FFXI Newly Terrible On Terrible Laptop

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FFXI newly terrible on terrible laptop
 Valefor.Omnys
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By Valefor.Omnys 2016-10-20 06:11:48  
So I'm running windows 10 on a 2.3ghz dual core HP laptop. I run two characters.

Everything on the computer runs fine and always has, til recently.

I start two instances of the windower launcher, NP. I take both into POL and my fan immediately picks up.

I'm FPS-lagging in the stupidest places. My dualbox is at 23 FPS in Hazhalm (not even Einherjar, just alone in Hazhalm). My same-account mule is at 13 FPS in N. Sandy with about 5 people around me (fully loaded). I'm not trying to optimize for pretty graphics (a polished turd is still a turd).

I haven't downloaded anything, let alone anything questionable. I've run AVG and MWB Anti-Malware. I've tried assigning CPU affinity and since this began tried using Project Mercury to assign higher priority to FFXI.

Nothing has seemed to help.

Maybe a reinstall would help, but I kinda doubt it. I haven't changed settings and haven't downloaded anything recently. I don't use anything most of the playerbase isn't using.

A cursory inspection of the laptop looks clean but I'll be buying a can of air (forget bottled water!) and opening up my laptop for its first thorough cleaning.

It doesn't really matter what I run in the background. Running nothing, even closing most background processes, doesn't really help.

It gets much worst in heavily graphical environments like anything with GEO bubbles.
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By Wordspoken 2016-10-20 06:13:56  
Driver issue? What is your GPU?
 Valefor.Omnys
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By Valefor.Omnys 2016-10-20 06:25:38  
Integrated into the CPU, which is an i5-4200U 1.6GHz 2.3GHz.

Task Manager never appears to have any diagnostics (CPU, Memory, etc) running far above 50%.
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By Wordspoken 2016-10-20 06:50:16  
Well...integrated gpus have reportedly had bad performance with ffxi. No idea how to fix it.
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By RolandJ 2016-10-20 06:55:13  
N.Sandoria is a small-to midsize zone, Hazhalm is a small zone. Reducing your clipping zone, or rather, reducing the distance at which anything is rendered might help you - I recommend doing so on both characters.

Also, are you overheating? Install a hardware temperature monitoring program such as HWMonitor and run it while you're still working to find a manageable setup for your laptop. My old laptop was getting to 85 degrees Celsius, which is only a half dozen degrees away from very extremely too hot for a CPU - partially due to having a almost-worthless fan, mosty due to a horrible ventilation design. If your laptop is getting to 75 degrees or more while dual boxing you should be concerned - my new laptop stays around 55 degrees for instance.

75 degrees Celsius is 167 degrees Fahrenheit, by the way, but don't worry, almost all hardware monitors measure in Celsius.

Also, if you have multiple CPU or memory intensive background tasks running then those can contribute considerably to said overheating problem. An overheating problem won't give you much grief today but within the span of a month if very hot or years if moderately hot they can ruin a computer's ability to function reliably.

My old laptop gets a lot of errors now even on fresh installs of windows plus the thermal paste was dried completely (which I replaced), for example. I ran it moderately overheating on games for 2-3 years before noticing I was overheating it - I had always kept it on my desk and never noticed it till I started gaming from my lap and that's when I started to be interested in learning precautions for preventing overheating, something I hadn't given much thought to beforehand.
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 Valefor.Omnys
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By Valefor.Omnys 2016-10-20 14:32:28  
Well, there was an update for the onboard GPU but it hasn't seemed to help.

So, idk why I didn't think to install a fan monitor.. ._.

Yeah FFXI is getting me all hot-and-bothered.

It was running mostly at the max until I closed XI just now (thought I grabbed an SS before closing). Going to start taking this a lot more serious.



The KB isn't warm to the touch and I've never starved it for air (like sitting it on a blanket or carpet As matter of fact, it always sits on a laptop cooler which is almost always on a table of some sort, with a few inches on all sides.
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By RolandJ 2016-10-20 22:34:52  
Yeah, those temperatures are extremely high! o.o

There should be either one or two major contributors to your problem.

First of all, you're running max settings dual box on a laptop. It's not so bad doing that on a desktop if it's sporting a hefty cooling system - but most laptops do not have such a cooling system.

Second of all, what kind of cooling system does your laptop have? One exhaust fan? Two? How many intakes? One on the bottom? Is the laptop full of dust? How strong is the air flow coming from the exhaust? Extremely weak? That's how my laptop's exhaust was.


I'd recommend dropping to minimum settings while dual boxing on that. 800x600 is perfectly playable if your goal is simply function-oriented rather rather than fluff. Definitely turn off super-sampling. Turn MIP mapping to max - it loads lower resolution versions of textures for distant objects, max being the most aggressively low-resolution version.

You could also pick up an external fan for your laptop if it has the right profile - might not work well for really fat laptops. I'd only do this if you're determined to use the laptop for gaming - I'd be more interested in getting a proper rig instead if at all possible in the immediate future. Here is such a fan that I got for my old laptop. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E3Q7FS6?psc=1. Using that plus dropping from 1024x768 dual box to 800x600, turning off super sampling on both, and turning off effects dropped my temperature from the low 80s range to the low 55-60.

I'd never go back to using that laptop now, though. I studied the ventilation systems of a handful of 2014 model gaming laptops and bought a used one for half the price. With two fans that both have strong airflow, an i7 CPU, and a GeForce 960m, albeit none of that is even nearly top-of-the-line, my gaming laptop now stays between 55-76 degrees depending on what gen of game I'm running. Multi-boxing ffxi with whatever setting typically gets my laptop hotter than running a current-gen game with same setting, it stinks how bad ffxi runs.

For current-gen games I normally go for med-high settings, avoiding ultra. I can do High settings but it ends up causing 80 degree temps which I don't think is worth it - I'd rather this laptop last me another 6-8 years while remaining to be reliable.
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By Bamboom 2016-10-20 23:20:54  
How old is your laptop? Have you tried cleaning the fans? My laptop was burning up when playing ffxi and other mmos but once I opened it up I knew why. Inside my fans there was dust lining the fan holes on the inside so I couldn't tell it was blocked from the outside.

Once I cleaned it though, the temperature dropped to normal levels or better. I do it once a month now
 Leviathan.Andret
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By Leviathan.Andret 2016-10-21 00:50:36  
Sounds like your Laptop needs a good cleaning. That temperature is really really high. Try to blast some compressed air into the vents while the laptop is running and see if it can blow out some dusts.

Also, download CPU-Z to check if your temperature is actually that high. I remember having an ASUS laptop that kept reporting the wrong temperature.

Also, check if your fans are working at their max speed on high temperatures. Some laptops there are settings that reduce fan power to keep the laptop quiet. Sometimes, those settings got stuck in low power mode while your CPU is on fire.
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By Warukyure 2016-10-21 02:50:27  
Just to chime in, remember you have a U-series CPU instead of the traditional M-Series. Which means your laptop isn't intended to stay at 2.3 GHz all the time. Its mainly designed to be used at 1.6 GHz and will "Turbo" to 2.3 GHz for short bursts to complete tasks. So your heat from the "Turbo"-ing is probably will kick in the Thermal Throttling really fast on your laptop which is why you might not get consistent frame rates either.

I have both a Laptop with this CPU, (Sony Flip 14 and the Intel NUC i5) and this is exactly how it is for me as well. Its ok if you use one client, but it really can't handle 2 Clients. And even at one client, you might as well run it in windowed mode at 1280x800 or 1024x768. Less you only want to be in small zones or your mog house and have near 30 fps.

As for the CPU utilization percentage being at 50. Its because of the inaccurate way Windows Measures CPU usage. Not sure if it was fixed in 10, but in 8.1, 7 and under what it does is it reads "Threads" as actual cores and calculates an average. If it isn't utilizing both threads then it tells windows that only "Half" the cores are running at max hence 50%.
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By Jetackuu 2016-10-21 05:48:10  
Sounds like one just needs to buy a better computer. If only moderately better.

I'd say shoot for a mid range i5 and that'd do the trick just fine. *should*
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By Grumpy Cat 2016-10-21 08:38:47  
Valefor.Omnys said: »
Well, there was an update for the onboard GPU but it hasn't seemed to help.

Try rolling back too.

9/10 times FFXI and GPU updates don't get along.
 Lakshmi.Buukki
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By Lakshmi.Buukki 2016-10-21 08:49:29  
Going to just add my personal experience with Laptops and ffxi: they suck, badly. I have an i7 and its still really, really poor when I play it on moderately high settings and are in areas like Reisenjima/Mhaura with crowded camps. It wasn't a good cleaning, as this was a brand new laptop. They just aren't completely designed for FFXI.

My only saving grace was when I finally decided to run FFXI from my laptop attached to an external monitor. For some reason, running the game on the exact same settings with the game loaded on the monitor side, it runs exceptionally well, even loading my macro bars significantly faster when I click the hotkeys. I never hear the fan when I'm playing on my desk. When I use my other laptop, which is portable (not attached to a monitor), I get the issues.

TLDR: You probably need either a better computer (hate to say it), an external monitor to take some of the power strain away from the main pc, or to run two games on two devices. Also, make sure you don't ever play on laps and comforters, as that causes the fans to get clogged and they immediately turn off.
 Lakshmi.Buukki
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By Lakshmi.Buukki 2016-10-21 11:23:09  
Truthfully, Windows 10 is a horrible operating system for FFXI, and by extension, windower. It seems every week I have to roll back my settings because of a new update that renders something in ffxi or windower as a virus, or a change in the system files that removes a critical item and has to be fixed from POL check files.

I had considered at one point just buying the steam OS and hooking it up to my monitor and playing that way, but I'd lose the windower functionality.
 Leviathan.Nitenichi
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By Leviathan.Nitenichi 2016-10-21 12:17:00  
Lakshmi.Buukki said: »
Truthfully, Windows 10 is a horrible operating system for FFXI, and by extension, windower. It seems every week I have to roll back my settings because of a new update that renders something in ffxi or windower as a virus, or a change in the system files that removes a critical item and has to be fixed from POL check files.

I had considered at one point just buying the steam OS and hooking it up to my monitor and playing that way, but I'd lose the windower functionality.

Completely incorrect, I have had 0 issues in FFXI or anything for that matter.
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By Wordspoken 2016-10-21 12:31:31  
Lakshmi.Buukki said: »
Truthfully, Windows 10 is a horrible operating system for FFXI, and by extension, windower. It seems every week I have to roll back my settings because of a new update that renders something in ffxi or windower as a virus, or a change in the system files that removes a critical item and has to be fixed from POL check files.

I had considered at one point just buying the steam OS and hooking it up to my monitor and playing that way, but I'd lose the windower functionality.
Last time I checked, steam OS is free.
 Lakshmi.Buukki
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By Lakshmi.Buukki 2016-10-21 13:36:09  
Wordspoken said: »
Lakshmi.Buukki said: »
Truthfully, Windows 10 is a horrible operating system for FFXI, and by extension, windower. It seems every week I have to roll back my settings because of a new update that renders something in ffxi or windower as a virus, or a change in the system files that removes a critical item and has to be fixed from POL check files.

I had considered at one point just buying the steam OS and hooking it up to my monitor and playing that way, but I'd lose the windower functionality.
Last time I checked, steam OS is free.

I meant one of the Steam Consoles that you can hook up to your PC.

Quote:
Completely incorrect, I have had 0 issues in FFXI or anything for that matter.

Sorry, I should have personalized and included that this was my experience. Windows 8/10 has been nothing but trouble for me running FFXI.
 Phoenix.Gaiarorshack
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By Phoenix.Gaiarorshack 2016-10-30 23:11:40  
Some sides tips too loo kat after fixing the heat issues:

Since you are running hyper threaded CPU you might want to disable core parking to get some more CPU power

Also you might want adjust cpu prirotiy to the FFXI instance you are controlling as it will make it more smooth


You can use my utility for it
http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/46234/project-mercury-a-cpu-priority-booster/

http://www.techcenter.dk/mercury.exe

just go to setting and enable "disable CPU core parking"
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By Pantafernando 2016-10-31 03:29:45  
My personal experience about lag and laptops, in 2014 i bouught my current pc win7 (originally win8 that i changed to win7), amd radeon graphic card. It never worked, it had the same problems that youre having, with lags even in neutral zones.

As i had another pc, i just ignore the problem till my previous notebook finally gave up (it was a win7 pc with no dedicated graphic card). Then i actually tried to solve my current laptop problem as it didnt make any sense it lagging when it was suposed to be a gaming notebook. After lots of internet reading, i think the most plausible explanation was that my radeon grapghic card wasnt working, due to some reason i will never know the dedicated wasnt called to work and my shared graphic card was working on ffxi thus generating lags and heat. Tried everything i could without expending cash, reading lots of thing in internet and the most plausible explanation was that my pc wasnt working well with "catalyst", that was supose the decide when the dedicated graphic card would work. At that point i gave up and was about to buy a new pc.

Ah, i forgot to mention my pc were originally win8, then i dowgraded to win7.

Well at that time the win10 were being offered, so i decided to try that as a last resort. I also had read that some new software from amd just worked on win10, so i restarted all. For my surprise, it worked. Installed a few drivers and nowaday i play normally on the pc originally just could play ffxi. Its given i run ffxi with the lowest graphic setup as im playing multiples accounts but mostly it works normal (not epic as i still face some bearable lags on zones like mhaura) and its not often that the notebook cooler does some noise.
 Lakshmi.Konvict
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By Lakshmi.Konvict 2016-10-31 05:00:31  
Valefor.Omnys said: »
So I'm running windows 10
Found your problem.
necroskull Necro Bump Detected! [377 days between previous and next post]
 Siren.Vanar
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By Siren.Vanar 2017-11-11 23:13:54  
Problem:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3733

Solution:
http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/51550/nvidia-38800-driver-instability-in-ffxi/#3298129

YMMV:
I had this working for a bit, in prep for coming back, but had to disable it until right before launching FFXI from POL. I tried to login today and windower can't launch POL with this now. Still Trying to Figure out why.