Improving my FFXI experience. HALP.

[Psion]

So, when I got my comp a couple years ago, this game ran beautifully. I could run it on high settings, resolution, and even have weather effects on, and the FPS would hover around 20ish even in active areas. It was glorious, a true upgrade from my old comp.

Fast forward to today. no longer new, my comp is pathetic. in noncrowded areas, with drawdistance set to .3, weather effects off, no shadows, my FPS hovers around 14-15. if I go to a crowded area, it goes down to 10ish. If it's near a vertical conflux, it drastically shoots down to 3-4. if I set drawdistance to 1, FPS in noncrowded areas is around 10-12, in crowded goes to 6-7, and at a conflux drops to 2-3. The only real thing that has possibly changed is my drivers, but I got no clue how to fix this sort of thing. Is there any good drivers for FFXI that will bring my performance back up? any tricks to free up what processing power its got?

As far as computer parameters go, its an emachines:

Model no: T5082
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz 3.00GHz (no clue why this is listed twice lol)
Memory (RAM): 1917 MB
System Type: 32-bit operating system
Windows Vista Home basic
160 GB hard drive
I use a wireless connection, though I've used it the whole time since I've got it, so that's not the reason.
Video card: ATI Radeon Xpress 200 (yes, I know, I know. ._.; )

Anyways, I'm wondering if there's any way to improve my performance back to old way it was, cause it really sucks when I get near a maw or conflux, or someone summons an avatar, or anything really, and seeing my character do the bunny hop.

[fredjanx]

edit: nvm

[Shojin]

When is the last time you reformatted? Sounds like its just bogged down with all the shit on it, and it's probably fragmented as hell. That's the only thing I can think of, either that or as you said, the drivers. But you should definitely reformat if you have never done it since you got the PC.

[xerodok]

If you're worried about cost, buy a shitty graphics card on eBay to upgrade your already shitty graphics card. If that makes sense.

[dejet]

Ya back up, and just wipe the system clean. If you updated drivers you could try and roll them back first. That might fix it, newer drivers do tend to hate 11

[fredjanx]

Supposedly GTX 480 runs FFXI the best, but it's a little expensive.

[Mabubeezareel]

Supposedly GTX 480 runs FFXI the best, but it's a little expensive.

Really hope this is a joke.....

[Psion]

To me, anything is expensive. I don't have even a dollar to spare on computer parts, so anything that requires buying is out of the question. -,-;

Good point on formatting, though... is it the same as defragmenting? Because my comp defragments on it's own once a week, and it did that last wednesday. :/

fiddling with the display driver didnt seem to do anything either. ;;

[Icari]

formatting is like starting all over with a brand new os install, nothing like defragmenting. You really should NOT need to defrag every week. What programs do run for anti-virus, firewall, spyware? How many programs are listed as running in your task manager under the processes tab? What browser do you mainly use?

[Psion]

I use firefox + noscript here, and technically norton anti-virus, but it's pretty much disabled. (I really should just remove the damned thing -_-; ) Don't really use a firewall or spyware either. As far as programs that run under processes, its:

ati2evxx.exe: 212 K
ati2evxx.exe: 528 K
audiodg.exe: 7,968 K
CCC.exe: 4,972 K
csrss.exe: 944 K
csrss.exe: 1108 K
DTLite.exe: 452 K
dwm.exe: 26,076 K
explorer.exe: 18.928 K
firefox.exe: 101,008 K (currently have several tabs open heh)
lsass.exe: 664 K
lsm.exe: 788 K
MOM.exe: 2,336 K
plugin-container.exe: 3,392 K
pol.exe: 135,524 K (this jumps to 189,144 K near a conflux)
PRISMXL.SYS: 136 K
RtHDVCpl.exe: 724 K
SearchIndexer.exe: 12,072 K
services.exe: 1048 K
SLsvc.exe: 1,204 K
smss.exe: 96 K
soffice.bin: 1,476 K
soffice.exe: 180 K
spoolsv.exe: 1,104 K
svchost.exe: 1,748 K
svchost.exe: 1,772 K
svchost.exe: 14,000 K
scvhost.exe: 2,836 K
svchost.exe: 39,888 K
svchost.exe: 22,852 K
svchost.exe: 2,244 K
svchost.exe: 3,244 K
svchost.exe: 7,392 K
svchost.exe: 416 K
svchost.exe: 484 K
svchost.exe: 624 K
System: 5,220 K
System Idle Process: 28 K
taskeng.exe: 1,404 K
taskeng.exe: 476 K
taslkmgr.exe: 1652 K
wininit.exe: 184 K
winlogon.exe: 632 K
WLAN Optimizer.exe: 440 K
wlancfg5.exe: 488 K
wuaudt.exe: 584 K
WUDFHost.exe: 644 K
XAudio.exe: 148 K

Processes: 48 CPU Usage: 29~61% Physical memory: 45%

Stupid task manager wouldn't let me copy and paste the info -,-

[Icari]

you should be running some type of anti-virus program, firewall and anti-spyware. search the forum for suggestions download the programs run them and clean up your system, should help it run better.

[Shojin]

Just reformat then install an anti-virus. You're long overdue for a reformat anyway.

[Psion]

Just reformat then install an anti-virus. You're long overdue for a reformat anyway.

How do I do a reformat? >.<; Do I have to lose all my old files? or what?

And I don't have an installation disk, instead it's partitioned on the hard drive? or something.

I really do need to reorganize my comp, there's lots of old random files I don't use anymore, plus others I have no clue if they're old files to important things like windower or POL, or viruses, or leftovers of programs gone by.

[Shojin]

You lose everything on the comp and it is restored to how it was shipped from the factory (if you have a partition, like you do). So yes, back up stuff you want to keep like music, movies, whatever, then when you reboot your computer you should see something like <F8 = Windows Restore> or something like that, it'll be assigned to one of the function keys. When you get in to it, it will usually ask you if you want to repair or reinstall Windows, click reinstall then usually it will give you 2 options, one to keep important files on the hard drive, and one that is a complete reformat. Choose the complete format then it is pretty straight forward from there.

[Psion]

Since that would take a long time to do, I decided to hold off on reformating for now, to spare myself the agony of redownloading all the FFXI updates and the like. What I have done so far to try fixing the issue:

turned off bump mapping for ffxi
enabled MIP mapping
lowered the resolution of the pixels slightly, to make it easier for comp to draw

And last but not least, I dusted out my comp so that it could breathe. Turns out I had enough dust in there to make a inch wide dust bunny. I'm not sure how much it helped my processing power, but holy shit my comp is quiet now. At any rate, my FPS hovers around 28 in quiet areas, and goes down to 18-22ish in minor fighting, and 14ish with an avatar. it still hovers at 5 FPS around a conflux though. I'm starting to think my problem is something to do with the display driver and how it displays glow effects, like the aura around a maw, avatar, or conflux.

Is there any way I can fix this? >< I tried to search for ffxi and my graphic card display driver, but I have never been good at searching online for these things, and couldn't find any updates to help fix it.

[Pikarya]

Supposedly GTX 480 runs FFXI the best, but it's a little expensive.

10/10/10

[Kohan]

Is there any way I can fix this? ><

http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/drivers.aspx

Find your drivers there.

Beyond that, you've already been given sound advice (format and reinstall). If you did that, you would be able to download all of the patches faster by following the instructions here. However, even if you do that, the areas which currently cause severe graphical lag are known to do this to nearly all players. Newer graphic cards may remedy the issue (especially if they're responsive to the latest NVIDIA driver set), or they may not.

In short: without formatting or spending money, you have it as good as it will get.

[Psion]

Oh god, I'm copying my pictures and other data to DVD-Rs to restore data I want to keep when I format, but it sure takes a while. At one point it was doing 8 KB per second, though after 10 minutes it started jumping to 170KBish <.<; I hope this won't take all weekend just to back everything up...

[Kohan]

Oh god, I'm copying my pictures and other data to DVD-Rs to restore data I want to keep when I format, but it sure takes a while. At one point it was doing 8 KB per second, though after 10 minutes it started jumping to 170KBish <.<; I hope this won't take all weekend just to back everything up...

Before formatting, make sure you find out what all of your hardware is (by loading up Device Manager, for example), and download drivers for everything. The ones for your Ethernet chipset are the most important, as without them, you won't be able to access the internet.

General guide: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...p_sg_clean.asp

As a note, where that guide says "Make sure you can boot with your CD drive", it mentions checking your BIOS for its settings, but doesn't really focus on it. If you stick a bootable disk in, try to start, and you don't see the "Press any key to boot" message, you may have to revisit your BIOS and change the boot order so your CD-ROM is listed first. Afterward, try again.

Also, if you go through all of this and your framerate is the same in FFXI, don't be surprised. It's still worthwhile, though, as your computer could likely use the fresh start.

[fishstix]

you don't necessarily have to reformat, you can just reinstall windows instead, while keeping your storage files. If you have a secondary drive, that'd be easiest, but otherwise I used to move everything into a storage folder. idk how vista reacts to trying to install windows ontop of an old installation. In 7, it'd move the Program Files, Users, and Windows into Windows.old, in XP, it'd move only the Windows folder. What I would do for XP, is uninstall and delete as much as possible from Program Files, since they'd remain and take up unnecessary space being unused in the new install.