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Having drifted away from PC gaming due to the lack of games WORTH playing releasing on PC lately I've gone and neglected having updated or even keeping current with current PC happenings.
Now I've always been able to build some nice PC's for under 1 grand but I started looking at PC components and I'm afraid I've gotten kind of lost on the tech.
I'm guessing something in the gtx 200 series cards (I would really rather not use a radeon) and between 4 and 8 gigs of ram, other than that, I'm totally lost.
I'd prefer to stay under a grand though if NECESSARY I don't think I'd mind breaching it.
What I'm asking for is advice, not asking you to build me a PC or anything like that, just throw me some thoughts and maybe what you think I should be aiming for, something that is going to last me a few years or that will be upgradeable to last me a few years would be GREAT. Ideally a base benchmark for this system would be this game as this is the primary indication that it was time to upgrade.
thanks in advance for any advice given, I truly appreciate it.
Comments
You can find the system requirements for FFXIV here http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/#/about/game_info scroll down to the bottom. You could probably run it with less then that even but if you want it to look good a gefroce gtx 200 should be fine .. and 4 gigs should be enough. Guess all you really need now is a decent processor.
I have 2.4 quad core, geforce 8800 ultra, and 4 gigs of ram. My graphics cards below the system requirements but I still got around a 2000 on the benchmark with no noticable lag or problems of any kind. I may get a better graphics card just to update and have it look better but I think SE is just playing safe with their requirements...
Read this thread, covering the PC I just built/upgraded for FFXIV...its covers lots of things, and has links to Newegg and TigerDirect you can use as reference points in picking out parts.
O I love newegg 2, never had problems. Also they are so close that everything ships overnight even when I select 3-5 buisness days
If you know how to overclock, the i7 920 is a no-brainer and I personally love the 5850 as it overclocks past a 5870 with little effort.
I got a dual-core 2.4GHz processor in my laptop with 3 gigs of ram and a geforce 8600M GS. I'm going to wait for my friend to get it and install it on my laptop and see how it goes. If it doesn't run, then I don't play XIV.
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"Chemistry: 'We do stuff in lab that would be a felony in your garage.'"
The most awesomest after school special T-shirt:
Front: UNO Chemistry Club
Back: /\OH --> Bad Decisions
Check out the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor (6 cores). Rated just under the i960 in performance but for 300$ less.
Great bang for your buck.
GPU wise, I'd stay away from the gtx 465 (piss poor power consumption, runs extremely hot, loses out to the 285 in many respects). Price/performance sweet spot in that end of the NVIDIA spectrum is the GTX 470. I myself went for the 5850 for the lower wattages and temperatures (price was a mere 20$ less).
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
thanks for all of the advice.
Now just out of curiosity, would it be possible to build a decent to good system with closer to 600, a lot of these seem to be recommending 500+ dollar graphics cards and 300 dollar processors.... kinda gonna blow 1000 dollars right out of the water with that.
You can grab the i7 920 for $200 at Microcenter if you have one nearby. The 5850 you can shop around and generally find a deal sometimes between $200-250 with a little bit of luck.
Is there anything in your current rig that you could tranfer to the new one to reduce costs? Hard drive, possibly ram?
If you're not sure about the exact specs, just let me know how old the PC is. I'm ordering parts as we speak so I'd be glad to propose a build that suits you.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
PM'ing you now
That is the processor I have and I didn't perform that great in benchmark compared to other people who has the same GFX card as I (480 GTX).
I seems like the benchmark handles the 6 cores badly or not at all. That doesn't mean that the game have the same problem but if you judge it by the benchmark you should go for a Intel processor.
I only got 4346 on low and around 3900 on high. I do however have a H50 water cooling system for the processor so I will probably clock it up when I get the actual game but for OP I advice to look on the thread with about the benchmark program and see what got best score.
It is a pretty nice processor and I have gotten very high score on many other benchmarks but it seems like FF runs better on Intel than many other games. Same seems to be with Nvidia Vs ATI, Nvidia generally gets higher score.
Of course could this just be the test but if this is the game you build the computer for I would recommend you to go by those anyways, better safe than sorry.
Take the benchmark with a grain of salt, they are still optimizing it.
I built my system for $1000 three years ago and scored a 4500ish on low and 4000 on high. I've seen people with better systems getting way lower scores. It just isn't optomized completely yet. You should be able to build a rig that gets a very high score for 700-900$, you could probably build my system for 600-700 now. (I built it from nothing, meaning I bought case/speakers/mouse/keyboard/monitor/etc)
My advice is....
Rember Age of Conan!
Never ever ever dump hundreds into your PC until one month or more after the game releases, no matter how great the game looks and seems.
I think people are seeing this as a wake up call versus a sole reason to upgrade. There are MANY gorgeous games out there that warrant a PC overhaul.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7