Video Card and Screen Problems thread.

[Thrasher]

Post the manufacture and model of your computer.
But also you might want to consider making a new thread to attempt to keep this thread on topic.


Also you could download CPUZ that program would give us your motherboard model.

[nikkibee521]

Hm, so i did some digging. and my motherboard is compatible with 8x/4x AGP graphics card. my card apparently sucks, b/c it's integrated.... but i can add a graphics card to it! woo. I checked out the compatibility list on the POL.com website, being that they suggest getting the GeForce FX series graphics card.... should I be looking to get that one, or one of the other ones? like ATI? or Ge Force 6 series?

[Thrasher]

Budget?
And lets try and avoid the Nvidia 6 series card due to they have some issues with the game.

[neighbortaru]

Just thought Id update, nothing worked so Iv stuck my old stable 9200SE in for now, getting refund on 9800Pro.
Instead I have just ordered a new mobo (Gigabyte GA-K8NF9-RH), an AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 4600+, another 1GB Ram and the Radeon X1300Pro.
Hopefully that should run the game a bit better :p
What do ya'll think? Im gonna regret it when the bill comes in but...

hongman, that 1300pro is not gonna be that much better than the 9200SE. they are both low end cards with the 1300pro only being slightly faster. what is your powersupply btw? another reason why your game may be crashing is if you are not supplying enough power to your system; the 9800pro eats more juice than the 9200se.

[hongman]

Oh yeah forgot to update again, I did realise after i ordered it that it wasnt much better, so I got an Asus EN7600GT Silent instead. Should be ok with this card?

[neighbortaru]

yes, the 7600gt is a nice card

[nikkibee521]

yah, experiencing a problem where my monitor goes black, and says that it is going to sleep. the only way to get out of it is to force restart my computer. ... I tried to put the settings at it's lowest, and it still did it. Then i put them to almost the highest, and turned off the automatic hybernate, and screensaver, etc.... it did it again, but not for a lot longer time... any suggestions?

[Renvales]

Hello to everyone on the site. I hate for my first post to be a cry for help, but I have been browsing the site for a while now, and there seems to be very knowledgable people registered, so...

Here is my question, lol.

(I apologize in advance if this post is in the wrong thread)

From my knowledge of my own system (its a custom built), I should have no problems running FFXI at peak settings and experience no issues with it. However as I am playing the game, I experience major slowdown when I am fighting and/or in heavily populated areas. This occurs even if I take my settings almost all the way down. I suspected it might be a memory issue, so I upped my RAM to 2 gigs, but still no luck. I do not think it is my video card, since the game looks beautiful, it just lags at the most unopportune times. Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Specs:

BOARD:
(Intel® Desktop Board D101GGC)

microATX
Support for an Intel® Pentium® D Processor in an LGA775 socket with an 800 MHz system bus
Support for an Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor in an LGA775 socket with an 800 or 533 MHz system bus
Support for an Intel® Celeron® D Processor in an LGA775 socket with a 533 MHz system bus
Two DDR SDRAM Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) sockets
Support for DDR 400 MHz and DDR 333 MHz DIMMs
Support for up to 2 GB of system memory
ATI* Radeon* Xpress 200 Chipset
AwardBIOS* for Intel resident in the 4 Mbit FWH
SMSC* SCH5017 Legacy I/O controller for hardware management, diskette drive, serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports
High Definition Audio subsystem using the Realtek* ALC861 audio codec
Integrated ATI* Radeon* X300 based graphics
10/100 Mbits/sec LAN subsystem using the Realtek* 8101L LAN adapter device


PROCESSOR:
(Intel Corporation / Intel® Boxed Celeron® D Processor 351 (3.2GHz)

Intel® Technology
Execute Disable Bit; Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel EM64T)
Celeron® D Processor 351
3.2GHz
90 nm Process Technology
64-Bit Technology
Socket 775
533MHz Frontside Bus
256KB Level 2 Cache
Intel® designed thermal solution (Fan, Heatsink, Clip Assembly)


VIDEO CARD:
(PNY Technologies / GeForce 7300 GT 256MB PCI-E x16 Video Card)
OpenGL ICD, Direct Draw, DirectVideo, Direct3D, DirectX
DirectX 9.0
nVidia GeForce 7300 GT Graphics Processor
256-Bit
350MHz Core Clock Speed
Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
256MB DDR2 Video Memory
333MHz Clock, 667MHz Effective
128-Bit
10.66GB per second
8 Pixel Pipelines (8 Pixel Shader Processors)
NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 Engine; NVIDIA Intellisample 4.0 Technology; Full Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 Support; True High Dynamic-Range (HDR) Rendering Support; NVIDIA nView Multi-Display Technology; Advanced Adaptive De-Interlacing
TV Video Output
NVIDIA TV Encoder (NTSC, HDTV)
(1) VGA 15-pin Port; (1) Digital Video Interface (DVI) Connector; (1) Video Out Port (Composite, Component, S-Video)
6-pin PCI-E Power Connector
Microsoft Windows 2000, XP
PCI Express x16 Interface
300 Watt Power Supply


And once again, I have two gigs or RAM on my mobo.

Could this also be a server problem? I denied the fact that it could be, because I was at a LAN party at one time, and the other guys I was playing with experienced no slowdown whatsoever. They were never more than a couple steps away from my character either so... ><

And help at all would be greatly appreciated, sorry for the long first post.

[Unibob]

FFXI is a major CPU hog, be sure to close all unneccessary background tasks before running the game, except firewall, assuming you are running one, some anti-virus are huge resource hogs *cough* Norton. I would also make sure that your machine is getting proper cooling, heat is the 2nd biggest enemy of a pc, only to static electricity.

make sure your drivers are up to date and directx is also up to date.

Defrag your hard drive often, this also affects game performance, at least for me anyway.

[Freyr]

@Renvales
Download this put, and put it on a floppy, then restart your computer and boot from the disk. It will test your memory.
http://www.memtest.org/download/1.65...st86+-1.65.zip

@Unibob
I consider norton a virus. I would also recommand if possible to make second user account just for ffxi and you can turn off the backround stuff, that you normal would have running when using the computer. That way you don't have to keep turning programs on and off. You just switch accounts.

[Renvales]

Okay, I do a weekly defrag, so that is taken care of. I will try out the memtest (won't be for a while e.g. I am at work for a few more hours) and post the results on here so you can further help me out. I do not think that the overheating is the issue also, because there is barely a warmth around the machine, lol. I do appreciate the replies though. It's been very useful towards the diagnosing of my problem. Any further help would be appreciated.

---So you do not think that it could be a server issue though?

[Gentoo]

I do appreciate the replies though. It's been very useful towards the diagnosing of my problem. Any further help would be appreciated.
---So you do not think that it could be a server issue though?

Hrm ... My post disappeared.

Awhile back SE confirmed a problem with certain GeForce cards and BuMP mapping that caused lag. The fix was to disable bump mapping in the FFXI configuration client. You might want to give that whirl and see if it fixes things.

[Renvales]

As did my reply to you lol. But yes I said that I have tested with and without that enabled and I see no real noticeable diference outside of graphical changes. The slowdown is still there.

[Gentoo]

As did my reply to you lol. But yes I said that I have tested with and without that enabled and I see no real noticeable diference outside of graphical changes. The slowdown is still there.

>> Huh?
<< What?
>> Huh?
...

Are you using wireless networking? Some have posted that they get very good performance from their wireless network (Macht for example), I've given up on the wireless route when gaming anymore. It might be worth the try to run a cable from your router.

Are you using the Windower by any chance? If so, have you tried using the game without it? Not that the Windower kills network performance, but I'm just thinking of things that might affect FFXI.

The only other thing I've got is check your AV Suite. The one that I use, Avast!, has various and sundry network scanning agents (as well as file system monitoring processes). If I turn off the web, im, and p2p monitoring agents when I play FFXI.

[Renvales]

Okay, one by one then:

I do use a physical wire through Ethernet for my connection. I feel it';s the best way to go when network/online gaming. I have experienced connection drops with wireless. Also about your windower suggestiom, I can honestly say that with the windower, my game actually runs smoother. I just hate to play it thorugh the windower, because I am not utilizing what I paid for in my monitor (22" HD Flatscreen), lol. I can just maximize the window, but it's just not the same. As far as the last thing you said e.g. "Avast!", my mind is a blank, lol. Run that by me again please. And thanks for the feedback.