Decent Graphic cardFollow

Anything not integrated.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

This should help ya out.

Well I get ~60fps in most places and ~30 during really bad load (christmas trees, large battles) and stuff.

Radeon HD6870 1GB from MSI. ~$144
You could get higher performance I'm sure but you could always pick up a second one of these down the road and crossfire it when 2.0 launches? ^^ That's what I'll do hehehe

If someone has a better card as per that list a few posts above please post about it and also your benchmark results for xiv ^^ I'm doing it right now in high res :)

Edited, Apr 17th 2012 9:18pm by Elionara

High-Res results: 4331 (Low 5718)
i7-960, 12GB Ram, Low-end SSD & 6870

Not the best but based on lodestone it's fine now and when they release new engine should be more than fine :)

[4500-5499] High Performance
Easily capable of running the game. Should perform well, even at higher resolutions.
[3000-4499] Fairly High Performance
Capable of running the game on default settings. Consider switching to a higher resolution depending on performance.

As far as CPU is concerned you really don't need anything over an i7-2700k. As it stands now running 3 games at once on the same computer only uses 40% of my CPU. Game is more GPU driven ^^

Edited, Apr 17th 2012 9:28pm by Elionara

Edited, Apr 17th 2012 9:35pm by Elionara

At $300~$350 you might be able to get the 7870 from AMD which has enough power to trade blows with the 580 from Nvidia; costs around $400. Slightly lower to $250 you can get the 7850 from AMD. 560 TI can go for around $200~$300 but loses to the 7850 in several games so I don't recommend buying it until Nvidia releases their 6xx line in full. In fact the 6870 which is around $150 will probably be the better choice.

I have the 6870 and I can run a fair number of games in 1920x1080 with high details and x2 AA; sometimes x4. Unless you really want x4 and x8 AA on almost all of your games, I wouldn't go dropping $300 on my 1st video card buy; especially when Nvidia is about to release their beasts to combat AMD. A lot of people are expecting prices to go down in the near future so if you spend a lot now, you might lose a bit. If you dig around, the 6870 can be bought for as low as $130.

That movie is in low resolution for recording, even the 6870 should be able to run it smoothly at that resolution. People usually don't play at that resolution for the eye candy. Assuming you have a decent CPU, then 6870 should be able to run FFXIV at 1280x1024 fairly smoothly. If you throw in AAx2 and 1920x1080 you might want to go with the 7850 at the minimum or even the GTX 680 ($500).

FFXIV is very inefficient, it`s like having a traffic jam in a race between video cards. A sport car can`t out run my granny car by much. Similarly, you aren`t using the full potential of a strong video card with FFXIV. It simply doesn`t utilize the horse power effectively.

Edit: I`d still recommend getting the 6870 for video card with your 1st pc built or 7850 or 7870 if you want it future proof. Make it a budget or entry-level gaming PC instead of a powerhouse. It shouldn`t go higher than $700 before shipping. This means going with an i5 2500k instead of i7. The gap between a budget gaming pc and a powerhouse only noticeable when you are on a 24 inch+ monitor and controlling 4000 troops in Shogun 2. Most gamers stay at around 1920x1080 (HD resolution) resolution for a 20-23 inch monitor with video settings at high. A budget gaming pc should be able to handle everything you throw at it with flying colors at 1920x1080.

Edited, Apr 18th 2012 1:05pm by Oddwaffle

@yfaithfully: I think a lot of bets are on the 2.0 being more efficient and more console compatible. That probably means lowering most of the graphic details and greatly increase the efficiency. Lower textures, more blurry stuff, less characters appearing on the screens... etc. If the Xbox version of The Witcher 2 is any indicator, FFXIV ver 2.0 for console will be vastly different than it is now.

The GTX 680 can x2 or x3 stronger than the 6870 but I can barely run FFXIV with no AA on 1920x1080 in a super crowded area (everything else is great though) so the 680 might take a beating with x4 AA but safer with x2 AA. This is a possibility as FFXIV is inefficient.

Edited, Apr 18th 2012 1:38pm by Oddwaffle

SE really needs to optimize the game, as is my 2 year old video card in my 4 year old PC, performs on par with my gaming laptop which has at least x3 the capability's of my PC. Just like some one said as is XIV is currently like a race through a traffic jam.

Edited, Apr 18th 2012 4:08pm by TwiddleDee

Edited, Apr 18th 2012 4:09pm by TwiddleDee

if you talk about spec with her she does not reply idk why

+1 for AMD 7870 or NVidia GTX 570 or wait for a GTX 670/660 ti

Hey, actually created an account to reply to this. Been lurking around here for months now. Anyway.....

I've run FFXIV on everything from a 8800m (laptop) to GTX580SLI and several cards in between. Truth is you don't need a super huge video card to run this game and have it look good. At the bottom of the range I would suggest is a Radeon 4670 (I have two of these) and that does struggle a bit. With your budget in mind you can go with a lot bigger card than that.

Personally I would suggest something like a Radeon 7870....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150605
It's at the top end of your budget but it's latest tech and has 2GB of vram. Now when the gtx670 or 660ti comes out that might be a good choice too. A 670 will most likely be $399.

At the bottom of your budget would be a 560ti 448core....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130738
This is a good card for the money. It is a generation back, but it will still do DX11 and all that.

Couple other things I wanted to point out as far as Crossfire and SLI. One is that if you're planning on getting a second card go with the latest tech, which is currently the Radeon 7xxx cards and the Nvidia 6xx cards. Reason is I've found a lot of times if you wait too long that particular card will go out of circulation and you won't be able to find a second one.
The second issue is Crossfire vs SLI, especially with FFXIV. If you run full screen then it's not so much of an issue, but I found that only SLI will run in windowed mode. Crossfire will only run one card in windowed. Now, that may have changed, but as of a year ago it wouldn't work. I'm currently not subbed into FFXIV so I can't test it on my 4670 Xfire rig. I suppose I could check it with the load up screen. If anyone has any newer info on this please chime in.


Edit: one other thing, make sure you have enough power supply to run whatever card you're looking at. They usually list that in the video card specs.

Edited, Apr 19th 2012 9:09am by VG1

Well i think im just going to go with a GTX 560 TI 2GB

Remember there are two different models the 384 core and the 448 core. As far as I know the 448 is 1.28GB, unless someone made one with more memory. The 384 comes in both a 1GB and a few had 2GB. Unless you're planning on running something more than 1080p or 1200p resolution I would suggest the 448 core. Find some articles on the internet comparing the two and you'll see the difference. The 560ti 448 is almost as strong as the 570.


Edit: the breakdown goes like this: 560ti 384 cuda cores, 560Ti 448 448 cuda cores, gtx570 480 cuda cores, gtx580 512 cuda cores. That's really the main difference between the cards. You can think of it kinda as the number of streams of data the card can handle at one time. The memory is just the amount of data it can load up to work with. FFXIV generally doesn't use a ton unless you're resolution is pretty high or you're trying to run a high anti aliasing. I don't think I've ever seen my 580 use more than 1GB playing FFXIV, and that's like 8x CSAA at 1920x1200.

Edited, Apr 19th 2012 6:58pm by VG1

Edited, Apr 19th 2012 7:04pm by VG1

Edited, Apr 19th 2012 7:06pm by VG1

No need to appologize for sounding like a company rep, you are actually correct. The x-60's are entry level high end cards, and I always use EVGA. Also, like another poster stated, EBAY is a great place to get "slightly" used high end cards for half the price. But like they said, get the receipt for the warranty.

GTX 460 has been rated the best value by just about every website for some time. I use it, and it runs FFXIV at 1080 just fine. Not everything maxed out, but well enough. Is it "the best card"? No, but it is the best value. And, it's less than $200, which is under your budget. If you insist on spending $250+, get a 560/70/80.