Ack! Whats wrong with my computer (bad framerate)

Comments

• Samusic Member CommonPosts: 466

  November 2003

  Try updating your drivers.

  

  
• Altimit Member Posts: 82

  November 2003

  Thanks for the advice, but I installed the newest video drivers before I even installed the game.
• Zohar Member Posts: 673

  November 2003

  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

   

  E-mail: Zohar@mmorpg.com
• Altimit Member Posts: 82

  November 2003

  Tried all that and it makes no difference at all... I think my video card is just a peice of crap.
• Oph8 Member Posts: 177

  November 2003

  I could have told ya that

  "Everything is mine and your woman too"

  "Everything is mine and your woman too"
• Kimvbb Member Posts: 47

  November 2003

  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 Member Posts: 673

  November 2003

  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

  E-mail: Zohar@mmorpg.com
• Kimvbb Member Posts: 47

  November 2003

  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 Member Posts: 82

  November 2003

  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?