Looking to upgrade video card, advice needed

I'm currently using the Radeon HD 5770 which is a tad outdated now (ok its really old now lol). Since Black Friday's around the corner I'm looking to upgrade.

My choices have come down to:
1) Radeon HD 7870 (2GB)
2) GeForce GTX 760 (2GB)

obviously #1 is cheaper because it's AMD and its a little older model than #2. However friends told me that Nvidia is better with their driver updates, and seeing how the September driver pack for my current card constantly fails to install I'm inclined to believe this. Does anyone have suggestions on which one I should go with? :)

I also intend to upgrade my ram from 4 to 8gb. My game currently runs fairly smoothly if I put it on 'standard laptop' in 1920 x 1080 but I guess I'd like to play in a higher graphic setting so I figured it's time for an upgrade.

I'm wondering this as well. I have a 6850 and having really strange performance issues even on the lowest possible settings, although my video card could just be really old by now.

For the price, I really think the 7870 beats the 760 in almost every way. I've seen them for as cheap as $150 which is roughly $100 less than the 760, with similar performance. Obviously if money is no issue, the 760 is the more powerful card, but not enough to justify another $100+ dollars IMO. That said, I do rather like the new shadowplay that NVIDIA software offers, they are great about updates and have lots of nice built-in tools, so if you prefer NVIDIA and want a cheaper card, the 660 is also a viable option. They run for ~$160 and offer similar performance to the 7870.

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Originally Posted by peaches

I'm wondering this as well. I have a 6850 and having really strange performance issues even on the lowest possible settings, although my video card could just be really old by now.

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The 6850 is still a decent{but not great}card. Try updating your drivers and/or seeing if any of the fans are covered with dust and if so clean them but be careful of static electricity.

The 7870 is a beast of a card for the price and isn't really tested by FFXIV(I own one).
Couple of things to consider though,firstly FFXIV is heavy computationally on your CPU so if your CPU is weak and not capable of keeping the GPU rammed full of data to process and send to the GPU frame buffer your system will bottle neck.
Result,with a weak CPU your game will look brilliant but suffer from crappy frame rates.
You can slightly offset the bottleneck by raising the game settings so that the GPU has to do more work per frame,filling up the GPU memory some-End result ,high and stabler FPS .
TBH,unless your CPU is an AMD Phenom IIx4 or an Intel I5 or above any GPU higher than a GTX 560 is overkill.
However if you do intend buying a 7870,go for the Tahiti core version as it rivals the performance of a 7950 in both games and benchmarks.
The 7870 Tahiti runs on the same GPU core as the 7950 with some stream processors turned off rather than the older Pitcairn core 7870.

I'm actually on Intel I-7 so I think I should be fine.
I ended up picking up the 7870 for $144 on newegg's thanksgiving sale :D
Also got myself 8gb of ram so hopefully I'll have even smoother gameplay now.