HELP!! Horrible fps; amd 7970; benchmarked 8500+

[Studybreak]

It's a 3.2 o/c to 3.8, worked great in the past no problems so I'm hoping it's just old paste that I'm about to replace. It's a watercooled system, never really tinkered w/ it. Card temp is perfect, never over 50deg or so even o/c to 1100/1600. It's only in town it drops to 7-8fps, out an about it's 20-30, but still not that fun compared to playing other MMOs in the past. I have to say I haven't played a good MMO in a few months, mainly COD/BF3, but no fps probs there.

Anyway, about to pop the hood and get this new paste in there. Hope it works, will post an update.

[Studybreak]

Well let's see if that did the trick. Old paste was dry and caked, got it off w/ some alcohol and applied a hopefully sufficient coat of new paste. Cores now running in the 60-70s during benchmarking, ran beautifully, let's see if I can get past 1017 and try it out in-game.

Updated benchmark:
--------------------------------
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Character Creation)
Tested on:9/2/2013 7:24:09 PM
Score:11864
Average Framerate:105.227
Performance:Extremely High
-Easily capable of running the game on the highest settings.

Screen Size: 1920x1080
Screen Mode: Full Screen
Graphics Presets: Maximum
General
-Enable HDR rendering and improve overall graphic quality. : Enabled
-Disable rendering of objects when not visible. (Occlusion Culling) : Disabled
-Use low-detail models on distant objects. (LOD) : Disabled
-Cache LOD data only when necessary. (LOD Streaming) : Disabled
-Real-time Reflections : High
-Edge Smoothing (Anti-aliasing) : FXAA
-Transparent Lighting Quality : High
-Grass Quality : High
Shadows
-Self : Display
-Other NPCs : Display
Shadow Quality
-Use low-detail models on shadows. (LOD) : Disabled
-Shadow Resolution : High - 2048p
-Shadow Cascading : Best
-Shadow Softening : Strong
Texture Detail
-Texture Filtering : Anisotropic
-Anisotropic Filtering : x16
Movement Physics
-Self : Full
-Other NPCs : Full
Effects
-Naturally darken the edges of the screen. (Limb Darkening) : Enabled
-Blur the graphics around an object in motion. (Radial Blur) : Enabled
-Screen Space Ambient Occlusion : Strong
-Glare : Normal
Cinematic Cutscenes
-Enable depth of field. : Enabled

System:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130708-1532)
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
12279.113MB
AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series(VRAM 4095 MB) 8.17.0010.1236

Benchmark results do not provide any guarantee FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn will run on your system.

FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Website http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com
(C) 2010-2013 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved.

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http://sqex.to/ffxiv_bench_na #FFXIV Score:11864 1920x1080 Maximum Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series

[TouchandFeel]

Good luck, hopefully that works for you.
If not two other things to check out.
- First, turn off Crossfire. I've seen a number of threads dealing with bad performance that was linked to people trying to use SLI and Crossfire and it causing problems.
- Second, make sure that FF14 is set to use your actual graphics cards and that it is not defaulting to your built-in graphics processor (example Intel-HD). Trying to run a game on that can also cause CPU overheating.

[Studybreak]

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Thanks everyone, especially Beliel, turns out it was my CPU overheating. Replaced the thermal paste, then noticed one of the fans mounted to the water cooler radiator was broken, so replaced that. Turned down my overclocking a bit too, to 3.5GHz. Ran IntelBurnTest and temps now down to 75deg on high load, pretty happy with that. In game, everything perfectly smooth everywhere at 60fps limited, even in town looking at the aetherite crystals. Tmax on my CPU now after playing for an hour was just 65deg, max temp on my GPU 64deg.

Reran the benchmark too and guess what, even turning down my CPU overclocking a bit, still getting over 11,500 on max settings at 1920x1080.

Lessons learned:
1. Even if your CPU isn't working at 100% on the task manager, still should check core temps!
2. Thermal paste needs to be replaced!
3. Check your whole cooling system - had to make two trips to radio shack to get paste and then a new fan
4. AMD 7970 is an amazing card!! Overclocked to 1100/1600, run stable and cool, 60fps everywhere including in town now.
5. AMD Catalyst 13.8 beta2 drivers work and looks to have fixed the crossfire problem. Running my dual-GPU 7970 in fullscreen mode with max settings and great fps.

Thanks again everyone for all your help, game looks beautiful and hopefully they'll fix this damn 1017 error w/ the next maint.

Best,
Study

[Beliel]

No problem, glad i could help.