FFXIV Settings / PC Help

Heyo guys, have a few new dumb questions. I got a new PC, nothing high end just a 1K dell. I have 6K RAM and an Intel i5-2320 CPU with a Radeon 6540 with 1K RAM on it. What can I buy to make it run FFXIV better? It runs excellent with everything on standard and i'm sure I have enough RAM, but when I try to make the game look great I can barely even move my mouse and everything runs slow even when I minimize the game. Do I just need to buy a better GFX card or what and if so do you think a 2-300$ card would make much diff? Any suggestions for anyone who plays would be great or if you need more PC specs just ask me whatcha need.

Is this enough to run the game smooth? >.> http://www.frys.com/product/6969837?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

To me, yeah it should run just like mine on standard mode, I just cant seem to see whats wrong with my game atm ; ; Dunno if its my GFX card or what @.@

Your card is on the lower end. You don't need anything 200-300 range, but that's up to you. If you want something simple that isn't going to break the bank, jumping up to a 6750($100) wouldn't be a bad investment.

Personally I am and always will be an nVidia guy, so I'd really and truely suggest;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130752

Or(more expensive);
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130759

I'm also an EVGA fan so that's why I chose those. Investing a little more for a better card is a decent idea, and a lot of the higher end settings are just really taxing(Anti Aliasing, Depth of Field and Ambient Occlusion come to mind.)

For a basic rundown on what kind of card is worth your money try this;
http://www.graphicscardbenchmarks.com/page/compare

You can put in a host of cards and see how they stack up, along with an average price.

Hope this helps and good luck!

What do your budgets look like and would you be comfortable building a computer on your own?

Yeah i keep reading PC games been run on super and ultra and what not lol i wonder if FF14 has that too but i know that requires a 3k$ PC and im poor XD

See that's my problem, i'm wondering why 14 runs so shitty on HQ mode. Is it my card only, I keep hearing 6-8K RAM is more than anyone will ever need and an i5 Pros is the ***. So your saying just a simple 1-200 dolla card would fix my 14 problems?

Sorry if I sounded like a *** Reikouki your info helped alot actually, I just dont know if the only problem is my card before I spend this money, I have 300 left from my pell grant for me spending and I really wanna fix my 14 problem on running in HQ mode.

Oh no worries. It's going to be a combination of things. Your RAM is not an issue I can guarantee that. A faster HDD(SSD or 10k RPM) speeds up performance of the game, as well as a better card. Other than that, your processor and RAM is fine.

As far as the easiest thing and biggest bang for the buck, it's going to be a graphics card. This game taxes the GPU and that's just how it is, so if you get a better, stronger card, you should be set. And like I said, you don't need anything crazy, 150 would let you see a pretty big boost.

To be honest I don't think it's particularly worth it unless you are really just OCD about getting that extra detail on your screen. I run an i7 OC'd to 3.8, 12gb RAM, and an EVGA GTX570 Superclocked and I can run the game at pretty high settings. I still turn off Anti-Aliasing and shadows because for me they aren't worth the resources they use.

I'd say hold onto the cash and just roll with it on standard settings unless it really bugs you.

Also Bomber, I spent a total of $1800 for my machine and that includes Dual 27" monitors so 3k is really overkill for this game. Not that I wouldn't buy a whole new machine with intense water cooling if I had 3 grand to blow...

Not to double post but this should also help explain what each setting does and what part of the PC it depends on;

http://www.ffxivcore.com/tutorials/article/6-ffxiv-graphical-settings-guide/

Thanks a lot for the info ^_^ i been looking up a lot ..and i know stronger double fan graph cards needs a higher power supply which can also be costly ..motherboards can be expensive too and the processor ..everything else is cheap ...but yeah you cant put a super card in a 300W PC lol

TY so much, I will just invest in a 1-200 dollar card for now, I am not OCD but I dream to be. It just makes me sad seeing characters at max drawing and then at standard mode.. I am OCD about it my wallet just can't help me atm. I use a 32 inch screen so the prettier it is the better the game play. I have played for around 3 hours now and I am almost level 9 (exploring alot) I love the no wait timer battle system and the game is just so pretty I can't wait for V2. TY for your help and I will invest in the best card for my price. The way I look at it seeing as my PC already runs any game but 14 in godly mode pimping 14 = any game in pimp mode beside the 2x 4x a mode like you said which I agree about the shadows they are useless really. I will keep at it, the only real times I get to upgrade my PC atm are when I get pell grants and have any leftover (which isn't alot) I would love to super clock my PC because its so easy with i5's but Dell blocks it :( I wanted a PC from MyPowerPC.com but I didn't have 2K to get a decent one so I just went to Best Buy and bought the best they had.

While on that subject how does one see what there power output is and what is being used atm? I know this effects the cards you buy.

On the side of your power supply it should say what wattage it is at. If it's a Dell it's probably going to be in the 500W or less range. They kind of spring for the cheapest possible.

In the future, it's going to be cheaper to build a pc than buy it, as long as you keep an eye out for deals at places like TigerDirect.com and newegg.com. The last 3 PCs I've built have been from Newegg and I haven't regretted it once. If you spring for AMD products instead of Intel you can typically get a good machine for <800, that can run most current games pretty darn well. Like I mentioned earlier I prefer nVidia, and also Intel, so I go for that, and it makes things a little on the higher end, price-wise.

Building your own PC is very simple, and it just requires a little research and watching a few youtube videos. As long as you do that, and follow the instructions you get with your mobo the first time, you won't have any issues.

Also typically building a PC is going to get you an overall increase in quality of product. The RAM and motherboards used in Dell and HP machines are usually lower end and a brand that only sells to businesses in bulk. As opposed to buying your own RAM you know you're getting Corsair, or you know you're getting an ASUS motherboard, etc. Same with hard drives at that.

Anyway, I like talking about this stuff so my posts are long. Bomber I suggest building a PC personally, but if that scares you then go for one that you can get a deal on.

You can try;
http://www.ibuypower.com
http://www.newegg.com

They both have good deals on a regular basis, and ibuypower lets you actually customize your machine to your own specifications.

Sorry for all the text and good luck to both you guys.

The text is appreciated! I considered building a PC but then I gave up because I didn't know what all I would need to buy then + the screws and all that stuff haha. I'm a lazy *** xD.

I just built my first PC from scratch, and as scary as it may seem, it's really not that difficult. The only challenge comes at mounting the CPU and the heatsink, the rest is really just plugging everything in.


I run an EVGA 2560MB GTX 570, and I was always wondering why even on a higher end card, FFXIV still runs subpar even in the high graphics end. Needless to say, I'm eternally grateful for this link, as it's helped me maximize out what I have.

Take the time to Google yourself through how to purchase and assemble your own parts. The savings and performance are worth it.

Yea the scariest part is CPU like you said, I still don't really like putting it in place, after multiple builds.

Yea I get some lag and whatnot when I turn on some of the settings too high. That's when I think it comes down to your HDD speeds(SSD or 10k RPM drives.) There honestly isn't anything else that makes sense from what I can tell. I don't ever go over 40% RAM utilization with Chrome, Netflix, Youtube on the other monitor, and CPU has hit about 35% max. My 570 doesn't overheat and isn't particularly being pushed to it's limits either. So at that point I start to think it has to do with loading the character models and environments from your hard drive. Honestly I can't seem to peg it on anything else, lol.

The graphics engine is one of the things being fixed for 2.0.

Personally I would stick with what you have on standard mode until 2.0 to see how well the updated game core systems are first.

Then by hopefully by that time when AMD has the HD7000 series, and Nvidia has the GTX600 series both out in full force it will slowly bring down the prices from the previous series cards.

Thats what I plan on doing.

Well from the research I've done all that SSD does on FFXIV is improve loading time a bit, also FFXIV's current engine is great on the eyes but horrible in the coding meaning that even high end hardware is going to meet up with bad performance if DoF and AO is both turned on (they are broken at the moment), just wait till 2.0 and its new engine like Xeonerable said and just play on standard setting with texture filtering on high and the other option that appears in the same config box on highest that should give good performance everywhere minus in ul'dah.

Whats needed to run the game like in this video?

I got a Radeon R6770 CORE EDITION at BestBuy for 195$ after taxes, installing the drivers now and will post pics of how it looks.

Looks pretty good :) runs smooth

Hopefully that kicked it up a notch, I hope it's performing how you wanted now buddy.

I didn't actually know that DoF and AO were broken at the moment, that's good to know.

Thats good to see and hear ;) , if you run into any type of fps drop in certain places you can always turn off the physics option in the system setting in game (since Ati doesn't have a separate physics processor on their cards like nvidia does) btw i also use Ati ^_^! (a 5770 i overclocked it a bit same with my cpu (which is amd) and its working fairly well on any game :)

Yeah unfortunately they are :( so just go without them and you should have smooth sailing till 2.0 .....well smooth sailing unless in Ul'dah after merge xD, darn place looks like New Years eve in the New York city streets , just before the new years ball drops xD.

Is there a good windower around for 14? I've read a few forums on sites I don't usually use so cant trust em and seems to be ALOT of em.

I noticed you're on Ridill also, if you ever wanna team up for some low level leve quests let me know :o I just started about a week ago.

Oh and what kind of settings are you using? While my game runs pretty smooth I've noticed some close ups of my elf look a little crappy. I'm running on a i7 16gig 560ti. Any suggestions as far as what settings would be best?

Yeah I don't really know otherwise, but I do run FFXIV on a Crucial M4 SSD, so I can't say what it does/doesn't improve.. I just keep it at standard settings with 4x MSAA and High Texture Rendering and Highest Texture Filtering, and disable depth of field.

Also, I force Vertical Sync and Triple Buffering on my card, which eliminates the awful tearing involved in standard card settings.


I just use the standard client, personally. It has a windowed mode in the config client, if that's what you're looking for.

Yeah there is a FFXIV windower but it doesnt have any addons or anything , so best bet is just to run it windowed.

Cookies ok, lets do it. And i just hate how i have to use my mouse to scroll up the text log.