For PC gaming...

Kopikatsu

New member
May 27, 2010
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So, I'm going to go get a gaming PC. I'm tech-savvy enough to figure out what I need for everything except for the graphics card. I don't know jack shit about graphics cards. So! I was wondering how a AMD Radeon HD 6670 would fair in the gaming world of today. Probably not too well, since it's fairly cheap ($99 as opposed to $720 for the 6990), but like...could anyone give examples of games that the 6670 is just good enough to play? (Like Hunted: The Demon's Forge, or Brink or something.)
 

Waaghpowa

Needs more Dakka
Apr 13, 2010
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It will do just about everything, just probably not on ultra. 6700 series is considered high end just a tad older.
Generally speaking the ATI series cards are good value, but tend to be a little behind Nvidia as far as benchmarking goes.
 

Griffolion

Elite Member
Aug 18, 2009
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Kopikatsu said:
So, I'm going to go get a gaming PC. I'm tech-savvy enough to figure out what I need for everything except for the graphics card. I don't know jack shit about graphics cards. So! I was wondering how a AMD Radeon HD 6670 would fair in the gaming world of today. Probably not too well, since it's fairly cheap ($99 as opposed to $720 for the 6990), but like...could anyone give examples of games that the 6670 is just good enough to play? (Like Hunted: The Demon's Forge, or Brink or something.)
This depends on the monitor resolution you're going to be playing on. I'm going to make my recommendations based on the use of 1920 x 1080 (full HD).

The 6770 is going to be the minimum entry level card if you want any semblance of a good gaming experience both in terms of fidelity and frame rate (especially in terms of modern games playing in DX11).

The 6670 would be an okay choice for a lower resolution like 1440 x 900 or something like that.

If you want any extensive help with choosing what to buy, feel free to give me a PM.
 

viranimus

Thread killer
Nov 20, 2009
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Yeah, dont believe the lies and hype. While I might not be as versed in AMD cards, I know the equivalent standards on the Nvidia side and know for example an older GeForce 9500 with 1gb of ram is good enough to run Arkham asylum at full specs with no lag.

Arkham city was confirmed to run flawlessly on a GTS 250.

Both of these cards were purchased for 100-120$ before the time of their respective tests.

So a 100-150$ card is typically as much as you would need to play any game at that current date and would likely hold over pretty well for the next year to year and a half.

One tool you might find handy is

Canyourunit
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/

Because not only can you look at a games system requirements/recommendations, on the video card section it typically lists what would be the "minimum" card/series for the game tested on both min/rec pages. Doing that allows you to see the bottom end of cards you might be able to consider using, so use that as your foundation to stand on, then shop from there to find the right balance of money vs increased performance from those recommendations.


Ok I will try this again, Using your example Hunted the demons forge,

Video Card
Recommended: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5830
You Have: GeForce GTX

Features: Recommended attributes of your Video Card
Required You Have
Video RAM 1 GB 2.2 GB
Pixel Shader version 5.0 5.0
Vertex Shader version 5.0 5.0

This is the listing of the recommended stats for this game. As you see it suggests you need a 5830 to handle anything the game can throw at you. Now use that bottom number as your foundation when shopping, knowing you NEED a 5800 series or better. You can then locate for example a


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150572

Which is practically a generation ahead of what the game actually NEEDs, so that gives you ample headroom to work with for the future and manages to do so while balancing the economics of it and not buying into bogus hype and outright lies you will encounter with this question.

Remember my golden rule. It is more logical to pay 100$ for a video card that may or may not need to be replaced in less than 2 years, than to pay 400$ for a card that WILL need to be replaced within 3. Plus when you upgrade parts consistently and save the old parts you will eventually have the parts to be able to build a modest secondary computer.
 

instantbenz

Pixel Pusher
Mar 25, 2009
744
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I'm unable to assist too greatly, however you've got the PC building pros of the escapist right here already (points at griffolion).

This community is good at giving people the right info without being pushy.

PC gaming is great. Games a little cheaper ... diehard community ... just don't forget a few lemon games that might require waiting for patches or that don't dance well with your particular graphics card.

I'm only a lvl 1 PC elitist, but welcome to the club :p.
 

N3vans

New member
Apr 14, 2009
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If you're considering Nvidia, I've had a GTX460 for about a year and a hald and it's still going strong. If you're not too worried about full HD on a massive monitor and just want something to make games look pretty I'd recommend it :)
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
6,374
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Kopikatsu said:
So, I'm going to go get a gaming PC. I'm tech-savvy enough to figure out what I need for everything except for the graphics card. I don't know jack shit about graphics cards. So! I was wondering how a AMD Radeon HD 6670 would fair in the gaming world of today. Probably not too well, since it's fairly cheap ($99 as opposed to $720 for the 6990), but like...could anyone give examples of games that the 6670 is just good enough to play? (Like Hunted: The Demon's Forge, or Brink or something.)
I have no clue how the 6670 compares to the rest of the 6xxx series, but I can't imagine it's any worse than my graphics card. Don't let PC elitists scare you into buying "THE BEST!!!!11!one!!", until games stop being developed for the consoles anything better than an HD Radeon 2xxx is going to be able to run computer games, just with varying levels of beauty.

I have a Mobility Radeon 5850 (two-year old card) in my laptop and I've been able to run every game released this year at 1600x900 with either high or ultra settings (even Crysis 2 with DX11 and the high-res texture pack, Witcher 2 I only need to turn ubersampling off). By next year I'll probably need anti-aliasing turned down a bit, maybe medium settings for some games, but PC hardware doesn't get outdated nearly as fast as people like to say anymore. I would still recommend something a bit better than the 6670, possibly a 6850, just to last you slightly longer if you can afford the extra ~$50 (depending on where you find it of course. . . but I think the 67xx series is pretty similar to the 6670 so there wouldn't be much of a difference between the 6670 and, say, a 6750). But with a 6670 I can't imagine you'd have trouble running anything released this year as long as you have a competent processor and a nice amount of RAM to match. Or if you decide to really splurge and get two graphics cards to run in Crossfire, you certainly wouldn't have problems. (Except with games that get all screwy when you have Crossfire, of course.)

EDIT: The biggest issue when it comes to PC gaming nowadays is how effectively the developers optimized the PC version. The Witcher 2 will run on pretty old hardware, and still looks fairly good when it does, because it's a rather well-optimized game. Crysis (the first one) still struggles to be run at full settings on newer hardware than the game itself because the CryEngine it was built on is extremely powerful, but horribly optimized (hence why everyone said it was built for some supercomputer from the future when it was released).

Unfortunately, a lot of games get paltry ports, so it is good to use hardware well above any recommended specs because it's difficult to actually know if something will run well until you personally test it. The first FEAR game, for instance (a PC exclusive when it was first released, later ported to the consoles), has such a bad engine that on some computers it severely cuts your framerate if you're using Windows 7 and have something like a mouse plugged in to a USB port.
 

CRRPGMykael

New member
Mar 6, 2011
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I can't say too much, except for 'GET A GOOD PROCESSOR OR YOU'RE FUCKED IN THE GAMING DEPARTMENT. I have a decent video card, but the processor is a little weak. Yeah, I can play just about every game out there, but I still have to turn the graphics down a lot. Pick one of the lowest resolutions, one of the lowest ratios, have shadows etc mostly on low or medium, so yeah, don't screw up on the processor.
 

Xanadu84

New member
Apr 9, 2008
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In my rather un-technical experience, $100 to $150 is a good price range for excellent performance that will last you a while. Go over it, and you will start scraping the ceiling performance wise on newer games, but you only really need that if you have money to burn and are a real gadget-head. Rather then spending $700 , just spend $200 3 times as often. You will have far better performance in the long run, and I strongly doubt that you will notice a serious difference in gameing when your actually just playing.

When buying a rig, the graphics card is a good place to skimp so you can spend more on your processor. Graphics cards will drop in price soon, and its a matter of opening up the case and plugging it in to upgrade, but replacing your processor is not fun.

My current card was (If I remember correctly) $140 well over a year ago. There is nothing that it can't play on a fairly high settings
 

tomvw

New member
Feb 5, 2009
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If you can muster up the extra cash, I'd recommend going with a 6850, it's probably one of the best cards under 200$. Especially if you're running 1920x1080 or higher.
For 1280x1024 or lower a 6670 will probably do, but a GTS 450 is probably a better choice.

Anyway, benchmarks and a review for the 6670:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_6670/
 

RagTagBand

New member
Jul 7, 2011
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Kopikatsu said:
What is your budget, and what specs have you chosen so far, What Resolution are you aiming to game at and what level of graphics would you like to game at?

Answer me these questions and i'll give you some worthy advice =]
 

Fledge

New member
Jan 28, 2010
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DON'T get this PC yet. PLEASE DON'T. Now is literally the worse time to get a new gaming PC in terms of value.

Wait for 2011 socket CPU's and 7000's series GPU's to have been on the market for a month or two.

You pretty much must get a 7000 series GPU if you want it to last.
 

Amaror

New member
Apr 15, 2011
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Kopikatsu said:
So, I'm going to go get a gaming PC. I'm tech-savvy enough to figure out what I need for everything except for the graphics card. I don't know jack shit about graphics cards. So! I was wondering how a AMD Radeon HD 6670 would fair in the gaming world of today. Probably not too well, since it's fairly cheap ($99 as opposed to $720 for the 6990), but like...could anyone give examples of games that the 6670 is just good enough to play? (Like Hunted: The Demon's Forge, or Brink or something.)
I can recommend the Geforce 470 Gt. This Graficcard has one of the best power to price ratio and can play all modern games at least on medium settings.
 

rayen020

New member
May 20, 2009
1,138
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the problem with graphics cards [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2133] i have no idea when it comes to graphics cards. I usually just buy the best tradeoff between new and well priced. Everything else i'm tech savvy enough to do myself. I just buy and hope for the best.
 

floobie

New member
Sep 10, 2010
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A trend I've been noticing over the years: The Radeon #850 card is always about ideal in terms of bang for the buck. They're on 6000 right now? Get a 6850, I guess.

Nice thing about PC gaming these days, is that you really don't need to go even remotely "high-end" to have something capable of running damn near anything. My 3.5 year old desktop (3.0ghz Core2Duo, Radeon 4850) still runs most new games just fine. Not quite maxed out anymore, but sufficiently close that I don't care. The days of needing to spend 700 dollars on a graphics card are over, unless you expect to play Crysis 2 at 100fps at 2560x1600 or something.
 

IzisviAziria

New member
Nov 9, 2008
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Welcome to the Master Race. Enjoy your stay.

That card you listed is reasonable. You'll be capable of playing everything on the market, you just won't be able to rock all the eye candy. If you want to start looking at eye candy, you'll want to get into the $200-$300 range. Stuff like anti-aliasing, DX11 effects, that stuff will slow a 6670 down quite a bit. I'm going to recommend you go with nVidia, but that's not a rock hard recommendation, ATI isn't terrible. Personally, if I were building a new computer on a semi-budget, I'd pick up an nVidia 560GTX Ti

Specifically, this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127565

But my next upgrade is this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127582

Absolute beast, the pricetag required some contemplation and saving first. But my first holiday check shows up next Friday, I've been saving like a good boy, and I shall have my pretty!

One more thing... I second this:
Xanadu84 said:
When buying a rig, the graphics card is a good place to skimp so you can spend more on your processor. Graphics cards will drop in price soon, and its a matter of opening up the case and plugging it in to upgrade, but replacing your processor is not fun.
And I will add to that, make sure you get a good MOTHERBOARD your first time around. Motherboard and Processor should be the two components you buy with quality in mind. Replacing either is a pain in the ass, but the motherboard is the worst. Replacing a motherboard is basically rebuilding your PC.
 

BRex21

New member
Sep 24, 2010
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that should hold up pretty well You really don't get the quantum leaps in performance that you did in yesteryear. My Gforce FX5700 is still preforming nicely and its at least 3 years old, what you have there should perform nicely if you avoid jacking up the resolution to maximum.
As for examples i would say pretty much any game coming out provided you don't need maximum graphical fidelity (some people do) most modern PC games will just set your graphics level to medium and in all honesty you probably wont notice all that much.