Concerns with FFXIOnline compatibility

[lieb39]

To all of those people who are concerned about their computers not being able to run FFXIOnline when it is released in North America,
[list=a][*]It doesn't matter if you have a Intel, Celeron, AMD or Duron Processor, as long as you are above the minium requirements, than you will be able to 'hardly' play the game.[*]Whether you have a Nvidia card or a ATI card, it doesn't matter, as long as it supports what FFXIOnline needs (Ram, DirectX version, etc.)[*]It doesn't matter if your card is AGP or PCI, the game will support both*.[*]RAM Doesn't matter, as long as you are above what FFXIOnline needs.[*]There should be no problems with directx when the games comes out. DirectX 9 should be supported with no problems.[*][/list=a]

If you have anymore concerns than post them here, and I will update the the list to calm your fears.

-lieb39
*AGP is faster than PCI, so the game might run smoother on AGP

last update: sept.13.03

[Doppelganger]

are there any known errors caused by dx9? there shouldn't be, but ide like to know if you have heard anything about that.

[Kai]

You might want to add that amd processors are fine too.

[Doppelganger]

can't forget duron processors too. im sure the toshiba laptop processor can also run it, don't think it will be pretty though.

[Mr_Cloud]

yah

Yeah, is a 1.2 GHZ Celeron equal to 800MHZ Penitum 3? :sweat:

[Petrifyus]

wasn't somebody questioning whether PCI cards worked even though the requirements say AGP cards only...
and somebody else said they worked fine

[KamuroIshigami]

Minimum Requirements and Prefered Requirements

PROCESSOR COMPATILIBITY ISSUES

Final Fantasy XI was designed with Pentium 4 processors in mind. That said, however, it can accept Intel OR AMD processors.

AMD Processors
A high end Duron or Athlon XP or Opteron processor with the AMD side is sufficent to play Final Fantasy XI. However, generally 1 GHz processors or above is highly recommended as anything lower will be very sluggish. Any AMD chips that are lower, like the K6, is HIGHLY NOT recommended and will probably FAIL to run FFXI. I have less experience with AMD processors, so if anyone wish to narrow the range of AMD processors for me, feel free.

Intel Prcessors
FFXI will run with a Pentium III 633 MHz. However, any P3 Processor will be ungodly slow. As a matter of fact anything below a Pentium 4 1 GHz, will run like a snail regardless of your Video card speed. A Pentium 4 1.5 GHz or above is preferred, and as you close to the 3 GHz you will fly in the game.

However, Pentium II or earlier chips will NOT work with FFXI, it will take too long just to move and load the game. Furthermore, from personal experience a Celeron will not do. A Pentium III 800 MHz will smoke a Celeron anyday.

Dual Prcessors, Xeon Chips, and Hyper-Threading
Final Fantasy XI is NOT designed to handle two processors. Which is VERY sad, considering games like Quake and the latest Duke Nukem takes advantage of extra processors. Therefore, if you have Hyper-Threading on your Pentium 4, turn it OFF! And Xeon processors and dual processors are a waste on FFXI. FFXI just fails to recognize your second CPU and do not use it to its fullest extent.

Front Side Bus Speed
The Front Side Bus speed, or FSB, is EXTREMELY important. Because a P4 1.7 GHz processor on a 100 MHz FSB compared to the same P4 1.7 GHz processor but on a 800 MHz FSB will run VASTLY different from each other. Any FSB will run FFXI, however, you will not be able to do much in very crowded battles where your party has multiple casters lobbing spells at the mob. The difference in the benchmark can range anywhere from 300 to 1250 points. So PAY ATTENTION to the FSB speed too!

The Processor ROADMAP
Intel Chips are easy to figure out which one is "higher" on the speed ladder than the other. Pentium 4 are faster than P3s and that is fater than P2s and so on. The only two things that do not fit nicely to this are the server processors (in this case Xeon and Itanium) and the Celeron. Celerons are viewed as the "stripped down" version of P3s, some say P2s and some say the original Pentium chips, depending on the Frequency speed. But in reality, it is "stripped" of its cache is what it is. So a Pentium line is ALWAYS going to be faster than its Celeron brethens.

It is kinda hard to read for comparison, but you get an idea. The Intel Processor Roadmap is seen here: http://www.intel.com/products/roadma..._proc+roadmap&

As for AMD's roadmap, its naming scheme is a little difficult to figure out which is the next version, lending to confusion. But AMD's roadmap is more straight forward and you can see it here for comparison: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/...18_608,00.html

VIDEO CARD COMPATABILITY ISSUES
FFXI will work with both an ATI or nVidia chip based cards. Please note that many other brands use ATI or nVidida chips on their video cards, those are acceptable and do not offer much difference from their ATI or nVidia counter-parts.

That said, FFXI is designed with video cards that have nVidia chips in mind. It is my experience that ATI cards are more expensive than nVidia equivilants, but that is at Fry's Electronics and a few select places. You might need to shop around and compare.

AGP and PCI
PCI slots are A LOT slower than AGP slots, period. While FFXI will run with a PCI slot video card, expect it to be rather slow for you at any resolution. FFXI does not check the slot type of the card, but only checks whether it has functions to handle the video it wants to render.

ATI and nVidia equivilants
An ATI Radeon 9000 is about the same as a high end nVidia GeForce 3 or GeForce 4 MX. I know some nVidia or ATI fans will dispute me on this, but that is how SquareEnix sees it and have labeled it as such on the box. Also, for a better comparison, there is a ranking at the Benchmark Guide (1st page) that should help give you an idea.

nVidia GeForce FX series controversey
According to most of the comments I have seen out there, the FX 5200 was a FLOP. With some decent performance with the FX 5600, and only a few select FX 5800 working well while others were simply not worth the price. You do not gain or lose much buying a GeForce 4 Ti 4800 instead of any of the FX since FFXI can not take 100% advantage of the new FX features other than the GPU speed and memory bandwidth.

Versions of DirectX
Final Fantasy XI will work well with DirectX 8.1 or higher, however, a special note have to be made that quite a few people have had problems with DirectX 9.0a. It is highly recommended that you go to DirectX 9.0b or higher if you must upgrade. But as with all DirectX upgrades, it is better to play safe than sorry; "if it ain't broken, don't fix it." Unless you have some problems, don't be so quick to jump to the next version. Once you go up to the next version you can only go back by formatting your OS.

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM)
Contrary to what lieb said about RAM, there are a few minor stipulations, one is the amount, the other is the speed. Which if you have a decent processor, the speed shouldn't be too much of a problem.

RAM size
The minimum requirement as specified by the FFXI box 128MB is technically correct in that you CAN run the game with that little RAM. However, it will be ungodly slow, as usually Windows eat up the first 128 MB in its resource use. Therefore it is recommended that you go up to 256MB. Anything less than 128MB may cause problems as the program freezes to wait for your SWAP MEMORY on your HD. And if it freezes too long, you get disconnected.

RAM speed
If you have a recent computer, this should not be a problem. Just don't be trying to run FFXI on EDO RAM and you will be okay. :p

The Things that matter
Only the following things you should really pay attention, in order of most important first, when "picking/building" your FFXI computer:[list=1][*]Processor Speed in FSB and GHz.[*]Video Card (AGP) and its video RAM (128 MB or higher)[*]RAM Size[/list=1]

Everything else, you can cut corners with, but those three things, you probably want to heavily invest.

I think that is it for now.

I am interested in who can make FFXI run at the slowest computer possible. What is the ACTUAL minimum requirement to run FFXI?

[Mr_Cloud]

excuse me but..

Where did you get this information. I may have to disagree with you. First of all, where do you get off thinking the GeForceFX 5200 was a flop? The benchmark works fine.

Furthermore, from personal experience a Celeron will not do.

Um, what personal experience?

My specs:

Celeron 1.2GHZ
254MB of RAM
Geforce FX5200 PCI

No lag at all in the benchmark.
How do you know that a lower Pentium III will smoke a Celeron?
Smoking meaning what? Don't say that my computer won't run it well. So far you have shamed every part of my upgrade and computer except for my RAM and even that...

How do you know this?
Have you ever played FFXI with a Celeron?

However, Pentium II or earlier chips will NOT work with FFXI, it will take too long just to move and load the game. Furthermore, from personal experience a Celeron will not do. A Pentium III 800 MHz will smoke a Celeron anyday.

Why do you assume this?
People with Pentium III's have been getting lower scores than Celerons.

http://game3.2ch.net/mmo/kako/1037/1...037053177.html

Go here.

Celeron1.4Ghz
GA-6OXT-A
GeForce4MX440
Mem 384

ƒXƒRƒA?@2600?`3000

This person seemed to have a good score.
?yOS?zWindowsXP Home
?yMB?zAsus CUCL2‚¾‚©‚È‚ñ‚¾‚©
?yCPU?zPentiumIII933‚¾‚©1G‚¾‚©
?yMEM?zPC133 512MB
?yVRAM?zŒº?lŽuŒü GeForce4MX440 64MB

score?@1800?`1900‚_‚ç‚¢?B?ׂ©‚¢?”Žš‚í‚·‚ꂽ

Yeah smoked.

Please tell me about your personal experience with Celerons.
My computer does not lag during the benchmark at all.
What I want you to do is play FFXI with a Celeron processor.

From your post, it seems that you think that a Celeron 1.8GHZ is worse off than a Pentium III 600MHZ..

My Geforce FX5200 works wonders. I don't understand what the problem is.

Where did you reference this from?

If your post is correct than I should not even be able to run the benchmark.

I am interested in who can make FFXI run at the slowest computer possible. What is the ACTUAL minimum requirement to run FFXI?

Hm.. I don't know ... a Celeron? :confused:
Puh :p

Come on, This game's been out for about two years.
You must be a little over your head.

Please have references to it. You know, this site says that the Celeron is smoked.. No reference. I only can trust you opinion.

Anything less than 128MB may cause problems as the program freezes to wait for your SWAP MEMORY on your HD. And if it freezes too long, you get disconnected.

Not true. So your saying that my previous 126MB of RAM could not run the benchmark...? Ha! I got a 2000...

The interesting thing is that the benchmark may not be as accurate as it seems.

Example:

Geforce FX5200 PCI
126MB of RAM
Driect X9.0
(No drivers were installed from the website)
(Direct X9.0B is not downloaded)

Benchmark: about 2000
(By the way, the score kept rising higher and higher ever time it looped. The highest was about 2234)


Geforce FX5200 PCI
264MB of RAM
Directx 9.0B
(I downloaded the drivers, turned the computer off immediatly and added the RAM.)

Benchmark: about 1900
(Hm... Something doesn't seem right, does it.)

I am going to prove you wrong this October.

See Ya Then

Inaccurate Benchmark

Signing off

[OnesAndZeros]

ok heres the deal... i know little of computers so please be patient.

System Specs (that i know):
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200
AMD Athlon Processor 1.00 GHz
(sais 504 MB of Ram but i thought that was impossible)

I scored a 1363 on the Benchmark. As you can tell this is no computer to be running FFXI. Now, i wish to upgrade as to score 3001 ~ 4000. A list of some sort on how to accomplish this would be more than i expect. Also i had the suspicion that the benchmark may be underestimating my computer as i meet all the requirements to run the game hardware wise but my score proves otherwise. I am sorry if this question has been asked before but between school and reading there is little time to search forums. I ask humbly for your understanding in this matter. Your help and time are greatly appreciated.

(sorry for reposting)

[Fire]

What are your other specs? motherboard, Ram type/ how many sticks of it ur using.

This link is for Aida32 a system info tool. Will tell u allmost everything about your comp. Just unzip, install, and copy the summary here. (Allthough Make sure to remove the part about your primary Ip addy.)
http://www.aida32.hu/download/aida32ee_380.zip

[OnesAndZeros]

alright man thanks alot. i appreciate your concern. hope this info is what your lookin for.

monitor: Compaq v55
audio adapter: VIA AC'97 Audio Controller
60 GB hard drive (25 free)
Motherboard Properties
Motherboard ID 62-0913-001437-00101111-071595-VIA_K7$M821LRRelease 09/13/2001 S
Motherboard Name Unknown

Front Side Bus Properties
Bus Type DEC Alpha EV6
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 100 MHz (DDR)
Effective Clock 200 MHz
Bandwidth 1600 MB/s

Memory Bus Properties
Bus Type SDR SDRAM
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 100 MHz
Effective Clock 100 MHz
Bandwidth 800 MB/s

Chipset Bus Properties
Bus Type PCI
Bus Width 32-bit
Real Clock 33 MHz
Effective Clock 33 MHz
Bandwidth 133 MB/s

Chipset Properties
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8361 Apollo KLE133
In-Order Queue Depth 4
CAS Latency 3T
RAS To CAS Delay 3T
RAS Precharge 3T

Integrated Graphics Controller
Graphics Controller Type Trident CyberBlade
Graphics Controller Status Enabled
Graphics Frame Buffer Size 8 MB

Memory Slots
DRAM Slot #1 256 MB (SDRAM)
DRAM Slot #2 256 MB (SDRAM)

AGP Properties
AGP Version 2.00
AGP Status Enabled
AGP Aperture Size 64 MB
Supported AGP Speeds 1x, 2x, 4x
Current AGP Speed 4x
Fast-Write Not Supported
Side Band Addressing Supported, Enabled

Chipset Manufacturer
Company Name VIA Technologies, Inc.

[KamuroIshigami]

Re: excuse me but..

Originally posted by Mr_Cloud
Where did you get this information. I may have to disagree with you. First of all, where do you get off thinking the GeForceFX 5200 was a flop? The benchmark works fine.

Well, it is a flop in terms of bang for your buck. It isn't a flop if you stand it by itself, it probably does a very good job. But for a bit more money you can get a significant difference in performance.

Also, "According to most of the comments I have seen out there, the FX 5200 was a FLOP." Most people expressed that the FX 5200 could have done better, and compared with the hype and/or the price, most people went with a FX 5600 as a better investment (more bang for buck). The FX 5200 and 5600 also have different video RAM limits, a 5200 can only go up to 128 MB while 5600 can go up to 256 MB. You can go around the various boards and ask people what they think, hence why I labeled it the FX controversey because it is very debatable.

GeForce FX Graphics Core:
5600 Ultra Memory Bandwidth:
Fill Rate:
Vertices per Second:
Maximum Memory:


256-bit
12.8GB/sec.
1.6 billion texels/sec.
100 million
256MB

GeForce FX Graphics Core:
5200 Ultra Memory Bandwidth:
Fill Rate:
Vertices per Second:
Maximum Memory:


256-bit
10.4GB/sec.
1.3 billion texels/sec.
81 million/sec.
128MB


The price difference where I bought my video card between the 128 MB FX 5200 and the 128 MB FX 5600 is about $35.

Um, what personal experience?

My specs:

Celeron 1.2GHZ
254MB of RAM
Geforce FX5200 PCI

No lag at all in the benchmark.
How do you know that a lower Pentium III will smoke a Celeron?
Smoking meaning what? Don't say that my computer won't run it well. So far you have shamed every part of my upgrade and computer except for my RAM and even that...

How do you know this?
Have you ever played FFXI with a Celeron?

When I say from personal experience, I mean it. I have played it on a Celeron and it is slow. While it will run, and if only one or two people are on the screen, sure, but try a full party with plenty of mages casting spells. You are stuck at a low resolution trying to get decent speed. Honestly, when you run the benchmark, anything below 3000 is actually very jerky in a battle.

It is also not whether it lags or not in the benchmark, it is whether it lags on game play. The benchmark render is almost always smooth, regardless of speed, it is the numbers that are counting that are determining whether you are doing well or poor. The benchmark actually throttles..., I guess is the best description, the rendering accordingly and gives it the appropriate marks. It is what it can handle something smoothly, how much can be rendered to stay smooth... it seems.

However, I do admit that I overlooked something when I tested it on a Celeron, the Front Side Bus speed. Damned if your CPU is fast if there is a bottle neck on the board.

Why do you assume this?
People with Pentium III's have been getting lower scores than Celerons.

http://game3.2ch.net/mmo/kako/1037/1...037053177.html

Go here.

Celeron1.4Ghz
GA-6OXT-A
GeForce4MX440
Mem 384

ƒXƒRƒA?@2600?`3000

This person seemed to have a good score.
?yOS?zWindowsXP Home
?yMB?zAsus CUCL2‚¾‚©‚È‚ñ‚¾‚©
?yCPU?zPentiumIII933‚¾‚©1G‚¾‚©
?yMEM?zPC133 512MB
?yVRAM?zŒº?lŽuŒü GeForce4MX440 64MB

score?@1800?`1900?E‚ç‚¢?B?ׂ©‚¢?”Žš‚í‚·‚ꂽ

Yeah smoked.

What is the FSB on the Pentium III and the Celeron? And did both parties turn off all their other "unnecessary" applications? What about the video RAM on the other machine? AGP speed? Memory speed of the other one?

Not true. So your saying that my previous 126MB of RAM could not run the benchmark...? Ha! I got a 2000...

The interesting thing is that the benchmark may not be as accurate as it seems.

It would appear so. Maybe version 2 of the benchmark will do a better job.

But running the game was a difference. I wouldn't be surprised if it RAN, technically. But does it run practically? Fast enough to not be considered too much of a problem? Does it run as it you can use the game practically?

I mean, look at the box that says MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS It says P3 800 MHz, can the game run on a P3 300MHz computer? It probably TECHNICALLY can, you can start the game. But can it run PRACTICALLY? Probably not.

Example:

Geforce FX5200 PCI
126MB of RAM
Driect X9.0
(No drivers were installed from the website)
(Direct X9.0B is not downloaded)

Benchmark: about 2000
(By the way, the score kept rising higher and higher ever time it looped. The highest was about 2234)

The rising speed is due to the caching, and to be on the pessimistic side, you usually take the lower number. Remember, when you run the benchmark repeatedly, you are running the same thing over, and over again. The OS isn't that stupid not to keep more of the stuff in memory than in swap. So you will see performance gains along the way (though it will peak off at a certain point). In the real game, that won't happen as often as you go from place to place and things change.

Geforce FX5200 PCI
264MB of RAM
Directx 9.0B
(I downloaded the drivers, turned the computer off immediatly and added the RAM.)

Benchmark: about 1900
(Hm... Something doesn't seem right, does it.)

What drivers were loaded? More drivers means more memory used for the system and not for the application. Try NOT loading the drivers and just add more RAM and see what happens. Also, in all practicality, you usually tend to have a lot of drivers loaded and other things loaded on a fully working system and usually that takes up more memory, thus forcing your system to go to swap on to the disk. So try the 128 MB with all your drivers loaded and your nice little apps like a software firewall, and then play with the memory sizes and come back to me.

I am going to prove you wrong this October.

See Ya Then

I look forward to you proving me wrong, and would appreciate if you can provide better concrete answers than I can. Better and more info for all would be greatly appreciated. And I do thank you for your insights and contribution.

Inaccurate Benchmark

Signing off

Quite possibly, see if version 2 of the benchmark helps any. When I ran the benchmark on my older P4 comp, it said 2600 or so (if I remember correctly). I thought it would run nice, then I was dead wrong when the party hunting came around, I was lagging left and right. I would press a macro for Taunt and it wouldn't go off until I count to three and then everything would run by really fast after all the spell effects kinda subsided.

[Doppelganger]

i got to say, AKosygin is right about the fx 5200, it was a total failure. even the older ti 4200 is on par, if not actually better than the fx 5200. anyway, all games are more focused on the processor speed than the video card. a celeron, even the new 2.8gh one, has less processing power than the pre- Northwood pentium 4's.

cloud, stop complaining. you followed aerobahn and me for the upgrades, yet you kept bursting out profanities because you were constantly wrong. if anyone remembers daiblo 2: lord of destruction, i played that with a pentium 2, 128mb ram, tnt2 video card, a whole bunch of background programs, and i had no lag what-so-ever. now, even on the bench, i more than double the requirements and get a lot of lag (damn those little tarus).

cloud, from that site, here are a few very sad comparisons:
CPU?@?@Celeron 1.1Ghz
VGA?@?@Ge-force2 MX200
ƒ?ƒ‚ƒŠ 512MB

714

CPU?FPen‚R 1Ghz
MEM?F512
Ge-Force2 Ultra 64MB

ƒXƒRƒA2000

P3 450MHz
mem 512M
GF4 420? 64M
ƒXƒRƒA?@951

Pentium‡U400dual
PC100 512MB
WinFast A250 U-TD GeForce4Ti4600 128MB

ƒXƒRƒA?@1380

CPU?F DURON 1GHz
M/B?F Giga GA-7VTX
RAM ?F PC2100 512M
VGA ?F GF2MX200
OS ?F Win2000

1470

Pen3/700MHz
PC133 256+128*3
GeForce2MX400
ƒ}ƒU?[•s–¾¥ß¥(É„D`)¥ß¥

1300

CPU3(Tualatin Celeron)1.2G
MemC133CL3 512MB
VGA:GeForceTi4200 64MB
ƒXƒRƒA:2760

is that enough proof that the celerons are out matched, even by the durons?

[Mr_Cloud]

hi

cloud, stop complaining. you followed aerobahn and me for the upgrades, yet you kept bursting out profanities because you were constantly wrong. if anyone remembers daiblo 2: lord of destruction, i played that with a pentium 2, 128mb ram, tnt2 video card, a whole bunch of background programs, and i had no lag what-so-ever. now, even on the bench, i more than double the requirements and get a lot of lag (damn those little tarus).

Yeah, I've stopped complaining when I saw Benchmark 2... I get 1900 which is a little too close to a "Even Match." I know I was wrong, and I've learned from the mistakes of my language.

now, even on the bench, i more than double the requirements and get a lot of lag (damn those little tarus).

Yeah sometimes I just wanna choke those Taru-Taru's.. I wonder... how come you lag? There must be something going on here. All I know is that I reduced my lag a lot after rolling back my driver to it's original state. '

Signing off

[KamuroIshigami]

Ah, for the record, I found the page with the video....

AMD performs better generally with games and they work well with Final Fantasy XI.

However, I run servers and so I trust Intel better, but this is the shocker that keeps me loyal to Intel

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2001...tvideo-05.html