m17x R2 CF 5870 + FFXIV

If by some miraculous chance that others are playing FFXIV on their CF 5870s, please let me know how you're doing. I want to believe that I should be able to run FFXIV on max settings @ 2xAA in full screen 1200p. What's your experience with it and what steps have you taken to optimize performance.

 

you might want to try different settings in CCC. try setting everything to application manged and see if it runs better. if not, then don't set anything to application managed. i've noticed some games like application managed, and some don't. like BFBC2 likes application managed and so does NFS world, but Black Ops doesn't.

 

Thanks for the idea! I've never thought to deviate from application settings, but I will certainly give that a shot. Will CCC override application settings though?

 

yes. if you have CCC set to 4x AA and the game set to 16x AA you will only get 4x AA.

oh and personally i would stay away from Adaptive Multi-sample AA, it gives everything a black boarder in my experiences and things look very strange.

 

About that. For FFXI it's fine, but for FFXIV it kills the FPS, even at low application settings. For now I've just lowered all the settings to standard with 2xAA. I think CF 5870s should be able to do a bit better than that though...

 

i'm not sure what you are gauging what 5870's should be able to do?

if its desktop 5870's, MOBILITY 5870's are only about a half as good as desktop 5870's.

try running benchmarks, like 3dmark vantage and tell us what your scores are, then you will be able to judge if its actually a problem with your computer or just that the game sucks on your machine. some games are written better then others, and not all games will play the same even if they aren't using high end graphics.

 

I've barely logged into FFXIV (even though it's free for the foreseeable future), however, you may want to check out the following thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/521344-any-ffxiv-players-disappointed-i-am.html

There are a couple of posts in there with the settings that people used (including what worked pretty well for me). Ultimately, it becomes about trial and error.

I'd suggest taking shadows down a notch or leaving them at the lowest/off settings (both in the out of game config and in-game settings. Keep in mind too, that the game isn't very well optimised and it's minimum requirements are still quite high. I'd also recommend using FRAPS to gauge your FPS.

Let us know how you go.

 

Speaking of optimization. Does that notion imply improvements down the road or is it permanently poorly optimized?

 

I'd like to optimistically suggest that it is generally the nature of MMO's to be constantly updated/patched/tweaked so would assume that performance is reviewed as well. So... perhaps, it's up to SE.

As Necrotopsy mentioned though, you also need to have a realistic expectation on how your hardware will perform. Play with your settings, monitor your performance - read about what other players are experiencing and also post your experience to compare and seek feedback.