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

[Darkshade]

Hello and thank you for stopping in to read my thread!

I have a question. I'm having trouble deciding which GPU to purchase.

I will likely be upgrading my GPU from an ATi 5850 1GB to either a nVidia 570 or ATi 6970. I probably won't make the purchase until the HD 7XXX series ships.

They both seem to have their strong points in the benchmarks with the 570 taking more FSAA wins and the 6970 taking more high resolution wins. As no one does benchmarks with XIV I've decided to come here and ask the source.

I'm curious as to which card performs better in XIV especially with FSAA at around resolutions of 1920x1080. Particularly if you could answer the following:

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-Current GPU:

-Anti Aliasing:

-Resolution:

-General Drawing Quality:

-Windowed or Fullscreen:

-Average FPS, if you don't know just ballpark it(Great/Smooth as silk=60+, Decent/Occasional FPS dips or lag=40+, I can deal with this/Bowling ball camera, choppy or laggy movement=20+, Horrible/I hate my life 0-10+):

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For comparison, here is mine with my current settings and a 5850.

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-Current GPU: 5850

-Anti Aliasing: 0

-Resolution: 1920x1080

-General Drawing Quality: 7

-Windowed or Fullscreen: Windowed

-Average FPS, if you don't know just ballpark it(Great/Smooth as silk=60+, Decent/Occasional FPS dips or lag=40+, I can deal with this/Bowling ball camera, choppy or laggy movement=20+, Horrible/I hate my life 0-10+): Between 25-40.

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Thank you very much for your time.

[Hikozaemon]

ati 6850 is more than enough to handle this game at max settings and is cheaper than 6870 by quite a bit can get a XFX one under 200$s only problem is they are HUGE gotta make sure u got room to fit it in tower i have 2 which i had to bang into place w/ a rubber mallet rofl.the second card isnt even being used > >; 40-60 fps usually 50+fps resolution is set to max but i play w/ hdmi cable thru my 47inch LCD tv looks great... 6850 has HDMI/DVI connections for TV.




BTW ATI cards always seem to perfom better on games that are VERY graphic intensive. Almost every comparison shows it and hardly ever any Driver issues that use to cause problems for ATI cards.

[Misha]

ati 6850 is more than enough to handle this game at max settings and is cheaper than 6870 by quite a bit can get a XFX one under 200$s only problem is they are HUGE gotta make sure u got room to fit it in tower i have 2 which i had to bang into place w/ a rubber mallet rofl.the second card isnt even being used > >; 40-60 fps usually 50+fps resolution is set to max but i play w/ hdmi cable thru my 47inch LCD tv looks great... 6850 has HDMI/DVI connections for TV.




BTW ATI cards always seem to perfom better on games that are VERY graphic intensive. Almost every comparison shows it and hardly ever any Driver issues that use to cause problems for ATI cards.

Glad someone said this and right away... its only $150 bucks, runs everything but ambient max with usually a steady 60 fps... oaying more then the $150 for a FF graphics card is overkill on pc and your wallet. Runs all my other games inc witcher 2 and crysis 2 extremely smooth as well! GTX 500's are overpriced and you'll be paying more per performance you get... and seeing as you don't need higher then a 6850 like I said... ya total waste xD if you have unlimited budget and don't care about price though go for w/e is most powerful. In conjunction with a ssd its extrememly smooth and loads are exremely fast! Especially all character models, they'll all pop as soon as they are within distance... this game benefits HUGELY from good read times and low response times from storage (hdd or ssd)!

All normal settings set to highest + no ambient

- ATI 6850 HD
- AA is set to 2
- 1920 x 1080
- 8
- full screen
- 60 fps even in towns ... dips a tad in windowed while in towns

Oh and I maintain 40 fps + with depth of field on!
Can't beat that performance for such a cheap card lol

[Arondight]

BTW ATI cards always seem to perfom better on games that are VERY graphic intensive. Almost every comparison shows it and hardly ever any Driver issues that use to cause problems for ATI cards.

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

[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

[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.

[Mikita]

I'm not very technical when it comes to computers, but here is what I can gather about my system:

-Current GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570

-CPU: Core i7 2.8GHz

-Hard Drive: 128GB SSD (really helped to eliminate stuttering)

-Anti Aliasing: 8xCSAA

-Resolution: 1920x1080

-General Drawing Quality: 8 (Standard)
- Background Drawing Quality: 4
- Shadow Detail: Highest
- Depth of Field: On
- Texture Quality: High
- Texture Filtering: High

-Windowed or Fullscreen: I've been switching between Windowed and Full Screen recently and don't really notice a big difference in performance.

Edit after checking actual FPS rates:
I average anywhere between 30 ~ 55 FPS in the cities, mainly depending on how many players, NPCs and special/event objects are around.

Out in the field I get a very solid 60 FPS even during rain and wind storms. My computer heats up quite a bit more, but the FPS rate doesn't drop. It only goes down a few FPS when running through bushes and trees.


Friends have said I should be able to go with even higher settings, but I think my case isn't very good at cooling because it gets really hot and the computer starts to make noise like it's about to blow up... so I've backed off a bit on the settings. ^^;

[Aenarion]

*above posts are useless without at least cpu spec*




what's your system spec right now? what psu do you have? is FF14 your primary use? or are you planning on playing other games down the line? what's your budget and expectation for system longevity?

in other words, need more information :P

[Hikozaemon]

*above posts are useless without at least cpu spec*




what's your system spec right now? what psu do you have? is FF14 your primary use? or are you planning on playing other games down the line? what's your budget and expectation for system longevity?

in other words, need more information :P

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)

[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.