Advice on Graphics Cards

[Soukyuu]

It's Intel's and thier socket pins that can be scary, one wrong slip, whoops there goes your motherboard.

More like, there goes your CPU lol. I actually once managed to bend about 4 pins on a Pentium4... and bend them back without breaking and the CPU still worked XD

FFXIV 1.0 i play at high setting with DOF and i got 2990 score on it lol tho that bench was made bad just like everything else they did lol. But ARR is build around low end PC so i'm sure you can do more then just craft

Eh, I played 1.0 at high without DoF and got the same score as you, assuming that's at max preset. I think the earliest we can start judging the performance by the time ARR enters open beta.

[Coris]

Got my new card yesterday and ran the benchmark.

With my old 6850:
5573
44.596 fps

With new 7870:
6513
52.355 fps

Used these settings:

Display resolution: 1920x1080

Improve overall graphic quality: Activated
Disable rendering of....(Occlusion Culling): Activated
User low-detail models... (LOD): Activated
Cache LOD data only when necessary. (LOD Streaming): Activated
Smooth edges (Anti-aliasing): Activated
Increase transparent lightning quality: Deactivated

Grass Quality: Low
Use low-detail models on shadows...(LOD): Activated
Display: Personal and Environment
Shadow Resolution: Mid 1024 pixels
Shadow Cascading: Normal
Shadow Softening: Low
Texture Filtering: Medium
Ansiotropic Filtering: Low

Naturally darken the edges... (Limb Darkening): Deactivated
Blur the graphics... (Radial Blur): Activated

Effects while in motion: Display Own
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion: Low
Glare: Low

Enable depth of field: Deactivated

Full PC specs (again xD")

Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor
8190.113MB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7870 (VRAM 1772 MB) <- manufactured by ASUS
120GB SSD (for OS and XIV)