HD2900XT and Final Fantasy XI on Vista

[cmdrdredd]

Does anyone play FinalFantasy XI on Vista with an HD2900xt? Do you have any issues with dropping framerates at all?

I'm deciding between this card and an 8800GTS 640MB but the 8800 cards have some serious slowdown and FPS drop issues that I'd like to avoid. I'm leaning toward the HD2900XT at the moment. I play FFXI alot, and have for a long time. I would like to continue to play this game on my new card whichever it may be, without any issues (bad textures, dropping framerate etc)

 

[Dainas]

The drop is only due to high textures in graphically demanding games and if there's one thing that FFXI is NOT, its being graphically demanding. In fact I don't know how you plan to avoid bad textures being as thats all the game has. Still allot of newer state of the art games sure could have learned something of animation quality in FFXI though.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Dainas
The drop is only due to high textures in graphically demanding games and if there's one thing that FFXI is NOT, its being graphically demanding. In fact I don't know how you plan to avoid bad textures being as thats all the game has. Still allot of newer state of the art games sure could have learned something of animation quality in FFXI though.

Unfortunately this game DOES suffer from that FPS drop with 8800 cards. I've researched it and it's plastered all over Nvidia's forums.

Anyhow I need to know if the HD2900xt has any problems.


Also don't come to my thread talking down about a game that I've enjoyed for 5 years off and on. I dare you to find a game that holds your attention that long. There are very few.

 

[Dainas]

hmm, thats odd as the cause seems to be the Nvidia drivers not sorting texture memory allocation and the drop is do to it overflowing to the point of HD swapping... Something that should take 50x as long to accomplish on a PS2 port than a newer game like Oblivion if it even still would. Still its not something thats technically wrong with the card and Nvidia claims to be sorting the problem with new drivers soon.

If you primarily play FFXI, why would you want anything stronger than your X1900XT? My sister has an X1950pro and it rocks at Oblivion HDR+AA maxxed at 1280x1024 to this day with LOD mods. When I first started playing FFXI my 9700pro played it perfectly at 1600x1200. DX10 support should still be in the back of our minds really, specially since the next gen (at least with Nvidia) seems like it will be a complete blunderbust(as in massive improvement) of performance over G80 and R600.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Dainas
hmm, thats odd as the cause seems to be the Nvidia drivers not sorting texture memory allocation and the drop is do to it overflowing to the point of HD swapping... Something that should take 50x as long to accomplish on a PS2 port than a newer game like Oblivion if it even still would. Still its not something thats technically wrong with the card and Nvidia claims to be sorting the problem with new drivers soon.

If you primarily play FFXI, why would you want anything stronger than your X1900XT? My sister has an X1950pro and it rocks at Oblivion HDR+AA maxxed at 1280x1024 to this day with LOD mods. When I first started playing FFXI my 9700pro played it perfectly at 1600x1200. DX10 support should still be in the back of our minds really, specially since the next gen (at least with Nvidia) seems like it will be a complete blunderbust(as in massive improvement) of performance over G80 and R600.

I plan to play games like Bioshock, Crysis, UT3 etc. These games won't likely run that great on my x1900.

 

[josh6079]

FFXI is locked at 30 fps, with or without vsync enabled. I don't remember the reason as to why this is, but I tried to fix it forever to no avail. Turns out it really can't be bypassed. However, it's pretty much a constant 30 fps, only dipping down in Jeuno or Whitegate (i.e. where there's a shit-load of other players and therefore lag)

The slowdowns in the game are simply engine quirks that are attributed to it's aged state. It was a good engine, still is a great setup in my opinion, but it does have it's pitfalls.

There's texture tweaks you can do to certain files for the game that make it look much better, albeit, still lacking by today's standards; it is a 5+ year old game after all.

 

[nullpointerus]

FFXI Benchmark Results

HD2900XT, Catalyst 7.7, Vista 32-bit:

"High" resolution, default ATI Quality settings: 6889
"High" resolution, 12xAA("edge-detect")/TrAA("performance")/16xAF/: 6552

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: josh6079
FFXI is locked at 30 fps, with or without vsync enabled. I don't remember the reason as to why this is, but I tried to fix it forever to no avail. Turns out it really can't be bypassed. However, it's pretty much a constant 30 fps, only dipping down in Jeuno or Whitegate (i.e. where there's a shit-load of other players and therefore lag)

The slowdowns in the game are simply engine quirks that are attributed to it's aged state. It was a good engine, still is a great setup in my opinion, but it does have it's pitfalls.

There's texture tweaks you can do to certain files for the game that make it look much better, albeit, still lacking by today's standards; it is a 5+ year old game after all.

No the problem is with an 8800gts/gtx the game gets 5fps after a time forcing you to quit the game and reload.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus
FFXI Benchmark Results

HD2900XT, Catalyst 7.7, Vista 32-bit:

"High" resolution, default ATI Quality settings: 6889
"High" resolution, 12xAA("edge-detect")/TrAA("performance")/16xAF/: 6552

The benchmark can run good but when playing the game it will dip to really low fps(below 10 with even an 8800gtx). I Guess nobody knows what's up with the HD2900 and this game.

All the reports I can find are 8800 users complaining. I haven't found anything where someone using an HD2900xt complains. Whether that means nobody is using one to play FFXI or because the card has no problems, I don't know.

 

[apoppin]

it seems to me you should go onto their forums and ask if anyone is running a 2900xt with it
... lots of people do that with every game

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: apoppin
it seems to me you should go onto their forums and ask if anyone is running a 2900xt with it
... lots of people do that with every game

Unfortunately SquareEnix has no English FFXI forums. And people on the FFXI forums around are computer illiterate. They are playing with Intel Rage Extreem and Geforce 6200LE cards

It's hard to get an assessment of new hardware on the game if people are using EMachines with no upgraded parts, and laptops.

I'd even say that a majority of the users are playing on a console. PS2 or Xbox360.

I just thought maybe I'd get lucky and find someone here who plays that game with a newer DX10 based card who could provide some feedback on what issues (if any) they find because like I said, the regular community forums related to the game are no help in this regard.


edit: over on another forum where I posted a similar thread I got a response from an HD2900xt user. The issues plaguing the Geforce 8800gts/gtx is nonexistant with the HD2900xt. FFXI runs flawlessly under Vista in both x64 and x86.

 

[manimal]

I play FF11 on two boxes, sometimes my laptop as well and on my 8800GTS 640 box I get 30 frames at all times even in experience parties. I never had the same problem others talk about but since the game runs in basically a emulated version of the ps2 hardware it barely taxes the gfx card at all. Its all about processor speed and even with a pimped rig I get slowdowns when bards play songs or when 5 blms cast firaga 4. Sometimes the slowdowns happen because of lag and multiple objects being load at once trough a small pipe-the game engine.

Play using windower-the most recent version- but play with it in full screen so the graphics card is less taxed. Also when in heavily populated areas or in a large group battles use drawdistance plugin to set the draw distance to a very short distance so the engine tries to load fewer things at once. When hanging out in town keep draw distance set low as well. When out in the world exploring set it to max and get a nice bonus to viewing when farming or searching for mobs.


Defrag often since the game engine reads the game files very often and don't play on Vista for the time being since this game engine is old and not optimized for newer hardware and software.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: manimal
I play FF11 on two boxes, sometimes my laptop as well and on my 8800GTS 640 box I get 30 frames at all times even in experience parties. I never had the same problem others talk about but since the game runs in basically a emulated version of the ps2 hardware it barely taxes the gfx card at all. Its all about processor speed and even with a pimped rig I get slowdowns when bards play songs or when 5 blms cast firaga 4. Sometimes the slowdowns happen because of lag and multiple objects being load at once trough a small pipe-the game engine.

Play using windower-the most recent version- but play with it in full screen so the graphics card is less taxed. Also when in heavily populated areas or in a large group battles use drawdistance plugin to set the draw distance to a very short distance so the engine tries to load fewer things at once. When hanging out in town keep draw distance set low as well. When out in the world exploring set it to max and get a nice bonus to viewing when farming or searching for mobs.


Defrag often since the game engine reads the game files very often and don't play on Vista for the time being since this game engine is old and not optimized for newer hardware and software.

1) I know all about the game and what happens in dynamis etc.
2) I have played this game and do play it with Vista x64 with no issues. I got my response on another forum. HD2900xt has no problems while the 8800 did/does have a slowdown bug in the drivers which won't be fixed for a while. Vista x86 and x64 both work flawless.

So aside from the usual "Vista Sux" responses I got the answer I needed.

 

[BFG10K]

The drop is only due to high textures in graphically demanding games

This isn't true and it can happen in any game depending on how it uses resources.

I had the problem in Chaser on my 8800 GTS (within 30 minutes of gameplay I was hitting less than 1 FPS) and that game is four years old with a very light graphics engine. Also Alt-Tab didn?t work there sometimes so I had to quit the game and restart it to get my performance back up.

Also I had this problem in Call of Duty (original) on both my 6800 U and 7800 GT when using 4xAA.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

The drop is only due to high textures in graphically demanding games

This isn't true and it can happen in any game depending on how it uses resources.

I had the problem in Chaser on my 8800 GTS (within 30 minutes of gameplay I was hitting less than 1 FPS) and that game is four years old with a very light graphics engine. Also Alt-Tab didn?t work there sometimes so I had to quit the game and restart it to get my performance back up.

Also I had this problem in Call of Duty (original) on both my 6800 U and 7800 GT when using 4xAA.

ouch