FFXI and graphics cards.

[altwight]

I know ffxi is based off of processor speed. Was wondering what exactly a graphics card does for ffxi other than boost the graphics, and if you buy a super good graphics card maybe one too strong for your processor(dunno if that's possible) would that slow your performance down on FFXI. I guess im wondering if a PCI-E would speed up or slow down ffxi more/less than a PCI.

[Snowknight26]

The general rule is PCI-E>PCI. You'll get better performace with a PCI-E video card compared to a PCI one.

[altwight]

you have the answers to all my questions. such a pro.

+50 DKP
+5respect

-thanks

[sekaran]

Go with a PCI-E graphics card. If you're playing FFXI mostly, go ATI.

Whats your budget?

[Blackice]

Nvidia cards are actually best for FFXI, not ATI.

[Ferien]

Nvidia cards are actually best for FFXI, not ATI.

Cue the swarms of people who've bitched about their spanking-new Nvidias not working properly with FFXI.

I started with an ATI 9800 PRO in 2003, switched to Nvidia 7800 GS last September, and didn't have much of a problem with either. The old ATI would artifact, but that was due to a combination of overclocking, poor cooling, and power issues. The Nvidia will just straight bluescreen on me.

Upgraded the rest of my rig last week though, hopefully my problems will clear up.

[Avanarius]

pci-e is much faster then pci. But agp speeds are more then enough for ffxi. If that's an option; I wouldn't go and spend money on old technology of course.

The only thing graphics cards seem to do is render the actual environment the character animates in, (if that at all). Better graphics cards seem to be able to handle larger draw distances more efficiently if you're using the windower plugin. If not, it's basically pointless because a 64mb geforce 4 should be enough to render most environments in ffxi.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the massive load ffxi puts on the cpu is from the huge amount of work it has to do decompressing the DTX3 textures on the character models.

Of course this is all debatable due to driver inconsistencies.

[evilbau]

pci-e is much faster then pci. But agp speeds are more then enough for ffxi. If that's an option; I wouldn't go and spend money on old technology of course.

The only thing graphics cards seem to do is render the actual environment the character animates in, (if that at all). Better graphics cards seem to be able to handle larger draw distances more efficiently if you're using the windower plugin. If not, it's basically pointless because a 64mb geforce 4 should be enough to render most environments in ffxi.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the massive load ffxi puts on the cpu is from the huge amount of work it has to do decompressing the DTX3 textures on the character models.

Of course this is all debatable due to driver inconsistencies.

you are right avan and agp is more than enough. why there are so many threads about upgrading for ffxi is beyond me. I still run it on a 5 year old computer with everything turned up to max.

[Vertabreaker]

Cue the swarms of people who've bitched about their spanking-new Nvidias not working properly with FFXI.

I started with an ATI 9800 PRO in 2003, switched to Nvidia 7800 GS last September, and didn't have much of a problem with either. The old ATI would artifact, but that was due to a combination of overclocking, poor cooling, and power issues. The Nvidia will just straight bluescreen on me.

Upgraded the rest of my rig last week though, hopefully my problems will clear up.

Simply solution to Nvidia not working = don't use Vista.

[Ferien]

Cue the swarms of people who've bitched about their spanking-new Nvidias not working properly with FFXI.

I started with an ATI 9800 PRO in 2003, switched to Nvidia 7800 GS last September, and didn't have much of a problem with either. The old ATI would artifact, but that was due to a combination of overclocking, poor cooling, and power issues. The Nvidia will just straight bluescreen on me.

Upgraded the rest of my rig last week though, hopefully my problems will clear up.

Simply solution to Nvidia not working = don't use Vista.

Who the fuck said I used Vista? Still running on XP Pro here, and I don't plan on switching.