19 replies to this topic

[Lugalbanda]

I've been looking for a post to address my question but haven't found it. If I'm beating the proverbial dead horse, just point me in the right direction.

Obviously, in a more near-perfect world, I'd plunk down the necessary money to get a video card that would run MWO max'd out. I live in a more constrained world, however, so I need some guidance.

Part of my difficulty is that I don't have a good sense of the minimum specification video cards -- the Nvidia 8800GT (how much RAM?) and an ATI 5600/5700 (which isn't actually a specific model). Similarly, the recommended spec cards don't perfectly line up with current production cards in ways that are easily discerned (I've had to dig on this issue, at least). ATI's purposefully confusing nomenclature with the 6xxx/7xxx models doesn't help here either.

So, what am I looking for at under $150US? What specific information should I take away from the MWO video card specs to make a decision? What current cards are positioned between the ATI 5600/5700 and the 5830 (same question for Nvidia, I'm just not as familar with those cards)?

A related set of questions -- what is the gameplay experience with the minimum spec cards? What is the gameplay experience with the recommended spec cards? If I step up from a 5830 to a 6870 (which is the card I have -- stepped up from a 4650; I'm trying to help a friend figure out what he is going to do), how much improvement will I see?

Again, I'm not looking to play at at a crazy 4K spec. I want to know about playable framerates and sense of the video settings I would be playing at.

I know the game can still be optimized from the beta, but I'd like to hear from people who are playing beta without the benefit of a 7970.

I appreciate your responses.

[Assault One]

Err, people playing in beta might get a tad in trouble if they answer your question.

[MATEO FALCONE]

I would start by reviewing the spec of the engine the game is going to be run on. As for the $150....that will buy a resonable video card with 1 gig of ddr 3 or even gddr 5 memory on it......Also make sure the core gpu clock is up around a 1000 mhz..In my opinion $150 card should play this......For example:NVIDIA GTX 550Ti - 1GB GDDR5: Gigabyte GTX 550Ti, 900 MHz core clock, 4100Mhz Memory Frequency, 1GB GDDR5, 192 Processor Cores, DVI / VGA / HDMI, Full DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4 support, PhysX ready, Multi-Monitor, 2560 x 1600 Max Digital, PCI-Express 2.0. Requires a minimum of a 400 Watt power supply with 12V current rating of 24A, one 6-pin PCI-Express Power Connectors required. This card is about 150 and i found it at a P.C. parts online store in about ten seconds. In fact its what i will be playing on when the game drops. The above specs on this card are at or near the specs of the recomended card for the game which is a gtx 285 or a radeon pile of poo.{my opinion}.Now that i have babbled myself in circles i hope i have helped a bit....

Edited by MATEO FALCONE, 21 July 2012 - 08:26 AM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

2 points:

• 1.) I got a new GeForce 560gtx on ebay for ~$130, which should be more than enough for the game. Getting new parts on ebay can be a good deal (I am piece-mealing my new build together from cheap parts I get while deal-hunting), just make sure they offer returns, and the product is listed as "new" instead of used.
  
• 2.) There is a forum specifically for Hardware and computer parts discussion called "Hardware, Accessories, Peripherals" (linked)

Edited by Prosperity Park, 21 July 2012 - 08:16 AM.

[MrFancypants]

As this game will use the CryEngine 3 you could look up benchmarks for other games using the same engine (such as Crysis 2). The results won't be exact, especially for titles that also appear on consoles, but it will give you an indiciation.

Various websites reviewing games also often compare different levels of graphics quality in a game, Crysis 2 reviews might help with that as well.

Find out what CPU you have, which resolution you want to use (usually depends on the size of your TFT) and how high the quality settings should be. Then type "Crysis 2 benchmark" into a google image search and you'll figure it out.

[Lin Shai]

I currently have an Nvidia 275GTX from ... 3 years ago? It plays many things fine at 2560x1600 on my 30" (D3, source engine games, etc). It cranks right along for almost anything at 1920x1200 with at least medium graphics settings on the more demanding games. I paid < $200 for it when I bought it.

It was over twice as fast as my 8800GTS (640MB) that it replaced.

If you have $150 bucks to spend ... but the current gen card that is right at $150

If you want to see the relative performance of current cards against each other the GPU bench on AnandTech is prob your best bet:

http://www.anandtech...bench/GPU12/372

- Roach

Edited by Lin Shai, 21 July 2012 - 08:26 AM.

[l33tworks]

Do.you have a quad core cpu? Get the 2500k.from.intel really good value. I would not recommend a amd cpu at this stage they are very very poor performers when it comes to.games. A cheap intel motherboard is only.50 bucks so conider that as well.

[Lugalbanda]

Prosperity Park, on 21 July 2012 - 08:15 AM, said:

2 points:

• 2.) There is a forum specifically for Hardware and computer parts discussion called "Hardware, Accessories, Peripherals" (linked)

Thanks for the redirect.

[Henchman 24]

To answer your question without more on your whole system is difficult, so I will say what I can based on what we know so far.

• 1. You have a HD6870, which is well within the horsepower range needed for CE3 games @ 1080p.(assuming it's a 1g card, which is almost not enough to load shaders quickly in this engine)

• 2. Knowing this, if you aren't running a decently performing quad core(2.4ghz per core with some sort of turbo @ minimum, hopefully decent L3 cache)...I would look into this first.

• 3. Having 8gigs+ of ddr3 1333 or above ram would be a good step.

• 4. I know some will poo poo me for this, but....when talking performance...let's not leave out the largest current PC bottleneck....your hard drive. A nice new SSD with even moderate SATA2/3 performance will trounce the average hard drive, and even make raptors and such look tame. Want to be the first one ingame waiting for others to join? Then fast IO and big ram is the place to be.

I currently have 2 Samsung F4 320g hard drives in RAID 0 on my i7 860 rig, and I'm worried it's not going to be fast enough to feed the video card. I also have a HD6870, and I'm not all that worried about the graphics...Crysis 2 runs well on high, and somewhat playable on highest.

I'm fairly sure the level of optimization for this will fall into a comfortable range with that card. If not, I'll grab another and X-fire it.

[sakkaku]

The longer you wait the cheaper the cards you are looking at will be. Wait to get in, see how it fairs and save some money. That will also give you some time to aquire additional funds to bump your budget up to around $200, which is where you get to the real price/performance sweetspot.

[Vulpesveritas]

Sub $150, a radeon HD 7770 is the fastest new GPU you can buy.
full price point guide here; http://mwomercs.com/...eral-gpu-guide/

sakkaku, on 21 July 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

The longer you wait the cheaper the cards you are looking at will be. Wait to get in, see how it fairs and save some money. That will also give you some time to aquire additional funds to bump your budget up to around $200, which is where you get to the real price/performance sweetspot.

Actually, $250 is more the sweet spot right now with the Radeon HD 7850 and Geforce GTX 570.

[Kumakichi]

I picked up a GTX 560 about 8 months ago when my mobo died. At the time these were pretty good bang for your buck. Before that I had run Radeons for years mainly due because they had such good value. I'd do some research on the Radeons. Some of them aren't so good performers and some are. Being that MWO is supported by Nvidia I think that reassuring if you have one of there vid cards. One thing for sure is there sure isn't any shortage on selection when it comes to computer parts.

[Zero Down]

I have a ASUS EAH6850, any thoughts on the viablity of this card going forward? It has 1 gig on it. Should I ditch it or X-Fire it?

[ScrapIron Prime]

Try this website for graphics card comparison.

Basically you want to be as far up the chart as you can afford. For MWO, i purchased a Diamond brand Radeon 7850 for $229.

[Der Zivilist]

If you have a Radeon 6870 now, there is nothing you can buy for $150 that will do the job better. Sad but true - both AMD and Nvidia decided to mark up their current generation so much that you're essentially getting the same or less FPS for your money than if you bought last generation cards.

This is due to the chip manufacturer, TSMC, screwing up royally on the production process. Capacities are only slowly increasing, and don't expect prices to come down for real until at least October.

Don't buy anything - stick with what you have. If you want to make absolutely sure, download a demo of Crysis 2 - that uses the same engine. If Crysis 2 runs, then so will MWO.

Edited by Der Zivilist, 24 July 2012 - 08:33 AM.

[ultra1437]

Vulpesveritas, on 21 July 2012 - 09:26 AM, said:

Sub $150, a radeon HD 7770 is the fastest new GPU you can buy.
full price point guide here; http://mwomercs.com/...eral-gpu-guide/


Actually, $250 is more the sweet spot right now with the Radeon HD 7850 and Geforce GTX 570.

That's actually what i picked up on my last upgrade, was a GTX 570. Not a bad card.

Der Zivilist, on 24 July 2012 - 08:32 AM, said:

If you have a Radeon 6870 now, there is nothing you can buy for $150 that will do the job better. Sad but true - both AMD and Nvidia decided to mark up their current generation so much that you're essentially getting the same or less FPS for your money than if you bought last generation cards.

This is due to the chip manufacturer, TSMC, screwing up royally on the production process. Capacities are only slowly increasing, and don't expect prices to come down for real until at least October.

Don't buy anything - stick with what you have. If you want to make absolutely sure, download a demo of Crysis 2 - that uses the same engine. If Crysis 2 runs, then so will MWO.

So that's what caused it... I wondered why this gen was more expensive than the last one was at release. Well, that answered that question.

[lpmagic]

So a little advice then pretty please. As you can see by my tag line, my system simply will not cut it. I have some choices in new purchases. What it has come down to is this:
Win 7 home premium
Core I7 3770 2.4Ghz
12GB DDR3
1TB HD 7200 RPM
Radeon HD 7770 2GB DDR5
$999.00

My question, will this work for MWO? it certainly should, handily, but I'm a little leary, this is going to cost me $1k even. I do not want to have to do upgrades at this price. The power supply is 460 watts, if I improve anything, that owuld be it, I have no wish to be fishing about in my machine to install a $300 GPU when I could have just done it right to begin with. From my research the 7770 card is a wonderfull value FOR THE MONEY, but, it is not at the top of the heap. I would love to keep this at a grand and be able to play at close to max settings, what do you guru's think?????

[Vulpesveritas]

lpmagic, on 25 July 2012 - 10:55 AM, said:

So a little advice then pretty please. As you can see by my tag line, my system simply will not cut it. I have some choices in new purchases. What it has come down to is this:
Win 7 home premium
Core I7 3770 2.4Ghz
12GB DDR3
1TB HD 7200 RPM
Radeon HD 7770 2GB DDR5
$999.00

My question, will this work for MWO? it certainly should, handily, but I'm a little leary, this is going to cost me $1k even. I do not want to have to do upgrades at this price. The power supply is 460 watts, if I improve anything, that owuld be it, I have no wish to be fishing about in my machine to install a $300 GPU when I could have just done it right to begin with. From my research the 7770 card is a wonderfull value FOR THE MONEY, but, it is not at the top of the heap. I would love to keep this at a grand and be able to play at close to max settings, what do you guru's think?????

Downgrade CPU to an i5, FX-4170, FX-6200, or Phenom II X4
Change RAM to 8GB.
Upgrade GPU to a Radeon HD 7850, 7870, 7950, or a Geforce GTX 570 or 670.

This will do much better.

[Lettuce Prey]

Der Zivilist, on 24 July 2012 - 08:32 AM, said:

If you have a Radeon 6870 now, there is nothing you can buy for $150 that will do the job better. Sad but true - both AMD and Nvidia decided to mark up their current generation so much that you're essentially getting the same or less FPS for your money than if you bought last generation cards.

This is due to the chip manufacturer, TSMC, screwing up royally on the production process. Capacities are only slowly increasing, and don't expect prices to come down for real until at least October.

Don't buy anything - stick with what you have. If you want to make absolutely sure, download a demo of Crysis 2 - that uses the same engine. If Crysis 2 runs, then so will MWO.

i looked around for the crysis 2 demo and after hitting several sites that gave error 404 or just didn't respond i found the download page for it at nvidia and there it said the demo had expired.

however over at the game site i found the list of system requirements for the demo

http://www.crysisdem...equirements.php


edit:

i found a place with the demo available for download and is 1.6 gigs incoming as i type.

http://downloads.gur...2efab1c04c688d7

Edited by Lettuce Prey, 25 July 2012 - 12:00 PM.

[Uri Brauer]

ScrapIron Prime, on 24 July 2012 - 08:00 AM, said:

Try this website for graphics card comparison.

...if you're going to use your GPUs mainly for non-gaming purposes. If you're playing games, you want benchmarks by a reputable review site. And for MWO, you want Crysis 2 benchmarks.