Opinion: What graphics card should I purchase?

[Attikus]

What % should my CPU be running at with ffxi up to be in a good state? If this is the problem, I'll be able to check and fix it right away when I get to my PC.

[Avanarius]

Honestly it depends entirely on how many character models are on screen. FFXI can take up to 100% of the cpu on a p4.

Norton Antivirus likes to take a lot of resources by constantly scanning the hdd for viruses. The best thing to do is to run a scan once a month with: AVG, Adaware, and Spybot, then uninstall them right after scanning. Since the majority of viruses/spyware generally cause your computer to only slowdown it's not necessary to have them constantly scanning.

When a virus wants to fuck over your computer entirely, it WILL, and norton antivirus wont do shit all for it. The best kind of virus protection is to know which sites NOT to go to.

[Cephius]

I love how ffxi is for some reason defined as the epiphany of hardware intensive gaming when it was designed for a p4 and the 5*00 series graphics cards.

Way back in the day my game run perfectly fine, with zero lag on a 2.4ghz p4 and a fx5600, so I blame the "modern day requirements" on new drivers being off set by the power of core duo 2's. No seriously, play with your drivers and try reformatting your computer if all you play is ffxi with that set up.

Except no one was running 1600x1200 resolution with a 2048x2048 background resolution in 2003. Things have progressed a bit since then, and to effectively run FFXI at the highest settings with shadows and everything turned on at that resolution, a 5*00 graphics card and an old system simply won't cut it. It's not anyone's fault, most games don't have the life of a MMO and thus don't get supported as technology advances. The issues with the 8000 series Nvidia cards were only resolved in the last week.

Back on topic, I agree disabling or unintstalling Norton would help. The commerical norton AV takes up a lot of system resources. Get a different one (nod32, kapersky, AVG are the top 3 atm) and turn off real time monitoring as needed. Have them scan overnight or something. See if it helps.

[Attikus]

Alright thanks guys. I'll try to check out norton when i get home. I honestly hate that program, it screws up with all kinds of stuff on my computer. I wouldn't be surprised if its causing some of this slowdown.

Ill try to find the disc that came with the nvidia card, but seeing as this rig was set up about 3 years ago, I don't know if I'll be able to find it.

I might try lowering my BG resolution back to 1024x1024 just to test and make sure it is the settings im asking of ffxi thats making it have this slowdown. But I'm quite sure it is.

If disabling norton doesnt fix this, I cant find the old Nvidia CD, and lowering my resolution to 1024x1024 does make a performance difference, I'll probably get the 8800 GT, and maybe even upgrade my processor if the card doesnt help enough.

[Avanarius]

you'll probably need a new mobo if you're going from a p4 to core 2 duo.

Except no one was running 1600x1200 resolution with a 2048x2048 background resolution in 2003. Things have progressed a bit since then, and to effectively run FFXI at the highest settings with shadows and everything turned on at that resolution, a 5*00 graphics card and an old system simply won't cut it.

I ran at 1280x1024 WITH that background resolution with the registry mod so I assumed a 6800 would make up for the extra resolution well enough.

I STILL can't turn on shadows even today with a e6600 without noticing considerable decrease in fps.

[Attikus]

I STILL can't turn on shadows even today with a e6600 without noticing considerable decrease in fps.

I know, shadows are a strain on my setup. When im exping/doing anything endgame/meriting/in a populated area, I have to turn them off (even with them off I still can consistently drop below 5 FPS). I'd be ecstatic if I could get a setup that could use the shadows, because not having them seriously screws with my sense of depth perception. I can't tell where people are standing, because you cant see where their feet are connecting to the ground >.>

[Avanarius]

I'd say that my fps drops from 29 to 15-17 in crowded areas by turning shadows on, I'm just picky about my fps I guess.

[Attikus]

i average 7-9ish in whitegate with shadows off. Don't even ask about the auction house....its freakin rediculous.

[Amele]

you get what you pay for with pc's.

in XI's case, the architecture is poor so if you want 'modern' performance you need a modern PC; you are getting performance via brute force.

4096x4096 background? totally do able. get ready to drop a couple grand on an 8800GT or a pair of GTS; a quad core and a liquid cooling setup so you can overclock all of it.


the OP's settings are more modest, obviously; but what's really holding him back is the P4. of course, to see real improvement he'd need to upgrade his mobo to get a better processor family; but since y'all are recommending PCI-E cards to him (he's on AGP 100% with a p4) he'd need to do that anyway.


you can build a pc that can run with full effects at high resolutions without noticeable lag (I've done it) it requires building a high end pc. yes; it sucks; it's a 5 year old game, etc. welcome to ports and bad hardware decisions. *shrugs*.

[Avanarius]

4096x4096 background? totally do able

caps at 2048x2048

[Attikus]

It is possible to change the resolution to 4096x4096 on Mogtoolz, whether that change does anything or not i do not know.

[Amele]

4096x4096 background? totally do able

caps at 2048x2048

considering that I'm at 3200x2400 right now; whoever told you that was misinformed.

every card has its own limit.

[levish]

As far as FFXI is concerned you will probably not be lag free regardless if you buy a 8800Ultra and a C2Extreme and any upgrade from your current system will not be a major difference from what you have now.

Considering you have a P4 3.2 and a 6800, you may be slightly less laggy in some places but places that bring your computer to a crawl will continue to do so since even if the system is 20,30,40% faster than your old one think of it this way

When you hit the bad spots you are are at 5-10fps

+50% computer power brings you to 7-15fps

As things stand right now the issue is more with the game handles things than your hardware's performance. Just wanted to bring to light that if you are upgrading for the sole purpose of making ffxi run better you might end up sorely disappointed regardless what you spend.

[Avanarius]

4096x4096 background? totally do able

caps at 2048x2048

considering that I'm at 3200x2400 right now; whoever told you that was misinformed.

every card has its own limit.

you can set it as high as you want, (though it should be a 1:1 ratio) but no visible improvements past 2048x2048, nor any decrease in fps, therefor, no improvement, but believe whatever you want.

I don't know if it's old but quoted off the mogtoolz website

Background Resolution: That's the 3D resolution of the graphics not the screen resolution. Tweaking this will allow you to boost your graphic quality up. You can create a simple anti-aliasing by setting this option higher than your resolution (screen size). Maximum value is 2048 and minimum is 1.

[snibe]

I have a question say for those running at 2048x2048

well I have two questions actually.

First is I have heard conflicting theories that background res should be 1:1 and others that say it should be a ratio of what your foreground is. I play in widescreen with my PC hooked up to my HDTV so i have it set at 1600x900 while my resolution is 1280x720. which is correct?

My only issue and my other question is. I can turn everything up. but when I try to do full shadow's forget it in crowded areas and dynamis and such. the question is, who has a high background res with full shadows on that isn't having a huge FPS drop. What kind of graphics card are you using?

I am using a AMD X2 4600 and my graphics card is a ATI radeon 1800XT

[Avanarius]

I've always set the background resolution to 1:1 ratio, As that's the default in the ffxi config and the game looks funky to me on any other setting, but I DONT have a widescreen monitor, so that could be a reason why.

The render path for the shadows seems to be similar to that of the character models, meaning the faster the cpu the less of an fps drop you'll notice from shadows. Though this is also probably dependent on the rest of your system setup as well.

If it means anything, I have an e6600 and I run at 29fps without shadows on. If I turn shadows on in a crowded area I drop to 17-18fps.

[Attikus]

CPU has been running fine. below 10% usually. Norton isnt using hardly any. I did a virus scan and found nothing major. I turned norton off and saw no improvements to the game.

So that rules out that stuff...

[Avanarius]

edited due to inaccuracy in post. If you drop the background res down does it restore the fps to the normal level? Just trying to exclude stuff to see if it's actually worth it to buy a new graphics card.

[Attikus]

ah, i knew i forgot to do something last night. I'll try that later today.

[Amele]

4096x4096 background? totally do able

caps at 2048x2048

considering that I'm at 3200x2400 right now; whoever told you that was misinformed.

every card has its own limit.

you can set it as high as you want, (though it should be a 1:1 ratio) but no visible improvements past 2048x2048, nor any decrease in fps, therefor, no improvement, but believe whatever you want.

I don't know if it's old but quoted off the mogtoolz website

[quote:25pc2k0l]Background Resolution: That's the 3D resolution of the graphics not the screen resolution. Tweaking this will allow you to boost your graphic quality up. You can create a simple anti-aliasing by setting this option higher than your resolution (screen size). Maximum value is 2048 and minimum is 1.

[/quote:25pc2k0l]


ok, so; considering mogtoolz is somewhat newer (2006) than the work several of us did on Alla back in '04; I'll walk you through it.

on resolution ranges:
resolutions over double your overlay res are not going to show noticeable improvement at first glance (unless you know exactly what to look for) this is because you are already oversampling at 2:1 or more. If you were to do a side by side comparison (especially of certain 'offending' areas, like staircases) you would be able to see a difference.

most human beings have no issues seeing a quality difference while the baseline image is still below 2:1 over-sampling, (in this case, at 1600x1200; 2:1 oversampling is exactly 3200x2400 which is why I put it where I did.)

the reference material that mogtoolz is working off of (max 2048) is from benchmarking done on alla (by me; heh) with a ti4200. which could not drive 3d layers in excess of 2048 on one side. if you want an idea of how this was determined - try 20,480x20,480 on your current card: FFXI will either not boot at all, or you will boot with a black screen. a similar effect occurs if you provide a 0 value. if you can provide a value in excess of 2048 and the game boots, your card is in fact driving a value in excess of 2048; it takes the value from the registry literally - there is no "software cap" as your statement seems to imply.


on fps change:

the primary hit to fps is model rendering time, which is applying textures to vertexes and positioning wireframes. this is CPU limited. above a certain minimum threshold (for most cards: when you stop under-sampling and start over-sampling) the performance of the card will not change significantly; most gpu's can do down-sampling faster than up-sampling; and since the modern gpu is not performing near its max capacity (because most vertex and texture application is being performed by your cpu) rendering the 3d pane onto the fit for the overlay layer after exceeding the overlay layer is relatively inexpensive.

in any case, the primary limit on gpu performance in FFXI's context is how much of the activity hits the software path; and mapping pixels for the final image scale is not generally software intensive.

on square resolutions:

square resolutions (that are powers of 2) are simpler and less computationally intensive to render; given that the modern GPU is significantly more powerful than FFXI requires; there is (little) reason to restrict yourself to a square resolution -except- when attempting to force a bias into the AA effect achieved by over-sampling.

specifically, a square 3d pane will increase the apparent effect of vertical-bias AA; which (for reasons to do with human perception) is the type of Aliasing that most people notice more.

==
so to answer the other question someone else asked: there's nothing wrong with matching the ratio to your (16:10?) widescreen monitor; in fact, I'd recommend it now. as for how high to go - unless you play on a really big screen, you probably don't need to do supersampling in excess of 2x your 'real' resolution; anything less than that you will probably notice a difference, although it may be worth it if it increases your fps running below it (I wouldn't expect you to have any issues running at 2x )

references to my posts:
aug 1, 2004
oct 26, 2004
mar 1, 2005