Video card help!

[liefe]

I was thinking of upgrading my PC'd vid card to something that will let me play a bit more smoothly. I'm mainly trying to get something that won't get me that fuckstupid tachi:yukikaze/boost/etc lag. Currently using a GEforce 5900 ultra. I'm trying not to break the bank, but I'm prepared to pay for a decent card as well. Suggestions?

[Sandhawk]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814195024
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814195025

[Sonomaa]

I was thinking of upgrading my PC'd vid card to something that will let me play a bit more smoothly. I'm mainly trying to get something that won't get me that fuckstupid tachi:yukikaze/boost/etc lag. Currently using a GEforce 5900 ultra. I'm trying not to break the bank, but I'm prepared to pay for a decent card as well. Suggestions?

nothing will stop that lag really, its bad coding, not video card issues

[Celeras]

I was thinking of upgrading my PC'd vid card to something that will let me play a bit more smoothly. I'm mainly trying to get something that won't get me that fuckstupid tachi:yukikaze/boost/etc lag. Currently using a GEforce 5900 ultra. I'm trying not to break the bank, but I'm prepared to pay for a decent card as well. Suggestions?

nothing will stop that lag really, its bad coding, not video card issues

Boost lag? Lol no. Firaga 3 and maybe some bard song lag can be attributed to bad coding, but if youre lagging to boost then its definately hardware.

[liefe]

If I upgrade to the newest nvidia drivers I get boost lag too, oddly enough. It is annoying as all fuck that newer drivers don't work. ;/

[Lamente]

My FFXI has randomly started pausing for a sec every 1 min or so...

[Fhqwghads]

Out of curiosity, and sort-of unrelated to the OP, does anyone have a supremely cutting edge PC? How do heavily congested areas perform? (E.g. Dynamis, DA packed full of people, etc.) I'm almost to the point of another upgrade since there's been so many hardware iterations, and I'm wondering if the upgrade would be reflected in FFXI. I know SE sucks with their rendering pipeline, so I wanted to hear from other what happens when better hardware is thrown at it.

[Stu]

boost lag and anything that has to do with particle effects lags because of windower from my personal experience. whenever i dont have windower on, none of the particle effects would rape my fps.

[Mojo]

If you want to boost your FFXI performance, the best thing you can do is upgrade to a dual core processor. FFXI is more CPU than GPU based, having 2 cores helps significantly. Even with the best video card out there, you aren't going to eliminate much of the lag unless you upgrade your motherboard + processor to dual core.

[Lamente]

Well.. my PC used to be cutting edge; hardware advances so fast it's ridiculous. Radeon X850 XT 3.6 GHz Pentium 4, 1 Gig RAM; things run decently, but it seems like FFXI's engine kind of sucks, and it doesn't seem to play nice with the updated drivers for graphics cards. In really crowded areas.. probably no worse than 20 frames or so, I guess.

[Mashu]

My FFXI has randomly started pausing for a sec every 1 min or so...

Do you have the parser (the one w/ GUI) up and running?

I know if I leave that software up and active for a few days, my PC lags up.

I don't know besides that... turning off shadows help a lot (practically doubles my FPS in dynamis zones).. but the bottomline is that the FFXI engine sucks >.>

[Snowknight26]

Out of curiosity, and sort-of unrelated to the OP, does anyone have a supremely cutting edge PC? How do heavily congested areas perform? (E.g. Dynamis, DA packed full of people, etc.) I'm almost to the point of another upgrade since there's been so many hardware iterations, and I'm wondering if the upgrade would be reflected in FFXI. I know SE sucks with their rendering pipeline, so I wanted to hear from other what happens when better hardware is thrown at it.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6500
2GB DDR2 PC2-5300
ATI Radeon x1900 XT

Framerate is a solid 29.9 fps everywhere but Jeuno/AU, where it drops down to about 15 with max players visible.. and thanks to the dual core CPU, recording videos has a very minimal effect on my FPS.
Dynamis I get average of 25 fps with 45 people, DA about 20 thanks to that waterfall.
With shadows on, I notice exponential fps decreases with more poeple.
Cost about $600.

[FFXIFlux]

If you want to boost your FFXI performance, the best thing you can do is upgrade to a dual core processor. FFXI is more CPU than GPU based, having 2 cores helps significantly. Even with the best video card out there, you aren't going to eliminate much of the lag unless you upgrade your motherboard + processor to dual core.

Dual core does nothing for FFXI unless you're trying to download porn at the same time.

[Mojo]

It actually does quite a bit considering your computer is running windows whiles running FFXI, and FFXI is coded so poorly that it barely uses your GPU. So yes, dual core will do a lot for FFXI.

[Lamente]

My FFXI has randomly started pausing for a sec every 1 min or so...

Do you have the parser (the one w/ GUI) up and running?

I know if I leave that software up and active for a few days, my PC lags up.

I don't know besides that... turning off shadows help a lot (practically doubles my FPS in dynamis zones).. but the bottomline is that the FFXI engine sucks >.>

Nothing open that would cause any performance issues. FFXI runs fine in between the pauses. I can run games like Doom 3 and FEAR just fine; no performance issues at all. FFXI used to run well (as well as it can, anyway), but then one day it decided to be a bitch, and it has been like that ever since. FFXI is the only game that gives me trouble (save for Source Engine games, as that is also a poorly coded piece of shit; shame they have to develop such good games with it).

[Elesirdur]

Go with an nVidia card for FFXI over an ATi unit. FFXI for PC was coded to use nVidia VPUs and things like AA, AF and texture filtering will work much better with an nVidia card. ATI cards work just fine, it's just that (in my experience at least) the texture filtering models don't work very well and you're left with just the stock-looking graphics.

[layte]

Go with an nVidia card for FFXI over an ATi unit. FFXI for PC was coded to use nVidia VPUs and things like AA, AF and texture filtering will work much better with an nVidia card. ATI cards work just fine, it's just that (in my experience at least) the texture filtering models don't work very well and you're left with just the stock-looking graphics.

rofl

AA doesnt work in this game due to the bizarre render to texture mode SE decided to use for displaying the screen. AF sorta works, but you have to piss around with registry keys to get anywhere close to a reasonable result.

Oh and for the love of God, don't get an Nvidia card to play this game, Bard songs, Firega, and other AoE effects KILL the framerate. Even on the latest hardware stuff like Minuet can take your framerate from 30fps down to 2-3fps.

[Scar]

I recently set up a dual boot environment with XP Pro and Windows Server 2003.

It took a while to get FFXI up and running on Server 2003 due to a Direct X error. I had installed DirextX 9.0c along with all the Service Packs, and it wouldn't let me update Playonline after installation. Some message came up saying I had to install Direct X 8.1 or higher...

After reading about problems people had getting FFXI and other XP games working on Vista Beta, I figured out the solution. I did a format and reinstall of Server 2003, didn't install any Service Packs, updated DirectX to 9.0a, and also updated NVIDIA drivers to latest version. After installing Playonline from disk, I copied the Playonline folder from its XP installation and was able to load it without seeing the Direct X 8.1 error.

All I have to say is the pains of getting this to install was well worth it. I'm running at 1600X1200 resolution with everything set to high and I'm getting 28.8-29.8 fps even in Whitegate when it's crammed with people.

Server 2003 is great for gaming if configured properly. It has a much better memory management system, and most games are compatible if they run on XP. There's a few that "won't" install, but you can get around that with an MSI editor.

If you've got good hardware, I recommend checking it out.

[Elesirdur]

rofl

AA doesnt work in this game due to the bizarre render to texture mode SE decided to use for displaying the screen. AF sorta works, but you have to piss around with registry keys to get anywhere close to a reasonable result.

Oh and for the love of God, don't get an Nvidia card to play this game, Bard songs, Firega, and other AoE effects KILL the framerate. Even on the latest hardware stuff like Minuet can take your framerate from 30fps down to 2-3fps.

I used the exact same registry settings from when I changed over to an ATi X1600 from my old crappy nVidia FX5900 and FFXI looks way worse than it did before. Forced AF doesn't seem to do jack on the ATi card while with the FX5900 the textures were smoothly rendered giving a much, much more desirable result. I never really got the Firaga/Minuet slowdown myself, and the ATi card seems to chug a bit when big Firaga spells go off as well.

[Sandhawk]

rofl

AA doesnt work in this game due to the bizarre render to texture mode SE decided to use for displaying the screen. AF sorta works, but you have to piss around with registry keys to get anywhere close to a reasonable result.

Oh and for the love of God, don't get an Nvidia card to play this game, Bard songs, Firega, and other AoE effects KILL the framerate. Even on the latest hardware stuff like Minuet can take your framerate from 30fps down to 2-3fps.

I used the exact same registry settings from when I changed over to an ATi X1600 from my old crappy nVidia FX5900 and FFXI looks way worse than it did before. Forced AF doesn't seem to do jack on the ATi card while with the FX5900 the textures were smoothly rendered giving a much, much more desirable result. I never really got the Firaga/Minuet slowdown myself, and the ATi card seems to chug a bit when big Firaga spells go off as well.

If I'm reading this right..."I'm using the same settings I used for my nVidia card with my ATI card............"

...yeah