FFXIV Hardware Requirements

[lvicious]

Buddy of mine Altima who played ffxi and still does wants a new gaming pc but doesn't want to go the building route or have one built by his specs like by cyberpowerpc for him. I told him he'll spend more buck for less bang but eh it's his cash. He wants this Alienware Area-51 rig.

Any feedback on this pre built pc is appreciated to pass along to him. It's not bad but not for the price he'll end up paying. Mostly cause of the extra bs they try to tack on. thank you. Yes he wants to play ff14 with it as well.

Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7 930 Quad Core Processor (3.36GHz, 8MB Cache)
Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 CrossfireX™ Enabled
12GB DDR3 1333MHz (3x 4GB) Tri Channel Memory - idk what brand they use.
1TB - SATA-II, 3Gb/s, 7,200RPM, 32MB Cache HDD - no raid config
Dual Drives: Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (BD-ROM; DVD/CD Burner) and DVD-ROM
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
21.5” Alienware AW2210 OptX™ Full HD Gaming Monitor - could get better cheaper probably and lower price a shitload dropping this.
Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution - mouse and kb I guess.. hell idk.
1525 PCIe WLAN card with 11n mini-Card & external antenna
Alienware™ High-Performance Liquid Cooling -at least it has this especially if the CPU is already OC'd. I guess he could oc his memory and gpu too.

[Melina]

Buddy of mine Altima who played ffxi and still does wants a new gaming pc but doesn't want to go the building route or have one built by his specs like by cyberpowerpc for him. I told him he'll spend more buck for less bang but eh it's his cash. He wants this Alienware Area-51 rig.

Any feedback on this pre built pc is appreciated to pass along to him. It's not bad but not for the price he'll end up paying. Mostly cause of the extra bs they try to tack on. thank you. Yes he wants to play ff14 with it as well.

Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7 930 Quad Core Processor (3.36GHz, 8MB Cache)
Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 CrossfireX™ Enabled
12GB DDR3 1333MHz (3x 4GB) Tri Channel Memory
1TB - SATA-II, 3Gb/s, 7,200RPM, 32MB Cache HDD
Dual Drives: Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (BD-ROM; DVD/CD Burner) and DVD-ROM
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
21.5” Alienware AW2210 OptX™ Full HD Gaming Monitor
Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution
1525 PCIe WLAN card with 11n mini-Card & external antenna
Alienware™ High-Performance Liquid Cooling

Ditch 12GB 1333MHz, go with 6GB 1600MHz Tri Channel.
If they really want optimal performance, might consider a faster HD to keep OS etc on, but they're already paying enough.
On a machine like that, with ATI cards and a 3.36 overclock, I don't think Liquid Cooling is all that needed, but I guess with mid towers you can't be too safe.

Sad but true, your friend is way overpaying. But, if this is what they want, it will do. I definitely recommend the RAM change. Otherwise, it'll be just fine.

[lvicious]

yeah definitely the memory change or if they wont' just ebay it and newegg new stuff.

I have a SSD as my boot drive and programs and raid 0 for other 2 but idk what they'll let him do on that. Not hard to buy his own stuff and set it up if he will.

I don't know shit about alienware cases or fan setups or how many he'll get. I'd bet it's a small, compacted inside case so the liquid cooling is well.. better than some stock pos so not bad. ty for reply.

[Ferr]

Currently running a Q6600 at stock speed and a GTX 460 1GB, i was thinking of replacing my cpu (my CPU is bottlenecking) and upgrading to an i5 760, but im not sure if is worth.

I know an option is OCing my Q6600, but for that I need a new mobo cause my n650 seems to suck for OCing Quads (also I would have to learn to install mobos and OC lol).

I dont know how CPU dependant is FFXIV so I dont know if a new i5 760 es worth the money.

Another question, i have to buy a new monitor and Im not sure if I should get a 1660 resolution one or a Full HD. Does my card will have a noticable drop in performance comparing both resolutions?

Thanks

[shaddix]

If SE fixes the game you won't need to upgrade, game runs tons of threads, but the workload isn't balanced between them very well. Right now for the beta, high clock speed is king, but that should change.(Because of this, if you were going to upgrade I would suggest a 1055t, high clock speed(4ghz OC easy) + 6 cores = woohoo.)

GTX 460 is good up to 1920x1200

[Icarian]

Been playing the beta, the game runs at 55-60 fps most of the time at 1920x1200 with 8xQ MSAA and highest settings, it runs really well but... when playing full screen (doesn't happen when windowed) when I move the camera around I get an 1 inch horizontal row of pixels that flicker, I tried to take screenshots of it, but it doesnt appear in the screens, I don't think it's the monitor either, cause it doesn't happen to anything else or any other game, just FFXIV, is this a known issue?

[lvicious]

@Ferr: better make sure you don't have some raggedy ass stock cooler in there if you gonna bump up to 4ghz and a nice roomy case wouldn't hurt... oh and don't fry your rig as a beginner oc'r.

@Icarian not sure about that. Read people correcting issues on the beta through rivatuner if it was a OC related issue and gpu control panels like nvidia's. Just depends. Also, it's the beta so it could be just that and this was posted on ffxivcore.com:

question: There is a mixed feeling in regards to computer requirements on the game. Despite the minimum requirements listed, players are having a hard time running this game even on fairly decent rigs. Is the game expected to go through further optimization prior to release?

answer from some SE team: For the beta version it might be because we have several check routines in the game that might be causing some of the performance-related issues. This should be improved when the game is released. It also could be something specific to the persons PC setup. There's a lot of different graphics cards among other things so we're trying to solve it one by one.

..I would only make changes after beta is over unless you know it's something that absolutely has to be done like you are running an ibm pc jr lol.

[Ferr]

If SE fixes the game you won't need to upgrade, game runs tons of threads, but the workload isn't balanced between them very well. Right now for the beta, high clock speed is king, but that should change.(Because of this, if you were going to upgrade I would suggest a 1055t, high clock speed(4ghz OC easy) + 6 cores = woohoo.)

but wouldnt the Q6600 at stock speed be a bottleneck for the GTX460?

That AMD sounds good, but I would like to avoid OC (im a beginner)

@Ferr: better make sure you don't have some raggedy ass stock cooler in there if you gonna bump up to 4ghz and a nice roomy case wouldn't hurt... oh and don't fry your rig as a beginner oc'r.

You're speaking about the AMD right?
I know that for OC the Q6600 would need a new mobo+a new cooler

[Purrrfect]

(Because of this, if you were going to upgrade I would suggest a 1055t, high clock speed(4ghz OC easy) + 6 cores = woohoo.)

Easy is a relative term, it is still a luck of the draw. Mine gets iffy the farther I push it past 3.8ghz. An H50 really helped out though I will say.

[shaddix]

but wouldnt the Q6600 at stock speed be a bottleneck for the GTX460?

Right now in the beta it's a bottleneck, but that isn't the processor's fault, FFXIV simply doesn't utilize the resources it has at it's disposal. This should change as SE patches the game to run more efficiently. I had a Q6600 at stock + GTX 460 and FFXIV beta was using ~60% of CPU resources while still bottlenecking the GTX 460, so there is plenty of room for improvement.
Not to mention something is wrong with 460+ffxiv... for some reason the 460 is only giving the performance of a gtx 260.

[Cooleko]

Been playing the beta, the game runs at 55-60 fps most of the time at 1920x1200 with 8xQ MSAA and highest settings, it runs really well but... when playing full screen (doesn't happen when windowed) when I move the camera around I get an 1 inch horizontal row of pixels that flicker, I tried to take screenshots of it, but it doesnt appear in the screens, I don't think it's the monitor either, cause it doesn't happen to anything else or any other game, just FFXIV, is this a known issue?

it is tearing probably, which is a problem with your refresh rates of your monitor and the FPS of the game.

[Jojimbo]

^ I get screen tearing when at 55~60 FPS, quite a lot actually x.x

[Icarian]

it is tearing probably, which is a problem with your refresh rates of your monitor and the FPS of the game.

FFXIV runs at 55-60 FPS (capped at 60) and I've been playing Bad Company 2 today which runs at 60-80 fps with no tearing, can a game running at lower FPS than the minotor's refresh rate tear and other game with higher FPS not tear?

Also, it only happens when moving the camera around, it doesn't happen when standing still or fighting :/

[Juhpe]

I originally started off with upgrading a prebuilt with just the video card to a 5770, and it turned into a entire rebuild basically. Ended up with a
CoolerMaster GX750 PSU
Asus M4A88TD-M/USB3 motherboard
Asus 1gb 5770
6GB ram (cannot remember brand)
64GB ssd
Phenom II x6 1090

Pretty happy with the performance so far. The beta still gets pretty choppy for me. thinking about going up to a 5850. As for a monitor not to concered about it right now, as I may be playing on my pioneer 500M or my panasonic VT25.

Just curious, has anyone been running this on a Asus G73? If so how does it run? I will be out of town for a bit and I know I will want to play so thinking about picking one up, if it does well with the game.

[Klaatu]

Is it possible to get an answer here or people just like showing off their "rigs"?

[Pikarya]

The latter is appropriate.

[Kirb]

Is it possible to get an answer here or people just like showing off their "rigs"?

They have the minimum requirements posted everywhere, man. Took me a single google search.

Min:
http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/7625/min.gif


Recommended:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3761/maxai.gif


Of course, if you're upgrading, I would not be trying to aim for just the minimum specs...

[Klaatu]

They have the minimum requirements posted everywhere, man. Took me a single google search.

Min:
http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/7625/min.gif


Recommended:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3761/maxai.gif


Of course, if you're upgrading, I would not be trying to aim for just the minimum specs...

Thanks for the reply. It doesn't make sense. I meet the min requirements and then some with my current PC, yet Benchmark is slow as hell.

[Metafox]

Thanks for the reply. It doesn't make sense. I meet the min requirements and then some with my current PC, yet Benchmark is slow as hell.

What video card are you using again? I think it said you had a 3200 series back there. As far as I can recall off the top of my head, this type of video card would be below minimum requirements. The quality of the cards doesn't necessarily go in numerical order. A 3200 would be at the bottom of the 3000 series, while a 2900, the minimum suggested, would be the best of the 2000 series.

[Kirb]

Thanks for the reply. It doesn't make sense. I meet the min requirements and then some with my current PC, yet Benchmark is slow as hell.

Here bud, take a look at this.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...tx,2676-7.html


This is a pretty handy chart that shows the hierarchy of most videocards. As you can see, your HD 3200 is at least a good 7-8 tiers below the minimum required card for XIV. You'll definitely need an upgrade.