The Bottom of the Barrel FFXIV Graphics Cards

[Kohan]

Now, let me be clear. When I'm talking "Bottom of the Barrel," I'm not referring to the lucky kid whose parents let them live at home and therefore has a couple hundred to spare. I'm referring to one ghetto-ass mother fucker who most would say "shouldn't play an MMO" due to their impossibly low salary.

With that in mind, what are currently perceived to be the cheapest graphic cards which work with FFXIV? They can produce terrible numbers -- in fact, that's not just fine, it's expected.

In the ballpark of $100 is desired. I'm currently considering refurbished Radeon HD 5770s.

[Cooleko]

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/94743-The-OFFICIAL-FFXIV-Benchmark-amp-Beta-Performance-Thread
look at the high scores to your hearts content. Every card listed can run the game, better performance is higher score, buy the card you want and dont complain when your looking at graphics a nes can beat.

[brozy]

currently running it on integrated geforce 8200 on a board that cost me bout £45, looks nice but runs like ass, not actually run anything to get a true fps average but from eye i'd say bout 10-15 fps max if that much and not much change with the lowest of the low buffer size and resolution, hope that gives ya a little bit of help

[sruon]

5770 is the best choice around that budget. $130 new, can probably find some semi-new for $100

[Eyedea-Seraph]

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/98354-WTS-nVidia-GTX260

the GTX260 is a great bang for buck card for ffxiv and this guys selling one for 120$ tell him your plight and get him to cover your shipping (am sure he will with the post you got here) and your gold if you have a decent CPU(C2Q+) i can see 2500+ as a minimum with this card on that shitty non-optimized benchmark. This was my old card also ;) , the core 216 version and i got 4k+ on low with an i7 920.

Cheers GL

[ufo]

I present the 4870 1GB open box(110$):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121376R

Runs the game surprisingly well. (a little faster than a 5770 but without dx11 and some other goodies)

[Holly Short]

I am playing XIV on a 128mb card with the settings turned down, if that puts it into perspective. (Until I finish new pc, fucking school.)

[Pikarya]

Just get the 4870. A lot of places selling it for $85.00 to $110.00 online.

[Ksandra]

You know, when hubby gets home I really shoud put up specs of this computer for people to see. It's about 5 years old and runs FFXIV perfectly (I didn't have to turn down any graphics or anything). He said he wants to build another just like it (he's been using a laptop), and I think he said he could do it for about 600$ considering it's outdated stuff.

You'd be surprised, I think, of what can run it. I keep seeing people insisting that you need high end shit, and that's simply not true. (not in this thread, both other threads).

For my card it's an ati radeon 4800 series card (I'm not sure what 4800, I'm a comp newb >.>;). I'll post a link when he gets home.

[TacoTaru]

My fiancee's laptop runs on a GT 310M on her Toshiba Satellite. She also has a i7 processor though, but I'm not sure how much that matters. If it doesn't, I'm sure the desktop equivalent is incredibly cheap as it's a card or two behind the current Nvidia minimum requirement. If it does matter a lot, ignore me.

[Uwen]

I'm running decently on this one. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150474&cm_re=radeon_hd557x-_-14-150-474-_-Product) Not optimal, I get some lag but not as much as on the laptop(integrated HD2400m.) Its something I will be upgrading over time, but my situation is similar to your description.

[Kohan]

Thank you for the feedback, everyone.

As for more information about the PC itself, it's a fresh, broke-ass budget build, which includes an AMD Athlon II X3 445 (unlocked as an X4), 2GB of RAM (which will eventually be upgraded to 4GB), a decent mid-range Thermaltake PSU, and other miscellaneous things. Therefore, only a decent GPU is needed to get FFXIV running at all; more RAM later should help smooth things out a bit.

I'll probably be getting either a 5770 or a 4870. Since a 4870 apparently runs FFXIV as well as/better than the 5770, and is a little cheaper, I'll probably lean toward that. The missing bells and whistles are meaningless, as the person I've built this for is a middle-age single mother who doesn't play any other videogames at all (sans Flash-based casual titles).

Thanks again.

[alt]

No way for me to prove it since I didn't screen shot, but my current old setup got me a 2481 score on the benchmark on low settings.

CPU: E6750 @2.66Ghz
GPU: Geforce 9800GT 512MB
RAM: 4GB Corsair XMS2
OS: XP SP3