FFXIV Hardware Requirements

**ElGranGon** · 2010-05-05 09:27

Is a Radeon 5770 HD good for it's price? @ 160?

**Shuichi** · 2010-05-05 12:32

Quick question. Are graphic card prices expected to drop this year or are they going to stay pretty much the same for the majority of the the year?

**Kawfee** · 2010-05-05 13:16

Originally Posted by ElGranGon

Motherboard Leonite2-GL8E (The one that the HP PAvillion a6257c brings)
GFX Is an intel media accelerator 450 hence im changing this piece of shit.
I have 3GB of memory.
Res I run @ 1680x1050

Ah, well, you can't upgrade your CPU any further with the mobo you have, that will only support Core 2 Duo (not even quadcore, I don't believe).
GFX obviously you want to upgrade.
Memory might help a bit; 3gb is a weird number, is that 3 1gb sticks or something, no dual channel ram?

How much total money do you have to spend in addition to the GFX card? Building your own system would be the cheapest/easiest way to get the biggest bang for your buck.

**Lazytowner** · 2010-05-05 13:56

Originally Posted by Kawfee

Building your own system would be the cheapest/easiest way to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Of course this isn't the case for the person you're replying to, but it just reminded me of this:

A large annoyance for me is when people ask for price and performance suggestions, and they end up wasting everyone's time by buying prebuilt.

Customization and efficiency are the greatest reasons for having a PC, and people pick up a Dell343874xx (Extremely Overpriced Cheaply Made Gaming Package) at their local Wal-Mart like a Mac. The fuck is that all about? Users need to start educating themselves about the equipment they use and stop throwing the burden on their wallets. They could at least pay someone to HELP them build, but good lord, quit with the fuckin' package deals.

Learn your shit. Don't be lazy.

**ElGranGon** · 2010-05-05 14:12

Originally Posted by Kawfee

Ah, well, you can't upgrade your CPU any further with the mobo you have, that will only support Core 2 Duo (not even quadcore, I don't believe).
GFX obviously you want to upgrade.
Memory might help a bit; 3gb is a weird number, is that 3 1gb sticks or something, no dual channel ram?

How much total money do you have to spend in addition to the GFX card? Building your own system would be the cheapest/easiest way to get the biggest bang for your buck.

It has dual channel rams, I just have 2 1GB sticks on a side and 1 GB stick on one of the side.
I have like 500 extra to pump in after the card.

I was considering to just make a PC from scratch.

**Kawfee** · 2010-05-05 16:10

Originally Posted by ElGranGon

It has dual channel rams, I just have 2 1GB sticks on a side and 1 GB stick on one of the side.
I have like 500 extra to pump in after the card.

I was considering to just make a PC from scratch.

Depending on what you can scrounge from your current PC (e.g. power supply), $500 is enough money to play with to get a nice PC going. Also, just to throw this out there, if you are nervous about building a PC, don't be, it's extremely easy, most stuff just plug and play now. I built my first one 3-4 years ago and it took me about 3 hours start to finish with no prior experience. Anyways, here's a sample build, some of the stuff you may not need (e.g. case, power supply), but just in case, I'll list it all:

High-End Machine:

Antec Case $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129066
Intel i7-920 Quadcore $280
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115202
EVGA X58 Mobo: $180
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813188049
Raidmax 500w SLI Ready Power Supply: $40
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817152028
LiteOn DVD Burner + SATA Cable: $30
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106335
3GB DDR1600 Triple Channel Memory Kit: $110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148268

Total: $690

Or, use your existing memory (not ideal, will work okay though I believe) to drop the total to $580. Scavenge a power supply and case and drop the total to $490.
I'd probably want more than 3GB, but it will be good enough with that, you can always upgrade more later.

If you wanted to go with a "middle-tier" machine (the one above is pretty high up there, not the highest, but still, best series cpu you can get), you could go with:

Middle Tier Machine
(Everything the same except)

Intel i5-750 Quadcore $200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115215
Asus P7P55 Mobo $120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131604
4GB DDR1600 Dual Channel Memory Kit $110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227495

Drops the total price (with case/power/dvd etc) to: $550

These are just examples, obviously do your own research (and just to note for ppl reading the post, clearly no gfx card included), but you get the idea.

**Waraji** · 2010-05-05 16:12

My 9800 GT from like a year ago is 35 on the list. Gonna wait a LOT closer to retail to upgrade my GPU to a 5850 (9) and nab an SSD as well as throwing 2 SATA HDD's into RAID 0.

XFX 5850 dropped in price by like $20 in last 2 months on newegg

hoping for a couple more bucks by December!

@Kawfee, Larger PSU, 750~ will save a headache in the long wrong. Don't half ass on PSU's at least not for "high end" pc's. for another ~$60 upgrade to 6GB DDR3 1600. I was actually eyeing that same MOBO before I found a bundle deal with the 920, ASUS P6T Dlx V2.

**Kawfee** · 2010-05-05 16:16

Originally Posted by Waraji

@Kawfee, Larger PSU, 750~ will save a headache in the long wrong. Don't half ass on PSU's at least not for "high end" pc's. for another ~$60 upgrade to 6GB DDR3 1600.

You're probably right, I was just doing my best to keep costs as close to the $500 he mentioned.

**Lazytowner** · 2010-05-05 17:11

Originally Posted by Kawfee

Depending on what you can scrounge from your current PC (e.g. power supply), $500 is enough money to play with to get a nice PC going. Also, just to throw this out there, if you are nervous about building a PC, don't be, it's extremely easy, most stuff just plug and play now. I built my first one 3-4 years ago and it took me about 3 hours start to finish with no prior experience. Anyways, here's a sample build, some of the stuff you may not need (e.g. case, power supply), but just in case, I'll list it all:

Spoiler: show
High-End Machine:

Spoiler: show

Ugh, when I see prices for CPUs and GPUs I always have this short-lived dream of travelling 10 years into the future, where CPUs and GPUs will be integrated and stop wasting my fucking money every time I want to upgrade. *rage*

**Khamsin** · 2010-05-05 17:38

Originally Posted by Lazytowner

Ugh, when I see prices for CPUs and GPUs I always have this short-lived dream of travelling 10 years into the future, where CPUs and GPUs will be integrated and stop wasting my fucking money every time I want to upgrade. *rage*

That will just cost you more money, because whenever you want to upgrade your GPU, you'll have to get a new CPU as well. Or vice versa.

At least today, you have them separate so you can only upgrade what you need.

And there are CPUs with integrated graphics, but... I think most people would prefer a real graphics card, anyway.

**Sign** · 2010-05-05 18:00

Just want to let you all know that I hate you right now! Sitting here bored at work and reading all this hardware discussion has made me look into upgrades for my rig. Then I discover that AMD has released their X6 CPU and now I am seriously considering doing an overhaul of my system (which I can't afford). You guys suck!

**Waraji** · 2010-05-05 21:10

X6 CPU's are a little gd overboard in my opinion, at least from a consumer standpoint. Hell half the CPU power these days for high end machines are a tad bit much by today's amount of software that can barley use em to full potential.

**Agito** · 2010-05-05 21:21

How would my Intel Pentium dual core E5200 @2.5Ghz fare with running FFXIV? I can overclock it to 3.0Ghz and above.

**Esse** · 2010-05-05 21:55

Originally Posted by Lazytowner

Of course this isn't the case for the person you're replying to, but it just reminded me of this:

A large annoyance for me is when people ask for price and performance suggestions, and they end up wasting everyone's time by buying prebuilt.

Customization and efficiency are the greatest reasons for having a PC, and people pick up a Dell343874xx (Extremely Overpriced Cheaply Made Gaming Package) at their local Wal-Mart like a Mac. The fuck is that all about? Users need to start educating themselves about the equipment they use and stop throwing the burden on their wallets. They could at least pay someone to HELP them build, but good lord, quit with the fuckin' package deals.

Learn your shit. Don't be lazy.

Very true, but after having two custom machines built by guys that came highly recommended by multiple people take a shit on me (shitty PSU, IRQ conflicts, x64 drivers), I opted for more reliability. I bought a pre-built Gateway (non-gaming machine) from American two years ago with a phenom 9550 quad core, 6 gigs of ram, and a 600 gig HDD for ~650. Since it ran things well stock, i waited for a bargain quality GPU. I still have a decent gaming machine, and haven't had any troubles with it for two years now.

I don't think all package deals are bad. At least do the research to have a reasonable expectation of its capabilities and how much it would cost to build it yourself. I know I could have saved cash by building my current machine myself, but the reliability I have gotten out of the box is well worth the markup in my opinion. You're shit out of luck if you barely have the know-how to build your own rig and you find yourself BSOD-ing every five minutes in game. At least with a pre-built there is enough information out there for a moderate level user to figure out a fix.

Also, if it's advertised as a gaming rig, you're likely seeing a 100% markup.

**Jinko** · 2010-05-05 22:04

There are good sites out there that will build you a PC from scratch, its just a a matter of finding a bargin.

Like the post above says though sometimes you can find a good deal and walk away with a decent PC, although you actually need to know a thing or two about PC's to do that.

**Gulkeeva** · 2010-05-05 22:43

I usually just get stuff from searching pricewatch.com

**Kurokikaze** · 2010-05-05 23:00

Newegg, TigerDirect, and Micro Center. And for those that don't know... On top of already having competitive prices, Micro Center will price match various sites including Newegg/TigerDirect just so you dont feel like you're getting ripped off.

**bluefan** · 2010-05-05 23:23

Sign up for NCIXs newsletters also. Every week, they have some kinda sale going on. With some very good prices.

**Kryssan** · 2010-05-06 16:51

I got a 2697.9 overall score with that BM program Jolli posted. Considering the results from the UniEngine test I posted in the other thread, I'm going to just go with "meh". Think I probably agree with Celeras on this one - the program even states of itself that the BM is for 'general' use, so not so heavy on the 'game' use which is what most people here I think are concerned about. Granted, I agree, if your computer has trouble opening MS Word and Paint at the same time whilst browsing multiple tabs in FireFox, you probably want to either upgrade or go with PS3 for FF14.

**Kawfee** · 2010-05-07 09:28

Not to shit up this thread, but all this talk has me looking into upgrading my system, too, and I also want to make sure any advice I may have given is accurate. 2 slightly off-ffxiv-topic questions:

GeForce 400 series vs. ATI HD5800 series, which would you get assuming price was "equal" (or close enough)?
Also - does it matter what mobo you have when it comes to using nvidia vs. ati? I'm assuming yes, but only if you want to run 2+ cards. I've only ever had nvidia chipset stuff in the last 4 years, so I don't know exactly if this matters.
EDIT: Feel free to PM me a response instead of posting here

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