Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

[lilnickle]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

OK, maximum pc magazine has a budget gaming computer in there issue with a total build cost of $647. my question is, would this support ffxiv on a playable setting? the contents are as follows...

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 620
MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2
MEMORY: Patriot 4GB DDR2/800
VIDEOCARD: Sapphire Radeon HD 5770
HARD DRIVE: Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.12
OPTICAL DRIVE: Samsung SH-S223C
CHASSIS: Rosewill R220
POWER SUPPLY: Cooler Master RS-460
OPERATING SYSTEM: Win 7 home 64 bit

maybe this will help others looking to build or buy a pc that can support ffxiv while keeping a budget, open to criticism and suggestions!

[wrongfeifong]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

647 and it will give you say 2600-3500 low and 1500 res high.

If you like lag during large scale stuff then sure.

Here what i suggest, pay 30 bucks more for a 880 motherboard. and get a better PSU, one with 600w and not a OCZ
pay that extra 139.99 for an extra 5770 and you will be more happy.

On another note, i just finish building my system and waiting for it to come.

Phenom II x6 1055T
Msi n980 SLI motherboard (only 1 of 2 n980 sli motherboard for Am3 on the market, feature 7.1 surround sound and HDMI ^^)
corsair 4gb ram
corsair TH750w SLI ready (certified to run gtx 470 x2 accordingt o slizone)
full tower with 5 big fans.
decent heatsink for cpu
1TB hdd sata 2
crappy optical drive + my own copy of win7

all for 932$ with 13% tax included. with -90$ MIR. So total is 822. If i add a GTX for 289.99 (might have no tax for this), i would get a great gamer rig for 1100 ^^

I hate canada for the taxes!!!!!

[lilnickle]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

thanks that helps. it doesnt have to be super speedy, just playable, id settle for playing on low settings with those benchmark scores unless u think itd be choppy durring large group things. ouch, yea canadian tax is painful i feel ya. thanks for the input!

[Tharian]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

okay I am kind of confused I have a PC with the following specs:

Windows Vista 64 bit
Intel Core 2 Quad (2.33 GHz, with 1333 MHz System Bus)
8 MB DDR2 SDRAM System Memory
Serial ATA (7200 RPM) 1 Terabyte Hard Drive
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4650 1 GB DDR2 VRAM Video Card
a 600 Watt Peak with 500 Watt Continuous RocketFish Gaming Power Supply
And a Cable Modem

Yet for some reason I continuously score as low as 1300 and as high as 1320 on the Benchmark. What am I doing wrong here?

I guess what I am asking is will FFXIV run on my machine?

(I suppose I should mention that I did just upgrade my PC today with the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4650 and the 500 Watt Power Supply just for this game and am still shocked to be under the benchmark).

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

My son has a similar setup except an ATI HD 4870. He benches 2300 on high. He doesn't think that will be good enough for retail though and is upgrading soon.

[Tharian]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

My son has a similar setup except an ATI HD 4870. He benches 2300 on high. He doesn't think that will be good enough for retail though and is upgrading soon.

I am going to be trying to upgrade to a Graphics card with GDDR5 in the near future if possible. Though I am not sure. Hopefully it works.

[Tatewaki75]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I'm trying to get my computer up to snuff in order to play FFXIV decently at 1280x720 resolution. My old computer was a Gateway, with these stats:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
3 gigs of DDR2 ram 800mhz
Visiontek HD5670 1gb DDR5
320gb 7200RPM HD

My highest score at low res was 1636.

That computer recently died on me, and I'm borrowing my sisters HP machine. It's got the same ram, HD, and GPU, but the CPU is a Pentium Dual core E2200 clocked at 2.2ghz (not Overclockable)

My highest score jumped to 2040.

My sister is getting tired of me hijacking her computer, so I'm going to get a case/psu/mobo/cpu.

I've only got 210 bucks in savings, so I was planning on getting a Case and a 500W PSU combo. Xion I believe is the brand.

For the MOBO and CPU, I'm going with a Asus M4A785-M, Socket AM3 (For upgrading later this year, when I'm not so broke) and a Phenom X4 9850. It's part of a bundle for 149.99.

Since this is all I can afford, I'm hoping that everything runs well, but my question is, should I see an improvement on my low res score? I'm hoping for at least 2500. Is it unreasonable to expect that, or should I be looking at maybe a 2200-2300?

Edit: Links to what I'm buying,

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...7&sku=B69-4385 Mobo/CPU
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...&sku=A406-2014 Case

[lilnickle]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Im a college student hoping to play ffxiv this year but i dont have a pc. i have never built a pc, or owned a real "gaming" pc, but i had a dell that played ffxi fine. im open to building a budget pc, or just buying one to get familiar with parts and assembly before i try to make one. but heres one that i found on Ibuypower that appears to meet ffxiv min requirements... (at least to my untrained eye) what suggestions if any would you do to this settup to make ffxiv playable? trying to keep under $750 if possible, its most likely not, but im open to it anyway.
iBUYPOWER Computer :: AMD Phenom II X6 DDR3 Configurator

[Freelancer]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Im a college student hoping to play ffxiv this year but i dont have a pc. i have never built a pc, or owned a real "gaming" pc, but i had a dell that played ffxi fine. im open to building a budget pc, or just buying one to get familiar with parts and assembly before i try to make one. but heres one that i found on Ibuypower that appears to meet ffxiv min requirements... (at least to my untrained eye) what suggestions if any would you do to this settup to make ffxiv playable? trying to keep under $750 if possible, its most likely not, but im open to it anyway.
iBUYPOWER Computer :: AMD Phenom II X6 DDR3 Configurator

Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT55TFBGRBOX

Newegg.com - MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard


Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL

Newegg.com - ASUS ENGTX460/2DI/768MD5 GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 768MB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Newegg.com - CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply


Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER RC-692-KKN3 CM690 II Basic Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case


total 800 will run the game like a champ.

If you replace the GTX460 card I picked with an HD5770

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100283-3L Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card


It'll drop to 750.

With the GTX460 you get good performance now, with 5770 you get ok performance with the option to Crossfire later.

My pick is the GTX460, 5770 in crossfire is only slightly better.

[Bricklayer]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL

What's your opinion on getting CL9 RAM vs CL8 or CL7 (assuming the same speed, e.g. DDR3 1600)?




Nevermind, I think I answered my own question:


(from Tomshardware.com)

[Freelancer]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

What's your opinion on getting CL9 RAM vs CL8 or CL7 (assuming the same speed, e.g. DDR3 1600)?




Nevermind, I think I answered my own question:


(from Tomshardware.com)

That you did. lol

Though I won't lie to you, I didn't bother much with it since its not noticeable enough to me, sure heavy overclockers will look for latency and timing that fits their needs but I just went with whatever made more sense money wise. but LC8 is as low as I'll go for a high end machine.

atm running 8-8-8-24 Corsair dominators 1600.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

okay I am kind of confused I have a PC with the following specs:

Windows Vista 64 bit
Intel Core 2 Quad (2.33 GHz, with 1333 MHz System Bus)
8 MB DDR2 SDRAM System Memory
Serial ATA (7200 RPM) 1 Terabyte Hard Drive
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4650 1 GB DDR2 VRAM Video Card
a 600 Watt Peak with 500 Watt Continuous RocketFish Gaming Power Supply
And a Cable Modem

Yet for some reason I continuously score as low as 1300 and as high as 1320 on the Benchmark. What am I doing wrong here?

I guess what I am asking is will FFXIV run on my machine?

(I suppose I should mention that I did just upgrade my PC today with the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4650 and the 500 Watt Power Supply just for this game and am still shocked to be under the benchmark).

Yes, FFXIV will *run*, but your system is gonna struggle and do not be suprised if you lag out horribly and disconnect from the servers frequently. Your 4650 is just lower than my 4670 and I already *know* that I'll need to upgrade that. Your processor is also a bit on the slow end ... mine is a Q9400 (Intel Core 2 Quad 2.67 GHz) and it's already on the *minimum* requirements for the game.

If anyone is considering getting a GTX 460, please, please, please do yourself a favor and pay the $20-30 more to get the 1GB version, not the 768MB version. The benchmarks clearly show a difference in the results and the difference in price is nominal at best for that performance increase. Do not make a mistake of cheaping out on parts for your computer. Doing so will only be more expensive down the road.

Anyway, quick run down for my projected minimum requirements (bare minimum, because SE is already touting their recommended specs as possibly the minimum spec for avoiding problems running their game)

Processor:

Intel i5 650+, Core 2 Quad 9450+, Core 2 Extreme QX6850
AMD Phenom II X4, X6 (Unfortunately, Intel trashes AMD so badly atm)

Graphics:

Nvidia 8800 Ultra, 9800 GTX, 9800 GTX+, GTS 250
ATI HD 3870 X2, HD 4850, HD 5750; Mobile: HD 4850, HD 5850

Memory: 4GB or more


Edit 1: So, why is the requirements steep? Well, for starters, you can't emulate a PS3 on any desktop computer right now, even with top of the line parts, so keeping that in mind, in order for the game to look as good as it will be on the PS3 ... well, you'll need some muscle under the hood to speak metaphorically. In short, you wanna play this on your PC, shell out the moolah. Got no money? Wait for it to come out on the PS3 6 months from now...

Edit 2: Note that I gave minimums. If you got stuff better than what was listed, you're golden and in better shape and probably closer to SE's recommendation and should not have too much problems. Remember to prepare for release by updating drivers, firmwares and BIOS. Make sure to defrag and scan for virus etc. Do all the housecleaning beforehand so you don't have to do it when trying to install the game that will take up 15gigs of your hard drive.

[DakAttack]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I'm now running GTX 460 1GB and i7 2.8GHz, and I scored a 2500. My goal was 3000, but this was the high res test. I'm sure running it on low res will add another 1000 to the score.

Would it be worth overclocking the CPU? I don't think this benchmark is as optimized as they plan for the game on release.

[Aeni]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I'm now running GTX 460 1GB and i7 2.8GHz, and I scored a 2500. My goal was 3000, but this was the high res test. I'm sure running it on low res will add another 1000 to the score.

Would it be worth overclocking the CPU? I don't think this benchmark is as optimized as they plan for the game on release.

Benchmark has some issues and not indicative of release. i7s were meant to be OC'd so you should look up what your board can support before going that route. I think Intel UK managed to overclock an i7 to over 5 GHz but for everyone else, you can pad 10% to your current speed safely.

I was thinking of getting either an HD 5850 or the GTX 460 as well. My friend said my Q9400 should be enough provided SE didn't make the game rely on the CPU for all the gfx processing which would be baaaaad (i.e, FFXI)

[DakAttack]

Re: Guide: Building a PC to play FFXIV

I've been looking around at guides, but I can't seem to find any that make me confident I wont blow it up. Plus, I think I might need better cooling in the case. The computer seems to hover around 55C most of the time.