What Budget to Mid-Range Card?

TJM

Hi folks.

Having bought Battlefield Bad Company 2 I'd now like to get my hands on a card that will allow me to run it at 1680x1050 with as much eye candy as possible turned on - ideally sub €100 but up to say €150 if needs be.

Computer is an aging ALDI special - Quad Core Q6600 @ 2.4GHz, 3GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 9500GS w/ 512MB, Win7 Home Premium.

I don't know what the power supply is rated to, and don't fancy crawling under the desk and opening it up to find out unless I have to but the model is a Medion P34592 (MD 8393) if it helps.

Any suggestions?

marco_polo

By all accounts the game appears to be very CPU and GPU hungry. The reccomended specs are a HD4870 / GTX 260. However these are both DirectX 10 cards and the game supports DirectX 11 and by all accounts looks fantastic in this mode. So I would go with the DX11 HD5770, it is roughly on a par with these two also a good bit more power friendly than the other two. However it still requires a fairly respectable PSU, so to be on the safe side you need to crawl under that desk .

Note these are only BETA benchmarks so the numbers should improve in the final version of the game. Also graphics card vendors will target improved performance as well with their newer drivers.

Jonny7

The good news is that with a new graphics card you can get that game to run quite well on high settings (not ultra high though)

Take the plunge, open up your PC and look for a sticker on the power supply
Snap a photo of it or if you are feeling lazy just write down the numbers (we are looking for the wattage, e.g. 350 watt and some more details like what amps the 12v puts out, should be written there somewhere)

Also, just check how much space there is for a graphics card, could you fit a dual slot card (takes up twice the width of your current card)

If so, you can go with an ATI 5750 or better yet an ATI 5770, they draw quite low power and could work in your PC. Great cards.

Solitaire

marco, do you think a HD5770 has a hope in hell of running BFBC2 in DX11?!

Most games have their FPS halved when in DX11 mode (same issue with DX9>DX10 back in the day) and if we know anything about BFBC2 its that its a horribly optimised port. GTA4 finally has some serious competition over on the FailBoat!! :eek:

marco_polo

Solitaire wrote: »

marco, do you think a HD5770 has a hope in hell of running BFBC2 in DX11?!

Most games have their FPS halved when in DX11 mode (same issue with DX9>DX10 back in the day) and if we know anything about BFBC2 its that its a horribly optimised port. GTA4 finally has some serious competition over on the FailBoat!! :eek:

Err I did actually . I didn't realise the DX11 hit was that bad, I figured that it would be playable at least with a bit of settings fiddling. Still it is about as good as the OP can do on the budget, presuming the PSU is up to scratch

It does look to be a horrendous port that is for sure.

Solitaire

Yeah, caught me by surprise. Thought GTA4 would remain captain of the FailBoat for a good while longer :P

The whole DX11-performance-hit thing was a shame, but its to be expected really; we had the same going from DX9 to DX10. The 8600GTS was a reasonable DX9 card if you needed the upgrade and didn't have a spare €300-400 for a 8800GTS, it was DX10 where it tanked

TJM

Thanks for all the advice - will open the case once I get a chance. One final question - assuming I have the power spare, should I get the 512mb or 1gb version of the HD5770?

cherryghost

i dunno where you got those benchmarks from, but i got that resolution with my gtx295 sli disabled, and FPS ranges from 60 - 80 :rolleyes:

Then again, its not the Beta I'm playing anymore

marco_polo

cherryghost wrote: »

i dunno where you got those benchmarks from, but i got that resolution with my gtx295 sli disabled, and FPS ranges from 60 - 80 :rolleyes:

Then again, its not the Beta I'm playing anymore

It is from some russian site, I found it on the nV forums, cannot find anything for the full version. I did think that they seemed seem alarmingly low, but given the poor optimization of the release version is not inconceivable that the Demo was that bad.

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgamegpu.ru%2FAction-%2F-FPS-%2F-TPS%2Fbattlefield-bad-company-2-beta-gpu.html&sl=ru&tl=en

Is it a decent game to play once you get it going?

TJM wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice - will open the case once I get a chance. One final question - assuming I have the power spare, should I get the 512mb or 1gb version of the HD5770?

If you plan on staying at 1680 X 1050 for the foreseeable future then you will not see any extra performance gain with the 1GB version. Unless there is a chance you will be moving up to 1900 X 1200 or 1080p resolutions during the lifetime of the card then I would just get the 512Mb.

cherryghost

yep, runs great, online is fantastic once you get logged in :pac:

i love it

Effluo

The gpu market is so rubbish right now

Dublin_Gunner

Just to update with benchmarks for the full game...

http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page4.html


Even a cheap-ass GPS250 should be able to run it 16x10 at medium qualty with AA.

But 5770 would be the sweetspot for that sort of price range, or you can pick up GTX260 for around €160 new these days