FFXIV Hardware Requirements

**bluefan** · 2010-06-04 22:37

Originally Posted by darkblade77

That's because you have an entirely different system process eating up resources usually used to play the game. If you're going to play games while multitasking with a program like WinRAR that involves heavy disc access, of course having a better hard drive is going to help that.

There are plenty of creative ways you can lag up or kill the FPS of an otherwise smooth program that has nothing to do with the components that affect how smooth it is normally supposed to run. My personal favorite is sending a print command via parallel port.

Missed the point entirely.

I was responding to a persons comment how the hard drive has nothing to do with performance in a game, especially MMOs. When it does. Negligible for most, but there are people out there who want and can afford the best.

**darkblade77** · 2010-06-04 23:28

Originally Posted by bluefan

Missed the point entirely.

I was responding to a persons comment how the hard drive has nothing to do with performance in a game, especially MMOs. When it does. Negligible for most, but there are people out there who want and can afford the best.

It does not. In both your and my example, the FPS hit to the game came from an external source or program which calls different resources into question than the game itself, which you can stop from running.

Making sure you're not running any processes that take up unneeded CPU cycles and/or stress connections with the hard drive will be just as effective as purchasing a faster hard drive in either example. (well, not the printer one. :D)

I mentioned in my first post that there is no direct correlation between having a faster hard drive and having a faster FPS when running the game. It only becomes a benefit when you're (knowing or unknowingly) taxing your system with something that isn't the game itself; something that is specifically using the hard drive.

"Having a faster hard drive improves FPS" is fallacious; "Having a faster hard drive when running antivirus scans/Windows searches/WinRAR dumps/passive system tray apps w/ disc accesses improves FPS" is closer to the truth.

And really, that goes for any given program's performance when it's that taxing. You typically don't judge high-resource games like FFXIV by how well they perform when you're multitasking to any degree, because a FPS hit is a given.

Vuitton · 2010-06-04 23:36

Wouldn't a hard drive's read access effect a game that is constantly reading the hard drive for graphics?

For example, for those who play WoW, is it the hard drive bottle necking or the graphics card bottle necking when loading into Dalaran and it takes ages for NPCs and various graphics to load, while simultaneously maintaining a decent FPS.

**bluefan** · 2010-06-04 23:43

Originally Posted by darkblade77

It does not. In both your and my example, the FPS hit to the game came from an external source or program which calls different resources into question than the game itself, which you can stop from running.

Making sure you're not running any processes that take up unneeded CPU cycles and/or stress connections with the hard drive will be just as effective as purchasing a faster hard drive in either example. (well, not the printer one. :D)

I mentioned in my first post that there is no direct correlation between having a faster hard drive and having a faster FPS when running the game. It only becomes a benefit when you're (knowing or unknowingly) taxing your system with something that isn't the game itself; something that is specifically using the hard drive.

"Having a faster hard drive improves FPS" is fallacious; "Having a faster hard drive when running antivirus scans/Windows searches/WinRAR dumps/passive system tray apps w/ disc accesses improves FPS" is closer to the truth.

And really, that goes for any given program's performance when it's that taxing. You typically don't judge high-resource games like FFXIV by how well they perform when you're multitasking to any degree, because a FPS hit is a given.

Like I said, you missed the point entirely. Someone mentioned something false, I rebutted.

HDD does not have a direct correlation to game play performance, for most genres, but we're talking about MMOs here. You constantly read and seek from the HDD. And I'll have to say it again...other genres I can agree with, where the HDD is entirely negligible after the loading screen, but not MMOs.

Also, I am the kind of person to be zipping/RARing, scanning, seeking, virus scanning etc... while playing a MMO. I have 3 monitors. If I didn't want to multitask for XIV, I would get it for the PS3. But I know I will be, as will many other people, so telling everyone that you can go cheap on the hard drive when you didn't for other stuff is completely bat shit idiotic. When there is a notable change in performance.

I don't know about you, but I don't build a $3000 machine every 3 years to just use it for one thing at a time.

P.S.
Working with an archive program hardly uses any CPU power, RAM and absolutely no GPU power. 99% hard drive. I used it to prove a point. The MMO genre relies on the HDD quite a bit more then most people seem to realize.

Originally Posted by Vuitton

Wouldn't a hard drive's read access effect a game that is constantly reading the hard drive for graphics?

For example, for those who play WoW, is it the hard drive bottle necking or the graphics card bottle necking when loading into Dalaran and it takes ages for NPCs and various graphics to load, while simultaneously maintaining a decent FPS.

A mix of multiple factors in Dalaran. It's mainly just the network though from what I've read.

**aalryn** · 2010-06-04 23:58

Originally Posted by Freelancer

Got my 470s for 310 a pop from a friend's store (currently 340-350$) and that's just 10$ over the 5850.(300-310$) and in SLI they're better than the 5850 so I can confidently say its 20$ well spent.

getting 2 40GB intel SSDs to raid later in July to replace my WD green for OS, its either that or 10,000rpm drives and those are pretty pricey for being barely better than regular 7,200rpm ones.

You're more than welcomed to correct me and perhaps suggest a better alternative.

I have been reading that SSD in raid tend to not be as good as single drives because of TRIM not working on raid setups yet. I may be way off base. This is why I was just going to drop cash on the 160gb version for os/programs (as I have 4TB of media storage on standard hard drives already)

**Kalisa** · 2010-06-05 00:05

I don't think anyone is trying to say hard disk performance affects the fps of a game per se, but when you're standing around waiting for the NPC or player of your choice to load so you can target it, HDD is playing a factor, however small, in that load time. Sure, your fps doesn't dip while it reads the data that it needs to load, but you're standing there waiting all the same. (In before someone insists that the game is keeping all 5+ GB of data it could possibly need to load in memory and it's really a RAM bottleneck.)

In all, this is a ridiculously pedantic argument that's gone on longer than it should have. If you have money to throw at a SSD and you want a SSD, get it. This is like the laptop argument a few pages back; if people want a laptop and have money to throw at the portability, it's their choice to get it.

You guys need to get back to comparing video cards and the like instead of bickering about people's personal choices to improve things you may or may not feel are marginal benefit.

Of course, they should stop posting about whether they want to upgrade that thing and starting the arguments, too. Honestly, it's not hard to know what's going to be a major performance increase (video, CPU, memory) and what's going to be a minor one (everything else).

**aalryn** · 2010-06-05 00:15

Yea a HD is so minimal and mainly helps with program boot times. It's been about 3 years since my last upgrade, and although my pc is still good with it's Q6600, 4gb ram, and 9600GT SLI; I'm ready for an upgrade, and I'm going big.

My financial status is also light years ahead of what it was three years ago and I fully expect to drop about close to 3k on my next pc. I just hope the 6 core intels become more mainstream before this game is about to launch and maybe another tier of vid cards. I'm sure there will be. We're still probably 6 months off.

**Celeras** · 2010-06-05 00:34

Originally Posted by Kalisa

I don't think anyone is trying to say hard disk performance affects the fps of a game per se, but when you're standing around waiting for the NPC or player of your choice to load so you can target it, HDD is playing a factor, however small, in that load time.

You obviously missed the last few pages, cos that's exactly what was being argued lol.. was pretty funny ;p Just ignore it if you know better and save yourself the headache. And if you're waiting around for players/npcs to pop, you're waiting on you memory or possibly the server.. not your HDD.

**Daemien** · 2010-06-05 01:26

**bluefan** · 2010-06-05 01:36

Originally Posted by Daemien

Well, to all people who are upgrading their PC mainly for XIV (and if time isn't a factor) I would wait a bit longer. Number of good things will hit the shelves before XIV does.

If time is a factor, only thing I would change is just personal preference.

-Go with the lower Thuban, and just overclock. If you've read anything about them, they run pretty cool and are just as overclock friendly as the Phenom II X4s.

-Different case...too much plastic.

Rest is just brand preference after that.

**Freelancer** · 2010-06-05 03:08

Originally Posted by Gulkeeva

Like I mentioned before you could get.. a Momentus XT hardrive.

Its SSD+7200 rpm sata2, costs about as much as a normal HDD with the speed of a SSD (namely on programs you use the most)

Although if you got cash to burn you could always wait for the new OCZ SSD, a 120GB "Revodrive" at $450 read speed 540MB/s and write at 530MB, and 75,000 IOPS. (I really could use that kind of space... 2 games + win7 almost like 60GB or something close)

That actually looks pretty sweet. I'll check on it some more once I find some reviews.

**Freelancer** · 2010-06-05 03:17

Originally Posted by Cooleko

Spoiler: show

If you want only speed then of course SSD is your best option. (there is little alternative, Gulk points to one such)

10,000rpms are fine and dandy for anybody that wants space and speed but for my needs they don't deliver. but alright I'll take your word on them being a good improvement over 7,200. but since I want speed and nothing else, and the cheapest 10,000rpm I could find costs more than a so-so SSD which is faster I'm obviously leaning toward the SSD.

I've read on OCN earlier today that by 4th Q of this year SSDs will drop in price so I'll hold out for now and keep an eye for the new thing Gulk mentioned, it looks pretty tempting.

**Squeaky** · 2010-06-05 09:32

I'm thinking I'll upgrade my graphics card sometime in the next few months, but I'll do a full PC upgrade sometime next year when the new Sandy Bridge CPU releases.

**viperlasson** · 2010-06-05 10:42

edit: wrong thread

**darkblade77** · 2010-06-05 16:45

Originally Posted by bluefan

Like I said, you missed the point entirely. Someone mentioned something false, I rebutted.

HDD does not have a direct correlation to game play performance, for most genres, but we're talking about MMOs here. You constantly read and seek from the HDD. And I'll have to say it again...other genres I can agree with, where the HDD is entirely negligible after the loading screen, but not MMOs.

Also, I am the kind of person to be zipping/RARing, scanning, seeking, virus scanning etc... while playing a MMO. I have 3 monitors. If I didn't want to multitask for XIV, I would get it for the PS3. But I know I will be, as will many other people, so telling everyone that you can go cheap on the hard drive when you didn't for other stuff is completely bat shit idiotic. When there is a notable change in performance.

I don't know about you, but I don't build a $3000 machine every 3 years to just use it for one thing at a time.

That's fine, but don't sell it like having a faster hard drive is going to make any video game--even an MMO--faster at performance in a vacuum. That was my issue with your point in the first place; you've elaborated now so it's moot.

The rest of what you said made sense and fell into place once you described your setup. Under normal circumstances, a 7200 RPM HDD can champ those few milliseconds when it pulls player/model data so that it doesn't cause a noticeable holdup. In your case, that would obviously be insufficient.

Not sure what the P.S. part is for since I've said as much in my previous posts, but I guess I'll elaborate for the last time:

Hard drive access takes up resources from the CPU and RAM; it forces them to idle and wait for the slower hard drive to provide the data they need to use for whatever operation they're doing. That's why having a faster hard drive is valuable and why a slower hard drive can produce a performance roadblock when a program is excessively using it.

Everyone gets the point by now, and I don't really disagree with the rest of what you're trying to say, so I'll peace out here.

**Deadgye** · 2010-06-06 04:52

Got my 470s for 310 a pop from a friend's store (currently 340-350$) and that's just 10$ over the 5850.(300-310$) and in SLI they're better than the 5850 so I can confidently say its 20$ well spent.

$60 well spent.

**Sworrub** · 2010-06-06 07:48

I know there are other posts about this, but I'm going to put my stats here to see what opinions are.

I can run Crysis 64-bit with "Very High" everything at 25-30FPS at 1440x900 with 8x AA... and 30-35 on 2x AA... and with any other game I'm pushing 40-80FPS at max settings. I'm using an Alienware M17x built around December 5th, 2009 (just before they started putting i7s in).

All that matters:

-Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
-3.2GHz (overclocked from 2.8) Intel Core 2 Duo T9600
-2x 1GB nVidia GTX 260Ms SLI
-8GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM
-Plenty of harddrive space

**Satyr** · 2010-06-07 13:54

FFXIV - PC System Requirements (Alpha Stage - 3/20/10)
*note: The following information is subject to change, and what changes have been made official or have been updated as from here on out, will be respectfully reflected here.

I'm sure many people who are looking to play this on their PC have all thought the same thing "Can my PC handle this game? will it be like Aion's system specifications?"

Fortunately and sadly, the system requirements are a bit "beefier" then most even thought, and the game is still in alpha testing, so two things could happen in the near future, the following specifications could increases (yikes), or decrease (phew).

Operating System
Windows XP SP3
Windows Vista: 32-bit /
64-bit SP2
Windows 7: 32-bit / 64-bit

CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz)
AMD Athlon X2 (2.4 GHz)

RAM
Windows XP: 1.5GB
Windows Vista / Windows 7: 2GB

Hard Disk Space
10 GB for installing
10 GB on drive containing the My Documents folder for downloading

GPU
NVIDIA® GeForce 8800 or higher VRAM 512 MB
Radeon HD 2900 or higher VRAM 512 MB
(Will most likely get tuned down to 256)

Audio
DirectSound compatible (DirectX 9.0)

Internet
broadband connection

Monitor Resolution
1280 x 720 (32 bit color)

DirectX
DirectX 9.0c

**yzn** · 2010-06-08 09:13

Originally Posted by Satyr

Operating System
Windows XP SP3
Windows Vista: 32-bit /
64-bit SP2
Windows 7: 32-bit / 64-bit

CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz)
AMD Athlon X2 (2.4 GHz)

RAM
Windows XP: 1.5GB
Windows Vista / Windows 7: 2GB

Hard Disk Space
10 GB for installing
10 GB on drive containing the My Documents folder for downloading

GPU
NVIDIA® GeForce 8800 or higher VRAM 512 MB
Radeon HD 2900 or higher VRAM 512 MB
(Will most likely get tuned down to 256)

Audio
DirectSound compatible (DirectX 9.0)

Internet
broadband connection

Monitor Resolution
1280 x 720 (32 bit color)

DirectX
DirectX 9.0c

and those are just minimum. I played alpha with:

win 7 64bit
phenom x4 965 (3,4Ghz)
geforce 8800GTS
4GB DDR3 Ram

and i played with 18-25 fps outside of towns and 10-15 fps inside. well may graka is very old and i have to buy a new one. but i will wait till the end of the year

(sorry for my bad english, iam from germany)

**Satyr** · 2010-06-08 09:24

the minimum requirments for the alpha build. Not saying there will be the requirements for the final release, it could be lighter but most liekley not a whole lot different.

Thread: FFXIV Hardware Requirements

Thread Tools

Latest Threads

Up & Coming Threads

Hottest Threads