Video Card Savvy

[File2ish]

Biggest bang for your buck on a budget I'd recommend a Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 or an AMD Radeon RX 480, or a GTX 1070 if you can afford it. They are fairly budget friendly and can run the game no problem. A 1060 performs about as well as a previous gen GTX 970.

Also the GTX 1080 got a price drop to $500 because the 1080ti is coming out, but if you get a 1080 you might as well build a new rig because of CPU bottlenecking.

That said: Your CPU should be good enough to easily push 60fps at the settings those GPUs can push out (my GTX 970 can easily push ~60-100FPS @ 1920x1080 with max settings depending on model/effect population density on screen). The i5 2500 might be a bit of a bottleneck on the FPS for other more CPU intensive games, but it should be at the very least able to push a steady 60 for XIV.

[Riverwulf]

Thank you everyone for all the responses. You guys and gals nailed it. I want solid to high performance (on ffxiv which shouldn't be asking too much) above all and I think that's what you recommended. I'll be looking for deals on 1060s and 1070s and go from there. Thanks again, see you all ingame.