AngelCityOutlaw Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 So I'm getting a new PC soon here, I want to use it for music and I figure why not throw in a good graphics card to play games on PC too? My problem is this. How in the hell do I know if whatever video card I buy will actually run games I want to play? Whenever you look at system requirements on steam it's like "GeForce X9900 or Radeon 245000" or something. Like, damn...I don't speak nerd; put this shit in English. Worse yet, it's like two games that are equally new will list entirely different video cards. But I KNOW for a fact that you don't need those specific cards to run the games; you need one that's just as good, right? Basically, how do I know if my graphics card will run a particular video game? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoeTaKa Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 If you've got a certain budget to spend on the card then check out wherever you're planning to purchase one and pick a few that fit your price range. Then you can compare those with a graphics card comparison site and see which one offers the best results. Or you can just simply youtube the card you're looking at with a game you're planning to get for example 'Nvidia GTX 650 Tomb Raider'. It's not a great way to go about it but you can see how well it's working. Obviously the CPU and RAM will be a factor too. Some games might recommend an Nvidia card but it isn't mandatory though. Another easy thing you can do is google something like "next gen pc builds" and you'll probably see some good builds for the price of a next gen console that will offer some recommendations on what graphics card to buy. Those will offer the value and performance to play the newest releases well enough. Those are just some things I used to do so I don't want to give you more complicated answers if they might be confusing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nOkbient Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 Not entirely sure if I can offer the best advice on this. I use a laptop for all my music and gaming. It's a pretty hefty thing though, and came with a built in Nvidia card. I know for a fact it's not the best one they offer, but I am perfectly capable of playing games on the best quality, even with overhauled graphical mods in some cases. That being said, unless you have a fetish for insanely high resolution on the biggest games, I'd say get something that's DECENT but not too cheap and not too expensive. Basically any graphics card now will work with modern games. Older games are different, and won always work with new ones though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperion5182 Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 Either primary maker of the card is a competent choice The question becomes the kind of FPS you want. If you're looking for 60+ you'll need a top end card. If you're looking for 40-60 you can work with a middle range card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sixto Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 i reeeeally recommend this card if it's within your budget. you'll easily be getting performance that is greater than an xbox one or a ps4. plus, graphics cards these days are so friggin HUGE that you have to get bigger cases to fit them in, but this one is so tiny and powerful. it's more powerful than my current card and costs about $200 less than i paid for mine. gonna get a couple of these myself to run in sli. check out these benchmarks. it was able to run assassin's creed 3 at 1080p with the highest settings at an average 60fps, and crysis 3 at highest settings (which looks friggin amazing) at an average 43 fps (which is still plenty better than last gen's 30 fps consoles). you should def look into it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazygecko Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 The naming conventions for GPUs are kind of stupid, what with how often they keep "reseting" them. But old ones are phased out from retailers pretty quickly. You should always be able to run current games decently with any card from the last 4-5 years, without having to worry about them being unplayable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoeTaKa Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 (edited) i reeeeally recommend this card if it's within your budget. you'll easily be getting performance that is greater than an xbox one or a ps4. plus, graphics cards these days are so friggin HUGE that you have to get bigger cases to fit them in, but this one is so tiny and powerful. it's more powerful than my current card and costs about $200 less than i paid for mine. gonna get a couple of these myself to run in sli. check out these benchmarks. it was able to run assassin's creed 3 at 1080p with the highest settings at an average 60fps, and crysis 3 at highest settings (which looks friggin amazing) at an average 43 fps (which is still plenty better than last gen's 30 fps consoles). you should def look into it This card is a good price for what you get. However if you're not fully interested in playing the latest AAA games I think you could get a cheaper card. But if you do not plan to upgrade for a long time you should always tell yourself to get the next best card if it's about another $30 because it's always worth it. Playing games at 60fps is alllways worth it. Assassin's Creed 3 wasn't a great port to PC but with a decent card it did look really nice. Also Crysis 3 was really pretty to look at, shame it wasn't so great to play. I do miss the original Crysis. edit - I'm currently using a GeForce GTX 650 2GB card and I wish I spent the little extra to get the Ti version. Last year I bought it for about £90 which is around $140. It's currently $130 on newegg and I played Assassin's Creed 3 between 40-60fps at 900p which looked good but most other games I've tested ran better (since AC3 isn't a terrific port and neither is AC4). It's going to struggle with newer games now and I will probably need to upgrade before next Christmas. Edited November 27, 2013 by RoeTaKa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelCityOutlaw Posted November 28, 2013 Author Share Posted November 28, 2013 Okay so Best Buy is having a pretty good Black Friday sale. For 449, they have an Asus AMD Quad-Core, 12 gigs of ram, 1tb of disk space, USB 3, and an AMD Radeon HD 8670D Graphics card. The graphics card is not integrated, so that means I could swap it out later right? Is that card any good? Is this a good buy? I'm thinking even if all the components aren't totally killer right out of the box I can always upgrade it later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitty Posted November 28, 2013 Share Posted November 28, 2013 The 8670D isn't a dedicated card and is meh compared to high end cards or even mid-range cards. This means you can't remove it, but that doesn't mean you can't place in another card and ignore the 8670D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelCityOutlaw Posted November 28, 2013 Author Share Posted November 28, 2013 The 8670D isn't a dedicated card and is meh compared to high end cards or even mid-range cards. This means you can't remove it, but that doesn't mean you can't place in another card and ignore the 8670D. I'm kind of confused as to why that means I can't swap it out if you say it isn't dedicated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sixto Posted November 28, 2013 Share Posted November 28, 2013 that means it's integrated into the motherboard. you can just install your own (dedicated) and ignore the integrated one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelCityOutlaw Posted November 29, 2013 Author Share Posted November 29, 2013 that means it's integrated into the motherboard. you can just install your own (dedicated) and ignore the integrated one Oh okay, that's good. Thanks a lot everyone! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argle Posted November 29, 2013 Share Posted November 29, 2013 I've had my current one for a few years, it plays new games fine. I think we've reached a point of limited returns in the last few years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexstyle Posted November 29, 2013 Share Posted November 29, 2013 Not that this chart is the be-all, end-all of graphics card recommendations, but Tom's Hardware is generally pretty solid when it comes to reviews 'n such. November 2013 Graphics Card Buying Guide It's a great place to start, at least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelCityOutlaw Posted November 30, 2013 Author Share Posted November 30, 2013 So I did get that computer. So far it's great! The graphics seems to run the games I have on Steam so that's good. I'll get a dedicated card later. and thanks for posting that chart, Flex! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitty Posted November 30, 2013 Share Posted November 30, 2013 So I did get that computer. So far it's great! The graphics seems to run the games I have on Steam so that's good. I'll get a dedicated card later.and thanks for posting that chart, Flex! Glad you were able to get in on a good deal! I always buy mid-range cards to save a bit of cash because the graphics card is the easiest component to install and/or upgrade. I see a lot of people these days skimping on the processor and shelling out $400+ for a graphics card. Games need a decent/up-to-date processor to run well too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelCityOutlaw Posted November 30, 2013 Author Share Posted November 30, 2013 Glad you were able to get in on a good deal! I always buy mid-range cards to save a bit of cash because the graphics card is the easiest component to install and/or upgrade. I see a lot of people these days skimping on the processor and shelling out $400+ for a graphics card. Games need a decent/up-to-date processor to run well too. Yeah, I recently tried out Ridge Racer: Unbounded (badass game!) on a friend's laptop and the built-in graphics card was enough, but the processor was slower I'm guessing since there were frame-rate slowdowns here and there. Runs smooth as a Brazilian wax on this new computer though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brushfire Posted November 30, 2013 Share Posted November 30, 2013 As an owner of a 780, I cannot go back to anything else. This card eats anything I throw at it. Skyrim at 126 FPS. Batman Arkham Origins at 110 FPS. FF14 at 96 FPS. L4D2 at 268 FPS. This card destroys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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