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Upgrading Graphics Card for GW2, I need advice!
thelastradio
Member UncommonPosts: 13
in Guild Wars 2
I currently have a GT430 and it plays quite nicely with almost max settings, but I'd like it to be a bit smoother. So I'm thinking of getting a GT550 Ti (all I can afford right now). I wanted to know if anyone has this card and is playing GW2, if so, what's your FPS and can you play on Max enjoyably? 
Currently get 25-30 fps with everything on max except shaders which are on medium. Do you think my FPS will go up a bit with the new card?
Thank you in advance
Comments
Cant you find a cheap old 460 somewhere instead? Nvidia cards ending with 50 are mainstream cards, the ones with 60 are for gamers. I know for a fect that a 560 can max out the game on a computer with a normal processor, a 460 should be able to do that as well and if you can find one it should be pretty cheap.
The 550 is not really the card for us who game.
I had a look for a 460 online in my country but can't seem to find anything. Will keep a look out for it. Thanks for the advice re: mainstream and gamer cards!
Still would like to hear from anyone with a 550Ti and how their game plays, 550Ti outperforms my current card quite nicely according to this:
http://www.hwcompare.com/9701/geforce-gt-430-vs-geforce-gtx-550-ti/
If you are upgrading your graphics card, get one which will last you for years to come.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130809
Have you considered a 7770?
Good card and a good value unless you are just a must have nvidia guy
If you're going to upgrade, then at least truly upgrade. I would do no less than a GTX 560 (for the same reasons Loke posted) and try my damnedest to get to a GTX 660.
Hell, I'm saving up to get an EVGA GTX 690 Signature, which is complete overkill for most anything on the market...
Are you trying to stay in a certain price range?
The AMD cards are really nice, but I believe that GW2 is built on Nvidia architecture and therefore an Nvidia card will produce the best performance.
I got
Nvidia geforce 680 gtx
PLaying on ultra settings ffxa etz but i hat to turn the shadows off cos when i get to wvwvw it drops to 20 fps from 50 lol.
My rig is preety nice but the game is really hungry , but looks awsome...
I am the punishment of God...
If you had not committed great sins,
God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you
Genghis Khan
You could look for one of these second hand on eBay and even new egg occasionally has refurbs of this for about $99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130690
Edit. Wrong link now corrected
Still waaaay over budget for me
Thank you very much anyway.
I run a 7870 and have it maxxed out with 60+ fps everywhere. It may be built and run a tad better with nvidia, but not enough to warrent buying that brand card if another is a better value. Especially if on a budget.
Cool I will definitely keep an ATI on the cards. I'm in the market for something in the 550Ti range and power consumption is also an issue, most of the better cards require a better power supply.
Thanks for all the advice, if anybody comes past here and plays with a 550Ti, let me know your experience
Have fun.
My advice is to look at some articles and comparisons for the cards that are within your budget. As far as a 550ti vs 7770, the 7700 wins in every catagory from power consumption to performance.
I am not biased towards either and have used both cards over many years. But my last two cards have been ATI. Price vs performance you cant beat em IMO. Driver support may not be as good as Nvidia I will agree, but barring that ATI has been a better value for me.
Good luck with what ever you choose
Thanks a lot
7770 looks very promising as well!
For most of the world, the only reason to even consider a GeForce GTX 550 Ti is rabid Nvidia fanboydom. A Radeon HD 7750 will get you equivalent performance for cheaper, and while using barely over half as much power. The 7750 will also be reliably able to use the full 1 GB of video memory, while if a GTX 550 Ti goes over 768 MB, it loses a ton of memory bandwidth due to the mismatched channels.
The next step up from the respective vendors is a GeForce GTX 460 or Radeon HD 7770. The analysis comparing them goes about the same as when comparing the GTX 550 Ti to the Radeon HD 7750, with only the exception that the GTX 460 actually made sense to buy at times before the 7770 price dropped several months ago. (For previous generation parts in the respective performance tiers, a Radeon HD 5770/6770 was nearly always cheaper than a GTX 550 Ti, but a Radeon HD 6850 didn't always undercut a GTX 460.)
The Radeon HD 7770 is probably the best bang for the buck in the price range you're looking at. But your information says you're in South Africa, so you have a narrow selection, which can skew prices.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/A GeForce GTX 560 (or Radeon HD 6870) is the next step up after a Radeon HD 7770. But it's likely out of the budget of the original poster. Those are both older cards, too, which means much worse energy efficiency.
The GeForce GTX 660 isn't sold to the general public. Nvidia doesn't have many of them to sell, as is typical for fourth bins of a GPU chip, so it's OEM-only. Your link goes to a GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which is a different card entirely. The GTX 660 Ti is a lot more expensive than a Radeon HD 7870 for only a little more performance. Or at the other end, it's essentially the same price as a Radeon HD 7950 that performs substantially better. A GeForce GTX 660 Ti can hang with AMD's lineup in a price/performance comparison so long as a game isn't very memory intensive, but will choke of a game wants a ton of memory bandwidth or capacity, of which the GTX 660 Ti has neither.
Getting a single GTX 690 is completely stupid. If that's the performance level you want, get two GeForce GTX 670s in SLI. That's nearly equivalent in performance, but a lot cheaper, and avoids the usual problems of dual-GPU cards. Or better yet, wait for GK110 to launch, though it will probably be spring or summer 2013 by the time they show up in GeForce cards in large volumes.
You will be better off with a stripped down 460 and they are less then a 550. $90 vs $120.
What's your cpu?
You might as well believe that the sky is green with purple polka dots. It uses DirectX, which means that it will work with any card that implements DirectX properly. It's highly implausible that ArenaNet didn't check performance on several different AMD and Nvidia cards, as well as Intel graphics, before launching the game. Indeed, ArenaNet's own performance charts showed the game having a slight preference for AMD cards.
What power supply do you have, anyway?
A Radeon HD 7750 has a TDP of 75 W, while a Radeon HD 7770 has a TDP of 100 W and a GeForce GTX 550 Ti has a TDP of 126 W.
Actually, what else do you have in your computer? List your full system specs. I get the impression that you bought some cheap junk OEM machine and are hoping to upgrade it, which isn't always practical.