If you're already looking forward to Dawntrail, or are in the market for an MMO experience with very robust free trial content available before you have to pay a penny, Final Fantasy XIV could well be on your radar this summer. Like many MMOs it has picked up a massive and loyal fanbase eager to experience the new content, but sometimes said players tend to stick it out with older PCs rather than update with a regular cadence for the very latest hardware and software.
Prior to this expansion's launch Square Enix have released an updated benchmarking tool which offers an assessment of your system's performance at given resolution and quality settings, helping new and returning players decide if a hardware upgrade is necessary. The software dynamically renders in-engine scenes using game assets and a customised character if desired, resulting in a score and rough assessment of in-game performance.
This score can be used in conjunction with the Dawntrail provisional system requirements to plan an upgrade patch if you're close to a particular threshold, or used to judge whether an extreme resolution and quality configuration is viable.
The tool also incorporates AMD FSR, NVIDIA DLSS and a host of image quality settings that approximate in-game options. Frame rates can be compared at a glance against previous runs so the impact of changed settings is easy to see. And of course your score can be shared on social media and the official FFXIV Lodestone forums.
More information on the benchmark page. FFXIV Dawntrail is set to launch worldwide on on July 2nd. The provisional Dawntrail PC system requirements are listed below: