Problems With FFXI Framerate Using A GTX260

Hey guys, I have a Nvidia GTX260 and I lag even in places like Bastok with a lot of NPC around. :(

Is there anything I can do to improve the framerate in these areas? They drop down to like 9fps and go up to 30fps in wide open empty places. I know for a fact it can't be my hardware obviously.

Thanks :)

Not likely.

Sadly FFXI runs on Direct X8 which causes much lag in all areas with many NPC's around. No hardware can stop that I'm afraid, it's simply the engine limitation.

If it's really a bother you can set it so less PC's and NPC's are on screen at any one time through the config.

Its not because FFXI runs in DX8 that its laggy, its because it was written for the PS2 which does not have a GPU. All graphics rendering is done on the CPU with no offloading to the GPU. There is nothing you can do really in high traffic areas like Whitegate/Auction House other than face a wall and goto first person view.

If you have changed your settings to run at a high resolution with super sampled background (double your resolution) you could try running without the enhanced graphics, lower resolution or change the game settings to not show weather effects or lower the number of NPCs on the screen.

I'm pretty sure that's part of the reason, but DX8 definitely is partly the reason for this.

The FF client is hard-capped at 29.6 FPS due to limitations in the PS2 graphics architecture and older pre-HD JP television refresh rates. Nothing to do with DX8, as Playstations don't run DX anyway. The PC client is simply a direct DX port of the PS2 client, cap and all.

Because of the cap, any increase in rendering demand will cause the FPS to drop from 29 rather than from higher up, so you'll experience visual stutter even on the highest end graphics card.

On a normal game with a high-end system, you would be running at 60+ FPS by default and any decrease would be visually unnoticeable until around 30 FPS. Unfortunately because of FF's abnormally low starting point, any hit at all is perceived as a visual stutter.

Ah, so there's nothing I can do because it's the game itself limiting itself? That sucks. I'm actually running it on an i7, so you know, once I saw lag I was like "Oh come on something isn't right here" haha.

So there's no way around any of these limitations I assume?

Turning off shadows REALLY, really helps in general. It's certainly uglier at first, but the speed improvement is totally worth it.

Unfortunately Kooper, there isn't. This is just something that hardware can't fix, because the client is limiting itself.

Cliff and I experimented with removing the FPS limitation in the early versions of Windower, allowing a computer to use all of its hardware capability.

Unfortunately, we discovered that the FF developers had lazily tied things like spell timers, animation rates, ability timers, movement rate, etc, to this 29.6 FPS value. They were using it as an max-value internal timer to base everything else on.

So when we removed the limitation, suddenly the game started freaking out, because it couldn't keep track of time anymore. You would run at mach 9 and trigger hacker alerts. Everyone on screen would animate 10x faster, making it look like all of Jeuno was having an epileptic fit. And your spell and ability timers would appear to refresh faster as well, until you tried to use them, and the server would go WTF HAXOR.

So yeah, nothing to do about it, I'm afraid. All you can do is turn down your graphics settings to keep from dropping too far from the base 29.6 FPS value.

...and wait for FF14. ;)

Oh noes, ok then, thanks for all the help, at least I have a better understanding as to why it happens, there's not too much I can do about it. It's really not much of an issue in the end, so I can deal with it.

Thanks everyone for the helpful responses.

I have the same card, and FFXI got noticeably choppy a couple driver updates ago. If you've updated drivers recently roll back and see if that helps, if you haven't updated recently try going to a newer version, and if that fails, older.

Also, never use the forceware betas.