Final Fantasy XIV news

[abigsmurf]

That one doesn't include Windows 7. Adding that puts it at £546

[elaniel]

I did add Windows 7 to it, unless I selected an incorrect option.

EDIT: Yup... I must have missed something

[skyghene]

I got a score of 1998 with my AMD Athlon X2 6000+ and a 9600GT. I didn't expect a high score as my machine hasn't been updated in years, but darn. Guess I'll have to invest in better hardware as well

[abigsmurf]

2000 is playable according to Square

[skyghene]

When I did the FF11 benchmark I had a similar outcome, but the real game lagged like crazy, especially in towns. This benchmark ran great though, but you never know...

[elaniel]

Well CyberPower have slightly confused me.

They have told me:

Maybe a 5750 instead of the 5770, they are the same card but the 50 has slightly lower clocks. Also ask for the 550 to be unlocked. I can do this on some 550s to turn them into quad core CPUs on most M4A boards.

That's an inferior card isn't it? Also, won't there be some warranty issues if they unlock the Phenom to be "unlocked?"

I have no idea what that means

[abigsmurf]

The 5750 isn't the same as the 5770. It has fewer stream processors as well as the lower clock speed. You *can* overclock it to the same level of performance as the 5770 but it'll be close to the limit of the card.

He's saying the only difference between them is the clock speed which isn't really true. You can save a bit of money and get similar performance though, depends if you're happy on the card being overclocked.

He's right on the phenom though, that *can* have the other cores unlocked to make it a 4 core CPU. It isn't always successful though, sometimes the cores are disabled because they're defective.

It's slightly intimidating doing that it you're not familiar and it can result in the PC refusing to boot (requiring a bios reset) if you're unlucky but if he's willing to do it for free or a small amount (whilst keeping the warrenty) it's worth it.

[elaniel]

The 5750 isn't the same as the 5770. It has fewer stream processors as well as the lower clock speed. You *can* overclock it to the same level of performance as the 5770 but it'll be close to the limit of the card.

He's saying the only difference between them is the clock speed which isn't really true. You can save a bit of money and get similar performance though, depends if you're happy on the card being overclocked.

He's right on the phenom though, that *can* have the other cores unlocked to make it a 4 core CPU. It isn't always successful though, sometimes the cores are disabled because they're defective.

It's slightly intimidating doing that it you're not familiar and it can result in the PC refusing to boot (requiring a bios reset) if you're unlucky but if he's willing to do it for free or a small amount (whilst keeping the warrenty) it's worth it.

Thanks for that. He was saying that quad core for a different motherboard.

The one that you told me to get has a ASUS M2N68-AM SE2 NF630A motherboard. He was talking about the M4A, and I'm not willing to spend another £50. I guess he was recommending me a different motherboard.

Also, it seems there's no DVI on that M2 board, so I'm going to have to use VGA?

EDIT: Well I'm a tit, I should be looking at the ports on the graphics card, not motherboard LOL.

[Number45]

New invites have gone out. Check your mailz people.

[abigsmurf]

No beta invite.

I do however have 4 WoW cataclysm beta invites and my battlenet account needs to be verified! I'd better send them my credit card number!

WoW-login-battl-enet.com is legit right?

[Number45]

I do hope so, I've just registered and sent them a payment of £800,000.

[Hohum]

Got my beta invite today. Shame that my main graphics card died a few weeks ago and I'm temporarily having to use a low-end card in the meantime (Radeon 4350). Scored 253 in the benchmark I think, so don't expect I'll be able to play really...

[sj33]

It's playable on my GeForce GT240m 1GB (mobile version, so less powerful than the desktop one). The main issue is that there's very little to configure in the beta in terms of graphics. In-game you can disable things like shadows and certain graphical effects, but it looks like everything else is running maxed out. Ideally I'd drop some of the settings. It's a massive step-up from the Alpha in terms of playablility, but still not what I'd want the final to be like.

I got something like 700-800 in the benchmark. The benchmark is abysmal though, it's windowed-only ffs (just like the Alpha was).

[Hohum]

There's some irony in that FFXIV has been windowed-only up until now, yet it took years (and a lot of prodding) for SE to release a windowed mode for FFXI.

[Number45]

They've updated the lengths of the tests.

Tue, July 13, 2010 ? 11:00 > 21:00
Tue, July 13, 2010 - 23:00 > 09:00

Thu, July 15, 2010 ? 13:00 > 23:00
Fri, July 16, 2010 ? 13:00 > 23:00

* Testers from all regions may log in during the above times.

* The beta tests scheduled for Saturday, July 17 and Sunday, July 18 have been cancelled due to network maintenance. Subsequent dates and times will be posted at a later date.