Graphics cards, is this the fastest and most cost effective way to upgrade so you can play the latest games?
Maybe it is.
I cannot count how many times we, as support team members in the On-Line game industry, hear clients complain about lag in game and why aren’t we doing anything about it. I guarantee you that, more often than not, it will be a person who is trying to run the latest and greatest game on a subpar machine and with all graphics turned up to the max. So many times I’ve gone over this with people and tried to get them to set their visual options to something more reasonable for what their machines can handle, if it’s possible at all, and so many times I’ve been told that if they cannot play the game on full then it’s the fault of the game and not their over inflated view of the hardware they have.
Most games will run smoother if your graphics card is up to the challenge. This Radeon Sapphire Toxic HD6870 did the trick here for me. It’s got 1Gig of GDDR5 SDRAM and comparing prices around here we could find it for anywhere from £137 - £270.
It looks, and is, pretty huge so make sure there’s room in your case for something this large. It will take up space not only for the card itself but the size of the cooler on it. Be prepared!
Now granted my system isn’t that old but most of us know that as soon as you’ve bought something of this type, most tech and computer hardware, it is out of date the moment it leaves the shop. I have a decent home built machine that my partner put together, after much research.
My system stats:
- Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) ll X4 955 processor 3.20GHz
- Installed memory (RAM): 4.00 GB DDR3
- System Type: 64-bit Operating System
Not bad but even when I was just starting to play Rift beta I noticed I had to keep the graphics to a minimum. That on a system only built a few months before the beta went out. The graphics card I had then was no slouch, but it wasn’t quite up to the intense graphics of that game, plain and simple.
Now, with the Radeon, I can max out the graphics on all the MMOs I have here to test these on and it won’t even cough, let alone puke entirely. Smooth as a....
FPS:
EQ2, okay one of the older games I have but not the oldest (Anarchy Online is the oldest MMO I have here still). NO matter where I go in any area, guild hall, raid, and so on. On a normal day though I’m getting very good numbers, usually about 60 – 70fps with all graphics maxed, and then some.
The afore mentioned Rift gets a bit less but my machine is still not gagging at all on the amount of graphics that gets thrown at this card. With a latency of 62ms I am getting 32- 44FPS running in fullscreen/windowed/fullscreen windowed mode, didn’t seem to matter which, and in a crowded area right now. May not sound like much but with my old card I couldn’t move in a crowded area, I was constantly getting this rubberband sort of effect (gamers know what that means), and I’d not be able to function at all in a raid or rift battle at times. This is a Massive improvement.
Plus on maxed out graphics the games look better, all the better when the machine can handle it too. It means a lot less frustration this way so is well worth it.
And it doesn’t cost anywhere near as much as replacing the whole machine, obviously.
This Radeon Sapphire HD6870 made the games I’ve got look so much better I figured I’d share a few screen shots.
Indoors and out the shots looked great so if you’re looking for a new video card to try to boost the graphics performance of your computer
, or you just like the eye candy, we’d recommend Buying this one.
The techie side:
Output:
1 x Dual-Link DVI
1 x HDMI 1.4a
2 x Mini-DisplayPort
1 x Single-Link DVI-D
DisplayPort 1.2
GPU:
970 MHz Core Clock
40 nm Chip
1120 x Stream Processors
Memory:
1024 MB Size
256 -bit GDDR5
4600 MHz Effective
Software:
Driver CD
SAPPHIRE TriXX Utility
1 x Dirt®3 Coupon
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