So I finally got into the open beta after hours of horrendous patching & signup issues.  At this point the game is practically unplayable for me.  I'm getting 10-20FPS no matter what in-game settings I use.  It runs far worse than Age of Conan or Crysis and of course doesn't look anywhere near as good.  I've tried different video drivers and all sorts of other stuff.
 
In addition, the game has horrendous mouselag and the mouse skips around the screen (no hardware mouse?).  Clicking on enemies or NPCs takes too long.  Battle is clunky and slow, it feels worse than EQ1.
 
I think this is the most depressing MMO experience I've ever had and one of the worst PC gaming experiences.  :(
 
Noone talks in the game, there are dozens of people playing but many seem to be Japanese...
 
Oh yea, I wanted to say that even the benchmark ran / runs many times (literally) faster than the open beta.
 
Gonna edit in the bits I posted on ffxivcore.com :
 
Low settings (not min or the lowest, but this is the last low screenshot I got before the servers went down again) :

What specs?

I really don't have a clue, sorry. I heard the ATi 4800 cards had compatibility problems with the game, but obviously that doesn't apply to you. Weird that benchmark ran badly, as well. And your comp seems to be high enough spec. 
 
It sounds like an optimization or compatibility issue on S-E's part. I also remember them mentioning how the game had memory issues, thereby delaying the console development.

Your specs are more than enough to run it perfectly. Must be either some weird install issue or what sunking said.

Weird that benchmark ran badly, as well.

Yeah i have a similar problem, client is using an amazing amount of cpu.  All 4 cores on my q6600 are around 80-90%    guess fast cpu is needed for this game to run smooth.  i'm using a gtx 480 as well and frames get to 30fps but tank to 19-20fps when npcs are around.

mess around with the ffxivconfig file in the main folder and lower settings, see if that helps.  I tossed it into fullscreen mode and gained like 5 fps.

Sorry, I meant "Weird that benchmark ran well", not "badly".

small patch released a few minutes ago, hopefully it helps performance, i doubt it though heh.

STUPID PATCHER.
 
I get around 46 Remote connections and 14 local but still it wont download.

I'm still trying to simply get a registration code (I've been trying since the open beta started, but have gotten nothing but timeouts). I heard the closed beta had a lot of performance issues, I guess they haven't ironed it out yet. 

It's a beta, so it's not optimised perfectly yet. I can't think of much else

" It's a beta, so it's not optimised perfectly yet. I can't think of much else "

" @Fallen189 said:

" It's a beta, so it's not optimised perfectly yet. I can't think of much else "

It's not really optimized at all. You can't pull the "this is a beta card" when the game comes out in less than a month- it's unlikely that this will be fixed come release. Optimization takes a large amount of time and effort to pull off. With all the problems that FF14's been having throughout closed, and now open beta, I fear for what will happen when the game actually launches. "

" @Fallen189 said:

" It's a beta, so it's not optimised perfectly yet. I can't think of much else "

It's not really optimized at all. You can't pull the "this is a beta card" when the game comes out in less than a month- it's unlikely that this will be fixed come release. Optimization takes a large amount of time and effort to pull off. With all the problems that FF14's been having throughout closed, and now open beta, I fear for what will happen when the game actually launches. "

from what I understand they haven't done ANY optimization for this game. They just threw it all together and hoped your machine was good enough to figure it all out. I'm not bashing them or anything because I want to play this game, however, they, like many other devs need to get their act together when putting out PC games.

Well, I see one guy with almost my exact specs with my exact problem.  I see one guy with a Q9550 and GTX295 with similar problems too.  Also see some people with lower spec computers getting far better performance.
 
Definitely a hefty performance glitch going on right now.  Nvidia issues are pretty widespread.
 
Also, the patcher doesn't work at all right now.  Can't connect to the main server.

it's a beta.

" it's a beta. "

Yeah, I was gonna say, there's a thread on the [H]ardOCP forums about this issue.

I never got a key.

@jadeskye said:

it's a beta.

No one told me the beta would have problems!!!!!!  Seriously...it's in beta.

Find your NVAPPS.XML file, open it with notepad.   Find FFXIVwinbenchmark.exe and replace it with ffxivgame.exe.

Its weird to see an MMO require systems this strong. I already know I can't run it. But now, not even a little bit.

MMOs have always been some of the most demanding PC games. Massive RAM hogs, they are.

I updated the first page of this thread with images.  Also, the newest patch didn't help my performance at all.
 
Would like to hear from anyone else trying the beta and is having severe performance issues.

Kind of weird how many people with NV cards are experiencing such performance issues, this is a TWIMTBP game after all. I remember the benchmark not even supporting SLI or fullscreen. 

It's probably just not optimized worth a damn yet.

Yup, runs like shit on 9800GTX+ 512 VRAM, 2.8 GHz Q9550, 4GB RAM. Seriously, Age of Conan looks and runs better than this. AoC is hardly optimized and had a shite engine last time I played it back in June.

So are you saying that if it runs this bad on the pc it will run at 3 fps on the ps3?

It would be a bold move scrapping the PS3 version of the game considering the amount of people who would likely buy it.

" It would be a bold move scrapping the PS3 version of the game considering the amount of people who would likely buy it. "

I turned off Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field.  Those really kill performance.  The performance still isn't what it should be for this type of game.  Also, the lack of a hardware mouse option is stupendously stupid of them. 

Yikes. They need better programmers, there must be a ton of hidden junk in there.

This sounds like a VERY unoptimized game if you can't even run it with your GTX260. Might be some weird installation problems though.

Hey this might be a solution to the problem, run the game in window mode and open up task manager. in the processes tab find the programs process should be ffxiv... and check its priority. Its most likely set to low so set it to normal. You may have to restart to see improvement but log into a character just to check it. I've seen people go from 15 to 50 fps by switching this, it depends on the strength of your processor. if your running an oc'd i7 then this probably wont change much other then load times. Now you'll need to get a program to save the process priority so you don't have to keep changing it to normal, also because at least for me every time I alt tab in full screen it crashes the client. Hope this helps you, if it does I'll look for the program I'm using and link it.
 
@OP, ya this sounds like its the problem for you based on your processor and whats occurring.

" Hey this might be a solution to the problem, run the game in window mode and open up task manager. in the processes tab find the programs process should be ffxiv... and check its priority. Its most likely set to low so set it to normal. You may have to restart to see improvement but log into a character just to check it. I've seen people go from 15 to 50 fps by switching this, it depends on the strength of your processor. if your running an oc'd i7 then this probably wont change much other then load times. Now you'll need to get a program to save the process priority so you don't have to keep changing it to normal, also because at least for me every time I alt tab in full screen it crashes the client. Hope this helps you, if it does I'll look for the program I'm using and link it.  @OP, ya this sounds like its the problem for you based on your processor and whats occurring. "

It's too late, I uninstalled the thing when it refused to download the latest patch properly.

Hi, im running a dell xps with intel(R) core(TM) 2CPU 6420@ 2.13 GHz, 2.00 GB Ram and NVIDIA GeForce 8300 GS. Really had no trouble with most games but i cant play ff14 at all. Takes forever to log in and when i do my character moves about 5 sec after i try to move him. Do you think its my PC or the FF14 sever. Plz Help!!!! 
  thanks

" @plarx said:

" Hey this might be a solution to the problem, run the game in window mode and open up task manager. in the processes tab find the programs process should be ffxiv... and check its priority. Its most likely set to low so set it to normal. You may have to restart to see improvement but log into a character just to check it. I've seen people go from 15 to 50 fps by switching this, it depends on the strength of your processor. if your running an oc'd i7 then this probably wont change much other then load times. Now you'll need to get a program to save the process priority so you don't have to keep changing it to normal, also because at least for me every time I alt tab in full screen it crashes the client. Hope this helps you, if it does I'll look for the program I'm using and link it.  @OP, ya this sounds like its the problem for you based on your processor and whats occurring. "

Lol.. don't know how I never saw that. I went from 20 fps to 60 fps. Also using the hardware mouse patch and the experience seems a lot more enjoyable. Thanks. "