How to increase fps/graphics res - a guild I made for my LS

[damien420man]

Several people from my LS has found this to be helpful since the Nov 19th update - so I'm posting it here as well

This is targeted at nvidia / logitech users.

If you use Logitech G15, can easily get 25% fps increase.

If you run other games on your PC, these changes are probably not for you. FFXI makes very poor use of the gpu, so disabling many features is only beneficial for FFXI, other games may suffer or look very poor.

The basic idea: Disable any input devices (or part of) that isn't being used. FFXI reads from these devices, and overall slows down the game. Disable any gfx options so that texture optimization runs best. Lastly, increase the texturing beyond what FFXI config tool allows (aka software Antialiasing)

SE said they are working on making FFXI Direct X 9.0c complaint. They said it would be done when they make their own windower, which isn't the case at all (they didn't do it). If SE does do this, all of what I say here changes dramatically. If/when they do, I'm sure everyone will know, as a change like this is HUGE. I hope to see hardware AA support, but till this day comes, bumping up the texturing and optimizing the gfx settings to run like this, is about the best we can do;;.
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FFXI Settings

Anyways here we go: Specs taken from both 2 computers.

First - FFXI Settings (these are not necessarily the best, they happened to be best for me tho - use as your guide)
Note: Background Resolution has no value, this will be changed later via Registry, to a value that isn't selectable here.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...FXI_Config.gif
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GFX Card settings

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...properties.gif


PC#1
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...lpaneldamy.jpg

GeForce 7900 GTX - Driver (ForceWare) 94.24, GPU BIOS 5.71.22.12.10

Antialiasing settings : Application-controlled or disable/off
Anisotropic filtering : Application-controlled or disable/off
Image Setting : Quality or Performance or High Performance
Color Profile : N/A
Vertical Sync : this is up in the air, sometimes this can be forced on (recommended if fps are high (25+))
Force Mipmaps : None/Off
Conformant Texture Clamp : On or Hardware
Extension Limit : Off (if on - this will random crash FFXI)
Hardware acceleration : Single-display mode is best for FFXI, multiple doesn't effect fps to much
Trilinear Optimization : On
Anisotropic mip filter optimization : Off
Anisotropic sample optimization : On
Gamma correct antialiasing : Off
Transparency Antialising : Off
Triple buffering : Off or On (see no effect)
Negative LOD bias : Allow (LOD = level of detail, some cards do not allow negative LOD)
Threaded Optimization : No info - mine is set to auto, I think this has to do w/PCIE and multiple cards

PC#2
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...ntrolpanel.jpg

GeForce 7800 GS - (updated Nov 20th 07)

Anisotropic filtering : Application-controlled
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction : Off
Antialiasing settings : Application-controlled or disable/off
Antialising Transparency : Off
Conformant Texture Clamp : On or Hardware
Extension Limit : Off (if on - this will random crash FFXI)
Force Mipmaps : None/Off
Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration : Single-display mode is best for FFXI, multiple doesn't effect fps to much
Anisotropic mip filter optimization : On/Off
Anisotropic sample optimization : On/Off
Negative LOD bias : Allow (LOD = level of detail, some cards do not allow negative LOD)
Texture Filtering Quality : Quality
Texture Filtering Trilinear Optimization : On
Triple buffering : On
Vertical Sync : Force On

The above may not be best for you, use as your guide.
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Human Interface Device - HID

Now for the stuff that's been waiting to be fixed by SE for nearly 2 years. Human Interface Device - inputs that FFXI scans that may lag or even crash your computer. Each one kinda adds on the other, if 1 slows it down a bit, the next a bit more, next thing you know, 5fps in game. Logitech game controllers have been known to crash your PC while targeting mining/harvesting points (if you happen across this issue, just unplug controller and see if problem persists)

G15 Keyboard users: Both the keyboard profiler and LCD DRAMATICALLY effect FFXI right now. Disabling them via the G15 software is recommended if you don't use them. Personally I couldn't live w/out my countdown timers hehe, but the keyboard profiler - out the door. The good news, this should be the first thing addressed by SE, as this is a recent problem, and not a 2 year old one.

The best & easiest process I found to fix this issue is, is to go down the HID devices, and disable the ones you can. Top to bottom, or you can try and follow the pics of the ones I came up with.

Have FFXI running in the background, and use something that displays fps for direct x. Windower can display fps, just config the init script, or download fraps but ugg - we're after better fps, fraps isn't going to help out there.

Please note, your mouse and keyboard are HID devices, if you disable them .. yup you guessed it, their going to stop working. If you hit your mouse, just use tab and space on the keyboard to re-enable it. Can't live w/out keyboard/mouse, so those must stay.

Watch you FFXI fps as you disable these, you should see it go up. Try and locate yourself in game so that your fps is poor - ie not your moghouse, but somewhere where there isn't a lot of people running by, as this will drop the frame rate. You want to see the best effect for what changes you are making. The character selection screen isn't to bad, but I reached 29fps there easy, and was still 15fps by jeuno AH, which I then got up to around 25fps.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...e_manager2.jpg

You see that I disabled the 2nd from the last one. When I had everything enabled, there where 2 at the top, when I disabled those I got a huge fps increase. As I worked my way down the list, that 2nd from the last one, made one of the 2 up top, go away completely.
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Registry Tweaks - Background Resolution

Windows XP! If you are using something else, these values may not be correct for your machine (ie Windows XP64 machines - these keys are located in another area - 32bit emulation). Using them in this case is not harmful, they will just have no effect.

Ok, so at this point, FFXI should be looking like shit, but running pretty good. Time for some software AA. (this is about texture resolution used in ffxi and not the resolution at wish ffxi runs)

Unlike above, this part cannot be done while FFXI is running (Direct X to be specific) Can be in POL long as it is not full screen, ie using Direct X.

Note: Make sure that extensions of known files are visible, or the following won't work right. To check this: Start > Run > Explorer; Select Tools from the menu bar, and go into Folder Options, tab to View, make sure Hide Extensions for Known File Types is Unchecked. Then hit ok

What this does: Changes the texture resolution of FFXI to values beyond what can be selected via the config tool provided. These settings are located in the registry, it does not really change the game or anything on your HDD, other than the registry. You can always run the config tool (ie first picture on the post), and select one of the 3 given values, and what is done here, is undone. ie, if you do this and it runs like crap because computer can't handle it, run FFXI Config tool, and use whatever you had selected prior.

Now anytime someone posts registry teaks, they always give a warning, tons of your computer settings are located there. Fasted way to screw a computer up, change stuff in the registry! So be careful.

We won't actually edit the registry, we'll make a file that does it for us!

What to do:
Copy/Past one of the following into notepad (just the part between the lines, don't put the lines in there), from notepad chose save as, save it somewhere known with the extension .reg, ie 1280.reg (encode: Unicode)

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...ii/notepad.jpg

Next right click on the file you just created and select Merge, this will merge those lines into your computer's registry.

Note: By default the max value selectable is 1024x1024

1280x1280 Background Resolution
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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEni x\FinalFantasyXI]
"bFirst"=hex:00
"0003"=dword:00000500
"0004"=dword:00000500
-----------------------------------------------------

1536x1536 Background Resolution
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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEni x\FinalFantasyXI]
"bFirst"=hex:00
"0003"=dword:00000600
"0004"=dword:00000600
-----------------------------------------------------

1792x1792 Background Resolution
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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEni x\FinalFantasyXI]
"bFirst"=hex:00
"0003"=dword:00000700
"0004"=dword:00000700
-----------------------------------------------------

2048x2048 Background Resolution
-----------------------------------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEni x\FinalFantasyXI]
"bFirst"=hex:00
"0003"=dword:00000800
"0004"=dword:00000800
-----------------------------------------------------


Note: When merging, the previous data in those locations are replaced. I have each of these files on my PC, if I do something like Dynamis, I run the 1280 before launching FFXI, normally 1536 for me and I just leave it.

After merging - run FFXI and see if you like it. If the fps are good, maybe try one higher. Bard songs are the true test, hitting 6 people with songs can really slow things down. While you might thing its good in the MH/around town, make sure to really test drive the settings. Its easy enough to change tho, just don't want to find yourself stuck in a party, and it all gets laggy because texture resolutions to high.

2048 sure looks damn good! Wish I had a computer that could actually run that (yes I have a pretty good PC - don't know if any out there can run this).


Enjoy

[ringthree]

Can this be copypasta'd to the RealWiki™?

[Kurokikaze]

This isn't exactly new but I suppose it's good for people that don't know...

Screenshot of game running at 1920x1200 res 2048x2048 back-res: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v295/ ... 171308.jpg

They need to change the engine on this game already. Fuck...

[Laika]

kevin's argus 8)

[Aevis]

the advanced graca settings are nice for those with older ones, however the whole usb hid problem was fixed by SE with the last patch ^^

[Khrno]

The Graphic Card's settings actually help me out a lot to improve the frame rate, thanks a lot.