How do i Make my pc Better to Run FFXI*YOU ASK The Questions*

[bardia00]

if you have any questions of how to make your pc better, or if you plan on upgrading go ahead and ask me and i will give you the best advice ;)

Also be sure to post your system specs

ALSO I am NOT responsible for any hardware damage that may occur to your system.

[Urza Soltan]

Okay then...I'm getting a new computer sometime soon. How well will this run FFXI?

Pentium 4 2.6 Ghz
512 MB DDRRAM
Geforce 4 Ti 4600
Windows XP Pro

Think I'd be able to put settings on max and not have to worry about big slowdowns?

Oh yeah, and I'm kind of thinking of not getting that GF4. I'm torn between that and a Radeon 9500 (maybe 9600).

I've bought a Radeon 9500 Pro and put it in this computer (P4 1.3 Ghz, 128 MB RDRAM), but I had problems with the drivers. I'd never be able to install them. It was probably just the fact that my computer sucks, but I'm still a bit afraid of getting a Radeon card. Any advice?

[(Xer0)]

Well, this is from another post/topc of mine. I am looking to upgrade my comp for under 300 (not including video card). That means I need a new CPU (processor), motherboard, and probably some kind of RAM.

So Mr. Know It All, what is the best combination of things here (or better deals) to be able to smoothly run FFXI.


SKUID:107794
Intel Celeron 478 Pin 2.1GHz 128KB 400MHz FSB Processor Retail (Free-Shipping) $82.99
SKUID:107097
Intel Celeron 478Pin 2.0GHz 128KB 400MHz FSB Processor Retail (Free-Shipping) $74.99
SKUID:106648
Intel Celeron 478 Pin 1.8GHz 128KB 400MHz FSB Processor Retail (Free-Shipping) $68.99
SKUID:106472
Intel Celeron 478 Pin 1.7GHz 128KB 400MHz FSB Processor Retail (Free-Shipping) $59.99

eebuy.com - motherboards NEED AGP SLOT!!!

SKUID:109081
ECS MB L7VMM2 VIA KM266 & VT8235 SOCKET-A AMD-K7 XP/ATHLON/DURON 266/200MHz FSB DDR266/200 USB MATX RETAIL (Free-Shipping) $56.99 Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron Processors

SKUID:108161
PC CHIPS MB SiS 645DX P/N M930ALU P4/Celeron P4/Celeron Socket 478 400/533MHz FSB AGP 4X Lan Audio DDR333/266 PC133/100 USB2.0 ATX Bulk (Free-Shipping) Intel Pentium 4
$44.95

eebuy.com - SDRAM


MFG Part No.:OCZ266256P
OCZ DDR SDRAM 256MB P/N OCZ266256P PC2100 266MHz CL2 184Pin 2.5V With Black Aluminum Heatspreader
$31.50


MFG Part No.:64X64PC100
GENERIC SDRAM 512MB PC-100 168Pin non-ECC
$63.99


If you know of any better deals, let me know. I am looking for $300 + video card ($200 or so, give or take).

Thanks!

[bardia00]

Urza, instead of getting a 2.6 get a 2.4C(800mhz FSB) that will save you money, you can then Overclock that SOB to 3GHz no problem on stock fan and heatsink with stable temperatures, i would reccomend grabbing a Abit IS or IC Series motherboard, they are great overclockers, take the money you saved and get a Radeon 9500 pro since they are much better than the 9600 or ti4600, but if you can go for the 9700 pro or non pro, also be sure to get 2 sticks of 256 ram since the Abit mobos have Dual DDR ram, and get AT LEAST pc2700 ram

[bardia00]

Xer0 i would reccomend getting this, all these prices are from newegg.com

AMD ATHLON XP 2500+ "Barton" 333 FSB PROCESSOR CPU- RETAIL -$90 (these are Great Overclockers)

Epox Motherboard for AMD Processors 8RDA3+ Retail
Specifications:
Supported CPU:AMD Athlon, Athlon XP, Duron
Chipset:Nvidia Nforce2 SPP Chipset + Nvidia Nforce2 MCP
FSB:400MHz
RAM:3 x DDR SDRAM PC3200, 3GB max.
IDE: 2 x E/IDE Ultra DMA/133, 4 drives max.
Slots:1x AGP8X and 5x PCI 32bit
Ports:2xPS2, 2xCOM,1xLPT,4xUSB and Audio Ports
Onboard Audio: Sound C-Media CMI9739 6-channel full duplex
Onboard LAN: Dual Realtek 10/100 Ports

$119

OR

Asus Motherboard for AMD Athlon XP/Duron Processors, Model# A7N8X Deluxe Retail
Socket A AMD Athlon XP/Duron (support AMD XP 3200+ "Barton")
Chipset: NVIDIA nForce2 SPP, nForce2 MCP-T
FSB: 400/333/266MHz
IDE: 2 x ATA133
RAM: 3x 184-pin DIMM Sockets (PC3200/PC2700/PC2100 non-ECC DDR)
Slots: 1x AGP (Pro/8X), 5x PCI
Ports: 6x USB2.0
Onboard Silicon Image Sil 3112A Controller w/ 2 ports
NVIDIA SoundStorm Audio Processor Unit with Dolby
MCP integrated 3Com MAC + Broadcom AC101L PHY LAN
Firewire 1394: 2 Ports MCP-T integrated IEEE 1394a + Realtek PHY 8801B

$128

2X KINGSTON HyperX 184-pin 256MB DDR400 (PC3200) DDR RAM modules, Model# KHX3200A/256
Specifications:
Type: Kingston HyperX
Capacity: 256MB
Speed: DDR 400 (PC 3200)

(so thats 2 sticks of 256 gives you Dual DDR Ram with the Asus Mother board)

$112

ATI RADEON 9500 PRO 128MB DDR DVI AGP RETAIL

$195


Total:$554(sorry a bit above limit but its worth it)

Be sure to Overclock it to to get great results, if you do want to overclock i reccomend going with a Vantec Aeroflow or a SLK800 Heatsink along with some fan

[(Xer0)]

Thanks man. The reason it is over b/c you added the $$$ of the video card.

I wanted to spend roughly $300 excluding the price of the video card. Close enough:)

I think I will take your advice if I get my beta kit bardia00. If I don't it all depends on the price for the ps2 HDD.

I bow down to bardia00:handsdown He has saved me!

[bardia00]

i have a similar setup to that myself except i only have the Xp 2200 but i have it overclocked to 2.2ghz and i got a radeon 9700 pro and the asus mobo and i score 6200 on the FFXI benchmark :)

its all about overclockign and saving money my friend :)

[lil dragon]

i feel bad i think i need to fully upgrade my pc to play this game my pc
no intel
32bit video card
128.0 ram
and that's all i know

[lil dragon]

wut is tat program that u put on ur pc to see how ffxi will run on ur pc

[bardia00]

you need the FFXI Benchmark, just search it on google and its there :)

[lil dragon]

do you need a mother board for intel pentium 4

[bardia00]

you need a mother board for any kind of processor, but if you have the new pentium 4's you need a MOBO that supports 800MHZ FSB

[lil dragon]

where can i get it

[lil dragon]

and one more thing how do you get the benchmark to work on ur computer

[bardia00]

you can buy a motherboard of newegg.com and to get the benchmark to work just double click on the icon

[lil dragon]

Asus Motherboard for AMD Athlon XP/Duron Processors, Model# A7N8X Deluxe Retail will this work

[bardia00]

that works great, its the one i have :)

[lil dragon]

ok thx

[Mushudo]

Alright well i dont have a great pc just wondering on anyway to make it better(upgrading or overclocking crap whatever) I dont have to much money but if i must get something i will get that money from somewhere. alright here are the specs.
P4 1.6 ghz
256mb
geforce 2 pro-already OCed
60 gig hardrive
umm if u need any other specs to help i guess ask

[bardia00]

what kind of Ram do you have?

well for your pc and budget i would reccomend grabbing a Geforce 4 ti Series, either the 4200 or 4400 especially if you dont want a big upgrade and low on money, and if you do have extra money left try to have around 512 pc 2100 DDR Ram

[TeK-DeLorean™]

Ok bardia Please help. These are my specs:

Sony Vaio pcv-rx550
P4 1.5 ghz
400 mhz FSB
512 mb sdram (512 is the most i can put on this MOBO)
60 gb HDD
Ati Radeon 8500/le 64 mb

I just bought the radeon, because the old videocard I had couldnt even run the benchmark. Now I am able to Play FFXI, I get around 2800 on the bench with no other progs running in the backround. But the game itself is very choppy. Especially in the towns. one on one fighting is ok, but as soon as 3 characters are on screen, choppiness city. I use the lowest settings possible, low textures, no bump map etc, 16 bit colors, no FSA blah blah you get the picture. I don't want hi res graphics, I want PS2 (or better) graphics, with no dip in framerate EVER! What do you recommend I upgrade? I'm not sure if my MOBO supports DDR, but would it make a big difference in the framerate? I was considering getting a geforce ti 4200 128 mb. would that make a BIG difference, or would I have a bottleneck due to the sdram? sorry for so many Questions, I'm pretty desperate!

[elias]

Originally posted by bardia00
i have a similar setup to that myself except i only have the Xp 2200 but i have it overclocked to 2.2ghz and i got a radeon 9700 pro and the asus mobo and i score 6200 on the FFXI benchmark :)

its all about overclockign and saving money my friend :)

so, bardia, how do you overclock your computer, im running ffxi on cp ok, but i want it to look and run better.

and if i can simply overclock my cp, that would be great:biggrin:

btw here are some of my specs, ill get to you on the rest later on, if needed.

-Athlon xp
-Nvidea MXL 440
-Windows xp pro
-80 g
-512 mg
-1.5 ghz

[HAGAKURE]

I have a sony vaio

?EModel
PCV-RX851


?EProcessor
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.2

?ECache Memory
512KB Integrated On-Die Level 2


?EFront Side Bus Speed
533MHz


?EStandard RAM
512 MB PC-2100 DDR


?EHard Drive
40 GB?E 7200rpm Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive



?EVideo & Graphics
SiS651 Integrated Graphics with Real256?E2D/3D Graphics Accelerator


---------------------
Im upgrading my computer with a new mother board
aopen Model AX$SPE-MAX sprinddale Motherboard

and im also getting a new graphic card
ATI RADEON 9500 PRO 128MB DDR DVI AGP

im thinking about getting an extra harddrive such as
Samsumg 80GB 7200RPM Hard Drive

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

Is there anything else that I need to be able to run my FFXI at he best capble setting possible without lagging or anything

[bardia00]

Originally posted by TeK-DeLorean™
Ok bardia Please help. These are my specs:

Sony Vaio pcv-rx550
P4 1.5 ghz
400 mhz FSB
512 mb sdram (512 is the most i can put on this MOBO)
60 gb HDD
Ati Radeon 8500/le 64 mb

I just bought the radeon, because the old videocard I had couldnt even run the benchmark. Now I am able to Play FFXI, I get around 2800 on the bench with no other progs running in the backround. But the game itself is very choppy. Especially in the towns. one on one fighting is ok, but as soon as 3 characters are on screen, choppiness city. I use the lowest settings possible, low textures, no bump map etc, 16 bit colors, no FSA blah blah you get the picture. I don't want hi res graphics, I want PS2 (or better) graphics, with no dip in framerate EVER! What do you recommend I upgrade? I'm not sure if my MOBO supports DDR, but would it make a big difference in the framerate? I was considering getting a geforce ti 4200 128 mb. would that make a BIG difference, or would I have a bottleneck due to the sdram? sorry for so many Questions, I'm pretty desperate!

well your ram is definetaly bottlenecking you, by looking at your specs i would reccomend the GeForce4ti4200 considering you can only have 512 SD ram and you have a 1.5ghz, hopefully the motherboard on the PC has an AGP slot.

[bardia00]

Originally posted by elias


so, bardia, how do you overclock your computer, im running ffxi on cp ok, but i want it to look and run better.

and if i can simply overclock my cp, that would be great:biggrin:

btw here are some of my specs, ill get to you on the rest later on, if needed.

-Athlon xp
-Nvidea MXL 440
-Windows xp pro
-80 g
-512 mg
-1.5 ghz

did you make your computer or did you buy it? If you bought it and its an HP you wont be able to overclock because when you go into the bios it wont let you change anything, but if it i your own PC and you built it, go into the bios on start up, and to overclock you have to increase the Front Side Bus of your processor, i wouldnt reccomend doing it a lot since i dont know with athlon XP you have, and i would reccomend not using the stock heatsink and fan, also lower the timing of your ram, if you get instability go down a notch until your system is stable

[bardia00]

Originally posted by HAGAKURE
I have a sony vaio

?EModel
PCV-RX851


?EProcessor
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.2

?ECache Memory
512KB Integrated On-Die Level 2


?EFront Side Bus Speed
533MHz


?EStandard RAM
512 MB PC-2100 DDR


?EHard Drive
40 GB?E 7200rpm Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive



?EVideo & Graphics
SiS651 Integrated Graphics with Real256?E2D/3D Graphics Accelerator


---------------------
Im upgrading my computer with a new mother board
aopen Model AX$SPE-MAX sprinddale Motherboard

and im also getting a new graphic card
ATI RADEON 9500 PRO 128MB DDR DVI AGP

im thinking about getting an extra harddrive such as
Samsumg 80GB 7200RPM Hard Drive

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

Is there anything else that I need to be able to run my FFXI at he best capble setting possible without lagging or anything

Honestly i would just reccomend getting a new PC, i dont know how upgrading those Sony viaos would go because of case size and some other issues, if you do want me to reccomend some good stuff just tell me what price range your looking for and what kind you want (AMD Intel) BUT if you are going to upgrade that i would say get the Radeon 9500 PRO and for HDD get the Western Digital 80GH DDD 7200 RPM 8MB Chache, i dont know about that mother board though, sounds iffy.

[elias]

i built the computer i have, but when i go into the setup at startup, there is no option for increasing the front side bus speed, but i thought these ones might be something important.

these are some stuff that i can change.

-CPU speed 1533 MHz
-CPU frequency mutiple 11.5 x
-CPU/PCI frequency (MHz) 113/33
-CPU/Memory Frequency Ratio Auto

And there was a bios update option which was set on auto

[HAGAKURE]

Could you suggest a good motherboard that I can install into my sony vaio ... I dont have a price range because my current motherboard doesnt support 8X AGP it only supports 4X AGP so thats why im getting a new motherboard

[bardia00]

Elias what motherboard do you have?

the Asus a7n8x?

[bardia00]

Originally posted by HAGAKURE
Could you suggest a good motherboard that I can install into my sony vaio ... I dont have a price range because my current motherboard doesnt support 8X AGP it only supports 4X AGP so thats why im getting a new motherboard


See the problem is i dont know if the Motherboard will fit in the Case because i dont know how big it is.

but some good motherboards would be Abit, Epox and Asus, check out newegg.com for one that suits your specs

[HAGAKURE]

ah I c

*sigh* I think im going to just wait for the PS2 Vrsion and just get a Black USB keyboard and mouse ... since I already have a Multi-system T.V and S- Video Cables im sure that the game would recieve some advantages with my setup

[elias]

Originally posted by bardia00
Elias what motherboard do you have?

the Asus a7n8x?

this is the mother board i use

ASUS

A7S333

[(Xer0)]

Hey bardia - I am wondering if this rig is comparable to the one that you suggested (it's a lot cheaper).

Intel Celeron 478 Pin 1.7GHz 128KB 400MHz FSB Processor Retail

$60 :biggrin:

PC CHIPS MB SiS 645DX P/N M930ALU P4/Celeron P4/Celeron Socket 478 400/533MHz FSB AGP 4X Lan Audio DDR333/266 PC133/100 USB2.0 ATX Bulk Intel Pentium 4

$45
:thumbsup:

GeForce FX 5200

$68:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

All I need then is DDRAM. The FX5200 should be comparable to the Radeon 9500, correct? But even if not it saves a good $130 bucks. And I am NOT interested in overclocking. At least not anytime soon;):

Accidently hit reset message.

EDIT/ADD:

RAM:

MFG Part No.:OCZ266256P
OCZ DDR SDRAM 256MB P/N OCZ266256P PC2100 266MHz CL2 184Pin 2.5V With Black Aluminum Heatspreader
$31.50
x2=$63.

The price comes to under $250. prices are from eebuy, w/ the exception of the FX5200. That is from pc mall, w/ a $15 mail-in rebate until 6.30.03.

Total: $236.00 (excluding tax)

Looks like that's the best value EVER for a pc. I don't think I'll find a much better value. Anyone have comments on anything on my list?

Thanks!

**** the stuff. Bardia says it sucks. Oh well. It sounded good, but I guess it's obviously not. I didn't think you could get really good stuff for under $250 ;)

[bardia00]

Xer0 that is the biggest Pile oh **** i've seen, first of All any FX card sucks except for the 5900 Ultra, the 5200 isnt even comparable to a geforce 4 ti, its like a mx,2nd the Celeron sucks balls, im teling you, the setup i gave you is the best for the money, if you dont belive me go look at benchmarks of the celeron and FX5200 at tomshardware.com

[(Xer0)]

Alright.

Thanks for letting me know. But it seemed like a good deal. Prices are so damn decieving.;)

Guess I'll have to spend more money than I thought I had to.:( O well. As long as it works REAL smooth:biggrin: Which your recommendation should do:)

Good thing I checked before I bought the stuff.:thumbsup:

The pc god saves me again!:handsdown :handsdown