The Benchmark Thread

[Loony BoB]

FINAL FANTASY XIV Official Benchmark (http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/media/benchmark/na/)

How do you come up? My score was 1894. I noticed it had some trouble in the ship battle scene, but I didn't notice any major problems. For a few splitseconds it would lose sound (just a monotone noise instead) but the screen would still be moving.

This was on Low and with 3x IE8 windows, 2x Excel windows and 1x Explorer windows open and Y!M/AIM/IRC/Winamp all on in the background (Winamp obviously not playing). Gonna try it on high now... not optimistic. xD I have a pretty high end PC, too. Windows 7 64 bit on a GTS8800 320MB card (DX10 compatible) and 4GB RAM. E6600 processor, which might be worth upgrading someday, but still. Hmm.

EDIT: Never mind, seems there's not much point in me running it in HIGH as my resolution is 1680x1050, not 1920x1080.

[Rostum]

I have a pretty high end PC, too. Windows 7 64 bit on a GTS8800 320MB card (DX10 compatible) and 4GB RAM. E6600 processor.

No offense but that is very far from high end.

I score around 3,000 on high and almost 5,000 on low. My specs are Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, and a ATI HD 4870 512MB. But this computer is pretty old now and I'll end up upgrading towards the end of the year.

[Loony BoB]

Compared to every one of my mates at work, it's the best. *shrug* No, it's certainly not the latest spec out there (hence "pretty high end" rather than "high end" :p), but it's easily capable of running every video game I've installed (Crysis, Oblivion, FM2010) with every setting on High without issue. I'd say that makes it high end enough when you consider what the standard desktop/laptop that most regular users out there have. When Crysis came out, probably only about 5% of gamers had a PC capable of playing it. It's probably closer to something like 25-50% now. If FFXIV is going to be workable for only around 25% of the marketable PC audience then I'd question whether or not it would be classed as good business, but I'm sure that people will manage using their PS3 if not their PC. I'm concerned that Danielle might not have her PC be fully capable, although she does have the same specs I've listed. Her PC just tends to run slower than mine for whatever reason.

8800GTS was the best on the market when I purchased it a few years ago, so while it is 320MB it's not too shabby. Wouldn't mind an upgrade but won't break the bank until I have a game fail on me. :p

[Rostum]

Compared to the cheapest build you can build today, that is very old. A 8800GTS wasn't that great when it came out, either (you were looking at 1GB cards back then too). Maybe in early 2007 it was towards the high end, but things have progressed much much much further than that since.

By the time the game comes out, the current high spec computer will be much cheaper. You'll be looking at things like 16-24GB DDR3 RAM, nVidia 480GTX 2GB, i7 Core 4.0GHz to be middle-high range, most likely.

[Loony BoB]

16-24GB is, for me, stupid. Standard builds come with 2-4GB at the moment. Going by the Best Sellers at dixons.co.uk (a pretty prominent seller in the UK for Joe Average), the best is 3GB and the second best is 2GB. Best Seller for gaming specific section of their site reads up at 6GB, and that's a £1,600 desktop which is insanely expensive to all but the best paid people out there.

If you're going for a custom build, I've not seen anything with 16-24GB out there. I can sort of understand some might go for 8GB or something, but what the hell would you need 16-24GB RAM to run?

If the game is coming out at the end of the year, I'd expect 4GB to be used in less than half of the desktops that are in use throughout the world. For gaming PCs, it'll probably be about standard issue.

[Rostum]

16-24GB is, for me, stupid. Standard builds come with 2-4GB at the moment. Going by the Best Sellers at dixons.co.uk (a pretty prominent seller in the UK for Joe Average), the best is 3GB and the second best is 2GB. Best Seller for gaming specific section of their site reads up at 6GB, and that's a £1,600 desktop which is insanely expensive to all but the best paid people out there.

If you're going for a custom build, I've not seen anything with 16-24GB out there. I can sort of understand some might go for 8GB or something, but what the hell would you need 16-24GB RAM to run?

If the game is coming out at the end of the year, I'd expect 4GB to be used in less than half of the desktops that are in use throughout the world. For gaming PCs, it'll probably be about standard issue.

I've seen custom builds from companies like Dell, Alienware and HP that offer up to 24GB of RAM and even laptops that offer 8GB of RAM that isn't expensive, and it isn't stupid. Just because you aren't up to date with technology and don't realise that computers aren't just used to look up Facebook and play some games, does not make it stupid. If we kept saying "that's stupid" to newer technology, where would we be?

By the time FFXIV is released, you'll see that 4GB is the bare minimum of RAM you'd need. In fact, right now to have anything lower is laughable. Especially those on a 32-bit OS and running a 512MB-1GB GPU which counts along side it (meaning you'd really only be getting 3GB RAM).

In fact, the next upgrade I'll be doing will be around the 24GB RAM mark. I need it for my rendering, and it helps a tremendous amount! (I'm a character animator, but I also freelance which means I need to do lighting and rendering which will take up all of that 24GB).

So where does Square draw the line? Do they have to make their next big thing to a 5 year old game because the average joe doesn't know :bou::bou::bou::bou: about computers? There is nothing wrong with pushing the limits, and they won't break their market (I'm pretty sure they have more educated and skillful people doing research for them than us). They still have the PS3 as an option and if you look at all the FFXIV fansites (and MMORPG forums in general) you'll see most MMO players upgrade their computers a hell of a lot, and most are willing to buy a completely new system when FFXIV is released.

Of course, there are going to be many options to turn on and off to be able to get it to run on lower specs. It just won't look nearly as pretty. And me personally, I'd love to run it in 1080p with all settings maxed!

:D

[Loony BoB]

Custom builds, Alienware etc. with 12GB RAM are not using the RAM for gaming. They are using the RAM for running multiple virtual servers. Or (to quote what I was reading) "doing bracketed HDR exposures in CS4". Or, in your case, rendering. All places I've checked out just now are saying that 12GB is a waste of money if you're doing it for gaming and should stick to 4-6GB. If it's for gaming related purposes, it's basically nothing more than bragging rights which, to most people, will just end up with you looking silly if you don't have a good reason for the additional RAM.

When I say Average Joe, I mean the people who are actually able to afford a PC in the first place, and the ones that intend on using it for gaming - not rendering!

As for "High end" I don't mean "THE BEST!!!", I mean "what you need to run every game out there at the highest settings without any problems whatsoever." I would say what you're referring to is what I used to refer to as a "Specialist Computer" or (as they're referred to at my work) a "CAD PC". Borderline Supercomputer. :p Admittedly, I'd love to try gaming on one, mind you. :D Haha. You're lucky that your work requires you have that sort of rig, you'll never have a problem with games - ever. :)

Not up to date with technology? Dude, it's literally in my job description to be up to date with technology. :) I just also stay up to date with what is realistic for the needs and wallets of 99% of the gamer population... it's possible that, being a renderer, you aren't aware of what most people look for in a desktop. Which is understandable.

Anyway, enough rambling. :D The point is that normal gamers looking for what is referred to as "mid to high range" (in your words) shouldn't be looking for 16-24GB RAM. That's far beyond their requirements, and will remain that way at the start of 2011, easily. There is no need for them to rush out and spend £5,000+ on a gaming rig. Most people will be looking at closer to £600-1000 if they're serious about their gaming. In the UK, anyway, not sure on the costs of things over the pond.

How much RAM does a PS3 have, btw? I just read it's something like 256MB. Is that true? If so, that's crazy what they can do with such a small amount. Stunned.

[Octavious]

Scored a 2781 on High.

Absolutely can't wait for this to release.

[Rostum]

Custom builds, Alienware etc. with 12GB RAM are not using the RAM for gaming. They are using the RAM for running multiple virtual servers. Or (to quote what I was reading) "doing bracketed HDR exposures in CS4". Or, in your case, rendering. All places I've checked out just now are saying that 12GB is a waste of money if you're doing it for gaming and should stick to 4-6GB. If it's for gaming related purposes, it's basically nothing more than bragging rights which, to most people, will just end up with you looking silly if you don't have a good reason for the additional RAM.

When I say Average Joe, I mean the people who are actually able to afford a PC in the first place, and the ones that intend on using it for gaming - not rendering!

As for "High end" I don't mean "THE BEST!!!", I mean "what you need to run every game out there at the highest settings without any problems whatsoever." I would say what you're referring to is what I used to refer to as a "Specialist Computer" or (as they're referred to at my work) a "CAD PC". Borderline Supercomputer. :p Admittedly, I'd love to try gaming on one, mind you. :D Haha. You're lucky that your work requires you have that sort of rig, you'll never have a problem with games - ever. :)

Not up to date with technology? Dude, it's literally in my job description to be up to date with technology. :) I just also stay up to date with what is realistic for the needs and wallets of 99% of the gamer population... it's possible that, being a renderer, you aren't aware of what most people look for in a desktop. Which is understandable.

Anyway, enough rambling. :D The point is that normal gamers looking for what is referred to as "mid to high range" (in your words) shouldn't be looking for 16-24GB RAM. That's far beyond their requirements, and will remain that way at the start of 2011, easily. There is no need for them to rush out and spend £5,000+ on a gaming rig. Most people will be looking at closer to £600-1000 if they're serious about their gaming. In the UK, anyway, not sure on the costs of things over the pond.

How much RAM does a PS3 have, btw? I just read it's something like 256MB. Is that true? If so, that's crazy what they can do with such a small amount. Stunned.

This is probably starting to go off topic, but I can garantee you look as if you are out of date considering your "high spec" PC was high spec about 4 years ago and technology has progressed much further than that. I'm not sure where you're getting your facts and figures from, but all I can say is you're wrong. Most MMO gamers these days want a great deal of multitasking, which requires much more power than the average joe; especially when you consider how much more advanced FFXIV is compared to even Aion at this stage (let alone WoW). 4GB just doesn't cut it when you consider people don't generally use their PC's JUST for gaming at any one time.

People don't need to spend £5,000+ to get a current high-end PC. Unless they're stupid enough to want to buy a workstation graphics card. I can build a high-end PC that'd last me 3-4 years (longer if you don't care about it getting out dated by the next best thing) for around $1,500-$2,000 AUD which is fairly cheap in the grand scheme of things.

Now I'm probably going overboard with people needing 24GB of RAM, especially when they'll have faster RAM out by that time I bet. But most people can get 8-16GB DDR3 RAM fairly cheap. In fact, I know quite a few people who already had 16GB about two years ago and didn't have to pay a small fortune for it...

As for the PS3, it does things a lot differently than a PC so you pretty much can not compare them. Not to mention Square said themselves that FFXIV for the PS3 will only have a maximum of 720p resolution and there won't be as many graphical features (and more texture compression I'm guessing) than the PC version. In fact, they said the two version would be completely different builds to allow the PC to not be held back by any "PS3 limitations" in the far future.

[Loony BoB]

Admittedly my PC is not high end by today's standards but has never had a problem playing any game I've installed on it whilst also running other software. That was all I was referring to when I said "high end". I'm just saying that high end desktops don't need 24GB RAM which you seem to agree so yeah. :p I'd say 6-8GB is enough for gaming + software. Comfortably. Keeping in mind the only people who need to be told this are not the kind of people to build their own desktop.

I think anyone with 4-6GB RAM should be okay so long as they have a half-decent graphics card when playing FFXIV going by the benchmark test. My PC handled it with only the most fractional of problems and that was with a chunk of other things being used at the same time. But to avoid any kind of lag whatsoever, 6GB RAM and a 1GB graphics card will be fine, I'm reckoning.

[Rostum]

Yeah, well I don't want to argue anymore so let's just agree on that, lol. I'd suggest to anyone building a new PC to get a 64-bit motherboard/OS with at least 6GB of RAM and a GPU with 1GB / GDDR5 memory.

All in all, we should really just be waiting until Square release the recommended system requirements.

In any case, I was looking on NewEgg (not a site I use, but similar) and I notice you can build something pretty damn good for a cheap enough price. Just buy your mate a few beers for him to build it if your not one to want to muck around with it. Everyone has a mate who can build computers, right? :D

[Ouch!]

If they don't, they should. Free tech support for the win!

[Loony BoB]

Seriously. Although don't instantly assume people who work in IT are great with everything to do with computers. The amount of times I get called up by someone... "You work in IT, yeah? I just used [software that didn't actually cause problem] and it [description of part of the problem with no error message given] when I [not the action that caused the problem]. So, with that in mind, what do I do? I know you don't live in our country anymore, but..."

[Lionx]

My friend got a 3000ish score with only 2 gigs of RAM. He does have an i5 processor and some NVidia card...its pretty beefy. RAM really has nothing to do with this benchmark.

[Mirage]

I've got an 8800 GT, C2D 2.13 GHz (E6400) and 4 GB of RAM.
Score is 2030 on low. Never drops below 25 fps, so I'm very bothered by it. I plan on OCing this CPU when I get a better cooler (or just switch to an E8400 or a quadcore), and get a better video card (probably a 5850 or 5870) sometime this fall.

I'd also argue that the amount of RAM is the least important for FF14 performance, as long as it's 3 GB or more. I'm not using more than 3 GB of physical RAM when I play games (or run the alpha client). Of course, I see the point in having a lot of RAM, but it's definitely not something FF14 is going to benefit greatly from. If you wanted better FF14 performance, you're better off spending more money on the CPU and graphics card, not getting 12 GB or more RAM.

[Rostum]

The fact that getting more RAM is not much more expensive at all, and the fact that the general MMO community do not just run one program at any one time doesn't mean you only need 2-3GB of RAM. Seriously, I only have 4GB of RAM at the moment, but it'd cost me maybe $30AUD to buy another 4GB giving me 8GB total (this is only DDR2 but still...). That's like... not even close to being how much FFXIV itself will cost.

Even if you weren't playing FFXIV, I'd argue you should get 4GB or more RAM anyway. It helps greatly with multitasking and the general run of software. I'm not arguing that you must have 24GB of RAM to run this game, I'm arguing that by now you should really have 4GB or more. And you wonder why people always complain that their computer runs :bou::bou::bou::bou:ty a year after they bought it...

However, this benchmark seems a lot more GPU intensive than anything else.

Btw. ATI have nice cards at much better prices than NVIDIA. But ATI drivers are just so bad that I might just end up going NVIDIA next time...

[Mirage]

The fact that getting more RAM is not much more expensive at all, and the fact that the general MMO community do not just run one program at any one time doesn't mean you only need 2-3GB of RAM. Seriously, I only have 4GB of RAM at the moment, but it'd cost me maybe $30AUD to buy another 4GB giving me 8GB total (this is only DDR2 but still...). That's like... not even close to being how much FFXIV itself will cost.

Even if you weren't playing FFXIV, I'd argue you should get 4GB or more RAM anyway. It helps greatly with multitasking and the general run of software. I'm not arguing that you must have 24GB of RAM to run this game, I'm arguing that by now you should really have 4GB or more. And you wonder why people always complain that their computer runs :bou::bou::bou::bou:ty a year after they bought it...

However, this benchmark seems a lot more GPU intensive than anything else.

Btw. ATI have nice cards at much better prices than NVIDIA. But ATI drivers are just so bad that I might just end up going NVIDIA next time...

I think I'm marginally GPU limited with my 8800 GT card, actually :p, a friend of mine's got the same video card as me, but a much better CPU, he scores about 100 points more than me :p.
-edit-
Yeah, i actually lose only 100 points on the benchmark by going from no antialiasing to 4x :p.

Anyway yeah, RAM is good and all. I just really don't think you'd benefit much from more than 4 GB RAM unless you're multitasking way more than "most people". I mean I've currently got 1.5 GB free (though actually used by superfetch cache, but that doesn't count :p) and that's with photoshop using 500 MB. I never saw the FF14 client use more than 5-600 MB.
Of course, in a year or two, it might be a bit low with 4 GB.
-edit again-
Just checked DDR2 prices around here. they start at 600 kr (108 australian dollars) plus shipping. That's for 2x 2GB

[Rostum]

Just checked DDR2 prices around here. they start at 600 kr (108 australian dollars) plus shipping. That's for 2x 2GB

That's insane. I can get it for a third of the price.

[Mirage]

Just checked DDR2 prices around here. they start at 600 kr (108 australian dollars) plus shipping. That's for 2x 2GB

That's insane. I can get it for a third of the price.

Yeah, insane was what I thought too.

[Loony BoB]

Just checked DDR2 prices around here. they start at 600 kr (108 australian dollars) plus shipping. That's for 2x 2GB

That's insane. I can get it for a third of the price.
Where do you get your RAM from, out of curiosity? I just checked where I usually get mine from and it's over £100 for 3x2GB. :( I even bothered with Froogle and the lowest price I can find for "3x2GB" and "RAM" is £125.78. =|

Of course, a 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5850 is £193.62 on Froogle, too, so still a decent amount more expensive.

Most lag is caused by GPU rather than CPU - no mention of RAM so far as I can see... not sure.

[Rostum]

I think the confusing thing for a lot of FFXI players is that FFXI is very CPU intensive and barely uses the GPU. But now it's the other way around.

I use this dodgy asian store that most likely gets their parts off the back of a truck. Really bad customer service, but nice cheap parts.

MSY-The Name you can trust-More than 13 years in IT industry-Nationalwide branches serve you & always offer the best up today IT price (http://msy.com.au/)

They're usually cheaper in store as you can bargain a bit.

By the way BoBsicle, are you looking at DDR3 or DDR2 type RAM? And what speeds are they?

[Loony BoB]

I searched on froogle.co.uk for 6GB RAM and that's the kind of result I got. Same for 3x2GB RAM. xD Didn't check much beyond the lowest price for all results.

EDIT: The site I go to when mass-purchasing tends to be Overclockers UK (http://www.overclockers.co.uk), although I generally check Froogle to see if I can do better by keeping certain parts ordered elsewhere. Sometimes I can, but usually the shipping costs from multiple sites causes issues. I think things in the UK are just more expensive in general. =/

[Shadowdust]

I scored 4184 on high setting with a Phenom II 1055T@3.6 GHz, 8 GB DDR2@856 MHz, and a 1 GB Radeon 5850 (775 MHz core/4.5 GHz mem). I also had 2xAA and 16xAF enabled in the driver settings. I should turn off those settings to see if it will improve my score significantly or not.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

I have:

Processor: Intel Core 2Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz
RAM: 6GB
OS: Windows 7 64-Bit
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD4350 512MB

I got like a 500 and something on Low. :/ Makes me a sad panda. I was sorta surprised I did that bad.

[Ouch!]

I think Ome mentioned to me that they loaded a new benchmark because the old one didn't support ATI cards. You might want to try again.

[Rostum]

Nah, I was talking about SLI and CrossFire compatability. People are managing to turn them on in the benchmark (basically making it full screen so that the dual cards get in to action) and are reporting scores above 10,000.

So yeah, I think the benchmark isn't really that accurate (unless you can't run it at all).

[Jessweeee♪]

I'm in trouble D:

My laptop can't even start the benchmark.

[Mirage]

What kind of video card is there in it?

[Jessweeee♪]

Intel 965 Express Chipset :(

[Rostum]

Intel 965 Express Chipset :(

LOL

[Jessweeee♪]

I knooooow. When I play The Sims 3 the weight and muscle sliders just detach their limbs instead of changing their figure!

FFXI runs fine, though.

[Goldenboko]

No reason to even check the :bou::bou::bou::bou:ty comp I have currently. I'll check after purchasing a new one xD

[Mirage]

I knooooow. When I play The Sims 3 the weight and muscle sliders just detach their limbs instead of changing their figure!

FFXI runs fine, though.

FF11 runs fine because most of the rendering is done without using the video card. Your video card isn't really made for rendering 3D images at all, and that's why crap hits the fan when you try :p.

[Miriel]

I just got a new Mac Pro.

8 cores, 8gb ram, 2.26ghz, ATI HD 4870, 4tb hard drive space, Windows 7. Hollaaaaa. I think I'll be able to run this now. ;)

[Mirage]

8 cores? Are you sure it's not 4 with hyperthreading? :p

[Miriel]

8 Cores, 16 virtual ones with hyper-threading.

[Mirage]

That's quite hefty.

Strange that you didn't get a matching video card ;o.

[Miriel]

I might upgrade the video card later, but right now, this is a pretty big upgrade from my 2005 Macbook Pro. :p

[Mirage]

Yeah that's true. I guess it makes sense to have an insane CPU but just a normal GPU in a Mac though, it's not like Apple focuses a lot on gaming for those machines :p

[Ezme]

Teehehehehe, wana see summat funny?

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h135/Bugsey66/Benchmark.jpg

I bought this laptop 4 years ago to go to uni with an run guildwars on optimum specs so out of curiosity I ran the benchmark. I was 99.9% sure I wouldn't be up to standard but didn't think I'd be that rubbish! lol Ah well, if I get it me'thinks it will be on PS3. Hopefully I can avoid the VAT increase here in the UK.

[KentaRawr!]

My PC froze when I tried the benchmark. :p

[Ezme]

Ok so I've just got a new laptop for non-FF related reasons and thought I'd try the benchmark again just to see how awsome this new one is :p But it won't run and says "a problem has caused this programme to stop working" :( Could be something to do with me, I've been using windows 7 for all of a few hours and still haven't figured it all out! I went a got directx and everything :(

[Mirage]

Windows 7 would have a recent enough directx version already. What kind of graphics card is there in your new laptop? Also, try installing and running the benchmark with administrative priviledges.

[Rostum]

Remember they released a new version of DirectX 9 last month. I'm not sure if Windows 7 will automatically update it, but I just downloaded it manually just in case.

Honestly, the official system requirements are much lower than I thought they'd be. It's still funny to see people scramble to update their PC right now though.

[Aydin]

Can anyone help me? I try to run the Benchmark program but it stops responding...

[Rostum]

Can anyone help me? I try to run the Benchmark program but it stops responding...

Need more information.

What OS, what are you system specs, do you have the latest DirectX installed, do you have all the .NET Frameworks installed, etc.

[Aydin]

I have Windows 7, a chipset instead of a graphics card, I have the latest DirectX installed, and I don't know about frameworks or whatever...

[Rostum]

a chipset instead of a graphics card

There's your problem. You won't be able to run FFXIV on an intergrated graphics chip.

[Ezme]

I did do DirectX manually as couldn't find where it said if I had it, if in doubt and all :p I'm running a Radeon HD 5470 with an i5 with windows 7 home premium. This wasn't bought as a gaming laptop, just an update of a slowly dying one! If it does run it, it will just be a bonus, I think I got deal of the century with this lappy at £499 with office (End of a clearance line display model :p ) so I'm happy either way. Not all of us have the funds to upgrade computers willy nilly or have the knowledge to do it ourselves.

That being said if anyone knows off hand why it isn't working I will be forever grateful :)

[Loony BoB]

Do you know if your graphics card is the 512MB or 1024MB version of the HD 5470?

EDIT: Also, does your error message offer any additional information?

[Ezme]

the 512. Like I said I consciously made the decision to stop gaming on the laptop as it pushes the price up so much. I have a ps3 so it's academic really. The error message unfortunately doesn't say anything useful about what the problem is, just that there is one!

[Rostum]

512mb should be fine.

Make sure you have .NET Framework 4 installed. You can get that from Microsoft's website too. Usually this is installed with Windows 7 though, but may as well try it.

[Ezme]

I went an installed .net 4, restarted and....
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h135/Bugsey66/Benchemarkfail.png

:(

I've done a few system updates but this laptop is only about 20hrs old so maybe theres a few more bits to come down

[Loony BoB]

How strange. Yeah, look for updates for your graphics card drivers but aside from that I think it's more one for the Help Forum than for here.

[Ezme]

Yep, that's all from me on the subject, like I said, it isn't important really, just a comparison between old lappy and new would be interesting :p

[Loony BoB]

Just so you know, a quick search online showed that two people resolved that fault by updating something called Catalyst. I have no idea what Catalyst is or if you have it, mind you. :p

[Ezme]

PMSL thank yee muchly Loonybob, I shall investigate! :p

EDT: Catalyst is the software for ATI graphics cards :p I think I might be on the way to solve this! :D

EDT2: SUCCESS! I had to update catalyst twice before it worked but it worked! So if anyone has the same problem check if they have a ATI card. Unfortunately I only scored 749 on low :( I thought I'd do a lot better than that, although I guessed running would probs be not quite there. Oh well, nothing ventured and all, but the benchmark ran smoothly.

[Rostum]

I still think the benchmark is very misleading...

[Jessweeee♪]

ARGH this is why I hate PC gaming. Why won't you play with my chipset it's all lonely ;_;

[Rostum]

Because computers aren't magic. :(

[KentaRawr!]

ARGH this is why I hate PC gaming. Why won't you play with my chipset it's all lonely ;_;

We can be PS3 buddies.

[Mirage]

ARGH this is why I hate PC gaming. Why won't you play with my chipset it's all lonely ;_;

It's pretty much because you haven't got a PC made for gaming...

[Baloki]

http://forums.eyesonff.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=31826&stc=1&d=1279102929

ATI HD 3870 X2 512MB DDR3
Intel DuelCore E2180 @2GHZ
4GB RAM
Win 7 Pro x64

[Dignified Pauper]

How do you find your benchmark. I know last night, it was running very choppy for me.

[Loony BoB]

At the end of the video sequence it takes you to a screen similar to that which Baloki posted. If you have it on loop, the screen will only be around for about a minute or so before the video starts again.

[Dignified Pauper]

what, a video sequence?!

also, are the servers down?

[Baloki]

DP, you need to download the benchmark program (http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/media/benchmark/na/) listed in the FAQ thread (http://forums.eyesonff.com/final-fantasy-xiv-online/133049-final-fantasy-xiv-faq.html). Also my benchmark ran smoothly and didn't seem to drop a frame so I don't understand the low score, also I got a slightly higher score running the high-res version :/ I suspect it's the lack of crossfire support in the windowed benchmark that's the issue :/

[Dignified Pauper]

hmmm, i am downloading it now! WEE!

edit:

also, are the servers down currently?

Scored a 291 on my laptop, will have to try again on my PC.

[Miriel]

Beta won't work on vmware fusion. In fact, it's not even working via bootcamp/Windows 7, but I don't know if that's an issue specifically with mac & bootcamp since it seems like a lot of Windows users are getting the exact same error I am.

I'm also going to attempt to get it to work on Parallels because booting back and forth between the two OS is super annoying, and if it's possible to get it running virtually on Mac OS, that would be ideal.

[Bunny]

2044 on the max resolution; 2750 on the lowest available resolution. The first one might not be entirely accurate depending on how much active downloads affect the speed at which the scenes load.

Edit: Just ran the highest resolution video with the downloads shut off and got slightly higher results (about 2150 or so). The ms decreased significantly though (from 100k to 19k).

[Mirage]

Speaking of, this benchmark is running as a demo on like every computer on display in Tokyo, and most of them aren't even outperforming my PC with a two year old 8800 GT in it.

[Dignified Pauper]

looks like i won't be playing since it's not working for me, i'll have to play the ps3 version. BOO

[Miriel]

Benchmark runs beautifully, but the Beta client WILL NOT WORK.

So much hatred for Square rising up right now. With so many people unable to get the client to work, even people who were fine with alpha, I have to believe the problem is with the client and not with my computer. And they're doing squat to address the issue. :/ I guess they have enough people testing beta that it really doesn't matter if a couple hundred people can't get it to work.

[Old Manus]

I got a measly 270

Ah well, at least that'll save me a few hundred quid on subscription fees. It looked better than the score it gave me, the framerate wasn't too far behind normal, I think that if it could run in fullscreen and I tweaked my graphics card settings I could make it more passable. Not getting my hopes up though, back to Football Manager to suck the very being from my wilting body :manus:

[Loony BoB]

Football Manager is pretty demanding on a desktop these days as it is - well, if you play the 3D version, anyway. I remember when I upgraded to Windows 7 it just wouldn't play in 3D mode smoothly for a while so I switched to 2D and never looked back for months. Finally decided to check things out again and my players in 3D surprised me with how extreme they were - all of them were either massive well-built 6'4" players or tiny skinny 5'6" players (basically fullbacks and wingers!). It was weird.

[Old Manus]

Really? I run mine on a laptop, and the 3D mode runs smoother than something smooth. I know what you mean about the tiny players though, it's like live-action subbuteo

EDIT BY BoB: That wasn't neccessary, please don't post that kinda thing, etc.

[Drift]

the benchmark won't run on my machine (win7) something about directx9c .dll file missing or something

[Loony BoB]

Download the latest version of DirectX 9c.

Download details: DirectX End-User Runtime (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en)

[Ashi]

Man this was hella choppy. Made me feel sad. Last time I purchased computer upgrades was about 2 years ago and I've only ever played Guild Wars / WoW since then. Do not even meet minimum requirements apparently...I do believe the main cause is my graphics card hehe. It was so choppy it made my eyes hurt.

Still got about six weeks to research and see what I wanna upgrade in addition to my graphics card. I don't really want to run on minimum requirements and as a person that basically lives and breathes MMO, it really won't hurt to upgrade this year.

---

sorry for the double post but i seem to be having a problem with directx :(
got windows 7 and a few upgrades but i can't install directx, it's telling me to go to some error logs in my windows folder, but i can't locate them...

[Loony BoB]

Go to the Microsoft site and install directly from there. I found that this fixed any problem I had with the directx install that automatically began with the FFXIV installer.

[Ashi]

I got mine from microsoft. Some people say to turn off your antivirus when downloading/installing it, but nothing changes really.

[Loony BoB]

Strange. :( Bummer. Maybe raise a thread in the Help Forum?

[Baloki]

You have to download the directx 9c as well as directx 10 components I found :/

[Casey]

:p

I scored a 1342 on low, on a 2.40ghz (2 cpus) Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS. I need to upgrade or maybe I'll save the money and wait it out tell the Ps3 version is released .

[Suvious]

FF14 was a crappy PS3 port; the requirements for running this game are far too high for the quality given. They've even been daft enough to use a software mouse on the PC version - I mean just /why/ would you do that!? I can't see myself playing this game because the requirements needed are far too high to run on a PC; my computer is able to run any game thusfar without fault hence it's Square's incompetent decision to go with a PS3->PC port instead of the other way around. I'm disappointed with FF14 and it'll need some serious revamping for it to even go on my considerable list seeing the poor work they've conducted so far.

[Loony BoB]

I can only assume you've not played the actual release and are making a whole lot of judgements based on the beta. Perhaps you should not have confused the word "Beta" with "Demo" - the software mouse is gone, for a start.

It's not a PS3 port - if it was, it would be released on the PS3 now, no? It's a PC and PS3 multiplatform game. It's released on PC first and they're still trying to iron out things for the PS3 launch in March. To me, that means that it's closer to a PC port to the PS3, if it had to be one or the other. It's just been made functional for both rather than having completely different UI's for PC and PS3.

I'm sorry you don't like how things went, but perhaps you should not judge a game by it's beta. It's more a 'Western' games developer thing to use a beta as a way of showing off the game to it's users - for Square-Enix, they stated on multiple occasions that they were using the beta to test the game, find bugs and fix them, stress-test the servers, etc. etc. rather than show off what you can do.

The game is extremely smooth on my PC and that of my girlfriend's, with hardware mouse enabled by default etc.

[Suvious]

Hmm because I saw the beta on my brother's computer (which is just above my computer's specs) and it was both laggy, and of poor quality for the requirements. Those kinds of things aren't ironed out easily; especially if the game isn't functioning properly on a platform.

All I can do is hope they've actually successfully eliminated those god-awful bugs and made a decent game of it.

[Loony BoB]

The biggest issue I had in beta was the UI lag - anything involving your inventory, be it crafting or selling, took insane lengths of time. They've improved on this dramatically, and have advised they are looking to improve things even more. There is more of an issue with server lag now due to the amount of people being in one place (eg. the starting cities / camps), but that tends to only come up shortly after a maintenance patch. I can only guess that it's down to so many people logging on at once... but aside from that, it's doing pretty well.

As for quality, you have to remember that this is an MMO - you can't compare it to the likes of Crysis and so forth. Single player games will always look better and run better than online games, and when they're massive multiplayer online games with thousands of people on a server and often hundreds within a city... well, it's always going to be tricky to have high graphics and still have it run smoothly (which I'll add once again, it does on my machine and my girlfriend's machine).

[Suvious]

My main comparison is Age of Conan; that being an obviously impressive game visually gave me sort of a measurement on it. But yeah just seeing the mouse lag and the texture quality on my brother's computer was terrible - I'll download a trial version of the game/buy the full game when it's made retail-release for a better analysis. If it's significantly better as you're saying Bob, then I'll be sure to give it a shot.

A big concern for me is the EXP limit per week; is that actually globally or just in China? ^.-

And is the character system similar to that of FF11, wherein you can have 1 character with all jobs?

[Loony BoB]

One character, all jobs - and you can change them on the go now, too, instead of having to run back to a mog house.

The supposed "8 hour" cap per week is there, but so far despite playing for about four times that amount already this week, I'm still getting experience on all my jobs.

Here's a good explanation of the system: YouTube - Final Fantasy XIV - Understanding the Fatigue System (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1kM-9adCjY)

So basically, if it recharges when you're not playing or when you're using passive mode (ie not fighting) or when you're using another class... are you really going to hit that cap? :p I'd count it as an achievement. xD

[Suvious]

That video makes the the EXP cap actually sound like a legitimately decent idea o_O when I first heard about it I was fairly "No way, marketing hax" but now it seems legitimately appropriate. The retail release is September 30th right?

[Loony BoB]

Yup, 30th. And with a voice like that, you can make anything sound like a good idea. ;) Not saying it's bad, but dude, what a great voice to have. It reminds me of the Viridian Dynamics commercials on Better Off Ted. Which are great.

[Suvious]

Reminds me of the Old Spice commercials xD Look at your game, now look at mine, now back at yours, and back at mine - unfortunately, your game isn't mine.

I scored 2128 with my system, they need whacked out machines to play that game. ^.-

[Loony BoB]

I'm not 100% sure, but if you turn down the settings that might run the game okay. What graphics card do you have? That seems to be by far the important piece of equipment for FFXIV.

[Aerith's Knight]

I got a 2060 on HIGH with a Quad core and a Geforce 9800 GTX

But I think this entire benchmark seems stupid. It never even used more than 40% of any of my processors, and barely 30% of my RAM. Is my card that much of a bottleneck?

[Loony BoB]

That's a 2 year old 512MB card, yeah? In which case yeah, it will be a bit of a bottleneck. I think if you upgraded that card then you'd get a much better experience out of the game, but don't quote me on that - I'm not an expert on other components and you haven't specified anything but the card you're using (quad core is a bit vague :p - do you know the processor model or the amount/type of RAM you have, etc).

[Suvious]

My graphics card is a GTS 250, it's not that old... probably a year or so...

[Aerith's Knight]

That's a 2 year old 512MB card, yeah? In which case yeah, it will be a bit of a bottleneck. I think if you upgraded that card then you'd get a much better experience out of the game, but don't quote me on that - I'm not an expert on other components and you haven't specified anything but the card you're using (quad core is a bit vague :p - do you know the processor model or the amount/type of RAM you have, etc).

Well, yeah, it's a two-year old PC. Quad Core 2.66 gig, 4 gig RAM, Geforce 9800GTX.

Upgrading is expensive as hell though.

[Loony BoB]

I'd say the graphics card is the only thing holding you back. Look for a GTX 460 1GB if you're feeling spendy, I've got one and it plays the game great. If you can't afford that, have a look around for 1GB cards and see what you can find that'll do the business.

[kotora]

2144 on high. Running on an E8400 clocked at 3.8 ghz with a 9800GTX+.

[Aerith's Knight]

I'd say the graphics card is the only thing holding you back. Look for a GTX 460 1GB if you're feeling spendy, I've got one and it plays the game great.

I saw that one. It was on sale for like 300.

Wait.. you think I have 300 euros? xD

I'm a freaking student living in an apartment. I'm barely able to afford my gf, let alone food.

[Carl the Llama]

you might try the ATI Radeon HD 5570 1024MB GDDR3 SILENT PCI-Express Graphics Card (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-123-HT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1699) not that expensive at the price of £63.99... not sure how much that is in Euros but still relatively cheap.

[Aerith's Knight]

That's less than 100 euros. That is cheap.

[Loony BoB]

Possibly for a reason. Only scores a 2051 on XIV according to this link (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=4527588).

300 euros? Ouch. Hmm. That's about £250, yeah? Okay, you're being ripped off. :p The best GTX 460 you can get is the Gigabyte 1GB, and that's less than 300 euros, surely? (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-064-GI). You can get a 768MB GTX 460 for less than £120 over here, too, so that's what... 140 or so euros? Not a bad price for a good card.

EDIT: Useful link for assessing just where a graphics card stands in relation to the minimum spec... but keep in mind that some cards have variations, of course (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-radeon-hd-5570-gaming,2697-7.html), such as the 512MB/768MB/1GB/2GB or DDR3 / DDR5 etc.

[kotora]

Might wanna wait for the new 6xxx series from AMD which will probably cause a price drop for the existing 5xxx series.

[nirojan]

Hate reviving an old thread, but just tried the new bench mark on my new pc and got a score of LOW:4241 HIGH:2305! Guys,I'm 90% sure there's a new benchmark available (at least it's different from what I remember before the beta back in 2010):
FINAL FANTASY XIV Official Benchmark (http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/media/benchmark/na/)

EDIT: Apparently it's not the new benchmark :(

Would appreciate it if you guys who have a current subscription or a good rig post your stats up. I'd definitely want to know how well my PC can run the game and any tips on the settings that I should be running the game at would be appreciated.

I got:
Windows 7 Pro (64-Bit) SP1
3rd gen core i7-3770 @ 3.4GHz 8 CPUs
12 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 2GB GDDR5
Some other coolness, ask if you're interest ;)

[Ouch!]

You can run on maximum settings across the board with a rig like that. The benchmark is irrelevant at this point, though. There will be a new one for A Realm Reborn as it's running on an entirely new engine. Which, good news for you, is optimized much more efficiently than the current one. So you'll really be able to crank it.

[nirojan]

You can run on maximum settings across the board with a rig like that. The benchmark is irrelevant at this point, though. There will be a new one for A Realm Reborn as it's running on an entirely new engine. Which, good news for you, is optimized much more efficiently than the current one. So you'll really be able to crank it.

Okay, that's cool. I thought it was a little weird that I had to download DirectX 9 from the Microsoft page. Is a Realm Reborn going to be supporting DX11?

[Raistlin]

Is a Realm Reborn going to be supporting DX11?

IIRC, I don't think so.

[Ouch!]

I believe they said that they eventually plan to implement DX11 support, but not initially.

[Mirage]

That is correct, Ouch.