Ack! Whats wrong with my computer (bad framerate)

Altimit

First off let me list my PC specs:

Video card: Jaton Corp. Generic nVidia Geforce4 Ti 4200 128MB AGP 8X (on my computer it says its connected to a PCI bus, but AGP is enabled... I'm not sure if thats a problem or not)

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2 GHz

Memory: 2x 256MB DDR (512MB)

Sound Card: Some SoundMAX integrated crap

Manufacturer is Dell.

OK, now what my problem is is that in towns and at least one wilderness area (Dangruf Wadi), I have a not-so-great framerate. I've talked to other people who have worse specs than mine and the same video card and they say everything is perfectly smooth. I've messed with all the settings and it seems to run about the same weather I have Overlay Res 640x480, Backbuffer res: 255x255 with Texture compression on high, bump mapping off and environmental animations off or 1024x768 Overlay, 1024x1024 backbuffer, Texture Compression off, Bump Mapping enabled and environmental animations smooth. I've messed with the in game settings like clipping with no effect. The one thing that does make a difference is Mip Mapping which makes it run even worse wen enabled.

With the exception of the towns and dangruf wadi it runs smooth. I'm completly stumped and low framerates really bug me. Is there somthing horribly wrong with my computer? Is it fixable? Do I need a completley new computer?

Thanks,
Altimit

Samusic

Try updating your drivers.

Altimit

Thanks for the advice, but I installed the newest video drivers before I even installed the game.

Zohar

I'll write a quick little guide that may help you get your computer running optimally with FFXI.

Possible Problems:

Crappy Sound Card (may be causing the framerate lag, but unlikely)

The first step is to figure out what settings work best with your video card.

First open up your display properties in either the desktop or control panel. Search for the Direct X and Open GL tabs. There should be a slider that looks similar to this (although much less crappy)

|------------------------------------------------------------------------[+]|

High / Performance / Performance  / Balanced / Quality / High Quality

Set it to look like this:

|[+]------------------------------------------------------------------------|

High / Performance / Performance  / Balanced / Quality / High Quality

Also reduce your anti-alasing to 2X and turn antistrophic filtering off. This will likely reduce graphic quality slightly to moderately. If this increases your framerate, then the root of your problem was a much to high graphic quality setting. If this is the case, slowly move the slider toward High Quality and slowly raise the Antialasing and Antistrophic filtering.

Virtual Memory Tweaking:
(WARNING: CHANGING THE VIRTUAL MEMORY IMPROPERLY MAY CAUSE WINDOWS TO STOP WORKING AND/OR FUNCTION IMPROPERLY. CHANCES ARE THIS WON'T HAPPEN IF YOU LISTEN TO WHAT I SAY, OR MOST OF IT. JUST IN CASE THOUGH, I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE IF YOUR COMPUTER WON'T WORK, YOUR COMPUTER EXPLODES, SAMUSIC EATS YOUR COMPUTER, ETC. ESSENTIALLY, BE CAREFUL
Since you have 512MB of ram, go into the system settings section of control panel and set your virtual memory to this:
Min: 1280
Max: 1280
Note: Make sure you have at least 2GB free prior to altering your virtual memory, as a swap file that's 1280MB will be created on your hardrive (if you have a big hardrive, this is no problem, trust me)
Finally, go to www.softseek.com and search for a program like ram booster. Type something like "performance tweak" or "ram booster" or "ram tweak". There are a couple of free programs (like rambooster) that monitor your free ram and slightly increase performance. One of these programs increased my benchmark score by an average of 100 on low res and 70 on high res. While not much, every little bit helps.
I hope you found this useful, and I hope it helps. Now I need to sleep =P

 

Altimit

Tried all that and it makes no difference at all... I think my video card is just a peice of crap.

Oph8

I could have told ya that

"Everything is mine and your woman too"

Kimvbb

OK, I dont know a ton 'bout hardware so be gentle...  I'm scoring 2700 on low res and you dont wanna know on high, I'd like to be scoring 4000 on high. I have a pentium 4, with 512 mem, a NVidia GeForce4 MX440 (128 ddr sdram video memory) and a sound blaster 24 bit.  Thats what the sticker on the side of my poor comp says.  Do I need a new video card?  If so can you recomend anything, and perhaps estimate a price?  Hope I'm not being too demanding

Zohar

I noticed just now you had a PCI video card... I'm not compeltely sure but I think a PCI slot is much slower then an AGP slot, that could be the problem.

I got a 2370 on low res and a 1770 on high res. I can play the game perfectly on a decent resolution (1024x720 w/ textures of 1024x1024)

My specs are:

1.2 GHZ AMD Athlon Tunderbird

GeForce 4 MMX 400 64MB of Video ram AGP x 4 (I think, recalling from memory)

640MB of Ram

Creative Soundblaster XGamer

 

You don't need the best computer to get a decent gaming experience

Kimvbb

I was satisfied to have a decent gaming experience with EQ.  But I've loved the FF series, and been waiting *impatiantly* for FFXI to come out for a while.  Decent isn't good enough for FF, the word I want is "awesome"

Altimit

I checked and my Video card IS AGP, its just sharing an IRQ with the last PCI Bus which is unused so it shouldnt be a problem. I dont get why FFXI wont run well on my computer. I have newer games, for example Jedi Academy which I can run at 1024x768 with everything maxed out except dynamic glow and volumetric shadows and it runs at 60+ FPS practicly the whole time, and this game is even DirectX 9 which my card doesnt even support. FFXI is DX8 and has much worse graphics and is over a year older. What gives?