Nvidia Based GTX/GTS 8800 and FFXI...

[Damiuss]

Don't play nice together.

Yes, this is correct. For those of you who read my other thread, you know that I just spent some time building a MONSTER RIG. I decided to purchase the GTX 8800 to "play FFXI the way it was meant to be played", (according to Nvidia, HAH).

Turns out that Nvidia and Square have been playing the finger pointing game for some time now. Square let me know that the 8800 is not on their compatible card list so Nvidia had to add a fix to their drivers to support FFXI and Nvidia let me know that it was an issue with Square and that Square needed to add 8800 compatability drivers.

What is the finger pointing all about? What is the problem that has been stumping both companies that can't seem to be fixed? The menu tabs are blurred and bright so you can't tell one bar from the next and unless you have the menu memorized you can't tell what Menu list or Macro bar you are on.

Fortunately a regular person, not even an employee for either company fixed this problem by editing a .dat file in FFXI. It is a quick fix but not a tested and stabled fix. I am awaiting his reply so I can start playing FFXI again.

If you don't have this card yet and are planning on getting it and still play FFXI, WAIT!!!!

Don't get me wrong it is a beast of a card but it just won't play FFXI correctly. I would recommend it for any app other than FFXI. Oblivion runs beautifully at full "High" Options as well as Rainbow Six:Vegas, Just Cause, Warhammer 40k, Battlefield 2142, Dark Messiah and so forth. Yet, I can't play the game I truly want to play with this card.

If you wan't to read more horror post's on this topic here are a couple of links I found that let me know I was't the only one suffering from this, enjoy:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=21265

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1086.html

 

[Rorschach]

I'll be the first to admit i'm not a computer genious of any sort, but why in the hell wouldn't a brand new video card NOT be able to play a game from what, is it going on 5 years now? wtf?

 

[Damiuss]

Ok, so, I got the edited .dat file from the person who fixed the problem. Turns out that the problem does indeed lay with Square (or so it seems because of the fix he sent me). The Problem is with /Rom/119/51.dat, He sent me the edited file and I can see all the tabs perfectly and it hasn't messed anything else in the game up. All I want to know is why has it been since last November that this GPU came out and now in Febuary, almost 3 months later, Square has yet to fix a problem that took no more than .5 seconds for me to complete and make the game compatible with the latest processing card.

----------End "Brick" Rant ------------

Regardless, if anyone who has this GPU and knows how to edit settings, here is your file to have fun with. If you are like me and not "Script" Smart, I have the .dat file and you can just send me a message here and I will send it to you if you need it.

 

[Raziella]

I've gone back and forth with SE support about this before. They haven't updated their graphics API calls since at least v50-something of the ForceWare drivers (still called Detonators back then). And since it was that long ago, I'm willing to bet they've never updated it, period.

I wrote to their tech support about the common bug people see in their visuals where post-process artifacts appear on things like Avatars and alpha fading. They first sent me back a computer-generated response that had nothing to do with my question and repeated the instruction manual; stating the list of compatible video cards.

Annoyed, I fired back a complaint explaining how I was insulted that they didn't even bother to read my letter. The right person must have read it, because I got a real person this time. He starting into how only a certain card driver was deemed "compatible" with FFXI and it was a problem with the drivers not the game. (Yeah right, what's more probable: A leader in PC gaming hardware with a fantastic background in driver support permanently screws up all driver versions past v50.x or An aragant software giant with no PC experience tries to port from a proprietary format to a PC standard without using the API properly?)

Of course, I argued back explaining how the problem doesn't appear in anything but FFXI; only to get an insistent response about how it's not SE's fault. So yeah, end of story. Fast forward to another intersting note:

The artifacts aren't the only problem I've seen. Over the years when I played FFXI, I used a GeForce3 Ti500, GeForce 5900GT, and briefly a GeForce 7800GT. The same Forceware version on the Ti500 didn't cause problems in the 5900GT. Although, it created an even more debilitating problem where post-process effects (in this case, the MNK's Boost) would slam my frames per second down so hard, it felt like the game was locking up every time I used it. This didn't happen with the 7800GT, but when I saw the usual artifacts in Avatars again (this was like a month before I quit the game) I just surrendered since I was sorely losing interest anyway.

In conclusion, I really think it has a lot to do with how they are rendering their post process effects. My guess is, they're probably using a combination of API calls that only worked right in v50.x because of a bug. Naturally nVidia found and fixed it, but SE won't admitt that their engine and API usage is flat-out wrong. This would definitely explain why the symptoms vary from card to card.

In any event, good to hear that somebody out there fixed a problem with the game that the developer wouldn't touch. One of the many reasons I quit playing. Good luck with that, and I hope for your sake that SE doesn't patch right over your fix and break the game again.