Video Card

[catmato]

How do you remove the 29.x fps cap?

Apparently Ashita comes with a plugin to uncap framerate. I wish I had known about this a long time ago. The game looks so much better at 60 fps.

FFEvo

Thanks for directing me to the right place.

[Ayn]

When my old vid card (Radeon 4850) died some time back, I upgraded to a 6850.

FFXI actually runs worse on it than the 4850, even with the recommended drivers (I upgraded to win7, since I actually couldn't run it with the current card/video drivers they recommended).

Sucks too: The 4850 ran the game very, very well.

[Subadai]

If you're dropping to 7 fps in some areas, then it's most likely due to the video card. The problem is probably a driver bug, or FFXI is using some ancient DX feature that some newer cards don't support well or merely emulate. Probably some sort of alpha blending, would be my guess. FFXI loves its translucent effects. I would suggest you find a video card that other people say works well for them, and get that or one in the same family/architecture. Also, Crossfire or SLI might cause problems, so disable it for FFXI in the vid card control panel. I have a GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which is a mediocre card at best but runs FFXI pretty seamlessly.

[catmato]

I suppose I should contribute after my slight derail.

I have a GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which is a mediocre card at best but runs FFXI pretty seamlessly.

My GTX560ti worked fine, only dropping below the cap around confluxes/avatars/porter moogles (anything with that stupid glow effect you can't disable).

In the past, I don't recall having any significant issues with my Radeon HD4350.

How's your processor? If you have a Quad Core, try setting processor affinity to a single core (like the 4th one) and set the process priority above normal.

[Kaisha]

EDIT: I belatedly realized that I concluded this post without a suggestion, so here it is: if you haven't already done so, you should purchase an SSD, and run FFXI off of that. It provides a significant and immediate improvement due to how FFXI locally loads information from its DATs. Beyond that, there's the usual recommendations: check your Windower enhancement settings; turn off weather and shadows; limit the amount of models on-screen, and so on.

I never saw any real difference in XI when I ran it off an SSD. Zone load times were the same, and the player models still appeared the a typical 2-per-second rate, which always felt like an imposed limitation since my PS2 has zero problems wrecking itself to display everything as fast as possible in comparison.

Granted I tend to keep effects filtered during ally content just so there's less screen spam.

[grevenilvec75]

How's your processor? If you have a Quad Core, try setting processor affinity to a single core (like the 4th one) and set the process priority above normal.

Didn't help. Tried every core and set priority to realtime. stayed ~14 fps near plasm guy.

[Kohan]

SSD is probably a non-option until I build a new computer.

Why is that? What is your motherboard? Are all of your slots full? It would enhance your computer experience overall if you installed your OS to it, too; even if you didn't notice a marked FFXI improvement, it would still be nice.

[catmato]

Didn't help. Tried every core and set priority to realtime. stayed ~14 fps near plasm guy.

Realtime didn't run very well for me, although I assume you tried Above Normal and High first.

[Heatsink]

About the uncapping: I wrote a small utility to do it the same day SE added the fishing fps-changing patch -- I really was that fed up with the fps cap! -- http://pignax.com/pub/ffxi60fps_v0.01.7z Over one year ago now, and it's still working fine.

Around transparent effects like confluxes, the video card's fillrate actually starts to matter. A GTS250 wouldn't quite cut it at 2x background resolution, but a GTX280 can hold 60fps with a conflux taking up the entire screen.

On the PC, model loading is throttled by the framerate, so they will load twice as fast when uncapping to 60fps.

For ATI cards, it seems that they have yet to do a 'miracle patch' like nvidia did with its v256 driver. With the ATI cards I have available, the oldest one I have (X800XT) works just as well as the newest (X1950XTX), and the older the driver the better -- You need to go back to the year 2004 for best driver performance! I did a test a long time ago: http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.htm...852733590&h=50.

In other words, Kohan knows what's true: neither ATI or Nvidia care about old games.

[catmato]

http://pignax.com/pub/ffxi60fps_v0.01.7z

This is the greatest thing ever. Thanks.

[grevenilvec75]

Realtime didn't run very well for me, although I assume you tried Above Normal and High first.

I didnt actualloy, but I will try that later. Doubt it is going to help though

Why is that? What is your motherboard? Are all of your slots full? It would enhance your computer experience overall if you installed your OS to it, too; even if you didn't notice a marked FFXI improvement, it would still be nice.

I COULD add one, but that would at minimum entail reinstalling ffxi, which I really dont want to do. I doubt faster load times will lead to an increased framerate anyway.

About the uncapping: I wrote a small utility to do it the same day SE added the fishing fps-changing patch -- I really was that fed up with the fps cap! -- http://pignax.com/pub/ffxi60fps_v0.01.7z Over one year ago now, and it's still working fine.

Around transparent effects like confluxes, the video card's fillrate actually starts to matter. A GTS250 wouldn't quite cut it at 2x background resolution, but a GTX280 can hold 60fps with a conflux taking up the entire screen.

On the PC, model loading is throttled by the framerate, so they will load twice as fast when uncapping to 60fps.

For ATI cards, it seems that they have yet to do a 'miracle patch' like nvidia did with its v256 driver. With the ATI cards I have available, the oldest one I have (X800XT) works just as well as the newest (X1950XTX), and the older the driver the better -- You need to go back to the year 2004 for best driver performance! I did a test a long time ago: http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.htm...852733590&h=50.

In other words, Kohan knows what's true: neither ATI or Nvidia care about old games.

Am I mistaken in thinking that uncapping your framerate makes you appear to fleehack or somesuch on other people's screens?

[cdgreg]

Thanks for directing me to the right place.

is FFevo opening for anyone?

[catmato]

Am I mistaken in thinking that uncapping your framerate makes you appear to fleehack or somesuch on other people's screens?

You are.

is FFevo opening for anyone?

Down for me too.

[Morari]

I thought our movement speed was based on frame rate or something like that? Wasn't there a few instances years ago where folks who'd overclocked their computers getting banned because it influenced how fast they moved in game?

(Then again, I do not understand all this magical computery stuff...)

[nekura]

If I remember correctly, in some cases overclocking your processor would result in you appearing to speedhack, I'm not sure if that also affected the frame rate of the game, though.

[Heatsink]

A very long time ago there were reports of people overclocking or playing on laptops that had speedhack symptoms. SE may have been using the CPU timestamp counter for movement timing, since systems around that time had inconsistent implementations of the TSC where the tick rate could vary depending on the processor frequency. This quirk is well-known now (and fixed in modern processors too), but may have taken SE by surprise. Framerate is completely unlinked from ability recast time and movement speed nowadays.

[Raelia]

This computer can run Skyrim and Deus Ex: Human Revolution just fine.

To be fair, those are just console games and run maxed out on my $500 laptop.

Edit: I should try reading sometime. I hear it answers stupid questions.

About the uncapping: I wrote a small utility to do it the same day SE added the fishing fps-changing patch -- I really was that fed up with the fps cap! -- http://pignax.com/pub/ffxi60fps_v0.01.7z Over one year ago now, and it's still working fine.

*flail*

[Khary]

About the uncapping: I wrote a small utility to do it the same day SE added the fishing fps-changing patch -- I really was that fed up with the fps cap! -- http://pignax.com/pub/ffxi60fps_v0.01.7z Over one year ago now, and it's still working fine.

Once we download this file what exactly do we do with it? Sorry not exactly a computer wiz here lol

[catmato]

Once we download this file what exactly do we do with it? Sorry not exactly a computer wiz here lol

First you'll want to check it with your virus scanner. http://fi.somethingawful.com/images/...emot-siren.gif(keyloggers and stuff can be hidden from virus scanners, so you may want to think twice before using it even if you get a clean result)http://fi.somethingawful.com/images/...emot-siren.gif After loading the game, run the 60fps file as administrator. It isn't perfect, but It makes animations silky smooth. IMO it makes the game look more realistic. There are times where animations will take longer or shorter to complete than normal, but still at 60 fps.

[Khary]

Ok ty Catmato