MMO Gameing at 1920 x 1200

[darkrisen2003]

Ok guys I play a game called Everquest 2 which is an MMORPG. if you look at my sig you will see that im sporting a very old card and its starting to show. I would like to be able to run this game at 1920 x 1200 at max settings and get playable framerates which I dont think is impossible. I have many guildies that are able to run 2 accounts at one time at this resolution and have no issue and I would like to be able to do the same.

My only preferances are Nvidia card suggestions only. I have done ATI/AMD in the past and do not care to venture back to the red team. I keep hearing about new DX 11 cards coming out and if that is the case I might wait since they might offer better performance for the money than current cards but im open to suggestion. I dont really have a budget right now but would like to aim for the 250 and under mark if its possible.

Also if anyone plays the game currently and has some suggestions for settings to make the game play smoother im all ears. I am at work right now so I cannot get to links.

Thanks.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

You should ask what processor and video card you guildies are using.

I'd say get a GTS260. Will be under $200 and do what you need to do.

edit: Didn't catch this earlier, but I meant to say a GTX 260, not GTS 250. Although I thought really hard about saying the GTS 250 1GB, but ultimately I did not (completely).

 

[Keysplayr]

Seconded!

 

[CalvinHobbes]

It's possible the CPU will be holding you back depending on how much CPU the game requires. WoW for example needs a fast CPU to run well. A video card upgrade should definitely make a big difference, I would also suggest the GTX 260.

 

[darkrisen2003]

Well I have overclocked my chip to 3.0 gig by just changing the FSB to 1333 but thats all I have done. My board sucks and doesnt read the voltage correctly so I dont have a way of knowing when its too much and really dont know much about overclocking so I generally dont mess with it. I would love to put one of the q9550 or q9650's in my machine but have been warned that my board doesnt support it and I really dont want to replace too much without just going on ahead and getting i7 which I really cannot do at this point.

 

[RussianSensation]

If you arent interested in the red team, go for GTX 275 for $200.

 

[crisium]

If Everquest 2 is pretty much you're only interest in upgrading I'd get a GTS 250 512MB. Even at that Resolution I have confidence that the game doesn't use more than 512MB, so save some cash there. The GTX 250 is a more power efficient 9800GTX+, so you're still getting quite a powerful card. But if you plan to run games from 2007-2009 at 1920x1200 maxed out then I'd go for the GTX 260 or 275... but if it's really only Everquest 2 save yourself some money. Though GTS 250 prices are higher than the Radeon 4850 and so close to the Radeon 4870 that I cannot normally recommend them, but you seem to be a special person so knock yourself out. But I cannot see a GTX 250 stuttering with that game.

 

[Cuular]

As a quick rebuff to the above. At 1920X1200 eq2 actually uses over 1GB of graphic card memory, if you want to run at max settings. So the amount of memory is very important. By turning certain settings down you can get it to fall within the 1GB of memory on most of the higher end cards today.

If your guildy's are running two instances of the game at that resolution, they are not running anywhere near max settings. I'd ask them for the exact settings they are using, and what cards they are using.

 

[crisium]

Well if that's true then you'd be prudent to go for a GTX 260 since it doesn't cost much more than a GTS 250 1GB. I know the newest expansion looks prettier than the original 4+ year old game, but 1GB+ Video memory? It must have bad coding somewhere.

 

[darkrisen2003]

Everquest 2 is my primary game right now but I also have been known to play RPG's and Strategy games such as Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Age of Empires series, Heroes of Might and magic, ETC. Im not a fan of First person shooters but I have tried a few. MMORPG's have been known to be taxing on graphics cards though which is why im wondering how big im going to have to go for a decent enough card. Sucks being this behind the times now but when you are the one paying all the bills its hard to get the cash for my hobbies etc.

 

[darkrisen2003]

Does anyone have a ballpark shot in the dark on how long/ how much the dx 11 cards will be? By how long I mean an estimated date. I know theres not much to go on but most people have been saying as soon as the end of the month.

 

[Barfo]

Of course they'll be announced and "launched" sooner, but I expect full availability by December.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

AMD is going to announce the launch date on September 10, alongside a preview. I expect the cards to come out before the Windows 7 release date, which is October 22, but they might not come out until a bit later. No matter, the time is pretty near for these ATI cards. As for Nvidia... no one has any idea. They could launch sometime in November or maybe even early next year.

 

[darkrisen2003]

Thats another purchase I will be making. Currently im using the RC of windows 7 ultimate 64 bit and love it so I will definately be buying it when it comes out or soon there after. I would love to take out 2 birds with one stone if its possible. Another reason why I was asking about the directx 11 cards.

Wouldn't you assume the windows 7 ultimate dvd OEM would be around or under 200 like the vista DVD is right now?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

I think Windows 7 will be a tad bit more than what Vista currently is. I believe the prices have already been announced, at least for the retail packages. Best to just google it.

 

[soccerballtux]

4870 or wait for the next round of cards, there going to be stomping Nvidia for sure.

 

[zod96]

GTX260 216 core for around $180 should do nicely....

 

[Senpuu]

I would ask your friend to explain his 'max settings.' If you really go into the options and set every slider to max manually, you're going to be in for some trouble at 1920x1200 regardless of the machine your running it on in many areas. I had done just that and things like major cities, raids, and certain zones (EL, Nek, some of the Kunark zones especially) would often give me frame rates in the high teens. My rig at the time was i7 920 @ 3.6, 260s in SLI, Vista, 6GB DDR3 1600 ram. Best bet is to set it to the highest preset option and you won't have too much trouble with any current mid-range card. Also, more than anything, it seemed like overclocking from 2.66 to 3.6 made the biggest different with my frame rates in that game at the maximum possible settings. So take that for what it's worth.

 

[crimson117]

Either give AMD another chance and get an AMD 4890 on sale for $175 AR or so, or else wait for the next gen to arrive. At the very least they will bump the price of the nVidia GTX 260 / GTX 275 cards down a bit.

 

[faxon]

dont bother upgrading your graphics card, eq2 doesnt benefit any from much past the card you have anyway. what you will want to do is get the fastest CPU money can buy, which in this case would be an e8600 or an i7 920, depending on if you dual box or not. I raided hardcore in eq2 for 2 and a half years of the 5 i played, and when i went from my athlon 64 4000+ at stock to my e5200 at 3.2ghz, i saw insane gains in FPS with the same graphics card (HD2900 PRO). upgrading my GPU to a 9800GTX after that didnt do anything, ANYTHING, to increase my FPS in situations where it would make a difference. my recommendation is simple, get the fastest CPU you can get, overclock it to its limit of stability, and then get at least 6GB of ram, preferably 8gb. when playing EQ2, i could get ACT (Advanced Combat Tracker) to eat up as much as a gig and a half of memory on a long raid, and going to guild halls would easily put me past 5GB of ram utilization for the entire system. one of the most annoying things is that while the game now supports some usage of a second CPU (dual core) due to an engine update, it doesnt utilize it to the fullest. i did some testing between 1.6GHz and 3.2GHz and my CPU utilization was the same on both cores (core 0 95%, core 1 ~40%) no matter if i was at 1.6GHz or 3.2GHz. resolution, graphical quality, all of that, past a certain point didnt make any difference, because i just kept running into a CPU wall at a certain point. the game is really poorly optimized, and it does some graphical rendering (shadows, some particles) on the CPU, since when the engine started design in 2000 it wasnt possible to do these things on the GPU yet. needless to say, that changed between then and when the game came out in 2004, but it still holds true today, unless they released another major engine update to fix this (they have been planning on it). if you want, i can go do some testing again, though i havent played in several months, and it will have to wait until tomorrow night due to my work schedule. i havent had a chance to test my e5200 vs my Q9650 @ 4.2ghz yet, to see if these performance gains can scale up past 4GHz in the same manner they did before.

ed: hrm, misread your sig, maybe something a bit faster than an 8600GS 256 might make a difference, but you could replace it with something fast enough for like $50 (HD4670, 9600GT. get a 1GB model, eq2 can use it lmao). i simply cant stress enough how big of a difference a faster CPU makes in EQ2. an ex guildy of mine has an i7 920 @ 5GHz and he still complains of the same lag everyone else does, but if they were to recode the engine for quads a lot of that would probably go away. that, and move some of the load to the GPU where it belongs

 

[ginfest]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux
4870 or wait for the next round of cards, there going to be stomping Nvidia for sure.

Enlighten us please
Benchmark links?

 

[faxon]

Originally posted by: ginfest

Originally posted by: soccerballtux
4870 or wait for the next round of cards, there going to be stomping Nvidia for sure.

Enlighten us please
Benchmark links?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...=3967152&postcount=174

 

[BenSkywalker]

$80 vid card.

By the sounds of it money isn't in abundance for you at the moment, with your 6600 that board will suit you just fine with your needs.

Yes, the DX11 parts will be out at some point in the not too distant future, perhaps save the other ~$150 you are thinking about spending until after they come out and the pricess settle a bit. Given your gaming needs, you may not even find that to be necessary with that board for quite some time. Maybe if you are looking at a system overhaul, with your current CPU a 9600GT is a good match(your 8600GS is significantly slower).

 

[darkrisen2003]

I was under the impression that the 9600gt was a lesser card than my 8600 gts due to the 9600 using ddr2 and my card using ddr3 and a few other things.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Uh, no. Most 9600GTs should be using GDDR3 RAM. If they aren't, then you are probably looking at 9600GSOs or really low cost GTs. The 8600GT and GTS are good for lower resolution gaming, but for 1900x1200 the 9600GT will definitely outshine it thanks to having basically twice the memory bandwidth (128-bit bus for the 8600, 256-bit bus for the 9600), twice the memory, and twice the shader power.