The Benchmark Thread

[Loony BoB]

FINAL FANTASY XIV Official Benchmark

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" ), 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.

[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 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!

[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. Admittedly, I'd love to try gaming on one, mind you. 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. 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. Admittedly, I'd love to try gaming on one, mind you. 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. 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. 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?

[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.