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City of Heroes: Positron's Ultra Mode Shopping Guide
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
If you're all jazzed for the upcoming "Ultra Mode" graphical upgrade that's set to hit live servers with the release of Issue 17 sometime in the near future, you're probably wondering if your hardware is up to snuff or looking to upgrade. To help you figure out what you'll need City of Heroes Senior Design Lead Matt "Positron" Miller has put together a short video card shopping guide to make shopping for a new card a relatively simple task.
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If you are looking to spend under US$100, then an NVidia 9800 GT is your best bet. For AMD (ATI/Radeon), we don’t have enough of these cards at this price point to get you good data. This would be the minimum card for enabling all the features, only at reduced quality settings.
If you are looking to spend between $100 and $200, the Radeon HD 4890 and GeForce GTX 260 will do you well. We don’t have numbers from the Radeon 57xx series yet to verify if that is better or worse though. This would end up somewhere in the middle of Ultra-mode quality.
Finally if you are going to spend over $200, the GeForce GTX 285 is an excellent choice. We don’t have numbers from the Radeon 58xx series yet. This would be able to run Ultra-mode with the quality maxed out (except we have no data on Anti-aliasing, so caveat emptor when it comes to that specific feature).
Note: This is based on our current internal testing and might change by the time Going Rogue is released. Also, a video card is not the ONLY thing you should take into consideration. Your PC having a decent processor and memory will also enhance your performance. As we continue to test and get more information available we will update you. I hope this helps, and happy holidays!
UPDATE 2-10-2010: Spoke with our engineer today, and he said we were seeing excellent performance from the Radeon 5770 card, which is a mid-range card. We have not tested the 5870, but expect the performance on that card to be one of the fastest for Ultra mode. Also noteworthy is that Ultra Mode does not currently support SLI configured cards. We’re working with NVidia and ATI about this, but you all can speed up the process by contacting NVidia and ATI about updating things on their end to get it to work.
Pretty solid advice, however it is pretty disappointing to hear that neither Crossfire or SLi are supported in Ultra Mode.
View the original announcement here.
[Thanks Xondar123 and my good friend Luanne for the tip!]
Comments
I find some of their pricing and suggestions are off from that post. I prefer Tom's info: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2569.html
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I don't see anything spectacular enough in that side by side comparison to prompt me to go out and spend $100 to $400 on a new graphics card. Improved water reflection and some shadows doesn't really equate to Ultra mode in my book.
Not to be a negative Nancy or anything. ;p
Yeah I kinda expected more back when I first heard of "Ultra Mode" The fact that they didnt really do much, if anything, for the character model and the slightly upgraded look does not say "ultra" to me.
Just another gimmick if you ask me. I also think they seem to be stuck on Nvidia cards, which don't hold a candle to the ATI ones at the moment. Certainly does not say much for their development team.
Adding new vidio capabilities to a game does not equate to huge improvements in old artwork. What it does mean is the ability to generate better artwork in future content.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
I think they need a better side by side comparison pic. Lets see character and its detail to its costume.
The footage on YouTube shows the effects off better, and explains how elaborate the new shadow effects are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItM3OLqb5w
Skip forward about 14 and a half minutes, and remember to set the definition to 720p.
To me, the reflections look like they'll be the coolest thing. Perhaps we'll finally see our characters reflecting back when we look at the floor in City Hall. (Right now, the floor shows a reflection of the walls and ceiling, but the characters are missing, which is just creepy.)
Wow Pinebaron,
Thats much better vids. I can see how the improvements will matter. The shadowing and reflections are just so good.