Benchmark – Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward

For being part of the PC Master Race, we enthusiasts make sure that our gaming rigs will run the latest games we desire to buy without any performance issues, lags, and frame drops. This is why benchmarking was made for PC, to make sure that our gaming system would run at a playable frame rate on certain presets like High, Low, or Medium. To anyone who doesn’t know, gaming computers are built from various computer parts. Others would have a 300$ gaming PC while the rest would either have a beast 1000$ or an average 600$ system. The higher the value, the higher the performance is. This is when we come in to make this article in order for us to show our dear readers how heavy the game can be for their PC and ours.

FFXV Screenshot 5
That little mage… cute. (4K resized to 900p)

We in Sirus Gaming would like to start our benchmark for upcoming and recetly released games to test if our high-end gaming system can run the latest titles and to give you guys our thoughts if this particular game is definitely heavier than it looks.

We will be doing a benchmark of the upcoming expansion MMORPG title developed by SQUARE Enix, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward. For those people who doesn’t know Final Fantasy, it is originally a turn-based role-playing game released on 1987. The series has been well received by its compelling stories and character uniqueness. One of the game in the series that is still considered to be the best of them all is Final Fantasy VII. Every gaming enthusiasts requests year after year to have a full remake of this game. But hey, they might do a remake. Who knows?

Many thanks to SQUARE Enix for the opportunity to do a benchmark of the upcoming XIV: Heavensward. Below is the system specification of my gaming PC that’s used for this benchmark:

  • Processor: Intel Core i5-4440 @ 3.1GHz
  • Graphics Card: AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB GDDR5 (2) on CrossfireX
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 3
  • Memory: Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB @ 1866MHz
  • Powersupply: Season M12 II EVO 850W Bronze
FFXV Screenshot 1
Ride through with a mount! (4K resized to 900p)

 

One thing I noticed in this benchmark is the game does not support CrossfireX mode and the benchmark software detects only 3072MB (3GB) of VRAM instead of 4096MB (4GB). It might be because of my gaming PC has CrossfireX turned on, I’m not yet sure. I’ll have to look into this and update this article once I’m done checking.

We successfully benchmarked the game on its presets from Standard, High, and Maximum in 4K, 1080p, and 720p resolutions.

The HD that is still present…

Maximum, High, and Standard graphics preset in 720p was a piece of cake on my beast computer. Getting an average of 95.930 frames per second on Maximum, 102.866 frames per second on High, and 140.448 frames per second on Standard.

Full HD in this generation…

Now going to Full HD 1080p, the game had only minor stutters dipping down to only 26 frames per second in one instance throughout the whole test on Maximum. But overall, results on Maximum, High, and Standard presets were great. Maximum presets got an average of 68.284 frames per second, it did get some struggles and minor stutters on times when magical effects with the huge amount of characters were present. High settings got an average of 77.571 frames per second, it had some improvement but there were still unnoticeable micro-stutters on skill effects. No doubt that the result of the Standard preset was great, it got an average of 121.299 frames per second.

FFXV Screenshot 4
Battle Mode! (4k resized to 900p)

The Next Monstrous Generation Resolution…

My gaming rig performaned well on 720p and 1080p. But what about 4K? Everyone is taking 4K to be the most GPU intensive resolution (duh!) and it maximises the workload of all flagship videocards in the market! Now, I benchmarked the game on 4K using AMD’s Virtual Super Resolution (VSR) and got 3200×1800 resolution. It’s not true 4K, but it’s close to it. I was surprised with the results. The results were great for a single R9 290X graphics card, how much more with CrossfireX enabled on this benchmark. The game got an average of 32.154 frames per second on Maximum settings. The gameplay was very smooth and playable on 30 frames per second, it didn’t even disappointed me a bit.

FFXV Screenshot 2
What are these small fellas? (4K resized to 900p)

Lowering the presets to High, the game got an average of 36.734. The results improved only a little bit but the game was still smooth on its average frames.

Now it’s time to have the presets on Standard. There was a x2 leap improvement of the average frames per second to 70.940. The game on 4K was playable and it didn’t show any bit of stutters unlike the lower resolutions for some unknown reasons.

To conclude this benchmark, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward is a bit heavy on both CPU and GPU for an MMORPG title. This is because of the number of NPCs, other players, and effects that makes it heavy on entry-level rigs. If you want to achieve even on High settings, lowering the number of NPCs and shadow quality on High configuration can improve the FPS to a stable 60FPS. The game is fairly optimized and we can’t wait to have the actual game.