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 do a lot of 3D (mainly Maya and Photoshop open at the same time) I sometimes get close to 100% on the current 8GB I have atm.
_____________________ 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
Does anyone know if it will be necessary to run dual style (SLI) with this game to achieve max performance, or is it not needed?
No one knows. If you want to play it safe, get a 480 or 5970. Or I guess a second 295.
Or ask anyone alpha/beta testing FFXIV currently as to why you would choose an nVidia board over the ATI.
stick with your gut this time, get the nVidia if you're building it around FFXIV. You might also want to invest in a logitech rumblepad 2 if you dont have a 360 controller to use on your box
Well this is what i dont understand , here is my mates comp specs :
Manufacturer:
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Processor:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory:
OCZ 4094MB RAM 800Mhz
Hard Drive:
1x 500Gb WD Internal, x2 250gb WD External
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Monitor:
x2 GNR 19" Widescreen LCD Monitors
Sound Card:
Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Speakers/Headphones:
Creative Labs 5.1 System
Keyboard:
Microsoft Recluse
Mouse:
Razer Copperhead (Blue)
Mouse Surface:
Plexflow LCD Mouse Mat
Operating System:
Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)
Motherboard:
Gigabyte EP43-DSP
Computer Case:
Antec Nine Hundred
As u can see its not a top end , and hes using a 9800GT , but hes getting 3700 score on high with the benchmark , so im well confused as im only getting 2300 on High
Well this is what i dont understand , here is my mates comp specs :
Manufacturer:
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Processor:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory:
OCZ 4094MB RAM 800Mhz
Hard Drive:
1x 500Gb WD Internal, x2 250gb WD External
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Monitor:
x2 GNR 19" Widescreen LCD Monitors
Sound Card:
Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Speakers/Headphones:
Creative Labs 5.1 System
Keyboard:
Microsoft Recluse
Mouse:
Razer Copperhead (Blue)
Mouse Surface:
Plexflow LCD Mouse Mat
Operating System:
Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)
Motherboard:
Gigabyte EP43-DSP
Computer Case:
Antec Nine Hundred
As u can see its not a top end , and hes using a 9800GT , but hes getting 3700 score on high with the benchmark , so im well confused as im only getting 2300 on High
well, he has an e8500 and according to your sig you have an athlon 6400. The e8500 is faster than the 6400
you also have an ATI 5770 and hes using a 9800 GT. The 9800 GT is faster than the 5770
also keep in mind that the game is going to be more optimized for the nVidia chipsets than the ATI since its being developed for the ps3
Well this is what i dont understand , here is my mates comp specs :
Manufacturer:
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Processor:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory:
OCZ 4094MB RAM 800Mhz
Hard Drive:
1x 500Gb WD Internal, x2 250gb WD External
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Monitor:
x2 GNR 19" Widescreen LCD Monitors
Sound Card:
Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Speakers/Headphones:
Creative Labs 5.1 System
Keyboard:
Microsoft Recluse
Mouse:
Razer Copperhead (Blue)
Mouse Surface:
Plexflow LCD Mouse Mat
Operating System:
Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)
Motherboard:
Gigabyte EP43-DSP
Computer Case:
Antec Nine Hundred
As u can see its not a top end , and hes using a 9800GT , but hes getting 3700 score on high with the benchmark , so im well confused as im only getting 2300 on High
well, he has an e8500 and according to your sig you have an athlon 6400. The e8500 is faster than the 6400
you also have an ATI 5770 and hes using a 9800 GT. The 9800 GT is faster than the 5770
also keep in mind that the game is going to be more optimized for the nVidia chipsets than the ATI since its being developed for the ps3
First of all. A 9800 GT is nowhere near as fast as a 5770. That's a load of hot air. Second of all, there are numerous other reasons that can attirbute to a low end frame rate. The CPU in and of itself isn't enough to justify a disparity that large, while it may be a primary contributor. Motherboard, driver updates, DirectX updates, amount and speed of RAM among other culprits can also be responsible for your bottleneck. But the 5770, is DEFINITELY - NOT - IT. A 9800 GT scores almost 5000 less in Vantage DX10 than a 5770. The 5000 series is a far more current and superior chip architecture. There is also a major difference in frame rates depending on the Resolution you're running at. If he's running at a lower resolution than you are during the test the GPU's will come in at different speeds. If your display is superior that could easily explain the odd difference.
Well this is what i dont understand , here is my mates comp specs :
Manufacturer:
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Processor:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory:
OCZ 4094MB RAM 800Mhz
Hard Drive:
1x 500Gb WD Internal, x2 250gb WD External
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Monitor:
x2 GNR 19" Widescreen LCD Monitors
Sound Card:
Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Speakers/Headphones:
Creative Labs 5.1 System
Keyboard:
Microsoft Recluse
Mouse:
Razer Copperhead (Blue)
Mouse Surface:
Plexflow LCD Mouse Mat
Operating System:
Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)
Motherboard:
Gigabyte EP43-DSP
Computer Case:
Antec Nine Hundred
As u can see its not a top end , and hes using a 9800GT , but hes getting 3700 score on high with the benchmark , so im well confused as im only getting 2300 on High
well, he has an e8500 and according to your sig you have an athlon 6400. The e8500 is faster than the 6400
you also have an ATI 5770 and hes using a 9800 GT. The 9800 GT is faster than the 5770
also keep in mind that the game is going to be more optimized for the nVidia chipsets than the ATI since its being developed for the ps3
First of all. A 9800 GT is nowhere near as fast as a 5770. That's a load of hot air. Second of all, there are numerous other reasons that can attirbute to a low end frame rate. The CPU in and of itself isn't enough to justify a disparity that large, while it may be a primary contributor. Motherboard, driver updates, DirectX updates, amount and speed of RAM among other culprits can also be responsible for your bottleneck. But the 5770, is DEFINITELY - NOT - IT. A 9800 GT scores almost 5000 less in Vantage DX10 than a 5770. The 5000 series is a far more current and superior chip architecture. There is also a major difference in frame rates depending on the Resolution you're running at. If he's running at a lower resolution than you are during the test the GPU's will come in at different speeds. If your display is superior that could easily explain the odd difference.
ya you totally busted me fan boying it up it seems. Im not sure why I thought the 9800 was a faster board, hell the 4770 is faster than the 9800
so ya, im toast sorry for the mislead
back to the guys question though, I know most ATI users were having some severe performance issues up to a certain phase of testing but its been remedied. Theres a good chance the engine used in the FF benchmark is dated. Also ATI users are experiencing the best performance with the 10.6 catalyst drivers
Well I have come to discover that I may have upgraded my PC for FFXIV a little too soon, which was in early May when the new parts were installed. Granted what I bought plays FFXIV just fine on these settings:
1920*1200
Standard Shadows On
No AA
Buffer at Resolution
Texture Quality on High
Texture Filtering on Highest
Ambient Occlusion off
Depth of Field off
In-game settings I have everything on:
Shadows
Physics
Dust Effects
etc
And ultimately when I'm alone, lets say about 500-700 yalms {100 yalms is a square on the maps} from the nearest Aetheryte camp I easily get 43-49fps. When I'm within 200-300 yalms and other players are around it will dip down to 35-42fps, and when at an Atheryte camp or in the city-states with lots of players around, it drops to as low as 11fps, but averages 21-34fps.
Anyway, and even though SLi is not an option in FFXIV yet, I decided to upgrade my PC once again today {well I ordered the parts} and I'm now set for an SLi configuration in the future. My current board in a Crossfire board so I wouldn't have been able too. I also took the plunge and for the first time ever I decided to go Intel, mainly cause I love EVGA GPUs and their MBs are just as awesome, plus its much easier to build an SLi ready PC with Intel than it is with AMD parts.
I currently have the EVGA GTX 275, and I'm really holding out for either the 475 or 485, which neither have a release date yet, plus there are no games I'm interested in that use DX11 yet. And ultimately I'm planning on playing FFXIV for the next few years exclusively which is DX9 for now, and possible DX10 upgrades in the future, so I'm tempted to get a second GTX 275 and SLi them for now, and for use when FFXIV goes SLi compatible. And according to benchmarks GTX 275s in SLi are more powerful than a single 470, so not bad at all, and far cheaper...less than $150 for a 2nd 275 from ebay.
Anyway...now the long wait over the weekend and hopefully my new parts will arrive early next week before FFXIV Launches!
You might want to cancel that order if you still can, as it's going to end up obsolete before you get much use out of it.
You're basically saying that you bought a new motherboard today, in the hopes that Nvidia will be able to launch video cards to put into it... in about a year or so. Maybe. If you're lucky. Meanwhile, AMD launches Northern Islands later this year, and then will almost surely have the high end all to itself for a year or so--or possibly much longer they beat Nvidia to 28 nm. Cayman-based cards will also be considerably cheaper to produce than GF100-based cards, so don't expect Nvidia to be able to offer a compelling value on performance per dollar. It's more likely that Nvidia will simply cancel production of GF100-based GeForce cards rather than getting into a price war, as they did with GT200b when Cypress launched.
And in a year or so, even if you do get lucky and Nvidia does launch new cards in a year that are super awesome, you'll be stuck with what by then is an old processor. Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer both take new sockets. Sandy Bridge will surely clobber Lynnfield and Bloomfield, and Bulldozer likely will as well.
Nvidia might well be able to launch a fully functional GF104 chip, which will probably have performance in the range of a Radeon HD 5850. Don't hold your breath waiting on a 512-shader GF100, though. If they can't get enough of those for $4000 Tesla cards or $5000 Quadro cards, but have to use salvage parts even for those, then do you really think they're going to have a ton of them laying around for $500 gaming cards?
And did I mention that as of Catalyst 10.9, CrossFire works in Final Fantasy XIV, in case one video card doesn't provide enough performance for you?
I'm not saying you should switch the processor back to AMD. I'm saying if you're going to switch to Intel, the time to do it is right after Sandy Bridge launches, not right before. Intel is better at the high end right now, and that gap will grow with Sandy Bridge, before AMD maybe catches up with Bulldozer. If you can wait for Sandy Bridge to launch in January, the same price tag will get you about double the performance improvement over what you have today that upgrading now will offer.
And if you're upgrading video cards anytime soon, it's going to be a long time before Nvidia has anything worthwhile as an upgrade over what you have now. The motherboard seems to have been chosen with a video card upgrade in mind, but will be awfully dated by the time said video card upgrade is available from Nvidia.
It's also worth mentioning that Final Fantasy XIV happens to be more favorable to AMD's video cards rather than Nvidia's as compared to "average" other games. That doesn't particularly matter if you don't know what future games you're going to play, but if it's for FFXIV in particular, it's something to consider. Of course, that's a comparison of Evergreen to Fermi, and Northern Islands could change it.
I'm hoping my computer will hold out till Q1 next year to buy Sandy Bridge and all the nice shineys.
Hell i nearly spent 600 dollars today to upgrade the parts that arent going to be obsolete by the time they get to my door (g.skill phoenix pro ssd, wd caviar black 1tb, blu-ray burner, and my upgrade to windows 7 pro)
I'm thinking Windows 7 might give a performance boost. Anyone happen to dual boot? (why would ya, but still)
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
ic, well didn't mean to jump down your throat, but still I know about the new CPUs coming and the one I just bought is expensive enough, and if ya look at some of the higher end Intel atm, 960+ and x6 core are $600-$1000+. More than likely the new CPUs coming next year will be just as expensive and will be even 6-8mo or more before I could afford them. And by then we'd fall into the same situation, I'd be upgrading to an semi-older chip before something newer is releasing soon.
And honestly, FFXIV is designed with nVidia tech moreso than ATI. And as far as upgrading to one of the newest DX11 GPU, seems pointless to me atm cause there are only 2 games that use DX11 and Tesselation atm, and LOTRO has a few new options added lately for it, but none of them I care about. FFXIV is still a DX9 game...
I'm actually quite tempted to get a second GTX 275 here soon to SLi with for once...my last few boards were Crossfire with single nVidia, and I have wanted for a long time the ability to do SLi whether now and I'll be ready for the new 475 and 485 which I believe will launch later this year also to stay in competition with AMD.
The first Sandy Bridge processors will be two and four core processors meant to replace Lynnfield and Clarkdale, not six or eight core processors meant to replace Gulftown, and will be priced accordingly. That means you get the performance per clock cycle improvements of the architecture, without the crazy price tag. If you're overclocking, you might be interested in the Core i5 2500K. That's a Core i5, meaning that it's intended as a mid-range processor, and will therefore be priced accordingly--meaning, probably in the range of $200, and almost certainly under $300. It's a quad core stock clocked at 3.3 GHz, with turbo boost up to 3.7 GHz. It's made on Intel's 32 nm HKMG process (as compared to 45 nm for Gufltown), so it will probably be able to hit higher clock speeds than Lynnfield, in addition to better performance per clock cycle.
-----
If you want a video card that performs well in a given game, then it doesn't matter what architecture the game was designed for. It matters what it actually works well with.
A Radeon HD 5870 beats a GeForce GTX 480 handily in the Final Fantasy XIV official benchmark. They tested 16 games and three synthetic benchmarks, and the Radeon HD 5870 beats the GeForce GTX 480 by more in Final Fantasy XIV than in anything else they tested. Maybe you ignore that if you're going to play a bunch of demanding games on it, of which FFXIV is only one. But it's not a new build designed specifically for FFXIV if you ignore FFXIV performance.
That shows the 1 GB version losing at 1920x1080, but that's because the site skews toward Nvidia by using SSAA for AMD cards, meaning that it's rendering the game at a resolution of 3840x2160. Even if you do use a crazy resolution like that, a 2 GB version of the card fixes it. And that's AMD's old architecture. Their new one launches next month (with the high end cards probably not coming until November), and probably does considerably better yet.
-----
It's not that Nvidia doesn't want to release a GeForce GTX 475 or 485. It's that they can't. A fully functional GF104 would only offer around Radeon HD 5850 performance on average. A fully functional GF100 might be better, but the GeForce GTX 480 is already up against the 300 W cap on what can officially be called a PCI Express card, so they'd have to either clock it lower (so you may not get any better performance) or else run it out of spec and risk frying either the motherboard or the power supply.
And that's if Nvidia had good enough yields to have the chips sitting there. They don't. They don't even have enough fully functional GF100 chips to offer them in $4000 Tesla cards or $5000 Quadro cards. Do you really think they have a ton of them sitting around that they'll put in GeForce cards that they'll likely soon have to price around $300-$400 to be competitive in performance per dollar? They'd lose money on every card they sold if they tried that, so at most, it would be a PR stunt, not a commercially available product.
They'd need a new chip to offer better performance. They haven't even got the chips for Fermi out yet. Do you expect two new architectures in the same year? When's the last time a company launched one new architecture, and then had another one replace it later that year? When's the last time they even replaced the architecture the next year by something really new, not just minor tweaks and/or a die shrink?
The other alternative would be a die shrink. The plan was to offer a die shrink to TSMC's 32 nm bulk silicon process. That process got canceled. It's not Nvidia's fault that they can't make the chips they intended. The machinery that was supposed to build the cards doesn't exist and never will. Global Foundries' 32 nm HKMG process was canceled, too. UMC has given up on trying to keep up with cutting edge process nodes. There isn't a suitable new process for Nvidia to move to in the near future.
TSMC and Global Foundries are working on 28 nm HKMG processes, but those simply aren't ready for new cards yet, and won't be anytime soon. Even if everything goes well for both TSMC and Nvidia, we're looking at next summer or so before Nvidia can launch 28 nm cards.
And everything will not go well. TSMC has quite a history of delaying process nodes, after originally promising overly optimistic dates. For example, Nvidia's first 40 nm cards were delayed by about a year, launching in September of 2009 rather than September of 2008. It was mainly problems with TSMC, and AMD's cards were greatly delayed as well.
Nor is everything likely to go well even if we restrict to the things that Nvidia can control. AMD has consistently beaten Nvidia to new process nodes. Most recently, AMD beat Nvidia to 40 nm cards on the market by about five months. AMD had 55 nm cards for sale about 8 months before Nvidia did, and only about a month after Nvidia's first 65 nm cards. ATI beat Nvidia to 80 nm by about three months, and to 90 nm by five months. If AMD doesn't have much hope of launching 28 nm cards before next summer, it's far from automatic that Nvidia will have such cards on the market by the end of 2011.
-----
If you want an SLI setup for the sake of having an SLI setup, then it's your money, I guess. You'd best replace the power supply if you're going to run two GF100 cards in SLI and heavily overclock the processor, though. An Antec TruePower New is a very nice power supply, but if you draw more power from it than it's rated as being able to deliver, and then it malfunctions, that's your fault, not Antec's. A pair of GTX 275s would probably be fine so long as you don't overdo the overclock, or a single GF100 card would be fine, too.
Comments
omg just download FF14 benchamark and you will all see ..
+ post scores here.
I got 3510 on HI.
http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/media/benchmark/na/
Q8400 @ 3.2Ghz
4GB RAM DDR2 800
GTX260 by Asus little OC
Im currently playing beta on max and its smooth around 40 FPS, so I think full version will be even more cool
Rodier, icq 10905813
I do a lot of 3D (mainly Maya and Photoshop open at the same time) I sometimes get close to 100% on the current 8GB I have atm.
_____________________
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
Or ask anyone alpha/beta testing FFXIV currently as to why you would choose an nVidia board over the ATI.
stick with your gut this time, get the nVidia if you're building it around FFXIV. You might also want to invest in a logitech rumblepad 2 if you dont have a 360 controller to use on your box
It looks like the benchmark doesn't presently support Crossfire (I can't test whether that's true of SLI as well, but I would guess that it is).
No matter what, I don't seem to be able to get higher scores with my 5770s in Crossfire than with just one enabled (I get around 3000).
Well this is what i dont understand , here is my mates comp specs :
Manufacturer:
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Processor:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory:
OCZ 4094MB RAM 800Mhz
Hard Drive:
1x 500Gb WD Internal, x2 250gb WD External
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Monitor:
x2 GNR 19" Widescreen LCD Monitors
Sound Card:
Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Speakers/Headphones:
Creative Labs 5.1 System
Keyboard:
Microsoft Recluse
Mouse:
Razer Copperhead (Blue)
Mouse Surface:
Plexflow LCD Mouse Mat
Operating System:
Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)
Motherboard:
Gigabyte EP43-DSP
Computer Case:
Antec Nine Hundred
As u can see its not a top end , and hes using a 9800GT , but hes getting 3700 score on high with the benchmark , so im well confused as im only getting 2300 on High
From the FF14 benchmark website:
Performance similarities exist between GTX 480 and HD 5870s.
[8000 and over] Extremely High Performance
Easily capable of running the game on the highest settings.
[5500–7999] Very High Performance
Easily capable of running the game. Should perform exceptionally well, even at higher resolutions.
[4500-5499] High Performance
Easily capable of running the game. Should perform well, even at higher resolutions.
[3000-4499] Fairly High Performance
Capable of running the game on default settings. Consider switching to a higher resolution depending on performance.
[2500-2999] Standard Performance
Capable of running the game on default settings.
[2000-2499] Slightly Low Performance
Capable of running the game, but may experience some slowdown. Adjust settings to improve performance.
[1500-1999] Low Performance
Capable of running the game, but will experience considerable slowdown. Adjusting settings is unlikely to improve performance.
[Under 1500] Insufficient Performance
Does not meet specifications for running the game.
Time for you to benchmark your new builds
Guys think this will be good?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129043
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130551
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145224
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131365
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225
It goes in order. DVD Burner, Case, HD, Vid Card, PSU, RAM, MOBO, CPU
well, he has an e8500 and according to your sig you have an athlon 6400. The e8500 is faster than the 6400
you also have an ATI 5770 and hes using a 9800 GT. The 9800 GT is faster than the 5770
also keep in mind that the game is going to be more optimized for the nVidia chipsets than the ATI since its being developed for the ps3
http://www.guru3d.com/article/vga-charts-december-2009/10
First of all. A 9800 GT is nowhere near as fast as a 5770. That's a load of hot air. Second of all, there are numerous other reasons that can attirbute to a low end frame rate. The CPU in and of itself isn't enough to justify a disparity that large, while it may be a primary contributor. Motherboard, driver updates, DirectX updates, amount and speed of RAM among other culprits can also be responsible for your bottleneck. But the 5770, is DEFINITELY - NOT - IT. A 9800 GT scores almost 5000 less in Vantage DX10 than a 5770. The 5000 series is a far more current and superior chip architecture. There is also a major difference in frame rates depending on the Resolution you're running at. If he's running at a lower resolution than you are during the test the GPU's will come in at different speeds. If your display is superior that could easily explain the odd difference.
ya you totally busted me fan boying it up it seems. Im not sure why I thought the 9800 was a faster board, hell the 4770 is faster than the 9800
so ya, im toast
sorry for the mislead
back to the guys question though, I know most ATI users were having some severe performance issues up to a certain phase of testing but its been remedied. Theres a good chance the engine used in the FF benchmark is dated. Also ATI users are experiencing the best performance with the 10.6 catalyst drivers
Sorry to brake it to you bro but no graphics card that exists today can fully handle FFXIV.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Well I have come to discover that I may have upgraded my PC for FFXIV a little too soon, which was in early May when the new parts were installed. Granted what I bought plays FFXIV just fine on these settings:
1920*1200
Standard Shadows On
No AA
Buffer at Resolution
Texture Quality on High
Texture Filtering on Highest
Ambient Occlusion off
Depth of Field off
In-game settings I have everything on:
Shadows
Physics
Dust Effects
etc
And ultimately when I'm alone, lets say about 500-700 yalms {100 yalms is a square on the maps} from the nearest Aetheryte camp I easily get 43-49fps. When I'm within 200-300 yalms and other players are around it will dip down to 35-42fps, and when at an Atheryte camp or in the city-states with lots of players around, it drops to as low as 11fps, but averages 21-34fps.
Anyway, and even though SLi is not an option in FFXIV yet, I decided to upgrade my PC once again today {well I ordered the parts} and I'm now set for an SLi configuration in the future. My current board in a Crossfire board so I wouldn't have been able too. I also took the plunge and for the first time ever I decided to go Intel, mainly cause I love EVGA GPUs and their MBs are just as awesome, plus its much easier to build an SLi ready PC with Intel than it is with AMD parts.
Here is what I bought:
EVGA P55 FTW 200 SLI 141-LF-E658-KR LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i7-875K Lynnfield 2.93GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core
Truely an impressive setup and outright destroys even the x6 1090T AMD CPU, which I almost bought instead. Here are some benchmark scores and a review of the CPU, and here is a video review of the motherboard.
I currently have the EVGA GTX 275, and I'm really holding out for either the 475 or 485, which neither have a release date yet, plus there are no games I'm interested in that use DX11 yet. And ultimately I'm planning on playing FFXIV for the next few years exclusively which is DX9 for now, and possible DX10 upgrades in the future, so I'm tempted to get a second GTX 275 and SLi them for now, and for use when FFXIV goes SLi compatible. And according to benchmarks GTX 275s in SLi are more powerful than a single 470, so not bad at all, and far cheaper...less than $150 for a 2nd 275 from ebay.
Anyway...now the long wait over the weekend and hopefully my new parts will arrive early next week before FFXIV Launches!
You might want to cancel that order if you still can, as it's going to end up obsolete before you get much use out of it.
You're basically saying that you bought a new motherboard today, in the hopes that Nvidia will be able to launch video cards to put into it... in about a year or so. Maybe. If you're lucky. Meanwhile, AMD launches Northern Islands later this year, and then will almost surely have the high end all to itself for a year or so--or possibly much longer they beat Nvidia to 28 nm. Cayman-based cards will also be considerably cheaper to produce than GF100-based cards, so don't expect Nvidia to be able to offer a compelling value on performance per dollar. It's more likely that Nvidia will simply cancel production of GF100-based GeForce cards rather than getting into a price war, as they did with GT200b when Cypress launched.
And in a year or so, even if you do get lucky and Nvidia does launch new cards in a year that are super awesome, you'll be stuck with what by then is an old processor. Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer both take new sockets. Sandy Bridge will surely clobber Lynnfield and Bloomfield, and Bulldozer likely will as well.
Nvidia might well be able to launch a fully functional GF104 chip, which will probably have performance in the range of a Radeon HD 5850. Don't hold your breath waiting on a 512-shader GF100, though. If they can't get enough of those for $4000 Tesla cards or $5000 Quadro cards, but have to use salvage parts even for those, then do you really think they're going to have a ton of them laying around for $500 gaming cards?
And did I mention that as of Catalyst 10.9, CrossFire works in Final Fantasy XIV, in case one video card doesn't provide enough performance for you?
ROFL, seriously, first reply as a rant about why I should switch to ATI and return to AMD instead...good grief.
I'm not saying you should switch the processor back to AMD. I'm saying if you're going to switch to Intel, the time to do it is right after Sandy Bridge launches, not right before. Intel is better at the high end right now, and that gap will grow with Sandy Bridge, before AMD maybe catches up with Bulldozer. If you can wait for Sandy Bridge to launch in January, the same price tag will get you about double the performance improvement over what you have today that upgrading now will offer.
And if you're upgrading video cards anytime soon, it's going to be a long time before Nvidia has anything worthwhile as an upgrade over what you have now. The motherboard seems to have been chosen with a video card upgrade in mind, but will be awfully dated by the time said video card upgrade is available from Nvidia.
It's also worth mentioning that Final Fantasy XIV happens to be more favorable to AMD's video cards rather than Nvidia's as compared to "average" other games. That doesn't particularly matter if you don't know what future games you're going to play, but if it's for FFXIV in particular, it's something to consider. Of course, that's a comparison of Evergreen to Fermi, and Northern Islands could change it.
I'm hoping my computer will hold out till Q1 next year to buy Sandy Bridge and all the nice shineys.
Hell i nearly spent 600 dollars today to upgrade the parts that arent going to be obsolete by the time they get to my door (g.skill phoenix pro ssd, wd caviar black 1tb, blu-ray burner, and my upgrade to windows 7 pro)
I'm thinking Windows 7 might give a performance boost. Anyone happen to dual boot? (why would ya, but still)
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
ic, well didn't mean to jump down your throat, but still I know about the new CPUs coming and the one I just bought is expensive enough, and if ya look at some of the higher end Intel atm, 960+ and x6 core are $600-$1000+. More than likely the new CPUs coming next year will be just as expensive and will be even 6-8mo or more before I could afford them. And by then we'd fall into the same situation, I'd be upgrading to an semi-older chip before something newer is releasing soon.
And honestly, FFXIV is designed with nVidia tech moreso than ATI. And as far as upgrading to one of the newest DX11 GPU, seems pointless to me atm cause there are only 2 games that use DX11 and Tesselation atm, and LOTRO has a few new options added lately for it, but none of them I care about. FFXIV is still a DX9 game...
I'm actually quite tempted to get a second GTX 275 here soon to SLi with for once...my last few boards were Crossfire with single nVidia, and I have wanted for a long time the ability to do SLi whether now and I'll be ready for the new 475 and 485 which I believe will launch later this year also to stay in competition with AMD.
Anyway...
The first Sandy Bridge processors will be two and four core processors meant to replace Lynnfield and Clarkdale, not six or eight core processors meant to replace Gulftown, and will be priced accordingly. That means you get the performance per clock cycle improvements of the architecture, without the crazy price tag. If you're overclocking, you might be interested in the Core i5 2500K. That's a Core i5, meaning that it's intended as a mid-range processor, and will therefore be priced accordingly--meaning, probably in the range of $200, and almost certainly under $300. It's a quad core stock clocked at 3.3 GHz, with turbo boost up to 3.7 GHz. It's made on Intel's 32 nm HKMG process (as compared to 45 nm for Gufltown), so it will probably be able to hit higher clock speeds than Lynnfield, in addition to better performance per clock cycle.
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If you want a video card that performs well in a given game, then it doesn't matter what architecture the game was designed for. It matters what it actually works well with.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/asus-matrix-5870_11.html#sect2
A Radeon HD 5870 beats a GeForce GTX 480 handily in the Final Fantasy XIV official benchmark. They tested 16 games and three synthetic benchmarks, and the Radeon HD 5870 beats the GeForce GTX 480 by more in Final Fantasy XIV than in anything else they tested. Maybe you ignore that if you're going to play a bunch of demanding games on it, of which FFXIV is only one. But it's not a new build designed specifically for FFXIV if you ignore FFXIV performance.
That shows the 1 GB version losing at 1920x1080, but that's because the site skews toward Nvidia by using SSAA for AMD cards, meaning that it's rendering the game at a resolution of 3840x2160. Even if you do use a crazy resolution like that, a 2 GB version of the card fixes it. And that's AMD's old architecture. Their new one launches next month (with the high end cards probably not coming until November), and probably does considerably better yet.
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It's not that Nvidia doesn't want to release a GeForce GTX 475 or 485. It's that they can't. A fully functional GF104 would only offer around Radeon HD 5850 performance on average. A fully functional GF100 might be better, but the GeForce GTX 480 is already up against the 300 W cap on what can officially be called a PCI Express card, so they'd have to either clock it lower (so you may not get any better performance) or else run it out of spec and risk frying either the motherboard or the power supply.
And that's if Nvidia had good enough yields to have the chips sitting there. They don't. They don't even have enough fully functional GF100 chips to offer them in $4000 Tesla cards or $5000 Quadro cards. Do you really think they have a ton of them sitting around that they'll put in GeForce cards that they'll likely soon have to price around $300-$400 to be competitive in performance per dollar? They'd lose money on every card they sold if they tried that, so at most, it would be a PR stunt, not a commercially available product.
They'd need a new chip to offer better performance. They haven't even got the chips for Fermi out yet. Do you expect two new architectures in the same year? When's the last time a company launched one new architecture, and then had another one replace it later that year? When's the last time they even replaced the architecture the next year by something really new, not just minor tweaks and/or a die shrink?
The other alternative would be a die shrink. The plan was to offer a die shrink to TSMC's 32 nm bulk silicon process. That process got canceled. It's not Nvidia's fault that they can't make the chips they intended. The machinery that was supposed to build the cards doesn't exist and never will. Global Foundries' 32 nm HKMG process was canceled, too. UMC has given up on trying to keep up with cutting edge process nodes. There isn't a suitable new process for Nvidia to move to in the near future.
TSMC and Global Foundries are working on 28 nm HKMG processes, but those simply aren't ready for new cards yet, and won't be anytime soon. Even if everything goes well for both TSMC and Nvidia, we're looking at next summer or so before Nvidia can launch 28 nm cards.
And everything will not go well. TSMC has quite a history of delaying process nodes, after originally promising overly optimistic dates. For example, Nvidia's first 40 nm cards were delayed by about a year, launching in September of 2009 rather than September of 2008. It was mainly problems with TSMC, and AMD's cards were greatly delayed as well.
Nor is everything likely to go well even if we restrict to the things that Nvidia can control. AMD has consistently beaten Nvidia to new process nodes. Most recently, AMD beat Nvidia to 40 nm cards on the market by about five months. AMD had 55 nm cards for sale about 8 months before Nvidia did, and only about a month after Nvidia's first 65 nm cards. ATI beat Nvidia to 80 nm by about three months, and to 90 nm by five months. If AMD doesn't have much hope of launching 28 nm cards before next summer, it's far from automatic that Nvidia will have such cards on the market by the end of 2011.
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If you want an SLI setup for the sake of having an SLI setup, then it's your money, I guess. You'd best replace the power supply if you're going to run two GF100 cards in SLI and heavily overclock the processor, though. An Antec TruePower New is a very nice power supply, but if you draw more power from it than it's rated as being able to deliver, and then it malfunctions, that's your fault, not Antec's. A pair of GTX 275s would probably be fine so long as you don't overdo the overclock, or a single GF100 card would be fine, too.