Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

[Freelancer]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Go on an overclocking forum like overclock.net and give them your set up and they'll teach you how to overclock step my step.

---------- Post added at 12:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:30 PM ----------

Also some motherboards have an auto-overclock feature, whats yours?

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

For people who are following this thread and are unaware:

"A new version of the benchmark software is under development."

[wrongfeifong]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

watch your scores go even lower after the new benchmark release ha.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Just thought I'd post this here since so many people are tweaking or building. I thought someone might be interested in it.

How To Stress Test Your Hardware and Keep Your PC Stable - Tested

[Bricklayer]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Thanks TGM! I'll probably try to run some of those apps later this weekend on my new machine.

CM 690 II Plus (Asian version of Advanced)
Corsair 750HX
P7P55D-E
i5-760 2.8GHz
Coolermaster 212 Plus
OCZ 2x2GB DDR3 1600 CL8
EVGA GTX 470
WD Caviar Blue 1TB
Sony DRU-880S

Total price was approximately $1000 (converting from TWD, etc.)

Will post FFXIV Benchmark scores a little later as well.


As promised:

Low Res

High Res

[Cyprius]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

That's very promising.

My build is somewhat similar in that I've got an i5-750 and an XFX 5850. I plan on OC'ing the i5-750 to about 3Ghz.

Maybe even the 5850. Prob not.

Either way, I should have a nice mix of great GFX and performance.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

That's very promising.

My build is somewhat similar in that I've got an i5-750 and an XFX 5850. I plan on OC'ing the i5-750 to about 3Ghz.

Maybe even the 5850. Prob not.

Either way, I should have a nice mix of great GFX and performance.

First of all, there's been some rumors being spread that the GPU will be getting hit harder in the release version of the game (right now, it's the CPU that's the bottleneck in many "average" rigs This doesn't mean that the minimum requirements for the CPU will go away, it's just that they hope the load balancing will be more ideal than it was in FFXI.

Secondly, I've been perusing data gathered by a few tech guys at FFXIV Core and then I've been hitting Hard OCP, 3D Guru, etc. and been data mining there as well and have come to the conclusion that many players participating in beta are not qualified to run the game. Most players are unaware that they are going to hit massive performance issues at release because the closed beta doesn't accurately reflect a lot of conditions, including a congested network. Open Beta may be the first real eye opener for these players and I can guarantee a lot of whining will start to flood in to tech support. Quite frankly, using 2-3 year old tech isn't going to cut teeth on this game and while it's not necessary, people have been saying a DX11 card SHOULD BE the base minimum for running this game.

Some additional points made was that having a quadcore processor is definitely better than a faster duocore processor and that a hexacore processor does not seem to have any noticeable performance increase over a quadcore. Other findings were that AMD processors were lagging behind Intel's at price-to-performance ratios and that there doesn't seem to be as much of a performance difference between nVidia and ATI GPUs as was first hinted at during the first phase of beta. It could mean that ATI is actively putting out better support to SE, SE being fully aware of the performance issues and re-optimizing code for ATI GPUs or both.

Anyway, a brief look at the GPUs...

1. If you got a DX11 card in either the 400 series (260+) for nVidia or 5800/5900 series (4870+/4900) from ATI, you're gtg.

2. The sweetest price-to-performance ratio card on the market right now is nVidia's GTX 460 (1GB) cards. If you are under a very tight budget, then go for ATI's 5770 cards which retails about $140. If you want a sub $100 card the only one I can recommend is ATI 4870 and you can get that from Amazon.com (ASUS model) for $99 (after $30 main-in rebate) There are no "value" cards out there right now that can run FFXIV so you're out of luck there. If you can wait, however, sometime in October or November the industry expects wide ranging price cuts (how much is up to speculation) across the board in anticipation of the new batch of Fermis and the 6000 series unveiling.

3. Make sure you have adequate power supply for these new cards. Inadequate power can lead to system instability, application crashes and possible overheating problems. The recommended minimum is currently at 450W and generally 550W for everyone else. If you're into multi-GPUs, remember to add roughly 125W for each additional card you add to your system (this is the average "load" figure for the DX11 cards)

4. Those with the "high" 4000 series (ATI) and 200/300 series (nVidia) will be pleased to note that you may put off upgrading at least for another 6-12 mos. You're not likely to gain any appreciable performance for spending less than $200 and spending between $200 and $400 is a complete and utter waste. Save that money and in a year you can get your hands on something for $200 that can trash your current card.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Thank you for putting those pics in spoiler tags Brick, I could kiss you!

[Cyprius]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Build when it's finished:

Antec 200 V2 Case
i5-750 2.6GHZ
XFX Radeon 5850
OCZ ModXStream 600W PSU
Gigabyte P55-USB3 MoBo
4GB Mushkin RAM (2x2)

I exlcuded the HDD and DVD drive in the list, but I got 'em.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

4GB Mushkin RAM (2x2)

Very sweet rig ... but what's the speed on those ram? Also, can your board provide XFire? Because instead of getting a whole new card in 6 to 12 months, you couuld just buy another 5850 (it'll probably hit $200 by then) and get a bigger performance than spending $300 on a whole new card and you get to retain your initial investment.

[Cyprius]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Very sweet rig ... but what's the speed on those ram? Also, can your board provide XFire? Because instead of getting a whole new card in 6 to 12 months, you couuld just buy another 5850 (it'll probably hit $200 by then) and get a bigger performance than spending $300 on a whole new card and you get to retain your initial investment.

1333MHz

I was reading that RAM isn't having a major affect on gaming these days. I could be totally wrong, who knows.

I thought about going for 1600MHz or better, but these sticks were $89, so it was a good deal.

And no, this MoBo doesn't support XFire. I thought about getting a MoBo with XFire capability, but honestly this game is probably going to be the only game I'll be playing for a long, long time. I didn't want to start spending too much.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

And no, this MoBo doesn't support XFire. I thought about getting a MoBo with XFire capability, but honestly this game is probably going to be the only game I'll be playing for a long, long time. I didn't want to start spending too much.

It's still a very good gaming rig for most games and you get DX11 support for future games as well. I hope you really enjoy it!

[Cyprius]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

It's still a very good gaming rig for most games and you get DX11 support for future games as well. I hope you really enjoy it!

Yeah, thanks. The only other game I might play on this pc is SC2. And as it stands now my pc will eat it up.

[Kafeen]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Build when it's finished:

Antec 200 V2 Case
i5-750 2.6GHZ
XFX Radeon 5850
OCZ ModXStream 600W PSU
Gigabyte P55-USB3 MoBo
4GB Mushkin RAM (2x2)

I exlcuded the HDD and DVD drive in the list, but I got 'em.

Very similar to my build. Exactly the same PSU and GPU, I went for the 760 rather than the 750 but they're almost identical. MoBo is similar too, I got the Gigabyte P55M-UD2.

Btw, the P55-USB3 does support crossfire. GA-P55-USB3 (rev. 2.0) - GIGABYTE

[Bricklayer]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I let my MB overclock my i5-760, and it is now running on air at 3.66GHz. Ran the FFXIV Benchmark again to see if anything changed... Max temps for the four CPU cores on low resolution were 62, 61, 60, 61.

Low Res (OC)

High Res (OC)

Thought I'd include my temps as well. Actually, as I watched throughout the benchmark, CPU temps were pretty stable around 50C. GPU just kept creeping up, and even hit 93C at one point. That seems bad to me, but maybe these cards really are just like that, and are built to withstand the heat. Anyway, that's all the benching I'm doing for a while. My major takeaway from this is that i5-760's are VERY overclockable!