But you only have to spend 300 dollars for a rig that running FFXIV just fine. You only have to buy a PS3 Slim. If you lucky, there will be an FFXIV bundle when this game is releases. Dont bother to built a rig for this game. It doesn't worth it.
You will be fine when you play it on a PS3. With a PS3 Controller.
I think his intention was to build a sweet gaming rig capable of handling the game without necessarily it being the sole purpose of the endeavour, mate.
Precisely...and as I already said a few posts back....we PC gamers get to play FFXIV in Sept...the PS3 version won't be out until at the earliest March 2011.
I hear guys overclocking it easy to 3.4 on air, but I really don't trust myself fully with tweaking voltages yet. This little upgrade of mine cost me a good 500. A fried board and ram would be overkill at this point. =/
Yeah I don't overclock anything, always run at stock even though I could, but why bother with accidental fried components or them burning out after much shorter lifetimes then normal. I have money when I need to upgrade every few years but overclocked components when used as often I would; need to be replaced often and thats just not worth it.
I run my PC 24/7, its never off unless the power goes out or I'm switching parts or swapping cases like I did a few days back. My PC is my life, I'm on it a good 12-14 hrs minimum per day cause it does do almost everything for what my life has become. And for the record, in the past 12 years since I've been leaving my PCs running 24/7, and between 5-6 complete overhauls, the only thing that has ever gone out on me are 3 HDD, a dozen or so case fans, oh and one stock heatsink; all cheap and easily replaced.
I'm going to monitor the heat in my box to see if I need some crazy cooling but other than a possible change there, nothing should change for a long time. In fact, I've got to start putting hers together tonight after work. Weee!
What do you guys recommend I do with my current rig:
AMD Phenom II X3 710 Processor (2.6 GHz)
8 GB Kingston HyperX @ 1066
Ati Radeon 4890 (1gb)
1 Terabit Hardrive
Windows 7 (64 bit)
Benchmar was 2400 Hi Res, and 3800 Low Res.
Any guess on how much higher I can go by replacing the 4890 with a 5850?
How can I go if I get a better processor with a 5850?
My goal is ~4k High Res. Even 3500 Hi Rez is fine by me....
This game is GPU intensive (my Q9550 processor was never stressed beyond 35%). Since the 4890 and 5850 aren't so drastically apart performance wise, I'm not so sure you'd see extreme improvements (I personally wouldn't upgrade in your case, especially since we know this benchmark is exagerrated).
In my case, wanting to be DX11 ready, I upgraded my 9800gt (1gig) to a 5850 (1gig) and saw my score shoot up from 1780 to 3881 (high).
I think his intention was to build a sweet gaming rig capable of handling the game without necessarily it being the sole purpose of the endeavour, mate.
I own a PS3 but wanna play FFXIV ASAP
So i've saved this summer and now im buying (click)this rig (note: 2 x 5850)
Should do the job
_____________________ Played: Aion, All Points Bulletin, ArchLord, Champions Online, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, EverQuest II, Fallen Earth, Fantasy Earth Zero, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Metin 2, MU Online, RF Online, Ryzom, Silkroad Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars Galaxies, The Chronicles of Spellborn and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
I think his intention was to build a sweet gaming rig capable of handling the game without necessarily it being the sole purpose of the endeavour, mate.
I own a PS3 but wanna play FFXIV ASAP
So i've saved this summer and now im buying (click)this rig (note: 2 x 5850)
Should do the job
That`s a gorgeous PC, congratulations.
I`m really struggling with waiting until next tax season for a new build of my own. I`m assuming ATI will have it`s 6xxxx series on the market and 6 core processors will be more common.
Appears to be a good build and will run FFXIV quite well. You'll love that Antec 1200 case...I recently bought one and the airflow is incredibly good.
For instance with all the case fans on low, and my GPU at 43% fan speed, I clock in around 76-84 celcius. When I turn up the fans to high, and the GPU to 70% my temps drop to as low as 54-61 celcius.
Appears to be a good build and will run FFXIV quite well. You'll love that Antec 1200 case...I recently bought one and the airflow is incredibly good.
For instance with all the case fans on low, and my GPU at 43% fan speed, I clock in around 76-84 celcius. When I turn up the fans to high, and the GPU to 70% my temps drop to as low as 54-61 celcius.
Yeah, I built a comp for my GF (sim specs to the one im getting) with the antec 1200 a couple of weeks ago, i love that case. Espc seeing as it has the watercooling "sockets" on the pack, means I can crank the CPU to ~4.0 (if i was feeling insane one day) with some decent water cooling.
I just hope that i get it all before FFXIV is completed!
Any suggestions on what sort of benhmark I'll get ? It'd be nice to be > 4500
_____________________ Played: Aion, All Points Bulletin, ArchLord, Champions Online, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, EverQuest II, Fallen Earth, Fantasy Earth Zero, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Metin 2, MU Online, RF Online, Ryzom, Silkroad Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars Galaxies, The Chronicles of Spellborn and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
Appears to be a good build and will run FFXIV quite well. You'll love that Antec 1200 case...I recently bought one and the airflow is incredibly good.
For instance with all the case fans on low, and my GPU at 43% fan speed, I clock in around 76-84 celcius. When I turn up the fans to high, and the GPU to 70% my temps drop to as low as 54-61 celcius.
Yeah, I built a comp for my GF (sim specs to the one im getting) with the antec 1200 a couple of weeks ago, i love that case. Espc seeing as it has the watercooling "sockets" on the pack, means I can crank the CPU to ~4.0 (if i was feeling insane one day) with some decent water cooling.
I just hope that i get it all before FFXIV is completed!
Any suggestions on what sort of benhmark I'll get ? It'd be nice to be > 4500
I achieved 4612 with my overclocked q9550 (3.4ghz) and a 5850 (900/1150) with 8 gigs of 1066 ram. You should score a little higher, definitely.
I have a two year old alienware and it plays fine. But seriously, XI is so much of a better game. I realize two months still until release but its not very good at the moment. IMO
I have a two year old alienware and it plays fine. But seriously, XI is so much of a better game. I realize two months still until release but its not very good at the moment. IMO
Feel free to message me with your beta account info if it`s too much for you to bear.
I have a GTX 465 superclocked. Quad core processor. 4 gigs ram. I got a 3600 so I am content with that. Next year I might upgrade to an i7 but for now the game will run fine for me.
I've decided to upgrade for FXIV as well, here's what I built:
i7-875k
GTX 480 superclocked
Antec 1200 Full Tower
6GB G.Skill 1600mhz Ram
Corsair 850w PSU
Crucial C-300 128GB SSD
It takes the cost way down to built it yourself, that's for sure. I got the GTX 480 new on Ebay for $300, which was what I was going to pay for a GTX 470 anyway.
I'm selling my old computer if anyone is interested :P
So for the last few weeks I've been working my butt off doing odd jobs for family to raise some extra cash to upgrade my now going on 3yr old PC, and granted my current build ran almost every game on near maximum settings. Still though my goal is to build a damn fine PC for FFXIV so I can crank the settings to maximum in towns and 15-man Guildleves with no stuttering or slowdown...
I am so excited for FFXIV I want the best possible experience at launch and beyond. Anyhow, my previous build was an AMD Athalon X2{dual-core} AM2 3.0GHz, 4gb of PC800 DDR2 RAM, with a stock heatsink and fairly crappy APower 850w PS which totally died on me 2 days ago. Here are the new parts I recently bought this past week, which I am now running. I am verily exciting and greatly enjoying the upgrade!
Yes I know I could have waited and gotten a few higher-end parts even cheaper by the end of the year, but really though; parts are always dropping and better ones coming out so you just have to pick a period of time, buy stuff for a good value that will last several years and repeat...
Now all I need is the new nVidia EVGA GTX 480 later this year once the price drops a few hundred $$$ I'm currently running the nVidia GTX 275 896mb.
And here are a few images of said build, man I so love the heatsink...one massive turbine of cold air shooting out 360 degree helping cool other parts too. My CPU now idles around 36-38c and peaks under a full load at 49-51c, hasn't gone any higher yet...fricken sweet, and I'm only running the fan at 1000rpm, can still bump it up to 1600rpm should it be required...
So is anyone else out there building or upgrading their PC for FFXIV!? Please share your builds here...should be an interesting discussion.
Hi there Khrymson sorry if this has already been asked and posted but have u re-run the FFXIV benchmark since you put all your new hardware in , if u have whats your scores now , compared to your last system setup.
Hi there Khrymson sorry if this has already been asked and posted but have u re-run the FFXIV benchmark since you put all your new hardware in , if u have whats your scores now , compared to your last system setup.
The Benchmark wasn't released before I upgraded, but my scores atm with the GTX 275 are:
High: 2861
Low: 3872
I was expecting much higher since I've spent $1000+ on these upgrades already -sans a new DX11 GPU, however I don't do any overclocking and I didn't buy the best possible either. I've found over the years since PC parts drop in price so quickly and new stuff releases every few weeks that buying components that are like 2nd or 3rd best is a better deal. You can still run most games on maximum settings, and its much much cheaper overall.
Like right now I can easily play any game thats out right now on maximum -sans FFXIV, though its not fully optimized yet and its just like when EQII and Crysis were released, they demanded $6000+ rigs to run on max, but they still looked good on lower settings. Same with FFXIV, even on low/medium which I run it on it looks very good...
I think SE will change the score needed from the chart soon and make it lower , theres also still time for alot of optimization , so i think FFXIV will run alot better than we think at launch... "well heres hoping anyway" thanks for your reply.
I think his intention was to build a sweet gaming rig capable of handling the game without necessarily it being the sole purpose of the endeavour, mate.
I own a PS3 but wanna play FFXIV ASAP
So i've saved this summer and now im buying (click)this rig (note: 2 x 5850)
Should do the job
I'd drop some of that RAM, unless you're into graphics design. 12GB is overkill--I still game on 4GB of DDR3 1333 (dual-channel), and haven't had any need for more yet.
I think his intention was to build a sweet gaming rig capable of handling the game without necessarily it being the sole purpose of the endeavour, mate.
I own a PS3 but wanna play FFXIV ASAP
So i've saved this summer and now im buying (click)this rig (note: 2 x 5850)
Should do the job
I'd drop some of that RAM, unless you're into graphics design. 12GB is overkill--I still game on 4GB of DDR3 1333 (dual-channel), and haven't had any need for more yet.
i am still running on 2 gbs and still play my games on max settings...granted i am also still on xp :P
It never hurts to have a lot of extra RAM, then you don't have to worry about your PC slowing down at all. Everything you already have running is loaded and there is plenty of room to load even more files; thus you don't have to wait on your RAM to remove files not being used and replace them with new ones.
Granted it depends on what you're running and that will depend on how much slowdown transferring files you'll see, but sometimes it can be quite substantial.
On another note you never know when a new game may require or recommend more of anything, for instance the most GPU RAM I ever seen a PC game require has been 512mb, and now suddenly FFXIV's recommended specs are 768mb. While it'll still run on a lesser GPU its always good to have more just in case one of the new DX11 games in the near future will need it!
It never hurts to have a lot of extra RAM, then you don't have to worry about your PC slowing down at all. Everything you already have running is loaded and there is plenty of room to load even more files; thus you don't have to wait on your RAM to remove files not being used and replace them with new ones.
Granted it depends on what you're running and that will depend on how much slowdown transferring files you'll see, but sometimes it can be quite substantial.
True it doesn't hurt to have more RAM, but my point is the cost is unnecessary, in terms of the performance there is to be gained (any RAM not in use is worthless). That extra cost could be used towards a SSD or 10K RPM hard drive, or an upgraded video card, which would actually provide a performance benefit.
From the benchmark, the biggest improvement on base performance is multi-cores then a DirectX 11 GPU. Memory may also be necessary depending on if the client is 32bit or 64bit. If its 64-bit memory over 3GB will have an impact on the games performance.
Achieving the requirement of a 1500 score on the benchmark is pretty reasonable for a midrange system several years ago. From the benchmarks, the game does not favor any particular manufacturer.
I think after a decent examination of the benchmark the best system to use includes an AMD 6 core CPU, 4~8 GB ram, and a DirectX 11 video card. This should be relatively cheap to obtain. Once again to play the game on high really does not require a kick ass system. You can achieve playability with an $800 machine from 2007.
BTW my system achieved 3803 on highest settings for the benchmark with the following: -AMD Phenom II X4 940, 3.0 Ghz -OCZ Gold DDRII-800 2GB x4 (total 8GB) -MSI ATI HD5870 1GB
On a side note, the games shaders would improve drastically if the game was not sponsored by nVidia. The thing with alot of nVidia network developers is that they use .cg. The CG Shader Language has the benefit of being OpenGL or DirectX. Yet it comes at a price that nVidia has to keep up with the .glsl and .hlsl languages. It also comes at a hit because it has to translate the shader into the proper language. Out of the 3 shader languages, .cg is probably the slowest and has the least amount of features. The advantage is it can be cross-platform. Considering FFXIV is meant to be played on the PS3, chances are they are using .cg.
If they quit the illusion that this game is meant to be played on a console or another OS and just developed it with .hlsl from the start it would come with many benefits. The game would play smoother, and it will be more feature rich. If they adopted DX11, it would have this in even higher spades.
Comments
Precisely...and as I already said a few posts back....we PC gamers get to play FFXIV in Sept...the PS3 version won't be out until at the earliest March 2011.
Yeah I don't overclock anything, always run at stock even though I could, but why bother with accidental fried components or them burning out after much shorter lifetimes then normal. I have money when I need to upgrade every few years but overclocked components when used as often I would; need to be replaced often and thats just not worth it.
I run my PC 24/7, its never off unless the power goes out or I'm switching parts or swapping cases like I did a few days back. My PC is my life, I'm on it a good 12-14 hrs minimum per day cause it does do almost everything for what my life has become. And for the record, in the past 12 years since I've been leaving my PCs running 24/7, and between 5-6 complete overhauls, the only thing that has ever gone out on me are 3 HDD, a dozen or so case fans, oh and one stock heatsink; all cheap and easily replaced.
What do you guys recommend I do with my current rig:
AMD Phenom II X3 710 Processor (2.6 GHz)
8 GB Kingston HyperX @ 1066
Ati Radeon 4890 (1gb)
1 Terabit Hardrive
Windows 7 (64 bit)
Benchmar was 2400 Hi Res, and 3800 Low Res.
Any guess on how much higher I can go by replacing the 4890 with a 5850?
How can I go if I get a better processor with a 5850?
My goal is ~4k High Res. Even 3500 Hi Rez is fine by me....
I'm putting together two different ones (one for me, one for my gf) partially in anticipation of ffxiv but for work and school for the both of us.
My build is:
Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor BX80605I5750
RAIDMAX SMILODON ATX-612WB Black 1.0mm SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Foldout MB Computer Case
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
EVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
CORSAIR XMS 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000) Desktop Memory Model CMX4GX3M2A2000C9
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Ultra LSP750 750-Watt Power Supply - ATX, SATA-Ready, SLI-Ready, 135mm Fan, Lifetime Warranty
The one I'm building for my gf is identical except instead of the fermi 470, I'm putting in 2 PNY VCGGTS2501XPB GeForce GTS 250 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card as she doesn't really need the fermi 470.
I'm going to monitor the heat in my box to see if I need some crazy cooling but other than a possible change there, nothing should change for a long time. In fact, I've got to start putting hers together tonight after work. Weee!
This game is GPU intensive (my Q9550 processor was never stressed beyond 35%). Since the 4890 and 5850 aren't so drastically apart performance wise, I'm not so sure you'd see extreme improvements (I personally wouldn't upgrade in your case, especially since we know this benchmark is exagerrated).
In my case, wanting to be DX11 ready, I upgraded my 9800gt (1gig) to a 5850 (1gig) and saw my score shoot up from 1780 to 3881 (high).
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
I own a PS3 but wanna play FFXIV ASAP
So i've saved this summer and now im buying (click)this rig (note: 2 x 5850)
Should do the job
_____________________
Played:
Aion, All Points Bulletin, ArchLord, Champions Online, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, EverQuest II, Fallen Earth, Fantasy Earth Zero, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Metin 2, MU Online, RF Online, Ryzom, Silkroad Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars Galaxies, The Chronicles of Spellborn and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
Awaiting: FFXIV and SW:TOR
That`s a gorgeous PC, congratulations.
I`m really struggling with waiting until next tax season for a new build of my own. I`m assuming ATI will have it`s 6xxxx series on the market and 6 core processors will be more common.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
Appears to be a good build and will run FFXIV quite well. You'll love that Antec 1200 case...I recently bought one and the airflow is incredibly good.
For instance with all the case fans on low, and my GPU at 43% fan speed, I clock in around 76-84 celcius. When I turn up the fans to high, and the GPU to 70% my temps drop to as low as 54-61 celcius.
Yeah, I built a comp for my GF (sim specs to the one im getting) with the antec 1200 a couple of weeks ago, i love that case. Espc seeing as it has the watercooling "sockets" on the pack, means I can crank the CPU to ~4.0 (if i was feeling insane one day) with some decent water cooling.
I just hope that i get it all before FFXIV is completed!
Any suggestions on what sort of benhmark I'll get ? It'd be nice to be > 4500
_____________________
Played:
Aion, All Points Bulletin, ArchLord, Champions Online, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, EverQuest II, Fallen Earth, Fantasy Earth Zero, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Metin 2, MU Online, RF Online, Ryzom, Silkroad Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars Galaxies, The Chronicles of Spellborn and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
Awaiting: FFXIV and SW:TOR
I achieved 4612 with my overclocked q9550 (3.4ghz) and a 5850 (900/1150) with 8 gigs of 1066 ram. You should score a little higher, definitely.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
I have a two year old alienware and it plays fine. But seriously, XI is so much of a better game. I realize two months still until release but its not very good at the moment. IMO
Feel free to message me with your beta account info if it`s too much for you to bear.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
I have a GTX 465 superclocked. Quad core processor. 4 gigs ram. I got a 3600 so I am content with that. Next year I might upgrade to an i7 but for now the game will run fine for me.
480 is above 500 still. I got a 465 supeclocked, which i am content with, for 225.
I've decided to upgrade for FXIV as well, here's what I built:
i7-875k
GTX 480 superclocked
Antec 1200 Full Tower
6GB G.Skill 1600mhz Ram
Corsair 850w PSU
Crucial C-300 128GB SSD
It takes the cost way down to built it yourself, that's for sure. I got the GTX 480 new on Ebay for $300, which was what I was going to pay for a GTX 470 anyway.
I'm selling my old computer if anyone is interested :P
4gb 800mhz OCZ Ram
2x 10k RPM Western DR Raid 0 HDD
850w Thermaltake "Black Widow" PSU
8800GTS 640MB Superclocked Edition
Quad Core 2.4ghz Intel
Mobo with PCI-E 2.0 Capable.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
Hi there Khrymson sorry if this has already been asked and posted but have u re-run the FFXIV benchmark since you put all your new hardware in , if u have whats your scores now , compared to your last system setup.
The Benchmark wasn't released before I upgraded, but my scores atm with the GTX 275 are:
High: 2861
Low: 3872
I was expecting much higher since I've spent $1000+ on these upgrades already -sans a new DX11 GPU, however I don't do any overclocking and I didn't buy the best possible either. I've found over the years since PC parts drop in price so quickly and new stuff releases every few weeks that buying components that are like 2nd or 3rd best is a better deal. You can still run most games on maximum settings, and its much much cheaper overall.
Like right now I can easily play any game thats out right now on maximum -sans FFXIV, though its not fully optimized yet and its just like when EQII and Crysis were released, they demanded $6000+ rigs to run on max, but they still looked good on lower settings. Same with FFXIV, even on low/medium which I run it on it looks very good...
I think SE will change the score needed from the chart soon and make it lower , theres also still time for alot of optimization , so i think FFXIV will run alot better than we think at launch... "well heres hoping anyway" thanks for your reply.
I'd drop some of that RAM, unless you're into graphics design. 12GB is overkill--I still game on 4GB of DDR3 1333 (dual-channel), and haven't had any need for more yet.
i am still running on 2 gbs and still play my games on max settings...granted i am also still on xp :P
It never hurts to have a lot of extra RAM, then you don't have to worry about your PC slowing down at all. Everything you already have running is loaded and there is plenty of room to load even more files; thus you don't have to wait on your RAM to remove files not being used and replace them with new ones.
Granted it depends on what you're running and that will depend on how much slowdown transferring files you'll see, but sometimes it can be quite substantial.
On another note you never know when a new game may require or recommend more of anything, for instance the most GPU RAM I ever seen a PC game require has been 512mb, and now suddenly FFXIV's recommended specs are 768mb. While it'll still run on a lesser GPU its always good to have more just in case one of the new DX11 games in the near future will need it!
Im going to upgrade my CPU soon to the following :
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz
your see my current setup in my sig at the bottom , if u want to see benchmarks on comparing CPU's IE:
AMD "cpu" vs INT "cpu" then visit this link , sure is a good site
CPU Benchmarks
True it doesn't hurt to have more RAM, but my point is the cost is unnecessary, in terms of the performance there is to be gained (any RAM not in use is worthless). That extra cost could be used towards a SSD or 10K RPM hard drive, or an upgraded video card, which would actually provide a performance benefit.
Ya I am upgraded my computer for future games , not just this one specifically but I got
Ph II X 6 1090 T 3.2 Ghz
Gigabyte GA-890 FXA-UD5 Mobo
600 GB WD raptor
8 GB of crucial 1600 Ram (1.35v)
and a crappy 5770 Video card to be upgraded when the 6000 series comes out, didnt want to waste my money on a card I will have for 3 months.
From the benchmark, the biggest improvement on base performance is multi-cores then a DirectX 11 GPU. Memory may also be necessary depending on if the client is 32bit or 64bit. If its 64-bit memory over 3GB will have an impact on the games performance.
Achieving the requirement of a 1500 score on the benchmark is pretty reasonable for a midrange system several years ago. From the benchmarks, the game does not favor any particular manufacturer.
I think after a decent examination of the benchmark the best system to use includes an AMD 6 core CPU, 4~8 GB ram, and a DirectX 11 video card. This should be relatively cheap to obtain. Once again to play the game on high really does not require a kick ass system. You can achieve playability with an $800 machine from 2007.
BTW my system achieved 3803 on highest settings for the benchmark with the following:
-AMD Phenom II X4 940, 3.0 Ghz
-OCZ Gold DDRII-800 2GB x4 (total 8GB)
-MSI ATI HD5870 1GB
On a side note, the games shaders would improve drastically if the game was not sponsored by nVidia. The thing with alot of nVidia network developers is that they use .cg. The CG Shader Language has the benefit of being OpenGL or DirectX. Yet it comes at a price that nVidia has to keep up with the .glsl and .hlsl languages. It also comes at a hit because it has to translate the shader into the proper language. Out of the 3 shader languages, .cg is probably the slowest and has the least amount of features. The advantage is it can be cross-platform. Considering FFXIV is meant to be played on the PS3, chances are they are using .cg.
If they quit the illusion that this game is meant to be played on a console or another OS and just developed it with .hlsl from the start it would come with many benefits. The game would play smoother, and it will be more feature rich. If they adopted DX11, it would have this in even higher spades.