI for the money I can get a much beefier card compared to what I get nowadays with Nvidia, however I just prefer Nvidia and based on my experience with how they programmed drivers to run with FFXI completely ignoring how the game was designed and I stand by my decision.

It was not nor ever was my intention to turn this into an Nvidia/ATI debate, I fully believe that both cards to date are manufactured fine and that it is FFXIV that is currently the issue with things not the cards atmo. My opinion may change once SE actually sits down and optimizes the game to utilize the individual pieces of hardware as it should be designed for.

I stated my opinion and obviously it is being taken out of context. I did not post it because I knew it would start a "Debate" I posted it because that is what I believe.

[Tiraelina]

Then, be a dear and explain why ArmA II, which is data-intensive and set to maximum graphics settings, runs my CPU and GPU at 50% load and runs great, while FFXIV runs my GPU at 99% load and causes my video card to reach borderline overheating temperatures unless I set the fan manually to full speed. Both of these games are DirectX 9 games.

It is obvious here that the client was not fully optimized for the PC platform, and is causing these performance issues.

You're trying to make a straw-man argument with insufficient cooling and poorly-built graphics cards as an excuse. Programmers know that even the best hardware can be destroyed by poorly written software. When a game is "actually" using the CPU/GPU, it may be functional, but there's a marked difference between "using the CPU/GPU efficiently" and "using the CPU/GPU like a retard".

Edit: My point will be proven when Guild Wars 2 comes out and uses my Radeon 5870's GPU workload up to only 75%.

No it really is only poorly built GPU's that burn out, that or you are trying to stress test with FurMark. Everything ranging from VSync to having AA/AF on is going to change it, CPU/GPU interaction being a bottleneck will also change it.

All you are doing is making a big fuss over nothing, my old 4850's ran at 95-100c all the time under load and are still working after several years. Want to guess the thermal limit before the hardware failure? ~120c. 5870 will throttle itself back if it even gets near the danger zone of 100-105c which it won't do unless you have a very bad cooling arrangement/overclocking/FurMark.

Witcher 2 is DX9 and uses 99% of my own 5870, that doesn't mean its lifespan is getting shortened. It's working as designed

[Elkwood]

No it really is only poorly built GPU's that burn out, that or you are trying to stress test with FurMark. Everything ranging from VSync to having AA/AF on is going to change it, CPU/GPU interaction being a bottleneck will also change it.

All you are doing is making a big fuss over nothing, my old 4850's ran at 95-100c all the time under load and are still working after several years. Want to guess the thermal limit before the hardware failure? ~120c. 5870 will throttle itself back if it even gets near the danger zone of 100-105c which it won't do unless you have a very bad cooling arrangement/overclocking/FurMark.

Witcher 2 is DX9 and uses 99% of my own 5870, that doesn't mean its lifespan is getting shortened. It's working as designed

Except SE has come out and said that the game is not running on our PCs right because it is not optimized and that's why there heating up, I guess what part of them admitting the game is potentially doing damage was not understood?

[Tiraelina]

Except being optimized or not has nothing to do with heat, if anything it will run hotter because its doing more faster. Is there anyone that isn't talking from their own thought up facts? The game was and will never be doing damage unless its your own/manufacturers fault due to cooling failure, if someone neglects maintainence that long their card will burn or start shutting down when it gets that far.

This is like complaining that a video encode is using too much CPU.

[kukurumei]

Except being optimized or not has nothing to do with heat, if anything it will run hotter because its doing more faster. Is there anyone that isn't talking from their own thought up facts? The game was and will never be doing damage unless its your own/manufacturers fault due to cooling failure, if someone neglects maintainence that long their card will burn or start shutting down when it gets that far.

This is like complaining that a video encode is using too much CPU.

Untrue, Programing take a large part of what can happen. While the hardware itself is stress tested and drivers that have safe guards, it does not stop the fact that an unruly program(s) can spike it so badly it shortens the lifespan of the hardware and potentially harm it.

When you consider that gaming PCs are not like Macs or very rigorous R&D manufactures like Sony that does massive design analysis on their products, what you are left with is a patchwork of components that may or may not work well together in the worse occasions.

If FF14 is making the worse occasions constant, it's a very very bad program. If it has code that specifically bypasses safeguards(that's basically what OCing software does)... all heck can go to.

Again it's down to bad programing if such things are happening. Like an amateur that programs a text editor to uses up all system resources until the system locks up and BSOD.

I do not want a high class warranty insure workstation to play FF14. Especially when it's not even that great. Trying to put it on the same level as video encoding situation is ludicrous, because even video encoding doesn't it as bad as FF14.

[Tiraelina]

Yes and programs have to designed specificly to do that like FurMark for GPU's and in the case of CPU's a program that resides entirely in the L1/L2 cache (can't remember name) going full bore. Both are not anything that's going to happen in a game environment where the CPU and GPU threads can't run seperately. AMD has specificly stated they don't recommend anyone running FurMark on the 5800 series because it will kick in its safeguards.

In the case of this thread its being overly paranoid about normal operating temperatures and acting like something being used at 99% is "damaging" it. This a completely normal scenario where both are doing what they should be. The last time a game burned out video cards was SC2 on the Battle.net menus that were running off the GPU without a limit because the CPU didn't have to do any of the work, the only damage that was dealt was... the cards that were sold with inadequate cooling! That isn't a software problem.

[polyhedral]

I'm running an AMD 955 P2 x4 gtx460 @ 1600x900 and it runs like doo doo balls.

I'd stay signed in longer, and even sign in more, if my PC wasn't turned into a room heater/pretty screensaver.

Unoptimized is an understatement. I doubt they fix it. I keep thinking of how FFXI was @30fps,

meh

I truly want to be a fanboy of this game. That's the only freaking reason I'm posting. I do care, but man, how long do people really need to wait, ya know? 2 years???

I won't be heating my room tonight. I think I'll play Silent Hill Homecoming instead (and if you can't see the joke, the joke it on you perhaps)
derp da herp

[Ilean]

Some of you mix up stuff.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a GPU and/or CPU at 100% and its resulting high temp., the problem is we get crappy framerates in return.

If temp is your main concern keep reading. If not, I agree with you that SE needs to optimize the damn engine and offer more performance settings.

If you are experiencing lockups or a near meltdown due to high GPU/CPU temps, either it's a defective or low quality product, fans are failing, clogged heatsinks (even a thin layer of dust greatly reduces heat dissipation) or...

Do the case test, if GPU/CPU temps under similar load drop 10C or more when you leave your case open then you should focus on fixing that, there are lots of info on it online.

If you can't fix it and it's reasonable safe, leave your case open and air dust it (at least your heatsinks) once a week. Unless you have children around it or like to eat on top of it, your hardware will last more being exposed to some extra dust than to high temperatures.

[Elkwood]

Ilean if that was the issue I would gladly agree with you. This game is a massive resource hog and does run everyone's systems VERY hot. My case is VERY clean, and VERY open, with massive airflow being pulled through the entire case and properly vented out the top with 3x 120mm fans. [Corsair 800D Link] As you can see from my Case I have plenty of airflow and space with nothing impeding airflow. All my wiring is run behind the back of the case so all you see is the board and components. Temperatures inside a case will vary with weather, it is summertime and the average temp outside is going to be 85F naturally those temps that were 70C inside a case will now raise as well.

As I stated in my initial post having dual monitors I have watched how 2 games released withing a similar period Starcraft II and FFXIV access my hardware. Starcraft II does not heat my system up the way FFXIV does, it is properly optimized. FFXIV runs a good 20C hotter then most games I play, SE needs to work on this to reduce the load the game is putting on our systems.

With Nvidia i am lucky I can actually move some of my physX processing off my video card and over to unused cores on my CPU, do a few more tweaks and get some better performance but that is only a band aid on the issues. The game is not optimized for a PC, the video cards and CPU's that most of us ran out and bought because of Beta are several times more powerful then the stuff inside of a PS3, this game should be running flawless on ANY 6 core processor and 400GTX series card/ATI 5000X series card yet it does not.

This is bad programming any way you look at it. The game needs to have a client developed for PC not for PS3 then ported to PC or whatever people are saying that they do. I am not a computer programmer, I am however a licensed and certified Hardware Tech, and I can tell you with the utmost certainty this is the only game that accesses the hardware in this fashion.

[SAMINUS]

Ya... don't try and run this game with Windows Vista lol, Vista in itself is a memory hog. go with Win 7.