will a netbook work for ffxi?Follow

Yes.

FFXI is a little picky about the graphics cards it will run on. Make sure whatever you get can handle it. There are software work arounds for that, but the ones I tried never seemed that great. That was maybe 4-5 years ago when I was playing with them though, they could be better now. The screen on a netbook isn't exactly large or hi-res usually, so I don't understand your concerns about running at low settings, you probably will almost have to anyways.

As for requirements, see here:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/envi/win/win01.html?pageID=win

Most netbooks seem to more than meet the minimum requirements. Just shows you how old FFXI is and how far tech has come since.

I was thinking of doing the same thing myself. In the main room i'll be using it, i have a lcd monitor thats just sitting there that ill hook up to the netbook via vga port.

On the 'road', etc, I just think setting the books' display brightness & contrast,along with ffxi config and in-game graphical settings to optimize text clarity.

Yes. I am currently posting from an Asus Eee PC 1005PEB that I play FFXI on while at work or Travelling(my gaming laptop died right before a trip, I wanted something cheap and portable). In White Gate it gets about 6-7 FPS, in fields and such it can go up to 12-15. In heavy stuff like Campaign it can be a problem, but honestly I find more issues playing with the latency on my cell phone than the system itself. I wouldn't suggest being a main healer, but you can definitely play most jobs correctly. Stuff like thanking and as I mentioned main healing in an alliance may have issues. I've taken it to dynamis before though, as BLU, without too much issues.

As for suggestions on what to get, go for the higher processor and memory you can get. n450 atleast, and I believe a new set of Dual-Core netbook processors are slated for a summer release, so maybe if you have time see how that pans. (Unless they mean this?)

Edited, May 15th 2010 4:32pm by Souji

Well good luck on your net book purchase. I cannot give you any suggestions as to what to buy but obviously there are many available. Nowadays keep in mind that a lot of laptops themselves are just as much as a net book and might be a better investment in the long run depending on what it is you plan to do with it. I bought a Toshiba Satellite, dual-core, 3GB memory, 250gb hd, 15" screen, ati graphics 3100 for about 450.00 that was on sale at Best Buy. Granted net books may be cheaper than that by a hundred or two hundred. I love my 15" screen and would never settle for anything more in size or less. But that's me.

Also as for running FFXI in the lowest graphics possible, the funny thing is that it might look like crap. But every command you do is almost instant on the screen. In Besieged you can see pretty much everything around you, granted it might work the CPU more due to the fact but the FPS is pretty nice. It is basically the best trick in the book when it comes to camping NM, HNM; anything that pops that has competition. Has gotten me multiple claims versus other people that didn't see the monster pop for 2-3 seconds after I did. Also another weird thing about being in the lowest settings.

You actually see the monster appear, with their name colored like they are dead and the monster briefly appears dead on the ground for a split second and then is alive and running around. It's easy to miss if you are a constant blinker. It's pretty interesting to see the game run 30 FPS+ though even if the graphics suffer. Definitely a different perspective and experience if you have never tried it. Good luck on your purchase :-) And yes, playing FFXI for many years, I've mostly had flings/dates here and there. Hard to make time for school, work, ffxi and someone else. Easier to just sleep around in some sense with no obligation. At least that is how I deal with it.

There are still some netbooks and even fullsize laptops lurking around that do not have Hardware TnL. Check the graphics chipset for any you're looking to buy and quickly google it for some specs to see if it has or has not.

There are workarounds, but you'll get better performance out of FFXI and many other games (even silly little flash games) if you choose this as your minimum spec.

I play FFXI quite often on a Dell Mini 10v. It works well on the lowest graphics settings, with the lowest clipping plane and character models set to minimum, but it depending on what you're going to be doing. I wouldn't recommend besieged or a crowded campaign though.

Let us know how it goes when playing ^^

You can set the HUD resolution separately from the graphics resolution, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

As for video cards and CPUs, FFXI will only run using one core of your CPU, and without touching any GPU that might be on your video card, so keep this in mind when looking at the performance of the netbooks you're thinking of buying. (This is because it wasn't programmed to be aware of -- and therefore wasn't programmed to use -- multi-core CPUs, or any GPUs. They did not yet exist at the time.)


EDIT: In reply to the above post, I would contend that FFXI actually deals with wireless better than most non-turn-based games, thanks to it's comparatively slow pace of gameplay.
I've been playing via wireless ethernet for the past year without any major issues.

Edited, May 18th 2010 10:58am by Volkai


From what I can tell, successfully logging from multiple IPs is perfectly fine, but multiple failed login attempts from different IPs will raise red flags and cause them to at least temporarily lock out your account -- a lock which can be removed by confirming your account using the POL or original FFXI registration code used to make the account with them (on the phone.)

Edited, May 18th 2010 11:03am by Volkai

No, no, and NO. FFXI still requires hardware or software T&L, which is a GPU specific thing. Don't make **** up.

FFXI is *hard* on CPUs, no one will argue with that. But if you have a video card, your performance is significantly better even if you can run FFXI with your onboard stuff. You can test this out yourself with the Vanadiel benchmark 3. Without a video card, I score somewhere above 1000. With a video card, I shoot up to 4000+. If FFXI's engine didn't use the GPU, there would be no difference in the score.

Back on topic (for other if they are looking) I have an MSI wind Netbook from last year with XP and the atom 1.6ghz processor and for normal every day events: EXP parties, solo stuff, farming, duos, and BCNM's; it works extremely well. I duo box on it + my desktop all the time. Campaign and larger scale events like dynamis and the like... thats where things get a 'bit' problematic. Its still playable, but frame rate can be horrendous at times. Best thing to remember when you are trying to get it to work is resolution doesn't seem to matter that much (from what I have seen on netbooks) but texture compression does. Make sure if you have any issues to turn the texture compression up before you turn resolution down. I am playing at max resolution (untweaked from the registry fyi) but with compressed textures on. If I flipped it and put uncompressed with low resolution, my game still slows down to a crawl on just about any event. So if it doesn't play well out of the box, tweak the settings a bit and look for the right medium.