Forum Settings
       
Reply To Thread

Computer Lag(FFXI)Follow

#1 Jul 10 2010 at 10:30 AM Rating: Decent
**
551 posts
I've been playing FFXI since the NA PS2 launch, and last year, I finally swapped over to PC. The game has run fine this whole time up until a little over a week ago. Now, after anywhere from 5-20 minutes of play, my frame rate drops to ~3 FPS and stays there. The issue isn't isolated to my game, though. After the FPS drop, my browser and menus feel very sluggish, too. Rebooting FFXI and POL does not correct the problem. Only a full system restart does(but the problem returns). This slow down does not occur if FFXI is never launched.

Notable things: this issue started right around the time that I downloaded the FFXIV benchmark, I believe, which forced me to upgrade to Directx 10. Could this be the source of my problems? I upgraded my graphics card drivers last night, but it didn't fix my issue.

Specs are:

AMD Phenom 9550(quad) 2.20 GHz
6 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9100
Vista 64 bit SP2

I recently ran the "performance assessment" built into Windows, and my score dropped from an already-laughable 4.3 to a 2.0. The 2.0 is in the graphics department. Kaspersky picks up no viruses or anything, either. I'm pretty much at a loss for how to correct this.

And if you're wondering what my FFXIV benchmark score was, it was a 45. Let the laughter commence.
#2 Jul 10 2010 at 11:29 AM Rating: Decent
****
5,159 posts
Next time you play FFXI, run it windowed and leave the task manager open so you can check the resource usage of FFXI. It sounds like a memory leak of some sort. Also possible but highly unlikely is that the CPU or GPU is overheating after some amount of playtime, but FFXI isn't really intense enough for this. A GeForce 9100 should easily run this game. What were you using before?

Also, does this occur with other DirectX games (or games in general)? And have you tried rolling back to DirectX 9.0c?
#3 Jul 10 2010 at 1:19 PM Rating: Decent
**
551 posts
Quote:
Next time you play FFXI, run it windowed and leave the task manager open so you can check the resource usage of FFXI. It sounds like a memory leak of some sort. Also possible but highly unlikely is that the CPU or GPU is overheating after some amount of playtime, but FFXI isn't really intense enough for this. A GeForce 9100 should easily run this game. What were you using before?

I'll try this out next. I've been using the same computer for the last year. PS2 prior to that.
Quote:
Also, does this occur with other DirectX games (or games in general)? And have you tried rolling back to DirectX 9.0c?

I'm not sure. I don't play other games on my computer. I haven't tried rolling back. I could have sworn I was on some variant of 9.0 before, but I've been reading online, and everyone says Vista only supports 10. Is this wrong?
#4 Jul 10 2010 at 1:50 PM Rating: Decent
**
551 posts
Looks like:

pol.exe *32 150,000 K
firefox.exe *32 73,000 K
dwm.exe 40,000 K
explorer.exe 30,000 K
SmartMenu.exe 27,000 K
wmplayer.exe 13,000 K

Is it normal to have Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player as processes when they aren't actually running? Aside from that, nothing looks odd to my untrained eye. I have several other processes going, but they're all under 10 K.
#5 Jul 10 2010 at 2:51 PM Rating: Decent
****
5,159 posts
Windows Explorer is always running; it's the shell that you use to navigate around. WMP also likes to keep a process going, which is kind of annoying but not really a performance hit. Those numbers seem normal enough.

Vista supports all the older DirectX versions. What you're probably reading is not that Vista supports only 10, but that it does support 10, which was relatively new at the time of its release, when XP could not and 7 didn't exist. I'd probably try going back to 9.0c next, since you said it happened when you upgraded. You could also try running a file check and see if something is corrupted in FFXI that's causing it to load too much into memory at once. If you're getting desperate or just want to save some time, a system restore could also help, provided you have a restore point before your benchmark installation. (I'd uninstall the benchmark, too, since you already know your score.)
#6 Jul 10 2010 at 10:44 PM Rating: Decent
**
551 posts
The benchmark was removed. And I was mistaken - it's not DirectX 10, it's 11. I can't seem to remove it. There is no option to uninstall it. I've tried various third party removal programs, but I've yet to find one that works with 11 yet. I also did several different system restores, but all still contain DirectX 11 when I run dxdiag.

Is there any other way to remove this without wiping my hard drive and starting over from scratch?
#8 Jul 15 2010 at 10:01 AM Rating: Decent
Directx 11 shouldnt be an issue, its probably more a Vista issue. Vista and 14 do not play well together, and I saw lots of strange bugs with 11 and Vista anyway. Id recommend moving to 7, I enjoyed Vista but it did have its issues.
Reply To Thread

Colors Smileys Quote OriginalQuote Checked Help

 

Recent Visitors: 27 All times are in CST
Anonymous Guests (27)