All this talk about having a really great high-end pc to run FFXIV is scaring a lot of people away. And some of them are close friends of mine. So here I want to talk about what if you don't want to spend a ton of money just so you can play FFXIV.

First of all, there's no wonder why there's such a big fuss about all this. It's all over online, even the wish lists on newegg.com range from $1,000 up to $3,500.


CPU
You don't really need an i7 quad core to run FFXIV, and you don't need 12GB of memory either. But what you do need is a lot of video card power... As mentioned in tomshardware.com. That concludes repeatedly, that more often than not your gaming system is on the "needs more video card power" rather than "needs more CPU power".

• Tom's Hardware review of Athlon X3 435 at $70
  
• Tom's Hardware Benchmark CPU / GPU
  

The image above shows that even if you have an i7 processor but don't have a good video card the performance increase over a single core is almost 0%. But the same can't be said in reverse. Having a good video card combined with just a cheap dual core processor gives you a lot of FPS (frames per second). And in fact, only 2 video cards in that chart, the GTX 295 and the HD 5970 gives you a performance increase! All the others are mostly close to linear.

What does all this mean? Well you wont have to spend $300 on a processor and $250 for a motherboard that can accept that $300 processor. All you need is a decent dual core (over clocked would be even better).

Memory
I will say this first, of course your game and zones will load faster when you have say 4GB rather than 2GB. But does having more expensive RAM help? Well just take a look at the links below.

But if you're lazy and you trust me this much then my conclusion is that as long as you have 4GB of memory you will be all set. Even the official recommended system requirements of FFXIV states that 4GB is enough. My theory is, they had to design the game that can run at 4GB because most people don't even have a 64-bit Operating System--which can take up 16TB of memory (yes that's in terabytes.. holy ***!)

• Tom's Hardware: Do you really need more than 6GB of RAM
  
• Tom's Hardware: RAM Speed DDR3-800 vs. DDR3-1600
  
• Tom's Hardware: Conclusion on RAM Speed
  

Video Card
Okay, so this here is where you drop everything you have. A good $100-$150 card can run the game at 720p pretty decently, anything under $100 then you'll have to run the game at low settings at 720p. Anything above $200 then you'll be able to play at 1080p decently.

In my experience I bought a GeForce 8800 around 3 years ago and it runs the FFXIV benchmark beautifully at 1080p. It does stutter a little bit when the scenes are complicated, just a little tiny bit tho. But it runs at 720p flawlessly. My point is, last time I checked that video card is priced at $100. So you don't need to buy anything over $150 if you're fine running the game at 720p.

And a friend of mine actually doesn't play ffxiv beta at 1080p because the text gets so small that she prefers it at 720p. And I know she's right, at 1080p on say a 21" monitor or say a 40" inch TV (that's going to be 15 feet from you) is going to have text that's too small to read comfortably.

To get a comparison, check out these bencmarks. My video card which is the Nvidia 8800 GTS is #71 on that list of high end video cards. And yet, I can run at 1080p with a little bit of sluggishness. So if your video card is anywhere close to mine then you should be able to run ffxiv at 720p flawlessly.

A Cheap $400 Setup
So this is a rough "put-together" of parts from newegg.com. All though, I will buy something like this for my alternates if I do decide to have a second account. So this is by no means final or perfect. You can change the hard drive or get an even better video card or whatever.

• Newegg $400 mid-range build
  
  
  
  • Intel Pentium E5300 Wolfdale 2.6GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80571E5300
    
  • ASRock G41M-S LGA 775 Intel G41 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
    
  • ASUS Black SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model DVD-E818A6T/BLK/B/G
    
  • OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2P10664GK
    
  • Western Digital Caviar Blue WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
    
  • LOGISYS Computer Area 51 CS51WBK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 480W Power Supply
    
  • MSI N240GT-MD1G/D5 GeForce GT 240 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
    

Conclusion
As I was writing this article, I thought it would be hard for people to believe me if all I have is assumptions. So I had to test it! So I turned off my computer and pulled the 8800 GTS video card from my pc and plugged it into my other computer which is about 4 yrs old. Here are the specs:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3500+ 2.2GHz (very cheap & very old)
  
• 3GB Memory 333MHz (yes the old old ones)
  
• Plus the Nvidia 8800 GTS that I pulled
  

I installed the new drivers for the video card, installed directx drivers and downloaded the FFXIV benchmark, and then restarted the computer. As I was waiting I was feeling very confident that it would work great. So I started the benchmark and it was black for about 15 seconds... but you have to remember this is an old old pc.

And then there it was... once it loaded up, the game ran beautifully no stutters or anything!

The results were so good that I'm actually thinking of just buying new video cards instead of buying a new $400 system. And this ffxiv benchmark is set to the highest settings (shadows, anti-aliasing, lighting, etc). So I bet when FFXIV comes out you can change the settings a little lower if you're getting a video card that's less than $100.

I hope to see everyone in FFXIV! Especially the ones I've met before in FFXI.

Great points.

I have a 2-3 year old budget gaming machine I built.

Intel E5200 (Dual Core) @ 2.5GHz
4GB RAM (Single Channel)
Radeaon HD4850 (overclocked version)


I do play the game on low settings because I am not ready to build another. Will wait for SandyBridge to come out hoping 1156 ports CPU's drop in prices.

In my case my CPU is the bottleneck. My OC'ed video card is extremely potent, probably a B+ set-up by todays standards. If I crossfired another I could pick one up for $90, but graphics isn't my problem.

My CPU is old. It works well enough, I get lag occasionally since I am at 100% capacity almost non-stop when playing.

My RAM barely hits 3GB while playing, it usually around 2.25-2.5GB.

I may OC my CPU to see if I can get better graphic settings up and running, but so far I am fine with playing on the lower settings. It doesn't bother me right now.

And since a new build will probably cost between $800-1000 I'l be waiting for a bit.