It's not an issue with SLI so much as it is an issue with the newer drivers and cards, and it's extremely annoying.
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Lol oh yeah a "confirmed" issue, yet I've never had a problem with slow down when spells and songs are being casted..hmm..oh well.
I don't see why you're mocking him for pointing out that SE has finally confirmed this issue. If you are using a card that is compatible with the 66.93 driver, it would be very easy for you to avoid this problem.
FFXI official website wrote:
Compatibility has been confirmed for the following graphics cards using the "NVIDIA ForceWare(TM) Ver. 81.98" driver.
- GeForce 6 series(excluding graphics cards that are incompatible with "NVIDIA ForceWare(TM) Ver.66.93")
Unfortunately, those of who are using newer cards have cards that are not compatible with the 66.93 drivers.
If you are using a newer card (ie, GeForce 7 series) and still mange to avoid this slowdown, I'm sure that the rest of us would love to hear how you've done it, so please post your system specs and drivers so that we can learn from you. :)
This is something that has been discussed many, many times on these and other forums:
http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/game-setup-tweeking-optimizing-q/60622-dropping-1-2fps-bard-song-animations.html?highlight=Nvidia
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=9784
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=29&mid=114135696490882784
It's a VERY annoying problem, as you might well imagine, given how often there are bards/certain magic spells/certain job abilities being used, causing this horrible FPS slowdown. Personally, I'm not willing to spend more on a new video card, as the setup I have works very well for all other games, and that would be so wasteful.
If I were in the market to buy a new card and FFXI were the game that I played the vast majority of the time, I'd probably go with the x1900xt. If I played a lot of other games, I would probably use Google to find benchmarks from reliable sites (such as anandtech.com) to help me choose the best card. To say something like, "ATI is crap" or "Nvidia is garbage" is just idiotic. There have been times when one clearly won out over the other, but this generation, they both seem to have done quite well.