[Dev] Overtaxation of PC Hardware

[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.

[MonsieurVerde]

I'm using a 4870, 1080p @ 8xAA, getting around 25-30 FPS most of the time which is fine for me.

The problem isn't the framerate for me or even the heat of the CPU/GPU its the fact it doesn't utilize what I'm running it on, I heard FF14 is heavily bottlenecked by CPU issues though, so maybe SE need to look into optimsing their multithread compiler a bit better.

Any game can cause issues like that, techncially. What CPU and speed do you have running?

[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

[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.

[MaxWinter]

Im no pc expert when it come to these issues but my system does make more noise when running ff14 compared to any other game and its a quad core.

Saying this ff11 ran alot worse on my last pc then upgraded it ran super well so whatever is in the game is pushing the curent system.

[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.

[Elkwood]

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.

Because I don't have my System OC, these temperatures are default temps on an Air cooled system. I have no options but to do that if I want to play this summer, and I am sorry that is unacceptable, Stop defending SE for a poorly coded client when 30 ppl have told you this is an issue.

[AlexiaKidd]

I agree as pretty as the game is it should not eat up so much of my system. There are games that are a lot better graphically and have much better physics and they don't need this much stuff to run in full.

[Cairdeas]

LOLFLORIDA 110 degree summer estimated this year.


My house never changes from 69F >.> Industrial AC for the win.