Girl with computer problems

[Angelrush]

Heya boys and girls

I just bought a computer with 768mb of memory, a amd 2400 thingy, video card 256mb

I love ffxi soo much just now starting it but gosh my frames per second are like avg of 5.

my other girlfriends all have avg of 27 I have a much better computer then them how do i fix that?

my internet is 3mb upl and down

[ixtapa]

what kind of video card do you have? what you can try is setting your resolution to a lower setting.

[Angelrush]

Nvidia fx 5200 256mb

it gets worst lag wise when i cast on mobs.. down to .2-.6 fps

[ixtapa]

from what ive seen around the internet it seems that the 5200 has alot of problems with direct x. and since final fantasy runs on direct x that might be the problem. many ppl consider the 5200 a low end card. have you gotten the latest drivers from www.nvidia.com? have you gotten the latest drivers of directx? did you try the to lower the resolution?

[Angelrush]

i have the march drivers, i have dirext 9.0c and i have lowered the res nothing seems to work.. and this is a fresh install of os and everythign

[Sadeira]

you could get an ati card but that depends entirely on what kind of motherboard you have since you have an amd processor. if you had an intel, ati cards have no problems with it.

ati's play the best with asus brand motherboards but if you have an msi motherboard. ati will not play well with it. i've been running ffxi on geforce 5900 and i have had no framerate problems. only problems i've had are with the appearance of summons and invisible spell transparencies but it's no big deal really.

perhaps ixtapa is correct

[Angelrush]

i know what the prob is with the trans parent avatars and such
you need t go to direct x 9.0b i had those same problems on my last install and that is the fix you can get a program to unistall directx how it costs the other 2 options were deal with it or reinstall windows

is very odd my laptop and other girls laptop/pc are fine and bf1942 works excellent.. just not ffxi.

[Angelrush]

my computer setup

ECS k7s5a
AMD athlon xp 2400+
500 psu

i think that is all i need
what ati cards will work with this..

Chipset/Core Speed: ATI Radeon 9250/240MHz
Memory/Effective Speed: 256MB DDR/400MHz
BUS: AGP 8x/4x
Ports: VGA Out(15 Pin D-Sub) + TV-Out (S-Video) + DVI
Support 3D API: DirectX 8.1, OpenGL 1.3
Max Resolution@32bit Color: 2048X1536
Cable/Accessories: S-Video Adapter, Driver CD
Lite Retail Box (See pics for details)

[ixtapa]

i dont know how compatible amd and ati are. amd works really well with an Nvidia chipset. now is the computer your having problems with a laptop or a desktop? im just wondering cause the last post was kinda kriptic. the 5200 should be able to run ffxi but you probably have to set all your settings to the lowest setting.

[Angelrush]

desktop

[neighbortaru]

ugh, so much misinformation my head can burst.

First, AMD does not "work" better with nvida boards.
Second, ATI cards do not "work" better on intel boards.

now that we have that out of the way, the ECS is a nice budget board; no frills and performs well. your processor and ram are fine to. Your problem comes from the video card you have installed. Since two of your posts are confusing, I'm not sure if you have a FX5200 or Radeon 9250. Regardless, both are low end cards with not much power in them.

If you don't want to spend any more money, you should be able to run the game at a decent pace with 800x600 resolution, weather effects off, environment effects off and other party's effects off (i do this on my GF4MX card).

If you are willing to spend money, then you have a lot of choices. Here's my recommendations in ascending order (btw all are better than the 5200 and 9250): Radeon 9550 w/ 128bit memory architecture (very important), Radeon 9600 Pro, Geforce 6600 AGP, Radeon 9800 Pro, Geforce 6600GT AGP and Geforce 6800 AGP. Buy whatever you can afford (there are more, but I've already hit 'bout $300 on the 6800).

[cattri]

Well, I don't know what you guys are talking about with that being a low end card I used to run a ati 7500 64mb card and i ran just fine at medium settings and mid range resolutionbut its prolly mostly my processor and ram that lets me do it

I run Dual Xeon 3.0 and 2GB of ram (Computer Graphics Student , Maya cost more than just the program if ur system is not good to begin with >.<)
and I used to use a ATI 750064mb but again maya and school demanded higher so now i use ATI radeon 9800XP 128MB
so , altho i have a few friends that use the 5200 and they all say they get frame issues out of the blue when playing ffxi so it may be just a conflict with the card and software... Hope ya get it fixed =)

[neighbortaru]

cattri, just because things have a higher number/came out more recently does not necessarily mean it is a better/faster card.

the 5200 is a low end card no if, ands or buts. stay away.

[Pai Pai Master]

What settings are you running the game on?

Also make sure you don't have any high-memory programs running while you're playing.

[gaidensensei]

Originally posted by neighbortaru
cattri, just because things have a higher number/came out more recently does not necessarily mean it is a better/faster card.

the 5200 is a low end card no if, ands or buts. stay away.

What neighbortaru said is right.

The FX5200, or almost all FX series, except for 5900 and 5950 are all a peice of junk that utilize older technology.

The Radeon 9250 is a old card that should be kept at playing some older game such as Quake 3/Warcraft 3 without problems.

You can run it on low/medium settings with a lot off without problems, but if you are after the best graphics/resolutions possible, you need something along the newer engineering technology today.

Make sure of what form of video card you are using: such as AGP, PCI-E (PCI EXPRESS), PCI. AGP/PCI-e are the norm of today's future gaming.

ATi is great for Direct3d based games, that's what FFXI is made for. Half life 2 is also Direct3d-implemented. If you want good quality, go for something above the lines of a Radeon 9500/9550. To this date, the Radeon X800XT is possibly the best in line.

Nvidia is better with OpenGL based games, and that's what certain games such as Doom 3, FarCRY uses. Get something FX5900 and above. To this date, the nVidia 6800 Ultra is possibly the best in line.

Take a look at http://www20.graphics.tomshardware.c...004/index.html to see the differences between cards in games. Unfortunately, THG (tom's hardware guide) doesn't utilize FFXI as a benchmark, so you'll need to make your choices off what's there.

MEMORY ARCHITECTURE (not to be confused with total memory, they are different things) is the key to how fast graphics card can go. You want 128 and above, just what neighbortaru is telling you. Having a slower architecture means SLOWER processing and graphics. Everything past the 9550 Radeon should be fine. Getting PRO/ XT versions are like enthusiast cards, but they offer high end optimizations.

A lot of people generally think 256MB on graphics cards would be a huge improvement over 128MB. This is wrong. You can benchmark two FX5600's, one 128MB and 256MB, and you're looking at less than 8% difference, which is totally unnoticeable to the average human.

Finally, the processor and your ram come last. This is where it starts to get more technical, and you really need to understand what's going on before further trying to upgrade them. If you have a slower CPU, then your video card would be worthless because the CPU can't utilize the full possible potential of the video card. There are some reviews going around on tomshardware.com that show the difference between CPU's and video cards.