Framerate Tanks When Any FF11 Instance Is In Focus

I've been having this problem for years, and I keep coming back to it and wasting many hours of my life trying to fix it, only to give up again and repeat every so often.

All my instances run really badly when playing the game because I always have one FF11 instance in focus (alt tabbed/clicked on).

Yet, if I simply click on my desktop, or something that isn't an FF11 window, I get capped framerates on all.

I've tested it with always enable gamepad turned on, then clicked the desktop to boost everything to capped framerates,then use the controller to run around in the instance that the controller is working in and surely enough, can rapidly spin the camera etc. and FPS stays capped on all windows.

Having all windows run at capped fps while not in focus is such a strange problem, one that proves it's not a hardware limitation, my rig is more than capable to run all windows capped.

Windows when desktop is in focus: capped 57ish fps


Windows when I have clicked on Kaiyzer's window: 24.5 on Kruel, 43.9 on Kai


Please, if anyone has any idea how to fix this, I've tried so many things over the years from various CPU priority fixes, to refresh rate, v-sync fixes, g-sync fixes and countless other ideas.

Check your display driver settings for a setting to cap frame rate or lower performance for background games.

Background application max frame rate for nvidia cards.

Also check that gpu profile is set to performance and not power saving.

Did you try dgvoodoo?

Thanks for the responses.

Unfortunately the suggestions you both gave are part of the extensive things I've already tried.

But please everyone keep giving suggestions/ideas, a lot of the time I am going to have already tried them, but really hoping to come across something different to try or someone who knows about this issue.

Wish I could list all the things i've tried, so it's easier for people to avoid them, but I've went at this problem several times over several years, and a lot of the things i've tried I don't remember I tried until they're mentioned lol.

My goal here is to have my active window not get throttled, I don't care if instances I'm not currently tabbed to get throttled, although from my testing there's no reason any of them should be getting throttled, they all stay capped when they are all out of focus.

But from a gameplay perspective, I only need my current active FF11 window to not get throttled, and I'd be more than happy with that.

Couple questions and idea(s):
What OS do you use?
What is your GPU?
What is your CPU?
This is a boarder-less full screen window in ffxi config - correct?

Do you have Game mode on or off in windows? Try Toggling this.

Is Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) on in Windows?:
I had a major issue with this and FFXI and had to disable it to resolve my issue. If its on, I would try turning it off. In windows 11 with NVIDIA cards? it will get enabled by default.

You might want to download GPU-Z and have a look at the gpu and memory clock when going in focus. Same for CPU-Z for the cpu.

Something is being throttled, either gpu or cpu.

Windows 10 Pro
CPU: I9-9900k
GPU: RTX 3090
32gb DDR4 RAM @ 3200
FFXI installed on an NVME
Windowed instances of FFXI
Using Dgvoodoo
Tried game mode both on and off in one of my prior tests
Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling tried both on and off in the past also, agreed it can cause stability issues and usually not worth keeping on.




One of the other strange things, there are only very small changes in GPU and CPU utilisation when clicking on an FFXI instance and all instances FPS dropping, and Clicking on my desktop, etc. and all FF11 instances shooting up to full speed.

From years of trying to fix this problem, yes they're essentially being throttled, but not from where you'd think.

But you are also right to suggest this though, because some of my CPU cores do get stuck at 100% when I have an FF11 window in focus, but the capped cores do uncap when I make all FFXI instances go out of focus.
So overall CPU utilization barely changes, but the capped cores do become uncapped, which is why the instances don't throttle.

The GPU is not being throttled, and the CPU is, but in a weird way, it seems to be a throttle imposed by windows itself and how it dedicates resources to in focus and out of focus windows.

One of my more recent tests was to use this https://github.com/johan-sorman/windower-blockmouse in game to disable the mouse, one of my hunches was that the problem may be derived from how FFXI windows communicate with a mouse, and when I click my desktop, it's essentially disabling the mouse for all FFXI windows while they are out of focus.

My test was inconclusive, but there may be something there.

When activating this addon in game and it disabling the mouse, the instance the addon is active on comes to a grinding halt, 3-4 FPS.

We can rule out Win 11 things so that's good, as well as 13/14th series scheduling things, also good to rule out.

I would try boarder-less full screen windows just to see if you haven't tried that. I don't usually multi box, but I have had 3 full boarder-less windows running at 57/58 fps. (Your screenshots appear to be boarder?, not boarder-less) (Just throwing out ideas)

I've never seen the setting do anything but in 11 there is :
Windows Advanced Settings (Search for "adv" on windows search) > Performance > Advanced > Processor Scheduling
Check to see that it is not set to background services. (I don't think this setting exists in 10, not sure tbh)

If I can think of anything else I'll chime in. There's gotta be a setting somewhere or something to explain this.

Edit:
Just saw your post about blockmouse, I use that without issues or fps changes btw.

Thanks for the suggestions, I can only apologise to everyone who give good suggestions that I've already tried, but yeah, tried all those things already too lol.
Edit. Very interesting to know the blockmouse works fine for you though.

I can open up 4 FF11 instances, run FrameRateDivisor 0 and all 4 will be over 100 FPS when out of focus.

You mentioned cpu priority stuff in the past, is any of that still active? Do you have all cpu affinity settings off? In the past when I tried to put each instance of XI on its on core, it acted super weird and I had to disable it all.

Yeah, tried every thing imaginable with CPU priorities.

Disabled hyper threading, forced high priority, forced low priority, gave each instance their own specific core or cores and tested each core or threads in different combinations, etc.

The cores that max out and cause the throttling, if you disable that core, it just jumps to a different core and maxes that one out instead.

edit. sorry, forgot to say, yes, I disabled/reverted all my tests on the CPU.

For what its worth, I feel your pain. These things suck.

Have you gone the nuclear option and done a complete clean install of windows etc.? You might be there at this point if you haven't.

One other important bit of info, the same problem is on a fresh windows 11 install on my surface pro too.

A pretty barebones windows installation atm since it's so new, so if my issue on my desktop was from something like corrupted windows files or registry files, or something like that, we can discount that too.

Of course a surface pro the problem isn't as evident, with its lack of performance, but if I go to somewhere in game I know has high FPS with uncapped FPS on, the same issue happens and I get FPS drops across all FFXI instances when one is in focus, and everything shoots back up in fps when all are out of focus.

This is another reason why I think the problem is coming from something that windows actively does.

Last night I also tried it with ashita, same issue occurs.

Lol, would love to, but trying to hold out for the RTX 5000 series + next CPU's for my next full rebuild, don't wanna have to go through a full re-install twice in 1 year.

Have you tried without addons/plugins? Windower has a lot of potential events tied to keyboard/mouse input, which would only trigger when the client is in focus. If something you're using is triggering on every mouse/keyboard input and designed poorly, it's perfectly possible for it to cause that much of a loss of framerate while in focus and no effect while out of focus.

The addon you linked would do nothing to help with that, just to be clear. It prevents the game itself from seeing the mouse, and we'd know by now if the game had a problem with it.

An older version of dgvoodoo caused some issues relating to mouse input, iirc. If you were using that, try without it as well.

Yeah, tried it with clean installs of windower on some of my testing a couple of years back, installed no extra addons and only activated config so I could increase or uncap FPS.

Issue still persisted.

At the time I even dropped all windows to 800x600 and dropped all settings to minimum combined with clean windower installs, still got throttled by pretty much the exact same amount.
(for context all my 4 windows are 1920x1080 normally and still go over 100FPS when uncapped and out of focus, was almost identical with all settings on lowest and at 800x600 in both the throttled performance, and the out of focus high performance).

I have tried a few different version of Dgvoodoo over the years too, probably time for me to retry that with the latest one.

What's the CPU frequency on the utilised cores when in and out of focus. Can see this in cpu-z.

If you're using a monitor with freesync and a high max framerate, there have been some known issues for other games where attempting to freesync caused performance issues on the active process. Worth trying to limit your monitor to 60hz and/or ensuring freesync is disabled.

All physical cores staying at 5100 mhz in both cases.
(which again leads me to believe the problem maybe more of a windows issue, the testing seems to disprove any hardware issues).

Unfortunately yet another avenue I've been down and tested, the screen is hdmi 2.1 120hz and running VRR and is g-sync compatible.

I got it the wrong way around earlier, the 2 cores that max out at 100%, they actually max out when both windows are out of focus and performing at high FPS.

When I bring an FF11 window into focus, and the FPS dies on both instances, the 2 cores that were maxed drop to around 80% utilization.

Alright, here's another question. Does the framerate always drop by roughly the same amount when you focus a window?

IE:
-You are standing in your mog house, you focus the window, it drops to 45.
-You stand in domain invasion and focus the window, does it still drop to 45 or does it drop to, say, 5?

This would help to narrow down whether it's a scheduling issue or a load issue. A scheduling issue would likely effect the game about the same regardless of where you are, while a load issue would be more dramatic in 'harder' situations.

Edit: Your recent comment on CPU load makes it sound very much like a scheduling issue, but would still help to verify. Ideally, with only one character online for consistancy's sake.

The places that are graphically intense enough to drop below 57 fps, yes, they drop by roughly the same amount when testing.

Places like mog houses even with all 4 characters instances can stay at 57 even with having a window in focus.

There's nowhere in game when playing as one character that can push my fps below 57, also why I had a sleepless night last night trying to fix this problem again lol.

Was playing solo for the first time in a long time, and it was like playing a new game, no fps lag, was enjoying playing again.

Hate going back to this issue.

Not trying to be redundant, but all you've said in regards to sync seems to be:

Have you actually disabled g-sync entirely and set your monitor to 60hz? Your symptoms seem almost certain to be caused by a scheduling issue, and gsync/freesync are the most likely causes(unless you have other third party software limiting frames).

Yeah, I'm almost certain I'd tested it before, but re-tested that exact thing again last night. (disable Gsync and set to 60hz).

For other games I use nvidia's control panel to cap at 117 fps for the gsync/vsync sweet spot, but have it disabled specifically for FF11.

edit. If this info is of any use, the 2 cores getting hit in this dual box scenario are CPU2 (Physical core) and CPU15(thread).

Just to be absolutely sure, you've tried disabling g-sync systemwide and set your monitor's physical setting to a lower framerate? The setting won't work if it's not applied to the correct process(I believe it'd be windower, not pol.exe), and it's a relatively fast test for something that seems very likely to be related to your issues.

I've been taking no chances, I've done it system wide in tests, and also when applying it to specific processes, I do it on all of:
pol.exe, polboot, and all windower.exe's.
Yes, have also dropped my monitor's physical setting to a lower framerate.
edit. but I have tested them one at a time in the past also.

Seeing as you've tried all the basic ***already I'm sure you've done this too, but I used to have a similar problem and it was being caused by the iGPU that I wasn't even using. Disabling the iGPU entirely through bios fixed it for me. Didn't matter if I had the game set specifically to the dGPU or not, whether the game was using the iGPU or not, the iGPU was having some kind of problem and interfering with the Nvidia pipeline and it was causing system wide issues.

I'll try disabling it in bios, it doesn't show up in windows though, only option is the 3090.

But worth a shot, thanks for the idea, one I actually haven't tried yet.
edit. never mind, seems I did that already too lol.