FFXIV Hardware Requirements

[Fade]

Have a question, I'm about to purchase a gaming laptop. The config. I'm looking at will have a i7 820QM, 4GB DDR3 1333MHz, and Crossfire 5870M. This should be able to run the game High settings you guys think? I don't need the graphics to be on maxed everything, just want decent graphics and for it to be able to run smoothly.

I know a desktop would be best but I don't have the room in my bedroom for one. Also I do travel for business at least twice a month sometimes more, so it's nice to be able to relax after work in my hotel room and just game.

[firion]

I'm not tech savvy at all, and would appreciate any help that could be give from people with a lot of exp with different computers. I was going to play on PS3, but I'm not missing out on the first half year, so now I have to scramble to come up with enough cash to buy something that will run FFXIV on at least standard settings. I'm trying to make this as cheap as possible. (trying to keep this under $600...)

Should I get a PC from retailer or do you think it would be cheaper to order online from cyberpowerpc.com or some other site?

I'm not knowledgeable at all about CPU's or video cards, and some recommendations would be welcomed.

[Murureru]

I'm not tech savvy at all, and would appreciate any help that could be give from people with a lot of exp with different computers. I was going to play on PS3, but I'm not missing out on the first half year, so now I have to scramble to come up with enough cash to buy something that will run FFXIV on at least standard settings. I'm trying to make this as cheap as possible. (trying to keep this under $600...)

Should I get a PC from retailer or do you think it would be cheaper to order online from cyberpowerpc.com or some other site?

I'm not knowledgeable at all about CPU's or video cards, and some recommendations would be welcomed.

Do you have any form of PC now that you might be able to upgrade?

You might be struggling with that price imo, if you are buying a full PC from scratch, i.e monitor and all the peripherals etc it might be better buying a PC already built. I'm UK though so have not come across them sites before.

[Emirii]

hp.com has great customization features. You can pick out one of their 299$ towers and create a better computer off of their customization and it will work like a champ. Generally the more expensive towers have features that you will probably never use, like a fax modem and a TV tuner and a lot of extra HDD space, but still have the same core components of the cheaper towers.

Get:
A processor (dual or quad core over 2.7GHz)
An ATI Radeon series graphics card 5000 series or higher.
4 GB DDR3 Memory

As long as you have those three components anything you choose would be fine. The graphics card/processor might cost extra (sometimes even 100$ extra) but don't skimp out here. It takes them only a few days to build and ship out to you, so you don't have to wait too long.

[Sirenia]

So I have an iMac running Win XP on Bootcamp 3.0ghz core 2 duo, 3gb ram, nvidia geforce 8800 gs and my benchmark score was 1750 on low setting....I am SOL....

[Emirii]

No, benchmark is full of crap. You might have to buy a new graphics card, but your processor sounds good. If you got a 1700 you should be able to "run" the game on low settings. But like I said, the benchmark is fail.

[Sirenia]

I guess I will wait and see for myself when the game comes out, but ya can't really upgrade the video card since its an iMac.

[Yoli]

You can't upgrade video cards on macs? (Serious question, I have no clue. Surprising to me.)

[Zubis]

Been looking to build a new computer and a friend put together this package for me. Any suggestions for changes since I'm building the computer first and foremost for FFXIV? I'm aware of that I should probably add extra cooling.

Yes, I'm aware of that the site is in Swedish but the actual hardware is the same.

[Soap]

You can't upgrade video cards on macs? (Serious question, I have no clue. Surprising to me.)

You can only upgrade Video cards on the Mac Pro.

[Crowort]

Zubis that setup will run 14 great, infact it is likely overkill imo.

You could likely get away with a lower wattt psu, but if you don't need to save the money then that is a nice one.

[Murureru]

I would swap the 930 for the 920, their the same tech apart from the multiplier iirc, both will reach same clocks if you're going to OC and will save some moneys.

I would also be rid of them HDDs and get 2 Crucial 64GB C300 SSD's in Raid 0 for some serious read performance for loading times etc, should have enough money from the 920 instead, swap the board for a Gigabyte UD3R and get 6GB of Patriot DDR3 1600mhz instead.

Thats just my personal opinion though, a great spec you have there for XIV. (You best have a big monitor for that beast of a card! xP)

[Roscobel]

Official specs are out on the official (new) site.

[Purrrfect]

No, benchmark is full of crap. You might have to buy a new graphics card, but your processor sounds good. If you got a 1700 you should be able to "run" the game on low settings. But like I said, the benchmark is fail.

So you've played the beta already and know how the retail will turn out? I wouldn't go calling the benchmark a load of crap, considering it is the game engine running it. And that 8800gsin the previous post is fairly weak as far as gaming is concerned.

[alecrast]

I would swap the 930 for the 920, their the same tech apart from the multiplier iirc, both will reach same clocks if you're going to OC and will save some moneys.

I would also be rid of them HDDs and get 2 Crucial 64GB C300 SSD's in Raid 0 for some serious read performance for loading times etc, should have enough money from the 920 instead, swap the board for a Gigabyte UD3R and get 6GB of Patriot DDR3 1600mhz instead.

Thats just my personal opinion though, a great spec you have there for XIV. (You best have a big monitor for that beast of a card! xP)

I would give Crucial's C300 line some time to stabilize before taking the C300 plunge. ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/3704/c...mware-part-iii ). The motherboard he has listed doesn't have a SATA-III 6Gb/sec port so the C300 is going to be further limited in its performance.

I have 3 Intel X25-M 80GB drives, 1 OCZ Vertex 120GB drive (Indilinx), 1 OCZ Vertex LE 120GB drive (SandForce 1200/1500 hybrid), and 1 OWC Mercury Extreme 100GB drive (SandForce 1500). In terms of just plain working without any hassle, the Intel drives are hands down the best. No issues with sleep or hibernation, Windows 7 recognizes them as SSDs so you don't need to tweak registry settings, they support TRIM, and Intel provides a useful utility to ensure performance and reliability and to upgrade the firmware, should any upgrade be necessary.

The same cannot be said of the others. The OCZ Vertex drives are definitely for tweakers who want to be upgrading their firmware. I've flashed my Indilinx Vertex *many* times, with varying firmware revisions, have wound up in situations where I've had to destructively flash back to the original 1.10 firmware with a jumper, then incrementally flash up to the latest release, etc. If you get an OCZ drive, it means you want to be hanging out on their forums (which are admittedly pretty good because of Tony and a few others) and keeping up with the latest news for your drive.

The utility for SandForce drives is pretty straightforward with some minor re-badging depending on the company but SF's recent MP firmware (with the exception of OCZ's "special" version) deliberately slows down their SF-1200 based drives to make drives equipped with the more expensive SF-1500 more appealing.

For gaming, you won't really notice the difference between any of these drives. If you're patching a service pack into your OS, then you might, but not for day-to-day use so it really boils down to what you're looking for in a drive beyond just raw performance.

As for the i7 920 vs 930, you can actually get the 930 for less money than the 920. Newegg, which everyone uses as a baseline, sells the 920 for $294 while the 930 sells for $289. Microcenter sells the i7 930 for $199, assuming you live close enough to one to go there.

[Murureru]

Ouch, I don't like reading that a firmware update can brick the drive for good and they deteriorate over time!

Some people are getting some good speeds though on sata II

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/9...2010154435.png

Lost as to what to buy now reading that, what ssds would you recommend to pair up in raid 0? X25's are just out my price range unfortunately! =[

Not fussed about storage space, 64GB is more than enough.

I've read about the problem regarding the marvell controller on the motherboards, would one of these make any difference, I'm guessing it won't as its the same iirc?

Asus U3S6 USB3.0 & SATA 6Gbps PCI-Express Controller Card

Cheers

[inferknite]

are they going to enable SLI or Crossfire for beta(Two GPUS?)

[Bermy]

So I just ran the FFXIV benchmark on low settings and scored a 2402 with Windows 7 32-bit, Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 @ 2.4Ghz (OC'd to ~2.9Ghz), NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, and 4GB RAM... Not too worried about it now but keeping my options open for whenever I can actually test to see if the game runs smoothly on my system

Any suggestions on what to upgrade to improve the score? I figure it's the CPU considering its a bit outdated and has a WEI of 2.6 @.@ (I've been considering upgrading for a while). Would the E8500, E8600, or Q9550 be good options to upgrade to (not real sure if the quad core would be better as I don't use any video editing programs or anything)? Would prefer keeping my current mobo but if I really need to upgrade that as well for an iX CPU I could.

I don't THINK the GPU is too much of a problem but any advice is well appreciated, thanks in advance and let me know if more info is needed

[alecrast]

Ouch, I don't like reading that a firmware update can brick the drive for good and they deteriorate over time!

Some people are getting some good speeds though on sata II

Lost as to what to buy now reading that, what ssds would you recommend to pair up in raid 0? X25's are just out my price range unfortunately! =[

Not fussed about storage space, 64GB is more than enough.

I've read about the problem regarding the marvell controller on the motherboards, would one of these make any difference, I'm guessing it won't as its the same iirc?

Asus U3S6 USB3.0 & SATA 6Gbps PCI-Express Controller Card

Cheers

If you're planning on running in RAID 0, then you absolutely need a drive that supports garbage collection. This includes all drives with the Indilinx Barefoot controller and SandForce-based controllers. This is because current RAID drivers do not pass the TRIM command to the underlying drives. In all honesty, you don't really need RAID when running with a SSD. It's nice to see those big sequential read rates but they're essentially meaningless in practical use. Unless you're editing video, you're probably never going to be reading 500MB worth of sequential data (and if you are doing lots of video, then you probably want bulk storage, not expen$ive SSDs). Far more important are your IOps and random read rates. You'd do just as well with Windows on one drive and your games on the other.

That said, get the cheapest drives you can with either of the controllers I mentioned previously. The C300 might very well turn out to be a great drive in the long run but I'd let someone like Anand shake out all the bugs before jumping into one given what we've seen about the drives so far.

As for the Marvell controllers, I'm not sure if that's just a weakness in the controller itself or if there's a driver issue that has yet to be resolved. I have a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7 motherboard with the Marvell controller on it and my drives perform worse on the Marvell controller than they do on the Intel PCH. It's not something you'd notice just using the system but it is visible in benchmarks like Crystal Disk Mark.

are they going to enable SLI or Crossfire for beta(Two GPUS?)

If the client runs in full-screen mode, then Crossfire and SLI should work, though tweaking may be required.

[Emirii]

So you've played the beta already and know how the retail will turn out? I wouldn't go calling the benchmark a load of crap, considering it is the game engine running it. And that 8800gsin the previous post is fairly weak as far as gaming is concerned.

Yes, the graphics could not have changed significantly other than a lighting change from alpha. My old computer scored a 1500 on the benchmark and it ran just fine in alpha, give or take a few performance hindering issues, i'm sure than "lowest settings" translates into "can probably run on high-ish settings with a slight framerate hit" according to this.