FFXI (Laptop) Performance

[The Stig]

Currently I run the game on a P4 3.0ghz (with HyperThreading) with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 (128mb) with 512mb of RAM. The laptop is 3 years and 4 months old now.

Now I'm looking to replace my laptop already, but I'm wondering if anyone has the current generation laptops, how is the performace for FFXI like? 2 years ago when my laptop wasn't as old, performance on FFXI was OK and not much to complain about, but recently I've noticed performance gradually decreasing, which I'm not really surprised about. (Fan failure, dust/heat, not been (touchwood) reformatted for a while)

One thing to note is that my FPS drops to like 6-10 if I say, roam into an area with 2 odd parties. Another thing is that some areas, the FPS is just poor regardless, most noticably in the Prom-Areas. However, I am aware that this is also related to heat, as due to the fan failing on the graphics card the laptop has been considerably hotter than it ever was. (If I turn laptop on then log straight into game, it's not as laggy as it will get 1 hour later)

I'm somewhat satisfied and happy with my current performance anyway however, the CPU usage when FFXI is running is always at 90%+ tops, which of course, slows down everything else like web browsing, MSN chatting and the such (basically most if not all applications slow down while FFXI is running, but I've trimmed my running processes to 13 on startup so there is only ever like 20 max processes running at peak).

I'm wondering if anyone uses the Dual Core processors (Core Duo/Core 2 Duo/AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile) will help performance? I am aware that 512mb RAM doesn't cut it nowadays and 1GB should be the minimum, but however I was wondering if anyone has any experience with the new processors. I.e. Is it possible to watch a DVD while the game is running? (DVD can be replaced with maybe like a DivX Video on Winamp for example, but I chose DVD because it's processor intensive, sort of). I heard that these new CPUs are pretty top notch for performance, but I've always wondered what it's truely like.

I ask this because I've heard from people who get little to no "graphical" (frame) lag while in Dynamis and other intensive CPU related events such as Besieged, so everything appears nice and smooth. I understand that my RAM is a bit low that's why I would encounter such lag so easily, but also because of the heat, however, I would like to hear from anyone with their setups (laptop wise) to see how they get on.

Thanks! :wink:

EDIT: Bleh, topic title didn't fit >_<

[Keno]

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=36

[Tekki]

I have a Dell XPS m1710. The only thing this puppy cant seem to do is record with fraps. Other then that, FFXI looks kick ass in its 1900x1200 glory. My suggestion, and what I did, is to go to notebookforum.com and look around. I found excatly what I was looking for there and was unsure of what to get.

Some random pics from when I got the laptop: http://theblackroses-ls.com/tekki/Tekki ... PC%20pics/ (http://theblackroses-ls.com/tekki/Tekki/New%20PC%20pics/)

[Popsiclestick]

The real performance killers in FFXI are draw distance, shadows, weather effects.... Have you tried reducing those to get better FPS?

[The Stig]

The real performance killers in FFXI are draw distance, shadows, weather effects.... Have you tried reducing those to get better FPS?

Popsiclestick: Yes they're all turned off. I forgot to mention that. Apologies.

Tekki: Yes I had the XPS m1710 in mind, as well as the XPS m2010. (Yes that 20incher). I've looked/researched around extensively already and am a member of notebookforum.com already (3 years 4 months ago), where I posted pictures of my laptop (Alienware =p), because everyone else was doing it. What do you mean you can't record from FRAPs? Because on my current laptop, I technically cannot record from FRAPs either, the sound/video goes out of sync, so I marked it off as an error :o

Keno: Sorry I posted in the wrong forum. I had originally assumed this to be a FFXI discussion as I am technically not having any(major) problems running FFXI. If a mod wishes to move this, please do so.

[leviathanertai]

I personally have a Dell Inspiron E1505 (I didn't want to drop the extra 500 on an XPS) and the performance seems quite good.

Specs are:

Core Duo 1.66 ghz
1gb memory
ATI Mobility Radeon x1400 (256MB)

And I never really run into almost any issues that many of my fellow LS members do with lag on their PCs. Heres some screenshots to see the quality (also I do enjoy playing in widescreen). The FPS rarely drops below 27 except in Dynamis and Whitegate which both drop it to about 20ish.

http://kriskrosswillmakeyoujumpjump.com/images/ffxi/img_0036.png
http://kriskrosswillmakeyoujumpjump.com/images/ffxi/img_0107.png

These are quite large as that is literally just taken just from the Windower Screen Shot and was not resized. My quality could definitely be higher, but I have some things turned down slightly and I notice absolutely no problem with running other applications at the same time as FFXI (generally its just AIM, MSN Messenger and Firefox, but occasionally Outlook which definitely does make a slight difference) Also, please ignore my horrendous attempts at dat modding :oops:

The main thing to keep in mind about my laptop is that it also cost under $1000 (I think with shipping the total was 975ish) and I've been super-happy with it since I purchased it (May 2006)

[Vertabreaker]

Speaking of FPS, what's considered good/average/bad?

[Kimiko]

This should be moved over to Technical Support.

[safer]

not too offtopic, but leviathanertai, how well does the ATI x1400 perform?
i know that ffxi isnt the most graphics intensive game, and uses the CPU more than the gfx card, but im asking cause im looking to purchase a laptop sometime really soon, and my options are the x1400 and nvidia 7900 GS... thing is its a $310(CAD) price difference, and just wanted to know for general gaming purposes, if the x1400 is obsolete by todays standards, and i should jus fork over the money for the nvidia card, or if i can get away with it without kicking myself a couple months down the line...

D;

[Feielle]

Speaking of FPS, what's considered good/average/bad?

FFXI caps out at 30 fps. I'm pretty sure you can't do anything about that.

FRAPS will show your FPS in a screen corner if you're interested. I usually run 30 in no-man's-land (Tav. Safehold) 20-25 in Whitegate or XP, and somewhere between 15-20 in Dynamis.

I'm also using a 4-year old Radeon 9600XTPro, 2.4G Athalon (sp?), and 2G of RAM.

[Vertabreaker]

Speaking of FPS, what's considered good/average/bad?

FFXI caps out at 30 fps. I'm pretty sure you can't do anything about that.

FRAPS will show your FPS in a screen corner if you're interested. I usually run 30 in no-man's-land (Tav. Safehold) 20-25 in Whitegate or XP, and somewhere between 15-20 in Dynamis.

I'm also using a 4-year old Radeon 9600XTPro, 2.4G Athalon (sp?), and 2G of RAM.

Cool, thanks for the reply. Mine hasn't dropped below 28 even during dynamis, but it's usually at 29.something and I was wondering why it never went above 30.

[leviathanertai]

I really can't answer how well the x1400 works for anything but FFXI as I don't really play other PC games. As far as FFXI goes, though, it seems to do a pretty decent job. Its definitely noticable that it isn't top of the line, but I've definitely used much much worse.

[The Stig]

This should be moved over to Technical Support.

Yes I'm sorry. I will try to PM a mod to see if it can be moved. I assumed it to be "FFXI Discussion" rather than technical so I thought this might be the best place to put it. Admittidly, I did fail to see that forum in the first place. Sorry.

leviathanertai: Seeing those specs, do you get much gameplay lag at all? I mean literally, if I'm on MSN at the same time, and a new conversation window opens, my laptop will "lag up" and my FFXI screen lags a bit until the new conversation window is open (which is normally some wanker saying "Hello" to me to which the conversation dies in 5 minutes anyway). By gameplay lag, I mean if the screen has about 20 odd players in it in general, does it start running very choppy? Even just in Bastok after a while of playing my FPS won't hit over 10, unless I'm "alone" in an area. Looking at your stats, I don't do Dynamis, but I drop to 4-7ish if my game runs into a Dynamis Crew in the cities. Do you have your effects turned on? (Weather mainly)

Safer: NVidia 7900 GS if possible, this will future proof you a lot. It's a massive gap (terms of benchmarks) between the X1400 and the 7900 GS. But if all you intend to do is play FFXI, then X1400 should be clearly sufficient. Just get plenty of ram at least, so if you do choose to play current generation cames you won't suffer that much.

[Sigi]

Frankly, FFXI is more processor reliant... get as fast as you can. The Core Duo in my 1505 (lol, replaced the 8500 that literally melted down) performs decently, but the 3gig P4 outperforms. The 1505 has better ram (1GB v 512), graphics card (x1350 v 9800), and hard drive. However, it performs slightly cludgier than the desktop. However, since I use the desktop main... and the laptop is my emergency spare... it's not a huge issue.

[kisada]

Speaking of FPS, what's considered good/average/bad?

FFXI caps out at 30 fps. I'm pretty sure you can't do anything about that.

FRAPS will show your FPS in a screen corner if you're interested. I usually run 30 in no-man's-land (Tav. Safehold) 20-25 in Whitegate or XP, and somewhere between 15-20 in Dynamis.

I'm also using a 4-year old Radeon 9600XTPro, 2.4G Athalon (sp?), and 2G of RAM.

Cool, thanks for the reply. Mine hasn't dropped below 28 even during dynamis, but it's usually at 29.something and I was wondering why it never went above 30.

From what i remember you posting, you have a pretty beastly computer, so maxed frames in dynamis is the exception. In your case you pretty much have what everyone wishes for, capped fps in high intensity areas.

On topic: As far as what processor to buy etc, grab a decent vid card, lots of ram, and the fastest single core processor you can get. Dual core doesn't do anything for the game, unfortunately.

[Vertabreaker]

Speaking of FPS, what's considered good/average/bad?

FFXI caps out at 30 fps. I'm pretty sure you can't do anything about that.

FRAPS will show your FPS in a screen corner if you're interested. I usually run 30 in no-man's-land (Tav. Safehold) 20-25 in Whitegate or XP, and somewhere between 15-20 in Dynamis.

I'm also using a 4-year old Radeon 9600XTPro, 2.4G Athalon (sp?), and 2G of RAM.

Cool, thanks for the reply. Mine hasn't dropped below 28 even during dynamis, but it's usually at 29.something and I was wondering why it never went above 30.

From what i remember you posting, you have a pretty beastly computer, so maxed frames in dynamis is the exception. In your case you pretty much have what everyone wishes for, capped fps in high intensity areas.

On topic: As far as what processor to buy etc, grab a decent vid card, lots of ram, and the fastest single core processor you can get. Dual core doesn't do anything for the game, unfortunately.

Yeah but the C2Ds are too nasty to pass up. That's the one regret I had with my recent system although I'm very pleased with my current system(ex: no lag in whitegate, dyanmis, etc and graphics are amazing no matter what game I play), but I should've gone C2D for the "bang for the buck". They simply cannot be beaten for how much they cost. Maybe the next system I build I'll finally build a C2D box and break free from AMD....unless AMD brings out a CPU that's better which I highly doubt will happen any time soon.

[The Stig]

On topic: As far as what processor to buy etc, grab a decent vid card, lots of ram, and the fastest single core processor you can get. Dual core doesn't do anything for the game, unfortunately.

Yeh I can do all of the above. I'm aware that the game cannot utilise the Dual Core technology, but I pretty much already have a "desktop" P4 processor fitted into my laptop. Not very good in terms of heat and batterylife of course, but I guess my Video Card/RAM/Heat doesn't do too good for my game anyway. What I mean is, my processor is damn fast, but my other bits (I was trying to shave off a little bit of the cost at the time) can't "keep up".

However, should I get a Core 2 Duo or one of AMD's top Dual Core techs, although the game would not utilise them, would I be able to "multi task" (I don't believe those adverts. On TV it says "Surf the web, listen to music, write e-mails, at the same time!!" I do all that with 1 core ...). By multi-tasking it would actually mean:

Play FFXI
Watch a DVD (i.e. Camping NM, rather than staring at my screen, stare somewhere else instead)
Run Emulators (SNES, GBA, N64, PS, Kawaks/Neo-Geo etc)
Web Activity: Flash Games, sites which require intensive processor usage, etc, MSN, Webcam/Talk, etc etc
Rip/Encode MP3s/Videos, video edit
Do assignments, i.e. run Word/Excel/Powerpoint Presentations

And so on, but it'll be playing FFXI in conjunction with 1 or more of the below. I do not mind a performance hit if it gets too intensive, especially with the ripping/encoding videos or MP3s, but in terms of real multi-tasking, is it up to that? Currently I cannot watch a DVD and play FFXI at the same time without the frame rate on both the DVD and FFXI being real choppy, which I can understand. But with all this hype with the technology of Dual Core, does it allow you to ride the processor that hard without much performance loss?

This time around I can afford a bit more, I've been working hard to save a bit of money and plan for 2GB Ram or up to 4GB Ram. Graphics aren't -that- important to me although I would go for something on the "top of the range" but on the "lower end" of it. Kinda like A- rather than A or A+.

I hope I'm somewhat clear, but I'm happy to explain more if needed. Thanks to everyone for sharing their specs and experience so far. :)

[Vertabreaker]

On topic: As far as what processor to buy etc, grab a decent vid card, lots of ram, and the fastest single core processor you can get. Dual core doesn't do anything for the game, unfortunately.

Yeh I can do all of the above. I'm aware that the game cannot utilise the Dual Core technology, but I pretty much already have a "desktop" P4 processor fitted into my laptop. Not very good in terms of heat and batterylife of course, but I guess my Video Card/RAM/Heat doesn't do too good for my game anyway. What I mean is, my processor is damn fast, but my other bits (I was trying to shave off a little bit of the cost at the time) can't "keep up".

However, should I get a Core 2 Duo or one of AMD's top Dual Core techs, although the game would not utilise them, would I be able to "multi task" (I don't believe those adverts. On TV it says "Surf the web, listen to music, write e-mails, at the same time!!" I do all that with 1 core ...). By multi-tasking it would actually mean:

Play FFXI
Watch a DVD (i.e. Camping NM, rather than staring at my screen, stare somewhere else instead)
Run Emulators (SNES, GBA, N64, PS, Kawaks/Neo-Geo etc)
Web Activity: Flash Games, sites which require intensive processor usage, etc, MSN, Webcam/Talk, etc etc
Rip/Encode MP3s/Videos, video edit
Do assignments, i.e. run Word/Excel/Powerpoint Presentations

And so on, but it'll be playing FFXI in conjunction with 1 or more of the below. I do not mind a performance hit if it gets too intensive, especially with the ripping/encoding videos or MP3s, but in terms of real multi-tasking, is it up to that? Currently I cannot watch a DVD and play FFXI at the same time without the frame rate on both the DVD and FFXI being real choppy, which I can understand. But with all this hype with the technology of Dual Core, does it allow you to ride the processor that hard without much performance loss?

This time around I can afford a bit more, I've been working hard to save a bit of money and plan for 2GB Ram or up to 4GB Ram. Graphics aren't -that- important to me although I would go for something on the "top of the range" but on the "lower end" of it. Kinda like A- rather than A or A+.

I hope I'm somewhat clear, but I'm happy to explain more if needed. Thanks to everyone for sharing their specs and experience so far. :)

I have a dual core system(AMD) and here's a SS of my rig with a small amount of what I usually have open. I normally have way more then this including fireworks/dreamweaver or adobe, 3ds max, etc.

http://www.uwf-ls.com/forums/index.php? ... post&id=68 (http://www.uwf-ls.com/forums/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=68)

Keep in mind the SS of FFXI was before my reg tweaks, looks better now :)

With the stuff open there, my system doesn't even break a sweat. Under "full" load the CPU and GPU temps don't go very high at all. And this is all with AMD...C2D would kill my PC.

I also use Dual monitors hence the split screen looking SS.

So the short answer to your original question is yes, Dual core will allow you to multi-task better then single core even though dual-core will not offer any advantages for FFXI directly.

[Tekki]

The real performance killers in FFXI are draw distance, shadows, weather effects.... Have you tried reducing those to get better FPS?

Popsiclestick: Yes they're all turned off. I forgot to mention that. Apologies.

Tekki: Yes I had the XPS m1710 in mind, as well as the XPS m2010. (Yes that 20incher). I've looked/researched around extensively already and am a member of notebookforum.com already (3 years 4 months ago), where I posted pictures of my laptop (Alienware =p), because everyone else was doing it. What do you mean you can't record from FRAPs? Because on my current laptop, I technically cannot record from FRAPs either, the sound/video goes out of sync, so I marked it off as an error :o

Keno: Sorry I posted in the wrong forum. I had originally assumed this to be a FFXI discussion as I am technically not having any(major) problems running FFXI. If a mod wishes to move this, please do so.

As soon as i hit record button on fraps the framerate goes to shit. I dont know why, and no one has ever given me a straight answer on how to fix it.
The m2010s are simply unrealistic. I have no clue why you would get it. The m1710 with a 17" widescreen is a beast enough and lugging it around can be a chore. Carrying around a 20inch monitor with a laptop attached too it is just much. Its not really practical imo.

[The Stig]

As soon as i hit record button on fraps the framerate goes to shit. I dont know why, and no one has ever given me a straight answer on how to fix it.
The m2010s are simply unrealistic. I have no clue why you would get it. The m1710 with a 17" widescreen is a beast enough and lugging it around can be a chore. Carrying around a 20inch monitor with a laptop attached too it is just much. Its not really practical imo.

Ah so it's an unknown reason at the moment. Ah well.

As for the m2010, true it's unrealistic, but I just feel like having something ... that "unique". I don't intend to lug it around often, if I really have to lug it around it will be often rare. But yes, it's not practical. But that would be something I would eventually buy.

As for the Dell XPS m1710, would you say that's "noisy"? By noisy, if you've ever owned a Dreamcast or a Generation 1 Playstation 2, is it as loud as that? (my current laptop is slightly louder than the 2 game consoles I specified).

Vertabreaker: Thank you for your info. What spec is your machine? Dual Screen setup would be a godsend, but I can cope with minimising my stuff if needed, but regardless, it appears you have a DVD running. So for comparison's sake, it would be handy to know your specs. That is the sort of thing I would want to be doing, but in a single screen. Judging from your screen on FFXI, you're getting near 30FPS on that, right? No choppiness or anything? Sky is occasionally a laggy area for me, maybe due to it being so ... big? Just a thought.

[Sigi]

If you have a laptop, you could go dual screen with an external LCD... might not have dvi out on the laptop however, but would definitely have VGA-out. (used to use my laptop as my dvd-player in my old apartment. Worked beautifully)


As far as noise, usually Dell laptops are pretty damn quiet, even when they are at full heat.