Graphics Card Trouble, Need Insight!

[PEANUT]

I am a little bummed out. I was previously playing FFXIV 1.0 and ARR Beta's on a AMD Radeon HD 5770. At max I was getting about 27-30fps in crowded areas and around 40fps in non crowded areas(instanced).

I looked at a few benchmarks on different sites comparing my old 5770 to the newer 7850 that I wanted to buy and the 7850 did twice and a little over twice the performance of the 5770. I bought the card(along with a new PSU 600watt), installed it and ran the benchmark and even got twice the score on max settings than I got using the 5770.

Playing the game officially now on the new 7850 card, it is running super quiet(my other one roared like a lion lol) and I get around 60fps in instanced areas which is good but in crowded areas, I seem to be getting 27-30fps again I updated my drivers to most recent and I am now wondering if my card is not using it's full potential or if there is something I am missing?

If anyone could please give me some insight or advice on what I can do to increase playability performance I would greatly appreciate it, thank you!

[Zenaku]

I have a 660GTX Asus OC and i get 20-40fps in crowded areas and over 60fps in non-crowded. I think the FPS drop in crowded have to do with CPU and not GPU. So ya sadly there noting you can do about that too people stop playing.

[PEANUT]

I have a 660GTX Asus OC and i get 20-40fps in crowded areas and over 60fps in non-crowded. I think the FPS drop in crowded have to do with CPU and not GPU. So ya sadly there noting you can do about that too people stop playing.

By CPU do you mean my Intel Core i7 processor?

[Asmodeus]

By CPU do you mean my Intel Core i7 processor?

Yes which one is it, btw just because it is an i7 doesn't mean it will be better, than a i5 for example, for gaming btw rather what generation it is will be more important.

[PEANUT]

Yes which one is it, btw just because it is an i7 doesn't mean it will be better, than a i5 for example, for gaming btw rather what generation it is will be more important.

It is an Intel Core i7 870 2.93 GHz, also I have 8gb of ram and over 500gb of hard drive space. Also my computer before I replaced my PSU and GPU is about 2.5 years old.

[Tam3n]

I have a 7850 crossfire, and i7 3820 @ 4,46 GHz... It's running pretty smooth, mostly 60 fps. Sometimes my fps dips randomly down to ~45 fps. That's usually in crowded areas, although other times it stays at 60 fps even if there's a ton of ppl. I haven't yet done much test with crossfire vs. single card performance to see whether it's GPU or CPU bottleneck. Future drivers probably improve performance a little.

One thing that can nicely boost fps (if it's your gpu) in crowded areas is to disable "other NPCs" shadowing, though that'll sacrifice the visuals a bit.

*Also if your fsp dips in random places even if there's not much other characters visible, try enabling occlusion culling.

[PostalTwinkie]

A couple of things to note;

First, the Benchmark they released is FAR from accurate, the performance seen in it is nothing like what you will see in the actual game. So ignore what it is saying completely!

This game seems pretty CPU heavy, and tends to scale well with higher clocked and higher end CPUs. Obviously GPU does impact performance, but if you are sitting at a system with a pretty high end GPU and a moderate CPU, you will see more gain by dropping in a higher end CPU than making an incremental upgrade on the GPU.

Crossfire performance in this game is currently garbage; even after pretty much every attempt to resolve it the scaling isn't that great and micro-stuttering is still an issue. Using the 13.4 or 13.6 drivers, with the SWTOR profile to using the latest 13.8 beta v2 drivers with ULPS disabled, it doesn't matter. Load across GPUs isn't well balanced, and as just mentioned, micro-stuttering. Even in the best case scenario, scaling with Crossfire in game is weak, although amazing in the Benchmark.

Quick specs of my system:
i5 2500K @ 4.6Ghz
8GB RAM @ 1866Mhz
2 x 7970 @ 1200Mhz.
FFXIV installed on a SSD.
2560x1440 S-IPS @ 120Hz

OP; What I am getting at is due to optimization, the best thing would be to scale down as many settings as you can. Turn off visual effects on non-party members, turn off SSAO, turn down shadows, etc etc.

[rentonor]

i got I7 920 quite old but still great chip that beats any new I5 if over clocked a little. Getting 12500 score in benchmark on max with MSI gtx770 lightning and steady 60+ fps in game

[Bardo_kcire]

They update something on the new catalyst beta drive, u should check it out

[PostalTwinkie]

They update something on the new catalyst beta drive, u should check it out

Yes, the new beta driver 13.8 v2 had a change relating to this game; although it was primarily targeted towards Crossfire. I have gotten reports that it did help single card situations though, so it is worth a shot.