Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

[Gman]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

You need to read Feba's stuff again, because I read it and understood it

If you have a PS3 what do you do with it? play games.

As far as the OP, I still don't think you get it...... you keep saying "use PS3 as a base point" well you cant do that, I don't care what the specs of a game console are, put those same specs in a PC, and you wont get as far as the console does.

Right now the system specs for the alpha, are very inaccurate, people meeting these specs or beyond, still lag horribly, and its because the game is not optimized.

Wait till SE releases system specs for the retail version of FFXIV then build a PC one/two steps above that.

I should have explained better- I found it informative because I know nothing about PC gaming, so I don't have a clue what kind of processor, ram, or video card is needed to run today's games. Even the info he had at least gave me a bit of insight to what is out there, even if it may not be adequate. That being said, he seems to have modeled his recommedation around what he has himself, and he said he got great scores on the benchmark, so to me (who know's zip about this stuff) it appears that his rig should be able to reasonbably handle the retail version, but of course I may be way off.

Oh, and the way I understood Feba's post was obviously wrong, but I thought Sony's "It only does everything" campaign was brought into play there (tongue in cheek of course)

[Kailea]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

well I also would not take that benchmark to heart, to me it seems as if its really picky, I have seen system stronger then mine get lower scores....and that does not make sense

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Had no idea people were still posting in this. To be clear, I'm going to reword my opening post. Feba is, begrudgingly, correct. No sense trying to use the PS3 as a "base" to compare a gaming rig to. What I'll say is this gaming on a PC is expensive.

So there are more than a couple of people in this forum that got low scores on the bench and want to know how to make their rigs better. Some play PC games a lot, and some just really only like FFXI.

That's part of why I made this post; making a PC for gaming is a lot more than getting a better GPU and/or some RAM. For the majority of people who have been using the same rigs to play FFXI just fine the past 6-7 years, getting a PS3 might be the most financially sound option as opposed to trying to build a new system. All I'm trying to do is give a decent comparison to a starter gaming rig, based only on my observations (I state as much).

Also, my gaming rig has costs me about $1800, including dual monitors, Windows OS and the Mount I put the monitors on. (So I'd say that the tower cost me about $1200-$1400).

One question I have: In light of all this banter, how is someone who claims they have a decrepit system that barely runs FFXI has any frame of reference to what would constitute a decent rig this month or even half a year from now? Unless said person builds PCs on a seasonal basis and can see for themselves the performance of different parts, of course.

Regardless, I will take the feedback and modify my original post to be more clear. Thank you, everyone.

- - - - - - -

First post has been updated.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

@ Feba

If experience counts for anything, the recommended specs will be HIGHER in the final version than in beta. I remember this to be precisely true with FFXI when I participated in Alpha and then Beta testing of the game. My rig ran fine until I installed the release on launch day and find to my dismay that it was woefully inadequate to the task. Part of the problem was driver optimization (a patch and a new reference driver from ATI helped a little) but once I got myself a new vid card and more ram, my rig was able to handle the game just fine. I suspect this will be the same since the game won't be fully stressed w/o it going to live and SE collecting much more data from a wider audience. I find majority of those participating in beta aren't as likely to report problems as those who pay $$$ would.

It will come down to sacrificing quality for parity. If they want to hit the mainstream, they are going to have to choose their audience and that may or may not work in their favor. I think they should've released the PS3 first and the PC after, although I'm not exactly sure what kind of data they are looking at regarding their survey they collected during the beta application process.

@ WishMaster3K

Thanks for taking the time to write this guide. Your particular approach is the same that I've thought about (in which I will wait a few more months until we know more about the game and get more analysis from the community at large about what is a good reference point for a baseline system) My only fear is that right now the requirements are very close to top-of-the-line which will make the game quite unpopular with the masses (i.e., think WoW) when they are forced to upgrade their hardware.

[Feba]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

If experience counts for anything, the recommended specs will be HIGHER in the final version than in beta.

That would probably be expected; at least with graphical improvements we didn't see in alpha. In terms of beta to live, that depends on how much they add compared to what they tighten up (which I'd imagine isn't a ton at that stage), and also the structure of the game. FF14 could be very much decentralized, which would take a lot of stress off places like AHs and so on.

Anyway, with the "PC first by half a year lawl" news, obviously "buy a PS3 and let the PC version bugfix itself while you chillax" doesn't quite work.

, how is someone who claims they have a decrepit system that barely runs FFXI has any frame of reference to what would constitute a decent rig this month or even half a year from now?

Oh, I don't pretend to have a superior knowledge. I read some about new parts, but generally wisdom is wisdom. I stopped caring about PC gaming years ago when I blew $2k and a month on parts that I could do nothing but RMA and never got a functioning computer out of it. If I wanted to ask about what the best graphics card on the market were, I'd go to someone like you who's looked into it lately. But if I wanted to build a PC for FFXIV, I'd wait until the last minute. It just makes more sense than buying parts hoping they'll work.

My only advice for building an FFXIV computer besides 'save money, wait' is to get nice monitors, keyboards, mice, speakers, headset, and whatever other peripherals you plan to use. That's going to make you far more comfortable than a longer draw distance or less pixelly shadowing.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

@ Feba

I think it also depends on just how comfortable people are with having to stay on top of new games and then being able to play them. Some companies have a knack of hitting the sweetspot with their audience (Blizzard) while others have a much more noble agenda in mind by not compromising their art in order to reach the masses (this rarely happens anymore as majority of games produced are at the hands of the large publishing companies who only care about the bottomline)

I think Square-Enix falls somewhere in the middle, where they would rather pursue a comfortable number of players, the "core fans" + a few others and their friends, rather then try to hit the proverbial jackpot. This means that they will somewhat compromise a few things as to not become so exclusive to a small group of players but not compromise so much in order to bankroll on the masses. This was exactly how they ran their ship with FFXI and why the game still looks and play decently today despite its age.

----------

For those people who want to continue gaming with their PCs, they need to realize that it's an investment over the long haul. The mistake they make is that spending $4,000 5 years ago would allow them to game for 10 years when the truth of the matter is that spending $1000 every 2 years makes much more sense. If people can't see themselves spending that kind of money to play games on their PCs, then they are better off with their consoles and the lower upfront costs that entails. Since I use my PC to do other things besides gaming, I am not bothered with the kind of investment that I sink into PCs and being able to play the latest games comfortably is just a bonus for me.

[Malacite]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I'm using a nVidia 8600 GT.


Can anyone recommend a GFX I can get from Best Buy or Future Shop that will run XIV smoothly on high settings and won't cost me a fortune? Doesn't have to be super high rest but high enough that it looks pretty as I'm fairly certain that's all I'm lacking.

I have a 5.4 performance rating using Vista Home Premium 64 bit. 8 GB RAM (though it says I only have 4 for some stupid reason) running an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6700 @2.66 GHz 2.67 GHz (reading from my System display here) and it's made by HP.

So pretty sure I got enough RAM and a good enough Processor, as well as a very nice monitor. I just need a better GPU as that 8600 failed miserably on the benchmark.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I'm using a nVidia 8600 GT.


Can anyone recommend a GFX I can get from Best Buy or Future Shop that will run XIV smoothly on high settings and won't cost me a fortune? Doesn't have to be super high rest but high enough that it looks pretty as I'm fairly certain that's all I'm lacking.

I think as far as an NV card goes, the sweet entry spot is the GTX 260 and you can find these for around $150 or so now (used to be closer to $200 just a couple of months ago) If you can wait for another 2 months, this card might go for as low as $120 and at that point, I would spend the extra $20-25 for a GTX 275 instead. If you don't mind spending another $50, the GTX 285 would be the best card by then for the money you spend.

For ATI cards, the HD 5770 edges out the GTX 260 and ditto with the HD 5850 compared with the GTX 275. However, the HD 5850 seems to be in short supply from what I've been hearing about and so the next practical choice would be the HD 5870. ATI cards are priced roughly 10% less than the NV cards from what I've been seeing online.

Now, the catch is this: NV cards are purported to run FF14 noticeably better and many ATI owners have reported bugs with the benchmark giving either really low scores and in some cases the program won't even run. You also have to remember that PS3 architecture features NV technology and Nvidia last year (or in 2008, can't remember) purchased the creators of PhysX (Ageia), a key technology found in PS3 development (also used in Wii and 360). You can get an ATI card (or whoever else reading this post that might be considering it) but you will have to be prepared for the game not being able to run well or endure patching/driver upgrades/unexplained graphical bugs ... solutions for which is highly reliant on whether or not AMD-ATI will care enough about the game to provide that kind of close support.

My 2 cents here is if you don't plan on running other games or own enough titles that feature PhysX/CUDA technology and will primarily play FFXIV, get an NV card. Otherwise, the upper echelon ATI cards are currently better in stability, performance and price with NV cards at entry and mid levels and arguably at the highest end being quite competitive and having an edge due to additional support for the aforementioned 3D technologies.

[DakAttack]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

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^ Necessary.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

@Aeni

When the benchmark came out, I had to wait a week before ATI released driver. A week, god damnit.

According to the press release, the system requirements for this game seem completely lawl-worthy and I totally don't believe that anyone with this system will enjoy the game. I was ABLE to run FFXI on my Dell laptop with the integrated Intel 965 chipset, but damnit, it wasn't pretty.

Windows XP/Vista/7
Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2GHz
2GB of RAM, 15GB HDD space
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 512MB or ATI Radeon HD 2900 512MB
DirectX 9

I'll research and update the first post when I wrap my head around the system with those specs.

[Kafeen]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

According to the press release, the system requirements for this game seem completely lawl-worthy and I totally don't believe that anyone with this system will enjoy the game. I was ABLE to run FFXI on my Dell laptop with the integrated Intel 965 chipset, but damnit, it wasn't pretty.

Windows XP/Vista/7
Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2GHz
2GB of RAM, 15GB HDD space
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 512MB or ATI Radeon HD 2900 512MB
DirectX 9

Given I got a score of 288 on the benchmark (<1000 supposed being too low to play) with 2.6GHz dual core, 2.8GB of RAM and a ATI Radeon HD 3200. I'd hate to see what score you get with the specs they list. It'll be like watching an FFXIV slideshow.

[Feba]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Keep in mind that FFXI's minimum requirements were something like Pre-orVeryEarly-GeForce when it first came out; I ran it on an MX440 (Basically a Geforce 2) for a long time with pretty good results (High resolution, shadows, draw distance). With expansions, that's been increased; TAU doesn't look better than RTZ for no reason. It could be that SE put some things into Alpha to test how far they could push it now, and decided to cut back on the graphics; or give some very forgiving minimum settings.

Of course, that's assuming the "SE isn't a bunch of incompetent dicks" theory.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I think this is a good base to work off of:

Beta Test System Requirements:

OS:
XP SP3 **
Vista 32bit/64bit SP2 ***
Win7 32bit/64bit ***

Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo (2.0 Ghz)
AMD Athlon X2 (2.0 Ghz)

Ram:
XP 1.5GB+
Vista/Win7 2.0GB+

HD Space:
Installation: 15GB+
Download: Space on the hard drive where My Documents is located should be 6GB+ ****

Graphics:
Nvidia Geforce 9600 or higher with 512 vram or higher
ATI Radeon HD 2900 or higher with 512 vram or higher

Sound Card:
DirectSound compatible sound card (DirectX 9 or higher)

Internet Connection:
Broadband Internet Connection or higher

Resolution:
1280 x 720 or higher, 32 bit or higher

DirectX:
DirectX 9.0c

Other:
Mouse, Keyboard, Gamepad *****

** If using WinXP, the executible files, installation, and version updates should be set to Administrator settings.
*** 64 bit OS will run in WOW64 (Windows on Windows 64) mode.
**** The file system in the drive containing the My Documents folder will need to be set to NTFS formatting.
***** A gamepad is not reuquired.

These are the required specifications for the Windows PC Beta Test. The requirements may change at the time of retail launch.

[wrongfeifong]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I been thinking to buy a PC for FFXI as well.

or i can use my athon x2 3ghz 4g ram + a new GPU to play.

Damn i wish they release PS3 version with PC, they are such an ASS. they expect people to buy 2 copy if you want to play ps3 version too.

I wonder how much do i need to get a bare minimum machine to play.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

@Aeni

When the benchmark came out, I had to wait a week before ATI released driver. A week, god damnit.

Support will be slow for beta clients of any game so that's understandable. But if that is a foreshadowing of release then I'm going to buy an NV card just to be on the safe side.

How steep are the requirements? I've asked around and got various friends to run the benchmarks.

i5/nv 260 at around 4100 (720p)
i7920/nv 275 at around 4400 (720p)
Phenom II/nv 260 at around 3200 (720p)
E8200/8800GTS at around 2400 (720p)

So I was right all along. You'll need at least a Phenom II/nv 260 for default settings and for HD mode you will probably need an i5/i7 (4-8 cores) and nv 275. The equivalent in ATI will be HD 5770 (720p) and HD 5850 (1080p)

Here is the hierarchy for both CPU and Graphics (Gaming Performance only, Tom's Hardware):

ATI

Tier0 - HD 5970
Tier1 - HD 4870 x2 (Crossfire)
Tier2 - HD 4850 x2, HD 5870
Tier3 - HD 5850
Tier4 - HD 4870, HD 4890, HD 5770
Tier5 - HD 3870 x2, HD 4850, HD 5750

Nvidia

Tier0 - n/a
Tier1 - GTX 295, GTX 480
Tier2 - n/a
Tier3 - GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 470
Tier4 - 9800 GX2, GTX 260, GTX 275, GTX 465
Tier5 - 8800 Ultra, 9800 GTX, 9800 GTX+, GTS 250

----------------------------------------

Intel

Tier0 - Core i7-965, -975 Extreme, -980X Extreme, Core i7-860, -870, -920, -930, -940, -950, Core i5-750, Core 2 Extreme QX9775, QX9770, QX9650, Core 2 Quad Q9650
Tier1 - Core 2 Extreme QX6850, QX6800, Core 2 Quad Q9550, Q9450, Q9400, Core i5-650, -660, -661, -670, -680
Tier2 - Core 2 Extreme QX6700, Core 2 Quad Q6700, Q9300, Q8400, Q6600, Q8300, Core 2 Duo E8600, E8500, E8400, E7600, Core i3 -530, -540

AMD

Tier0 - n/a
Tier1 - Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition, Phenom II X4 Black Edition 955, 965
Tier2 - Phenom II X6 1055T, Phenom II X4 945, 940, 920, 910, 910e, 810, Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition, Athlon II X4 640, 635, 630, Athlon II X3 445, 440, 435


-----------------------

These are what people should be aiming for in my opinion (if you are building a rig or purchasing a new system or looking to upgrade) If you decide to go with something less, be prepared to run the game at subpar levels. Yes, you can play the game with minimum requirements, but let's not kid ourselves.