Stuttering Graphical Performance

I've made a thread over in the official forums but I don't think I'm having much luck so I'll try here as well. >.<

Just recently I've acquired a decent laptop. Since FFXI requirements are pretty easy to get, I figured this laptop would be able to run it perfectly. I guessed wrong.

I've installed everything correctly, all expansions. I had no error whatsoever when installing the game.
Everything went smoothly until the moment I logged in. I had set the configurations beforehand exactly like a similar computer I have (the laptop is better). It turns out I have really bad graphical performance, everything is really laggy in an open field. I can walk in Jeuno with some difficulty but it's pretty bad.
The only time it's not stuttering it's when I face my camera towards a wall or a small spot. Battling monsters is quite slow because of it as well. So I am at a complete loss here, this laptop has the requirements but it runs it terribly. I tried all graphical settings from very low to high. Updated my graphics card and nothing changed.

I've tested other games, even FFXIV:ARR's benchmark and my laptop can handle it. My only guess left is that FFXI has no compatibility with Windows 8.1.
If that is the problem then is there a solution for it?

Acer Aspire E1-572
Windows 8.1 64bits
Intel Core i3-4010U 1.7GHz
Intel HD Graphics 4400
4GB Memory DDR3

Sadly, FFXI runs through so many DirectX compatibility wrappers that your poor 1.7 can't manage it.

Many people think that this is an old game so any old machine can run it flawlessly, this is wrong! Most of the processing of this old game depends on a good CPU and some decent amount of dedicated GPU.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, you might wanna try to trim the resolution down a notch...

Ignore that other guy. Your problem, is most likely your Graphics card. Intel cards are notoriosly bad with ffxi. For these problems, its worth posting what graphics card driver you are using.

This is pretty much correct I had a laptop with intel graphics and FFXI ran horrible on it.

The only other option you can try is setting FFXI to run on 1 core instead 2-4 or whatever your system has.

Your pretty much screwed. You can try updating to the latest GPU drivers from Intel, but most likely you don't have enough combined CPU/GPU performance for FFXI. FFXI is DirectX 8 which is handled through a DX9 -> DX11 wrapper on Windows 7 and higher. Further not all graphics in FFXI are handled through the GPU. When they ported from the PS2 to PC they did some special effects in CPU. The Intel HD graphics units are very weak, barely enough for the most basic candy crush gaming. Their performance is older titles is pretty bad as Intel never optimized the drivers for DX9 and before.

The best you can do is hope a new set of Intel drivers combined with possibly a lower resolution for overlay / display will get you playable frame rates. FFXI is just barely playable at 1080p on my HP DV6 with a 3550MX.

I don't understand... When I was using a friend's laptop pretty similar to mine, FFXI ran perfectly, I didn't experience the same thing I am now. The only difference between her laptop and mine is that it had 2.1 GHz, Intel HD Graphics 3000 (worser than mine which is 4400) and lastly she used Windows 7, not 8.1 like I am.

one of my laptops (macbook pro with win7, that doesnt have integrated gfx) has crappy framerate now since the last update, they screwed something up in the client renderer.

Used to be able to run 2k x 2k background resolution and 1600x900 res and it was always smooth. Now I have to modify it down to run it at 1280x720 with a 1k x 1k background res and it gets choppy.

I've downgraded my graphics card driver and it seemed to remedy the issue a little. The game is now at playable fps with some lowered options. Still nothing like what my friend had, but I'm happy enough it's working better.

I was reading this and thought about shadows, and how you could either turn them off. It's what I had to do so that choppiness goes away. Hope that helps along with right sizes in the ffxi settings.

Pretty sure its Windows giving you the headache, did you try running the game in a different compatibility mode?

Im' using a i3 330m Acer Aspire 5740 @2.13Ghz with intel HD. & its a laptop and im able to play and stream ffxi np on highest settings . However i am using Win7. So if its not windows it just might be your CPU.

EDIT: Since its a laptop, make sure you have the graphic card settings and your power settings set to high performance

Which driver version are you using? This is also, quite relevant.

8.15.10.2993 as of 1/30/2013

EDIT: CPU on 6.1.7600.16385 6/21/2006 XD

I did try to run it in compatibility mode for 7 and Win XP but none showed any difference. I changed my power and graphic settings to high performanced just now. Nothing changed much. I want to belive this is SE's fault for not making a Win 8.1 client available...

My game is running with these settings:
MIP Mapping set to 2
Overlay and background resolutions set to 1366 x 768 both
Texture compression set to low
On-screen maps set to compressed
Fonts set to compressed
Bump mapping enabled

All my in-game options are set to high except for shadows, if I set shadows to high my game will start lagging like hell... having menus open also helps it lag even more. But compared to before, downgrading the graphics card's driver helped a ton, I can actually play the game now.