New PC FFXI problems

[daemun]

I just moved from PS2 to PC but I am having a big problem in FFXI.

My new laptop is a Dell Studio with 2.25 Gb 800mhz bus speed dual processor, ATI Radeon HD 3650 256 MB gfx card, WIndows Vista Premium 64-bit

Here's what's happening: The moment I move from POL to FFXI (intro movie, character select screen, in game any zone, etc), the game plays for about 3 seconds and then freezes for about 1/2 second. When it freezes the screen doesn't glitch or block up. When I'm in game the lock up doesn't create a speed up afterwards as though I had lagged, my char and other chars will just stop moving for a split second and then resume. It also screws up what I'm typing during these glitches, causing me to lose a couple of letters in the middle of my sentences, or if i hit enter about the glitch it doesn't send I've still got it.

I have played with the settings for FFXI and my desktop resolution some, but I haven't done too much not knowing what the problem is. I've also had my shell have me try the animation rate setting in game, even at full 0 this occurs at the same rate.

Can anyone please help me with this? Thank you in advance for anyone who tries.

[Mayareira]

Are your video drivers up to date? Stutter is quite common with NVIDIA cards but I haven't heard nightmare stories w/ ATI.

[daemun]

yea I have tried twice (the pc is three days old mind you) to update drivers. got a "driver version is up to date" both times.

[Zumi]

Do other games work? It could be a bad video card.

[daemun]

i would hope not since i just pulled it out of the box from dell, but this if my first go at PC gaming (been a console person) so i don't really have a collection of games to test it with. I'll look around see if I have something.

[Kohan]

If you don't have any games immediately available, just download some demos.

FilePlanet: Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo v3334

FilePlanet: LEGO Batman: The Videogame Demo

Neither of those break 500MB, so they aren't the typical 1GB+ demos you'll find floating around. There's also these:

FilePlanet: Final Fantasy XI - Vanadiel Benchmark 2 v1.01

FilePlanet: Final Fantasy XI - Tavnazian Benchmark 3

[daemun]

Unreal: Flawless

FFXI Bench V3: Flawless

didn't bother after that, tells me its an FFXI only thing.

Anyone think it could be a bad disc? Or is there that one stupid little setting somewhere in cfg I need to fix?

[Mayareira]

Bad disc? No, don't think so.

Try turning off/tuning down graphical settings one by one and see if there is one particular detail that causes the problem.

This is how I got rid of lag on my GeForce card(it was unplayable).

[daemun]

ive set every setting to its lowest possible, still the same problem.

talked to POL support today they want me to try re-intalling the software, flushing the 3650 drivers and going with a 3800 series dl and telling my PC that 3850 is the card actually installed.

3800's have been confirmed by them to have no direct conflict so im in the process of trying that atm.

will update