The FPS and my Graphics Card

[ShuyinTakahara]

I use a cheap GTX 260 card with this game and get around 50 FPS on High laptop setting. Though I suspect this game Is more CPU hungry and GPU to be honest.

[RaineMagus]

[What i'm looking for]
I'm at lease looking for a good graphics card that's under $300 that can at lease get to 50 fps or more.

If you can live without SSAO and 'high quality' transparent lighting, then this shouldn't be too hard.

A Radeon 7970, 270x, or even 7870 should be able to handle 50 fps (or better) at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 .. or a Geforce 660 / 760 (on highest settings, minus SSAO). I'd suggest that you consider what ShuyinTakahara stated though, considering you mentioned a "Radeon HD 7310" -- that sounds like an on-chip graphics solution on low end Zacate processors (ultra low power).

While that machine may be a "desktop" .. it may only be a desktop in form factor. I somewhat doubt that it has the CPU horsepower / oomph to play the game very well. You 'may' have to upgrade more than inserting a videocard.



Possible to list more of what's in that machine, or the computer's model number in the case of a pre-built?

EDIT: Another thing to keep in mind for machines with integrated graphics or lower end graphics is to think about if their power supply is sufficient to handle a mid to high end graphics card.. Even with a 270x (sub 200$ card), a 450watt "generic" PSU (such as a Chiefmax or Viotek) would be pushing it.

[Riyuzaki]

I use a cheap GTX 260 card with this game and get around 50 FPS on High laptop setting. Though I suspect this game Is more CPU hungry and GPU to be honest.

ALL mmo's are generally more cpu hungry, especially when other pc's are around. used to run an amd set up, some 6750 hd card i believe. and a ga 970a d3 motherboard, with some amd fx-4100 cpu.

after dealing with crap from a lot of amd's drivers. nothing against em, i loved amd for a long time. refused to go with intel and nvidia set up, but i finally did.

anyway, i noticed my fps was pretty normal, and the game ran pretty well all the time on that set up, but only on minimum settings.

currently im running this

intel i5 4670k processor (i know its for overclocking, i've got a fan that's good enough for that. just in case i choose to oc. but mostly so i can leave my computer on, and literally never turn it off except when doing maintanence.)
z87 fatl1ty killer motherboard. (the pci 3.0 slots have had a huge impact over the 2.0 slots graphics wise compared to my ga-970a-d3, i love it.)
nvidia gtx 760 made by asus, there was a evga varient, which was enclosed and i said no, an msi varient, and a gigabyte variant, i probably would have gone with gigabyte's variant, but the freakin graphics card would have literally gone through my 1 TB internal hdd and my 4 TB internal harddrive. it's a huge gpu with like 3 fans, but the asus is less enclosed than the evga gpu's so, i like it. plus its about 30-40% better than a gtx 660 or 660 ti, and only 10 bucks more than a 660 ti. so i figured why not.

(this part is directed toward the op)
so far. you want a good cpu. i'd say something from the 3rd gen of intel's processors would be perfectly fine long as it's quad core and has about 3.0 ghz.

i don't know amd wise anymore. but you'd have to figure out what's equivalent.

either way, better graphics card probably wont make things much better.
i remember with tera online, i always had to run it on pretty crap settings cuz i didnt know this.
i was running with a gtx 660 and i still had to run on the same settings cuz my cpu just wasnt up to par.

but i run quite nearly literally everything at max graphics now. and it always runs well. even emulators for like gamecube and such run like a dream, which is very nice. (no more stuttering and no more choppy sound!)

now for the price of what i've got now...

cpu- 250 ish. (the non k variant, i.e. the one that isn't unlocked for overclocking i believe is around 220 atm, your choice though, both work well.)
motherboard- 140 ish.
gpu - 260 ish.

total - 650

also, i started out with my computer as a pre built, since i was too lazy to build my own, but now all the the parts minus the case are my own parts.

also, to rainemagus, i tend to run ssao on any game just fine, transparent lighting too, as you mentioned the 760, i havent run into issues with ssao or any of those variants, not that i really understand them well.
would this be due to my motherboard having pci 3.0 slots or in combo with my cpu, or possibly because i force my games to use my gpu for physx rather than auto selecting or using my cpu?

[RaineMagus]

also, to rainemagus, i tend to run ssao on any game just fine, transparent lighting too, as you mentioned the 760, i havent run into issues with ssao or any of those variants, not that i really understand them well.
would this be due to my motherboard having pci 3.0 slots or in combo with my cpu, or possibly because i force my games to use my gpu for physx rather than auto selecting or using my cpu?

SSAO is "screen-space" ambient occlusion. It's an attempt to approximate global illumination in the pixel shader, working on the depth buffer with some ray-tracing. Far as what it 'does', SSAO is supposed to darken areas that would receive less-light (such as corners of a room or cracks / fissures in a surface). It's intended to add to perceived realism by making these portions of the scene more pronounced.

Far as PCI-E 3.0.. No, that won't have any real impact here as SSAO is run entirely in shaders and doesn't take up bandwidth. PCI-E 3.0 helps more with loading times, load stuttering, and resource transfer in general. You mentioned emulators, which is something that PCI-E 3.0 can have a significant impact on due to that alot of consoles have direct hardware frame-buffer access (PS2 games notably do this alot).


If you open a tool such as GPU-Z, MSI Afterburner, or EVGA Precision X, you should be able to watch plots of GPU and or bus utilization in the game. Settings wise, of the graphics settings. Transparent lighting and SSAO are the two "biggest" settings in terms of GPU usage. (not including object occlusion, which I'm assuming that most people do not shut off ... as this is intended to be an optimization / not impact visual quality except for rare exceptions where an object is improperly culled)

Anyway, if you're not at 100% usage, then of course you have no reason at all to shut off settings. Use your card to its fullest by all means.


-I probably should've mentioned that I'm considering "highest" settings as including 16x Anisotropic Filtering being set in the drivers.

The effect of SSAO is very subtle when done properly (many games exaggerate it to the point it doesn't look realistic). That said, alot of people will say that they can't notice the effect at all .. similar to doing more lighting passes, which people also usually say they can't notice. If you don't see a difference, then you might shut those settings off to either run the card cooler (if FPS limiting is on) or in favor of different options such as cranking the AF.



EDIT: To answer the AMD question on processor equivalence.

The only thing that can match an i5 / i7 3570k, 4570k, 3770k, 4770k, etc, in FFXIV:ARR would be a heavily overclocked 8350 [*9590 would be another choice, rather than overclocking an 8350 by hand*]. This is not a comparison of total processor performance, only of single core performance (which is what matters for the game). Yet it should also be noted that you DO NOT need a top tier processor to achieve 60 fps where it matters, such as in dungeon instances and for raids. It becomes more important in town around the market board, or in FATEs.

Hyperthreading (3770k vs 3570k), you also will not see any difference in game performance with.... Unless you're encoding video / streaming. Of course if you're streaming all bets are off and an 8350 may compete well with an Intel too!