Looking to purchase new computer and a graphics card.

[Apollo]

First timer on these forums, so hi everyone.

I am currently looking to purchase a new computer (old one is from 2001) and a video card in order to play FFXI.

In another thread I read I dont need to go over a 64 megabit video card because FFXI doesnt require it. Is this true?

I read that someone else is looking for a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX. Is this too much? How would this be a benefit over something similar but only has 64 MB ram?

If money is not a tremendous factor about how much video ram do I need to get above average quality performance from a computer that will probably have around 3-4 ghz speed and 100 gb of ram memory.

Any help is greatly appreciated THANK YOU!!

[tonicfly]

Re: Looking to purchase new computer and a graphics card.

i would go with a video card that has 256mb instead of the 64mb. the difference is that the 64mb would lag more within the game than the 256mb and the graphics would be quite a bit better with the 256mb.

[Sadeira]

Re: Looking to purchase new computer and a graphics card.

I believe that ATI cards work much better than nVidia cards for ffxi. The best examples come with the difference between the two in transparencies. If you choose a nVidia card, then you'll notice that summon graphics and invisibility graphics will appear screwed up.

At least that's what I noticed in my PC when i used 2 or 3 ATI cards compared with 2 nVidia cards. If anyone has any opinions on this please let me know.

If you're feeling tight with money, go with 128 megs of ram on your video card. But seeing as how you're trying to get a system with a clock speed of 3-4 ghz I don't see why you want to get a comparatively weaker video card. Your video card will only bottleneck your system and cause whatever game you play to slow down.

(By the way, I do believe that 100 gigs of RAM is quite impossible for the current consumer market.)

[Apollo]

Re: Looking to purchase new computer and a graphics card.

Thank you for the responses.


About the 100 g of ram, oops!! I meant hard disk space. 80-100 g of memory.

[neighbortaru]

Re: Looking to purchase new computer and a graphics card.

FFXI will tax your CPU and RAM more so than the video card. That being said, check this out for some benchmarks of the mid-range cards: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...0-ddr2_19.html (bottom of page).
high/mid-range:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...6800gs_21.html

The local memory on the video card won't make much of a difference in FFXI. For other games, however, they might. Read the rest of the pages of the benchmarks so you can get an idea of how all the cards perform in other games. Then get what you can afford.

[bside]

Re: Looking to purchase new computer and a graphics card.

as far as playing ffxi is concerned, having 64 or 256 won't really matter much, as w/ most other directx8-generation games. it's simply because it never send any more than 64MB of data to the vid card. what matters more here is the speed of VRAM (in which u really don't have a choice among the vid cards of the same GPU), rather than the capacity of. while there still is a slight difference, 128 should be more than enough for this particular game. but u never find a 7800 GTX card w/ 128MB of VRAM, so u should decide what kind of GPU first, and then the VRAM capacity if there's a choice. (u'll hardly find ones w/ 64MB these days, so 128 is kinda like the starting point tho.)

as to what kind of vid cards, 7800 GTX is obviously top of the line today, so it's way more than what ffxi requires. (remember, ffxi is 3 yrs old.) but the better the video card, the better quality u'll get, so it's really a matter of ur needs.

however, ffxi's performance heavily relies on CPU, unlike some other games that need more of the GPU power, and the overall performance gets limited by it. for instance, if u have 7800 GTX but the CPU is something like Athlon 64 3000+, then u'll be disappointed at the benchmark score. likewise, having top of the line CPU like Athlon FX-57 and mid-range GPU like 6600GT won't leave good scores, either. combination of both as well as other components must be nicely balanced to get the most out of ur money. and the bottom line is, it's really a matter of at what point u deem it to be "enough," and of course ur budget must be taken into consideration.


fyi, my system's basic config is;

Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB RAM, ASUS A8N-SLI, ATI X700 PRO 128MB

and it's running ffxi just fine as far as i'm concerned. i play most of the games on PS2, and ffxi is pretty much the only pc game that i play on a regular basis. so i didn't feel like spending much on this, and it's just "good enough" for me. and u need to know what ur "enough" is.


EDIT: ultimately, the question is whether u need Porsche 911, Lexus GS, or Toyota Camry for ur everyday driving. but don't go w/ something like Ford Ka as u'll need some power at least. sry if this doesn't make sense lol

[Apollo]

Re: Looking to purchase new computer and a graphics card.

Thank you for the visuals and the lengthy responses.

I am indebted to you both.

This is really a great website.

I see myself spending a lot of time on here.

See you in Vana'diel soon!!