Nvidia 8400GS problems (Not yet covered)

[KaB0b0]

All right! So, I got a new Geforce 8400GS card and installed it (Note: I am running Windows XP). At first, everything was great. As time went on, however, I found that certain things would cause my game to freeze for a moment and then return to mismatched textures-- sometimes even a ground texture overlayed onto my entire display
I've looked all around and can't seem to find any fix at all. This makes my game basically (well.. totally) unplayable. Has anyone had any similar problems and found a way to fix it? I've tried enabling/disabling just about every parameter possible to no avail.
I have also tried talking to POL tech support only to have them tell me to try enabling/disabling parameters until it works ..it doesn't seem as though I can count on SE or Nvidia to fix this, so.. am I just out of luck here?

[Vyvian]

The only 2 things I can think of, would be to try the latest flavor of forceware drivers, and to make sure your computer has enough cooling. Video cards will start to artifact like that if they get too hot. Also try it with any manual overclocking disabled, and work your way back up.

[KaB0b0]

Ok, so, I turned on the NVIDIA monitor to closely monitor my GPU heat and one thing really stuck out: my CPU usage is @ 100% at all times while FFXI is open.
I'm assuming this is not desirable. I have a 2.2GHz processor, so I doubt that I simply cannot support FFXI-- so any idea what the issue might be?
I used to run FFXI through 3danalyze because I had integrated graphics before the card and was wondering if perhaps it was still attempting to use hook dlls or something (to be honest I'm not sure how that works )?

[Vyvian]

Something with how FFXI is coded causes it to use a lot of system power, instead of power from the gpu.

When I was using a 9800pro ati, a 7600 gs nvidia, and an x700pro ati, this always happened, but after I upgraded to an 8800GTS, now system cpu usage never breaks 45%. It might have something to do with how they coded the game to handle the large volume of texture files that need to be loaded into memory, the GTS has a large memory compared to most cards, 640mb; to be honest I'm not 100% sure why, but I do know that making that rather large jump significantly improved performance, especially when you set the texture resolution higher than the built in max.

The CPU at 100% is rather common, I'm sure a lot of people get it, before the card upgrade, it would happen to me in dynamis and in whitegate, and other lag intensive areas. It shouldn't cause the graphical distortions you were referring to in the OP.