Picking Out A New GFX

marco_polo

MarkJD wrote: »

Well there are some ongoing issues with some of the ATI HD series, the 5750 has also been tagged as one with the same problem im experiencing. I guess ill wait to see how thats resolved and see how it runs!

That packs a similar punch as the HD4850 give or take so I would wait and see how that pans out.

swirlser

>FF14 thread here< there you go (not that there is much happening there ;p)

No need to bet money, without question its more cpu dependant at the low res setting OP did ask to ignore the res tho and the recommendation of the 5850 still stands if you intend on playing at 1080p or greater (which it seems you are going 1080p). I did say the cpu will then be holding you back, you wont know until the game is actually out on how its going to run, but with ur current rig its going to be slow and limited to low settings so an upgrade is really on the cards for you anyway. The problem with Alpha was it wasnt well optimized and even as that improves moving towards launch, the game is getting a polishing with added effects so the weaker entry lvl machines are going to show more signs of struggling.

But since you have been a long time FFXI player, you know you will be playing FFXIV for a long time, money well spent upgrading imo XD At the very least you will want the 5850 along with whatever the upper end of quad core your mobo supports.

marco_polo

swirlser wrote: »

>FF14 thread here< there you go (not that there is much happening there ;p)

No need to bet money, without question its more cpu dependant at the low res setting OP did ask to ignore the res tho and the recommendation of the 5850 still stands if you intend on playing at 1080p or greater (which it seems you are going 1080p). I did say the cpu will then be holding you back, you wont know until the game is actually out on how its going to run, but with ur current rig its going to be slow and limited to low settings so an upgrade is really on the cards for you anyway. The problem with Alpha was it wasnt well optimized and even as that improves moving towards launch, the game is getting a polishing with added effects so the weaker entry lvl machines are going to show more signs of struggling.

But since you have been a long time FFXI player, you know you will be playing FFXIV for a long time, money well spent upgrading imo XD At the very least you will want the 5850 along with whatever the upper end of quad core your mobo supports.

I would reckon it way well be the CPU now. I don't disagree with any of that, all sound advice if the OP wants to step up to 1080p gaming, just pointing the cheaper short term alternative .

MarkJD

So granted i dont want to spend €1000 + at present to upgrade to a new machine but understanding that it is something i will have to do in the future, for the short term by upgrading to a 5850 and a new monitor should i be able to run the game at 1080 even on medium settings or will the CPU still hold me way back?

Someone mentioned the CPU will probably bottleneck with my CPU does that mean it will hamper the performance of the GPU and ill be back to square one?

Should i be upgrading say in 6 months time is the 5850 a good buying option if i plan to keep that as my main GFX card in the new system?

Would OC'ing the CPU be a smart move should i buy the 5850?

swirlser

I dont want to dampen your spirits here, but theres a chance DX11 will be added down the line and even the 5850 may start to struggle (thats only if you go that route, if DX11 is added at all - and on a side note, thats when nV will probably jump past ATI, at least with the current generation). Thats down the line tho and nothing in the PC world lasts forever!

Without a doubt the gpu upgrade will boost the performance at the higher res's, and without a doubt the cpu will be holding you back at that point - I think its down to guestimating what you can hope to achieve then with your current cpu, but you will likely want to upgrade to a quad. OCing your current will help, but by how much.....

MarkJD

How soon would DX11 be introduced to games though, i dont see that happening for at least 2 years and even then will there be a game i want to play?

I understand what your saying but for the next 2/3 years do you think the 5850 is a good stadup buy at the moment? Is it one of the best ATI cards you can get at present?

Ye your right it is alot of guestimating at the moment, shame i dont have anything more concrete to work on

Ill play it by year for now though.

marco_polo

I don't believe that the GPU could be the problem right now so I doubt that a graphics upgrade would help at the moment. I am not familiar with the execution profile of the game so I cannot say for sure, but I would bet that either poorly optimized, or heavily multithreaded code is CPU hogging. In fact you could maybe try some overclocking and see if that helps, if it has a posuitive impact then we have an immediate answer.

Perhaps you could monitor CPU and GPU usage while playing for a few minutes and post up the results might give an insight into what is going on.

Also probably the best time for GPU buying at the moment anyway as we may be on the verge of some real competition again in the GPU market over the next few months. :pac:

swirlser

Actually here is a really nice spreadsheet with many cpu/gpu combos listed, about half way down theres a few with your graphics card, its very clear the difference a higher core and clocked cpu makes on the low res setting. Theres also someone with 2 x 4830 (xfire) with a lesser cpu than yours achieving a reasonable 2537 high res score.

swirlser

MarkJD wrote: »

How soon would DX11

Now we're really flying into the land of speculation ;p I think my guess would be as good as someone who never heard of FF tbh

I just mentioned it as I remember reading an interview with Hiromichi Tanaka that he would like to see it being added at some point. Which suits me, I cant wait for FFXIV and they bigger and shinier they wanna make it, im onboard!

#014917

Just got an e-mail from Game saying the date for the CE has been changed back to the 22nd if anyone was wondering!

marco_polo

swirlser wrote: »

Actually here is a really nice spreadsheet with many cpu/gpu combos listed, about half way down theres a few with your graphics card, its very clear the difference a higher core and clocked cpu makes on the low res setting. Theres also someone with 2 x 4830 (xfire) with a lesser cpu than yours achieving a reasonable 2537 high res score.

Interesting list does suggest that the immediate problem is not the HD4850 and that it has more to give if paired with a better CPU. The AMD 720 BE X3 posts a nice score in combination with the 4850, spanking both an i7 860 and Q6600 paired with the same card.

Multithread failboat for FF14. :P

MarkJD

So you reckon i should upgrade the CPU before the GPU now?

Man my head hurts with all this stuff haha

swirlser

What I take from that spreadsheet is that with your 4850, upgrading your cpu will have a huge impact on low res, while the impact on high res is very small. As you can imagine, there arent too many people who have a nice amount of gpu power paired with a low end cpu. The one example I mentioned before is the 2 x 4830 (more gpu power than you have currently) and the E4300@3.0 (less cpu power than you have currently), with a reasonable result of 2.5k on high res.

MarkJD wrote: »

Its an old one by todays standards. 19" Widescreen 1440 x 900 2ms. Ill probably pick up a new one should i need it though so dont hold back on suggestions based on monitor.

Im only going based on this ^ If you want the bigger boost at 1080p, the gpu here will give that to you.

/pats your hurting head. (/taru panic for good measure)

If you want to enjoy this game, an upgrade is on the cards. A new monitor, cpu and gpu is whats needed. If you dont plan on getting a new monitor and stick with ur current res, a cpu upgrade will help you more. If your buying a new monitor (upping the res), and can only upgrade one at time, the gpu should be the first.

EDIT:
Id happily give a big thumbs up to getting to 1080p, monitors are so cheap now and it'll enhance your PC experience period
Best to decide first on this, as it ultimately dictates what your priorities are in terms of PC upgrading.

swirlser

#014917 wrote: »

Just got an e-mail from Game saying the date for the CE has been changed back to the 22nd if anyone was wondering!

Whoops, missed that, yes I am interested Thank you kindly!

I bet it was actually something silly like getting the CE and SE blurred! They went to check it out and saw the official release date was the 30th and went with that, then further investigation revealed the separate dates (Well - its funny and believable....)

marco_polo

Downloaded the benchmark and ran it out of curiosity. Must say first off that it looks great. Have a AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE @3.4 GHz stock and a HD 4870.

A bit more puzzled by the spreadsheet scores now though having ran it a few times, as it appears to be heavily multithread threaded (20+ according to resource manager) and uses all four CPu cores fairly evenly, so not sure why the higher clocked duals do so well.

It also appears to be more GPU intensive than I was giving it credit for as logging activity using GPU-z it kept my GPU core at almost 100% for most of the way through (even during the low quality 720p run :eek:).

Scores were 2223 for the high quality run, (which looking at the spreadsheet appears to be just about the upper limit for the HD4870) and 3824 for the lower quality run.

Set my CPU to a few different clock speeds and ran the HQ benchmark a few times, a little over 2.0 GHz appears to be the point at which my GPU becomes the bottleneck.

GHz - HQ Score
1.0 - 1559
1.6 - 1955
2.0 - 2112
2.6 - 2200
3.4 - 2223
3.8 - 2232

In conclusion now I am even less sure what the OP should do.

MarkJD

Great post!

Thanks for those details! I think to begin with at least ill definately wait until this bug or issue is resolved with certain ATI HD series cards then make a decision.

I think ill definately start with a new monitor and video card. Increase the clock speed of my CPU and take it from there.

I guess ill be happy to run the game on Medium settings once it runs smooth.

When you say it bottlenecks should that happen does that term mean its causing damage or its just at its peak?

Should i invest in the 5850 series card for the future and use that for the time being and it peaks at a certain point will it just mean i wont see any further performance until CPU is upgraded or using it at those settings could cause damage to the card?

marco_polo

MarkJD wrote: »

Great post!

Thanks for those details! I think to begin with at least ill definately wait until this bug or issue is resolved with certain ATI HD series cards then make a decision.

I think ill definately start with a new monitor and video card. Increase the clock speed of my CPU and take it from there.

I guess ill be happy to run the game on Medium settings once it runs smooth.

When you say it bottlenecks should that happen does that term mean its causing damage or its just at its peak?

Should i invest in the 5850 series card for the future and use that for the time being and it peaks at a certain point will it just mean i wont see any further performance until CPU is upgraded or using it at those settings could cause damage to the card?

Nah it is just the point around which my GPU is hitting 100% load and any further increases in CPU speed do nothing to improve performance as the card is maxed out.

If you bought a 5850 the opposite would likely be the case as your CPU would almost certainly be limiting it (Maybe this this is even already happening).


It might be a useful excercise for you to download The FFVIX benchmark and GPU-Z yourself to see what kind of load you are getting on the GPU and your benchmak scores. (Confession nearly as much for my own curiosity at this stage )

1) Simply run GPU-z, open the sensors tab
2 tick the boxes labeled 'Log to file' (will prompt for file name)
and 'Contimue refreshing this screen while GPPU-Z is in the back ground'
3) Run the FF14 Benchmark.
4) Uncheck the boxes and open the file in a text editor.
5) Look in the log file there will be an entry of the GPU usage at an intervals of one second. (As well as tempratures).

Sobanek

I'd suggest either a NVIDIA GTX260 or an ATI HD5770. Both are very similar in performance.