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.