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Graphics Cards - few questions for max enjoyment of this game.
rhavok
Member Posts: 117
I am longwinded, I apologize; TLDR version: I need a new video card around $450, suggestions? (A few more questions in long version ^^)
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I am running dual 550ti's right now, but rather than running in SLI mode, I am running 3 monitors. Typically this card has churned out nice performance at max settings on most of the games I have wanted to play. I have not been a fan of the more recent games so I haven't need tons of power.
That being said, I noticed a bit of stutter on FFXIV:ARR this weekend. I could probably disable my third monitor and switch to SLI mode and get a boost (assuming ARR supports it, I know in Beta3 it didn't seem to make a difference.)
I just paid off my car last month (yay!) so the money I had budgeted for that is now free. This leaves me with 450 dollars I can toss at a new card. To give a brief snapshot of my current set up, I have an AMD Phenom II X4 940 CPU at 3.0ghz and 8 gigs of RAM. My PSU is a Raidmax modular 700 watts. I don't think I am bottle-necking anywhere but the graphics card, but I could be wrong.
Now, what cards would you fellas recommend in my price range. I have always been a fan of nVidia over ATI, mainly because ATI Catalyst Control Center irritates me (or it did like 10 years ago, I hold a grudge what can I say). I know there is more to a card than just RAM, so am I going to notice better performance with higher Cuda Cores, or a Higher Core clock?
My last question is this, I am spoiled with 3 monitors, and I only have the cash (this month) for one card. I will pick up a twin for it next month, but in the mean time, is it possible to run two cards of a different model if I don't attempt to SLI them, so I can still rock my triple monitor set up? Example, my new card in the first slot, and the 550ti in the next slot? I know in the past this was not possible, and I am assuming it still isn't, but I haven't kept up with hardware in a while so I was hoping something may have changed.
Thank you to all who stuck through my long winded post, I will make you gear if you play on Diabolos! Thanks for the help too guys.
Comments
What kind of framerate are you going for?
I have an i7 3.6 GHz, 16GB RAM and a GTX 780 and at 1080p resolution with maximum settings I had a framerate that was mostly in the high 50s.
Was expecting a solid 60 outside of capitol cities but that didnt happen.
But for $450 you could get a GTX 770 or an HD 7970.
7970 or 770, two very good cards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600100181%20600286767%20600356257&IsNodeId=1&name=Radeon%20HD%207970%20GHz%20Edition
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600030348%20600451269%20600451260&IsNodeId=1&name=GeForce%20GTX%20770
ARR is an AMD Gaming Evolved title - which essentially means that AMD paid S/E some money to stick an AMD splash add on the startup screen, and presumably AMD engineers get early access to the engine so they can optimize their drivers early on.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Gaming-Evolved-Games-Logo-Partners-Titles,23560.html
The 7970 is definitely the top performing AMD card for this game. That being said, it's also nearly a year and a half old, and is due to be refreshed sometime soon (nothing imminent, but "soon").
The 770 is basically a slightly upgraded 680 for a few dollars less, and is a good deal.
Neither card will do you wrong, however, the game performs very well even on much lesser GPUs. ARR does officially support SLI now, so that could make a difference. Just turning down a graphics option or two could make a huge difference in framerates, and a nearly negligible difference in visual quality, if your willing to come down off MAX MAX graphics settings.
And all of that being said, I would very strongly urge waiting until a couple of weeks ~after~ the official release. Make sure you are well and truly going to subscribe to the game before committing to a lot of money for hardware for the exlcusive benefit of a single title. Right now benchmark scores seem to skew toward nVidia's favor, but benchmark scores don't mean a whole lot and we haven't seen any official optimized driver from AMD yet, and we haven't been dealing with "official" final release code yet either. To cap it off, if any lesson should be learned from 1.0, it's that the entire hype train could derail and it could be you just don't play the game for more than a couple of weeks in the first place.
You still cannot SLI/CF mismatching GPUs - they have to be of at least the same chip type. You could crossfire a 7950 and a 7970 together, (A 7950 is a 7970 with a few functions disabled). You could not, however, pair a 780 with a 550Ti - the are completely different GPUs.
i have to agree with br3aking dawn. i have a 770gtx and 4770k processor and i sat around 70-80 fps average on full everything seems your machine isn't putting out how it should unless ur using a crappy older motherboard or something lol.
but for the price vs quality the 770gtx is the best bang for your buck currently on the market. and with how afforable they are. (average 380-420) and the sli capabilities of them being better designed for sli two 770 boosts your performance by about 80% of the cards power. instead of about 40% or so with the old 550.
Then something is terribly wrong with your 780gtx, since that card is so beastly. My current 570gtx is getting 50-65fps on max 1080p. There were certain times that it dipped down to 45 in crazy FATEs but still very smooth.
Why do people ALWAYS assume the problem is on your end and nothing else is at all possible?
Mayhaps that FF14 is the outlier and all other games I have are performing to a level expected of a GTX 780.
I am running a GTX 670 4GB and I just got a new 27" IPS monitor that runs @ 2560 x 1440 resolution. Decided to run the benchmark test:
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Character Creation)
Tested on:8/19/2013 6:51:43 PM
Score:6612
Average Framerate:55.375
Performance:Very High
-Easily capable of running the game. Should perform exceptionally well, even at higher resolutions.
Screen Size: 2560x1440
Screen Mode: Full Screen
Graphics Presets: Maximum
Not bad! My score at 1200p with max settings was around 7800.
Save yourself some money and just get a HD 7950 or GTX 660 Ti, use those 2 cards as a baseline and go up. 7950 can play FFXIV maximum at 1920x1080 at max framerate, and save yourself a hundred+ bucks you could sink into better ram or something.
Edit - You don't really need a 450 card to max out games on the market right now. It is simply just over kill. Hell even the 2 cards I mentioned are kinda overkill. you could get a video card and a nice hooker for that kinda money
Honestly, based on my own experiences in the game this game is extremely graphically efficient. I'd benchmark against another developer like Bethesda or BioWare - both do a good job with graphical optimization.
That said, I think you are grossly overshooting the GPU. I don't think you need it. I'd honestly run what you have SLI and turn off the 3rd monitor, but if you like overkill then you are past my own computer expertise.
The bigger issue I have with the game is all the loading. I'd take that money and reinvest in faster RAM (lower Cas latency) and SSD for extremely fast loading. I really doubt that your GPU setup is bottlenecking your performance.
I just bought that exact card for FF14!
Remember Old School Ultima Online
I would check out this card for that kind of money.
http://event.msi.com/vga/
I call bullshit. My 680 is 30 to 40 in the city on max.
What driver are you using? Latest?
First off, I'm not in either camp for video cards, I've used both ATI/AMD and Nvidia cards over the years. I usually go with whichever card is the most bang for the buck at the time of purchase. I tend to buy the 2nd fastest technology as it is usually within 90% of the fastest tech for half the cost. Case in point - my last video card was a GTX 780. Its not as fast as a Titan, buts its damn close for $400 less.
That said.. the next tier down from the GTX 780 is the $450 market... as GTX 770 or the Radeon 7970. Both cards should handle FFXIV using 3 monitors @ 5760x1080 "Normal" settings. For "Maximum" settings you may need to back off to 5040x1050 get playable frame rates.
GTX 770 - Should handle FFXIV @ playable frame rates given your resolution/3monitors.
AMD 7970 - Should also handle FFXIV @ playable frame rates given your resolution/3monitors..
The 3GB of vram in the AMD 7970 will be a bonus benefit in a multi-monitor setup if you plan to stay at a single card. But as you said, if you plan on going with a second card soon... I'd go for the GTX770. As a personal opinion.. I prefer the Nvidia's SLI software over AMD/ATI Crossfire. Both setups work, I've just had less issues with Nvidia in the past couple of years.
The link below gives good examples of a few games at multiple resolutions, SLI and Multi-monitor.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-770-Review-GK104-Speed-Bump
"Youre in our world now!"
I run on maximum settings @1080p with Radeon 7850 2GB (OC'd to stock 7870 performance). My gameplay is great. I get fps in the 50s and dips down to the 40s occasionally. But when the DX11 client comes out, I'm definitely going to upgrade, but I am waiting on the new Radeon 9xxx series
I'm not much of a computer wiz...I know how to fix it if something breaks, but when it comes to what's new and stuff, I"m kinda in the dark. I recently bought a laptop with a Geforce 750m gddr5 (in my sig hehe). And it has an ultrabay that allowed me to purchase a second one later on, and it actually saved me like $70.
Running two of them, I had no problems at all running it on maximum settings. I'm sure anything relatively new for a desktop will run just as well, if not better.
Hold off on buying a new card until a few weeks after release. It was unanimously agreed upon that many people were experiencing graphical "stuttering" during this last beta phase; even those with higher end computers. So It may very well have been something with the game or server and not your hardware if you experienced this during the last beta phase and not any of the previous ones.
I myself am running a dinosaur AMD Radeon HD 4600 (below minimum system requirements) on minimum settings and was pulling an average of 38fps outside of the main cities and didn't get stuttering until this last beta phase. Needless to say though, I did get an AMD Radeon HD 6670 at a steal for only $35 to upgrade for this game. I would have liked to get into the 7XXX series but that's beyond my budget right now.
nice im still running with an hd 4870 hears about the 9xxx series that will be hitting the market in maybe october we will see then.
Is your chipset that uses the HD 4870 going to support the 9XXX series? My main issue right now is that the new card I bought uses Displayport/DVI/HDMI and I have a VGA monitor (HD 4600 is a VGA only card...dinosaur lol) so I'm waiting on a Displayport adapter to come in the mail and hoping that works since the card doesn't support DVI <-> VGA adapters. Otherwise I'll be playing the game on my HD 4600 for awhile until I can afford a new monitor XD
Suppose I better investigate. Someone running a 78xx radeon faster then me is just wrong. Weird thing is I get expected results from all my other games. The benchmark gave me 12k or so. But in game I swore I saw 30-40 FPS in a crowded city on maximum..
Hasnt bothered me much as I run Standard High with 3 monitors and honestly I cant really see much of a differences besides a lack of shadow density.
Better check your system I'd say. My single overclocked GTX460 (no SLI at the moment) hits 30FPS easily in the city with all settings to max on 1080p...