GPU Question: Attn. -nVidia 570- & -ATi HD 6970- owners

[Aenarion]

Its rather safe to say knowing peoples CPU and etc doesnt matter if u got a dual core and a Harddrive and a hd6850 u can play ff14 at max settings for a hell of alot cheaper than an overpirced name brand videocard (nvidia) and an overpirced cpu (intel)

*sigh*

yea, we obviously need more fanboyism on these forums -_-

and i don't even know why you mention having a hard drive, as that's a required component in a system. Also, depend on a person's usage, a dual core may not be sufficient to run both FF14 and whatever else he's running, and the list goes on and on and on... Basically, you're looking at it from a singular "I iz AMD fanboy gamer" perspective, while I'm trying to offer him brand-loyalty-free advice that hopefully would give him what he's looking for. Also, nvidia isn't overpriced this generation, neither is Intel overpriced, AMD just haven't been able to put up much of a fight. AMD needs to step it up with their next CPU, they haven't been able to compete with Intel in anything other than the budget segment for awhile now.

Back on topic, both nvidia and amd offer competitive product across all price range this time around, and you're unlikely to go wrong with either one, which means go for the ones with the best deal you can find within your budget range.

[Konachibi]

Everything maxed with FSAAx16 EXCEPT ambient occlusion turned off

To be fair ambient occlusion doesn't really do anything and is a total resource vampire. The only real reason for turning it on is to see what the game looks like when the frame-rate nosedives into the pits of hades

[Aenarion]

Personally I would go with the nVidia. From previous experience nVidia did have a bit of a slip with the series 8xxx and series 9xxx geforces but they've improved a lot since then, but all 4 of the ATI cards I've had in the past have had one or two problems with them, usually in the areas of poor RAM handling or struggling with fast frame changing. Seriously the ATI 4650 HD I bought couldn't even run WoW Cata in 1024x768 without the frame-rate dieing horribly in Stormwind, but then I took that back and swapped it for a Geforce 210 which cost the same price, and that works fine for FFXIV with all settings on medium, apart from a bit of a drop in frame-rate in some overly graphical areas (Black Shroud).

I've found nVidia to be much more game friendly and their nview program just seems to operate better than ATI Catalyst does.

the 8000 series were great when it first came out, it only became an issue when nvidia kept rebadging the same thing and call it the 9000 series, and then even tried to do it again when they were switching to the 200 series.

Frankly, I've never had much issues with any of my video cards, nvidia or ati/amd, the 8800 was great, the HD5850 kicked ass, and now the GTX580 is doing just fine.

[Darkshade]

Thanks for the information. Keep it coming, I do appreciate it greatly.

Also note that I have a 128GB SATA2 SSD which my OS and XIV are installed on.

Also please note if the graphics ever stutter/choke even if you get 60FPS most of the time and whether or not you have an SSD.

[Aenarion]

as for my own system:

i7 920 @ 4.0ghz
GTX580



Windowed
1920x1200
8x CSAA
Draw Quality 8
Background 5
Shadows: High
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Depth of Field: Off
Texture quality: High
Texture Filtering: Highest

Don't have DoF on 'cause i prefer the look with it off, and as far as AO and other settings are concerned, I couldn't really see any notable increase in image quality with the higher settings that would justify the extra resource used, so I left them as is.

I stay around 60fps for the most part in the field, running through uldah usually puts me at around 50-60.

[Konachibi]

the 8000 series were great when it first came out, it only became an issue when nvidia kept rebadging the same thing and call it the 9000 series, and then even tried to do it again when they were switching to the 200 series.

Frankly, I've never had much issues with any of my video cards, nvidia or ati/amd, the 8800 was great, the HD5850 kicked ass, and now the GTX580 is doing just fine.

The problem with the 8 and 9 series were their poor quality fans. The cards were prone to overheating and shutting off the computer (known on the nvidia forums as 'the black screen of death') which was a problem nVidia never addressed, mostly 'cos they knew they screwed up. I found the problem I had with my Geforce 9500GT was sometimes the fan wouldn't switch on when I booted up the computer, so I had to prod the fan with a pen whilst the computer was running to get it spinning and stop my computer from melting at 120 degrees. Since then though the quality of their cards has improved back up to the standards they were before the series 8's so they're much more reliable now.

*Please Note: Do not prod the insides of your computer with anything whilst it is operating, only fully trained experts or stupid people like me should do things like that*

[Aenarion]

were those reference cards? tbh for issues like that I blame the actual card manufacturers.

[SilvertearRen]

Nope. Check Crysis 2 reviews for example. It's probably one of the most intensive game out there.
And no, it's not even the only game where nVidia performs better.

(I had a 6950, it died, I took a GTX 570, best decision of the year ^^)

Everything maxed with FSAAx16 EXCEPT ambient occlusion turned off, 50-60 FPS, falls down to 40-30 when loading characters when I tp to Ul'dah for example.

-Current GPU: GTX 570

-Anti Aliasing: FSAAx16

-Resolution: 1920x1080

-General Drawing Quality: 10

-Windowed or Fullscreen: fullscreen

-Average FPS: let's say 55

I have just one thing to say about the video card/game benchmarking argument:

All games are not created equal. It is not a realistic benchmark to use. If you want something to really benchmark against, use FutureMark.

My personal opinion is strongly in favor of ATI, I am still using a 5870 and FFXIV sings nicely on it, although it is quite a power hog on my 750W Corsair.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

My understanding of Crysis 2 is that it decided to step down from the monster that was Crysis 1. But a benchmark nonetheless.

Gonna try fullscreen tonight to see if I get to 60 fps on *any* setting with a gtx 560 (had to replace defunct gtx285)

[Konachibi]

My plan for the next computer upgrade was going to be linking 2 Geforce 460GT's into a new motherboard with 12gb DDR3 RAM and maybe an intel i7 processor.

Gonna cost a lot of money and no doubt need a reasonably large sized power supply but still, that should be able to handle anything PC game developers throw at me for the next few years