Very Good PC - Very LOL Frame Rate...

Hi, my setup is:
CPU AMD Phenom II x4 965
GPU XFX HD5770 xXx Edition
8 gb Corsair RAM Vengeance 1600Mhz
WIn7 Ultimate x64

And I have an IMPOSSIBLE unstable frame rate... For example no matter if I am in Port jeuno or in Aby Konshtat with only 3 sapling around me... Happens that my FPS drop from 29.4 to 17-20 for some seconds or in Jeuno sometimes when I run it does 29.4 > 25 > 22 > 25 >29.4 again, or rarely is stable at 29.4 even with 200 ppl around.
Well I should have a stable 29.4 fps everywhere, maybe I have some wrong settings? What should I do?

That's normal for Jeuno. Konsch is pretty weird though. Update graphics card drivers etc.

FFXI doesn't do multicore etc, so it doesn't really matter how advanced it is passed a certain point.

NO shadows.

Forget them, disable them. Not even "low quality" shadows.

Disable Triple Buffering on your graphics card, also Morphological filtering (In your NVIDIA control panel somewhere, I have ATI but i assume its really similar)

Remember this is a 10 year old game, for some reason some things are just not compatible with newer graphics cards.

But how do I know?

I have the same problem with my ATI Radeon 6970 Sapphire 2GB, 4x Phenom II 3.6GHz PC :|

Hope it works for you as it did I. I was literally getting 12 FPS with shadows on. Disable them in game and I got perfect score. Made a mistake with turning every setting on my graphics card to high, then had to troubleshoot it again to find the cause of my crappy framerate.

The most ridicolous thing is I had a Intel Core 2 Quad 4gb ram @ 800mhz and the Frame was steadyer lol...

Yep, I run FFXI with shadows disabled at 1600x900

My graphics settings for AMD Control Center:
Morphlogical filtering: disabled
Anti-Aliasing: 8x Edge-Detect (Samples: 24x)
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
"AMD Optimized" for tessellation.. w/e that means :3
Catalyst A.I. enabled: more AMD junk
Anti-Aliasing Mode: High Quality
Triple Buffering: unchecked

You have to find the perfect balance to really get it to run smooth on your machine... But hopefully my settings will help you a little.

Here's screenshot:

I noticed something the last time I upgraded my computer. Running 64 bit windows 7 system now where as before I was running 32 bit with XP. AMD processor now, Intel before. With the new setup, I have to dual box in order to get 29.4 frame rate everywhere. If I don't, I get frame rate all over the place.

Not sure if any of this info would help you or not...

I have a lot of more options to set after AMD Tassellation... What did u put on em, quality or performance?

What do u mean with u have to dualbox in order to 29.4 everywhere? O.o

Oh and also, what did u set in the 3 overdrive settings Emirii?

old game is old. its bottle necked by the coding. you're never going to get people who don't lag sometimes.

if ur not dipping under 20 fps with allot of ppl loaded on ur screen, ur fine. make sure to turn off shadows, update drivers, and using windower gui launcher lower ur background res between 1200-1400. if that you still "Feel" laggy with out watching ur fps it could just be ur vid card not playing well with ffxi which is a common prob. ive found nvidia cards to run ffxi consistently well for desktops, as low as the geforce 9500 card (60-90 bucks online).

I think is more a stuttering problem now that I check better, can it be? How can I solve micro stuttering?

Or well I dont know if calling it stutter is right cause the game "stops" for a fraction of second in which I can read fps going @ 25 or so and then it starts again to go @29. Its like a superfast and little freeze

I think I see you are using radeon? I tried to upgrade to a really pricey one last year, was 200$ at best buy at the time, ran all the best games out at the time perfectly, but ffxi like *** (felt very laggy and hard to relax and ignore). my solution was to upgrade to a cheaper card, geforce 9500 > 9800 gt, that ran ffxi better than i had ever seen previously. currently im using the geforce gtx 550 TI, and it runs ffxi like a monster.

So u think its cause SE supports nVidia more for FFXI?

idk what the cause is, I just know from personal experience with many video cards, geforce has always done very well for me while the 1 time I tried an uber radeon, that card failed.

you can always goto the store and buy a cheapy geforce 9500 or better to test and return it after you get ur results. if thats works out for you, I think going online and ordering an uber nvidia card within ur price range is best.

thats cuz the longer you have ur windows running, each pol process takes up more memory(check ur task manager when you start up ur pol and check again after a few hours). getting a better video card would most likely fix that.

I have a 7500gt @ home XD too old?

I wouldnt know, prior to the geforce 9500 i upgraded to years ago I was using a integrated stock vid card and didnt know I was playing in hellish fps.

lol its funny how everyone always says "update your graphic card drivers" but you see....that doesn't always fix things. Emirii mentioned some settings that might also be relevant. But when it comes to things like ffxi, you might find better frame rate..in actual older/beta drivers that were used prior. In some cases you will find drastic changes in frame rate if none at all. It really is trial and error. However if your smart you would want to actually call the gpu manufacturer and see if they have a recommendation...you would be surprised at their customer support. However be advised.. using older drivers on newer cards will sometimes reduce functionality of said gpu. For ex: you might loose 3d functionality for cards that initially came with that feature, due to the older drivers not designed to support that feature.

thats true and that works sometimes, but it can be and usually is allot of effort that could turn out to be a waste of time, yield slightly better results, and/or work and hurt the way newer games run, vs just getting a vid card confirmed to run ffxi well with out all that work.

also more times than not "updating drivers" fixes probs not only for ffxi but other games as well. It was said just as part of a list of possible issues and things to check.

ffxi have 30 frame cap, no matter how good your pc is, you will get lower frame rates , specially on jeuno

The one thing that bogs my game down the most? Windows Update. It starts downloading (NOT installing) and I might as well just walk away until it's done. The frame rate becomes almost unplayable. Even running another game doesn't cause this kind of frame drop.

By gamer standards my PC is probably hideously out of date, but it's no snail by normal standards. Oh well it's probably just one of those "that's Microsoft for ya" type of things.

-_- Small lag only in Jueno. graphic quality is amazing all elsewhere. get used to the fewer fps down in Jeuno, because of shadows and other player animation (game doesn't play well with these) and you'll be fine. its an old game, cant expect it to work perfectly. Game without shadows is just nasty though lol

The random freezes on graphics might not be a graphics issue, probably a ram instability issue? Check out your other options.

My game runs perfectly with no fps drop rate anywhere except Jeuno and Vertical Conflux. (Which I still don't understand, but hey)

Confluxes are about the most graphically intense item in the game, and the game is poorly coded so you'll experience drops in performance no matter how good your rig is.

I didnt lag when I was still playing. Even in Jeuno when Abyssea was first released.

Nah, I've never experienced a performance drop from teleport crystals/confluxes when it's just my character. The only time I have a performance drop is when I have 5 characters at a telepoint.