Need help > No performance change with min/max settings

[Sessions01]

Spec:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 3GHz (oc)
nVidia GeForce 460GTX (oc)
4GB Crucial Ballistix
nVidia 680i LT SLI


I have been playing around with settings on the open beta this week as I was noticing a lot of fps drops when in any of the starting city's. I messed around with a few things and noticed no change, so decided to try the difference in max and min settings. For some reason my performance doesn't seem to change no matter what settings I select. In the screenshots below you can see that both shots, taken at the same location under the same circumstances are showing 16 fps.

When I run around the city on either of these settings the fps and general performance stays the same, ranging from 15-30 in the city, and 45-60 outside. Any ideas why this is or why I can't get a solid 30+ in the city even on the lowest settings?


Lowest possible settings:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4154/...02954521_b.jpg

Highest possible settings:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4114/...376e3956_b.jpg

[dunpeal]

starting city is the answer.

server congestion not system limitation is probably the answer. the more crowded the lower the FPS.

[Kaisha]

General question, but typically if changing the visual options makes no discernible difference in the FPS, that usually lends to the CPU being the bottleneck in the code no?

It's the same case for me, where 1920x1200 @ max runs a crappy 7fps, just the same as if I was running 1024x768 with everything at its minimum.

[Sessions01]

Yea I thought it might just be server congestion, but even then you'd think there would still be a slight improvement with such drastic changes to the settings. I have the exact same problem at the camps, which have nowhere near the number of people as in the city. Standing at a crystal surrounded by 15-20 other players, my performance is the same with both min and max settings.

I can understand server congestion causing problems with performance, and also it may be a beta issue, but regardless of this I would still expect there to be a noticable change in performance when running the low settings.

My gfx load usually ranges from 40-60%, with my CPU cores ranging from anywhere between 40-80%

[Purrrfect]

If the game is waiting on info from the server in a crowded area, then changing the settings isn't gonna make a difference as long as it's not capping the system. The system is just sitting there idle, telling it to draw more detail won't change the fps if it is already forced to wait some time for more server info.

[ufo]

It probably is the CPU, I noticed there is much more load on the CPU around town and other places where there are lots of people.

[alecrast]

My observations on client performance can be summed up here:

http://www.ffxivblog.com/content.php...nt-Performance

http://www.ffxivblog.com/content.php...nt-Performance

I think thread synchronization is a big issue for the client on dual-core servers but there are other issues going on, as well. I believe the client to be blocking on network IO in some cases and making poor choices about what to actually render in others.

[Sessions01]

There are lots of places that you can go in Limsa Lominsa where neither GPU nor CPU are anywhere close to being maxed out and yet the framerate still drops to 20 and it sits at 20 regardless of what you are looking at - you could be nose-to-wall and still have the same low framerate

This has been the base of all my frustrations and reason for testing. When I am running around the city, there are random patches where, no matter how crowded or quiet the area is, I get a 1-2 second stutter and fps drop. If I turn around and run back across the same patch it happens again. I guess there isn't much that can be done unless SE tidy this up before retail release :<

[alecrast]

This has been the base of all my frustrations and reason for testing. When I am running around the city, there are random patches where, no matter how crowded or quiet the area is, I get a 1-2 second stutter and fps drop. If I turn around and run back across the same patch it happens again. I guess there isn't much that can be done unless SE tidy this up before retail release :<

That just means that there's a lot of room for improvement in the client. It's entirely possible that the game actually is playable on their minimum spec'd system but that it is just not being reflected in my performance tests due to some debugging code that could linger for an unknown duration. There are plenty of reproducible instances of low GPU usage + low CPU use + low framerate that were made a lot more visible due to the bump in framerate cap from 30 to 60fps; SE just has to take a look at them. My guess it that they'll get to it but, for now, they're probably a lot more focused on fixing crashes and glitches in the client than performance itself.

The up side is that you're free to run with all settings except DoF:On, AO:On, and "Buffer Size: Double" with quite literally no impact to performance on your GTX460.

[Sessions01]

Yea that's exactly how I'm looking at it now :D

[Tineey]

My pair of 460s get so bored due to network fps cap they downclock themselves to 405mhz randomly. =(