Optimal PC Build for FFXI

[Shazam]

Good day everybody,

Everybody knows FFXI is extremly unoptimized but my question is simple:

Does anyone have a setup that NEVER drops below 29-30 FPS, and if so, what are your PC specs. I'm interested in CPU, GPU, Memory, Mother board model, possibly your ffxi graphics settings.

I have always had wildly different experiences with FFXI and all my computers I've played on over the past 10 years.

One computer would run the game fine, but frame rate would drop to 1-2 when fire spells went off. Another would run the game fine at 29-30 FPS at any time other than when I was in a large city with 50+ people around.

I also have experienced that reducing graphics quality, resolution, windowed vs true fullscreen doesn't help. ANY other game you play, if you reduce graphics settings, your frame rate will globally increase. This doesn't seem to apply to FFXI, in my case anyway, on multiple computer.

What's the best FFXI setup for constant 30 fps, even if theres 200 people on your screen.

Please don't go on tigerdirect and look up the most expensive parts, that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking from personal experience, what works?

Thank you!

P.S. My most high end PC is a i7 920 D0 OC'ed to 3.8 Ghz, with a Nvidia GTX480 on a Rampage 3 Extreme Mobo, 12 GB Triple Chan fast memory. Which can run games like Crysis 3 at max settings. Hower FFXI still can't keep a constant 30 FPS. What, the , fuck?

-Ben

[hey]

Pretty sure ffxi is just coded to drop fps when more than a couple people are around. I've gotten exactly the same fps drops in such situations through 3 gpu upgrades over 10 years. Nothing you can do about it.

[The Stig]

FFXI is very CPU dependant. Also apparently doesn't play incredibly well with Nvidia GPUs.

The secret to getting FFXI to run perfectly is, to get very old hardware, it seems: http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/116...lay-on-gtx-770

To quote:

in my experience, the better the graphics card the worse FFXI runs. sorry Im not more help but the engine is just so damn old it doesnt play well because they cant/wont update it for modern systems

The guy there is on a GTX 770, somewhat significantly more powerful than your card but is still on the high tier.

[shaddix]

Yeah I think the best performance I had on FFXI was a pentium 4 and a radeon 9800 pro on windows xp.

[The Stig]

Yeh same, but on an alienware laptop in 2004 at the time which has a desktop P4 CPU and a mobile ATI Radeon 9600 shoved in there.

Thinking about it, is "go play on a Xbox" an acceptable solution? lol. Never played it on a console, but I wonder if the same problems persist there.

[xopher]

There is no setup that will never drop below 29fps.

[Nitsuki]

Yeah I think the best performance I had on FFXI was a pentium 4 and a radeon 9800 pro on windows xp.

My setup that ran the game the best was a 3.2GHz P4 with a radeon 9800XT til the radeon kicked the bucket with overheating w/o any clocking. My next best card for ffxi from there was my 8800GTX that also kicked the bucket much later.