Amanathia's EQ2 Video Card Guide (ATI or NVIDIA? What model to buy?) [Archive]

Amanathia

05-08-2010, 09:39 PM

This guide assumes you have:1. A desire to buy a current generation (DirectX 11 compatible) video card. However, you also have enough of teh smartz to realize that you'll still get unacceptable performance if you turn CPU shadows on, enable 30 light sources, and force Anti-Aliasing on to a high level. Even on the best hardware money can buy.2. Windows 7.3. At least 2gb of ram.4. An AMD Phenom or Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better.**If you have a Pentium 4 based system please take a few minutes to back up your data, carefully disconnect the cables, and carry it as quickly as possible to the nearest dumpster. Make sure no one sees you. Hide the Pentium 4 sticker if necessary to avoid embarrassment.ATI vs. NVIDIAThe NVIDIA LogoYou might assume that because the game is a "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" title that it is somehow made to play better on NVIDIA hardware. This is incorrect. The logo means that the game manufacturer received some sort of sponsorship from NVIDIA. That might mean that the game gets some specific features like PhysX, that NVIDIA gave the game manufacturer financial assistance, or that NVIDIA helped the programmers optimize their graphics engine. In EQ2's case it means you get NVIDIA 3D Vision support. There are many TWIMTBP titles which actually perform better on ATI hardware (Crysis for example).Driver QualityI'm sure you've heard people claim that ATI has bad drivers. This was somewhat true back when the Radeon 2900XT was the top card in ATI's lineup. It has no basis in reality for the present generation of cards. ATI's drivers are solid. If you have a rabid NVIDIA fanboy in your family, simply ask them the following question: "Has ATI ever released any drivers that destroyed people's video cards?" That should shut them up. I do prefer the Nvidia Control Panel over ATI's Catalyst Control Center. It has better explanations of what the various settings do and is a bit faster and more intuitive. However, as far as actual drivers are concerned, both manufacturers have SOLID drivers. Most issues are caused by people doing dumb things such as not uninstalling old drivers before installing new ones.Specific Advantages & Disadvantages1. NVIDIA doesn't have any current generation (DirectX 11 compatible) video cards under $300. If you want an inexpensive NVIDIA card you're either going to need to wait 1-2 months or buy a previous generation card.2. The NVIDIA gtx470 and gtx480 take a ton of power and run very hot. Your existing power supply may not be adequate. They are designed to run at up to 100c (hot enough to boil water)! However, they have well designed cooling systems. The cooler ejects the hot air out the back of your case instead of circulating it around inside. You can hear the fan during gaming but it's fairly quiet until about 75%. It rarely (basically never unless you set a custom fan profile) spools up past 70%. At 100% the card is very loud but the noise is a whooshing air sound, not an annoying high-pitched fan noise.3. NVIDIA gives you 3d support. It's a very niche feature but it's an advantage nonetheless. You need a 120hz screen and shutter glasses. You can test the effect with red/blue colored 3d glasses. (Obviously it's not very playable with red/blue glasses but the effect works well and is amusing).4. NVIDIA's transparency anti-aliasing works extremely well when set to one of the super-sampling modes. Fake geometry such as tree leaves get anti-aliased and look fantastic, especially when you combine 2x or 4x super-sampling transparency AA with 16x or 32x regular AA. House and guild hall items often make use of tons of fake geometry. Keep this in mind if you spend a lot of time inside housing and guild halls or do a lot of decorating.5. The gtx470 and gtx480 have great minimum framerates. You'll experience slightly less situations where the framerate seems to "stutter".6. ATI's transparency anti-aliasing (called Adaptive Multi-sample AA) does not always work properly in EQ2. In most areas it works but in some areas it causes graphical glitches. I leave it off.7. However, ATI's edge-detect anti-aliasing works extremely well. Due to the way it works it doesn't always find 100% of the edges in the scene, but in general it works great. Really great. I think 4x edge-detect makes most polygon edges look as good as they do with NVIDIA's 32x CSAA mode. The edges it misses are usually fairly hard to see. The best part is that since it uses the shader processors to do the anti-aliasing it performs amazingly well in EQ2.8. ATI's cards are much more power efficient.9. ATI's crossfire is unusable in EQ2. It actually makes performance worse. Much worse.10. I have not tried Eyefinity. Someone else will need to pitch in on that one!What Card Do I Buy?Best Possible CardThe best possible card for playing EQ2 at the moment is the NVIDIA gtx480. It will cost you at least $500 at the moment. You'll need to ensure your power supply is adequate. I'd recommend at least a 700 watt power supply. You'll also need to make sure it has the required 8-pin PCIe power connector (or get an adapter). "But the review sites told me it'd be better to just get a 5970 if money is no object," you may be asking. For most games this would be correct. Not for EQ2, though. The issue is that a 5970 is basically two 5850 chips (albeit designed to be overclocked a bit). Even though it's on one board it's using crossfire. In EQ2 you'd only get to use 1/2 the card. For even more performance the gtx480 can overclock better than you'd expect.Gamer CardFor the $250-350 price range, pick up an NVIDIA gtx470 or an ATI 5850. Avoid the ATI 5830, it's not a good value at the moment. The gtx470 will cost around $350. It will provide slightly better visual quality than the 5850 (because ATI's transparency AA can cause glitches in EQ2). Most gtx470's can be overclocked to gtx480 speeds if you know what you are doing. I'd recommend at least a 600 watt power supply for a gtx470.A 5850 will cost somewhere between $250 and $325. For $325 it may be worth grabbing the gtx470 instead. If you can find one for closer to the $250 mark then the gtx470 becomes an extremely hard sell. The 5850 will take less power and run cooler. Most 5850's can be overclocked to 5870 speeds if you know what you are doing. I'd recommend at least a 450 watt power supply for a 5850.Value CardThe ATI 5770 is the card most people will want to buy. Average cost will be around $150. Some places may be price gouging these cards but there is no shortage of them so shop around. If you try hard enough you can find one for around $130 during sales or with rebate offers. Try to get a reference design 5770 with the "shroud" or "egg" cooler. The shroud ejects the hot air out the back of the case and looks nicer. The egg cooler doesn't look as nice, heats up the case more, but actually cools better. I prefer the egg cooler. These cards run extremely cool and are very quiet. They take very little power. They can be overclocked substantially if you know what you are doing. I'd recommend a 350 watt power supply for a 5770.Budget CardOnce you get under $100 things get very complicated. You've basically got two choices:1. Get the cheapest ATI 5670 you can find. They can be found for $80 during sales or with rebate offers. This will be slower than option number 2, but it gets you DirectX 11. You'll be able to play EQ2 at 720p resolution with GPU shadows on and 2x anti-aliasing. The 5670 has low enough power consumption that it doesn't require a PCIe power connector at all. It'll work fine in your Dell or HP computer as long as you've got a free PCIe slot. The 5570 isn't worth it because it's much slower than the 5670 for only a tiny bit less money. The 5450 isn't fast enough for gaming.2. Grab a previous generation card. Watch for a deal on an ATI 4770, ATI 4850, NVIDIA 9800gt, or NVIDIA 9600gt. Sometimes there are ridiculously good rebate deals.Hope this was useful to some out there, and thanks for reading! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Amanathia

07-18-2010, 01:53 AM

Just throwing a quick edit here to mention the new Geforce GTX460.This card is now going to be my recommendation for the $200 price point, at least until ATI drops their prices.Make sure you get the 1gb version. However, for $180 or so the 768mb version is pretty appealing as well.I recommend a 500 watt power supply with two 6-pin PCI express connectors for this card.I have not personally tested this card, but EQ2 is not very shader-heavy at this point, so this card should give you 85% or more of the performance of a GTX470 at a much more appealing price point. Not to mention much more appealing power requirements.As always, for NVIDIA cards, I recommend sticking with the EVGA brand as a safe bet if you live in the United States. Their support is top-notch.

Kain-UK

07-20-2010, 07:24 AM

Nice guide! Here's some info you may want to add or ignore... depending on how useful you feel it is. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />nVidia's SLI technology is very hit and miss with EQ2. The performance profiles are there, so it should work. Using shader 3.0 and shuffling shadows off to the GPU help to prove that it does work and takes some of the strain off your CPU. However, it can also cause some amazing graphical anomolies. One is the screen will sometimes get huge black bars down it, almost as if one of the cards has just stopped rendering. Another is the game graphics will go black if you try to swim underwater or climb out of the water. Your UI will still be visible, but that's all.These were discovered using an nVidia 9800GX2. I've since upgraded to a Radeon 5870.