Cheapest graphics card for 2560x1440 in EVE?

[darknite]

Ok i'm after a new 27" panel since my 24" went pop. I currently have a GTX 570 (see sig) I mainly play EVE. Will my GTX 570 cut it at 2560x1440 with all the graphic on full? Small res jump from 1920x1200 previously. If not whats my cheapest option? I don't play FPS games, just eve, dow, ruse that kind of thing.

Cheers all in advance.

 

[TheRealDeal]

A 7950 would be a nice upgrade from your gtx570. I am not sure how intense eve is on the memory these days but the 3gb that comes with the 7950 should see you fine as will any 2gb card.

 

[darknite]

So 2gb needed for 2560x1440 res? Thats my main worry, that 1.25gb is just not enough. I've never been a fan of ATI(AMD) graphic cards. But bang for buck would say get an AMD.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Yea it's the memory on the gtx570 thats the main worry. I am pretty sure it has enough gpu power behind it to cope with eve at the higher resolution but the memory is a definite worry. The 7950 just ticks all the boxes and if you overclock you are getting the performance of cards that cost over £100 more.

 

[Rroff]

EDIT: You don't need a massive amount of VRAM for Eve even at 2560x res - I've rarely seen over 700-800MB per client myself but adjusting for the extra res I'd imagine its possible to hit 1.5gig in big fleet fights on a POS. (I've not really been taking notice of it when stuff kicks off but have seen it hit 4 digits once or twice). To be comfortable tho 2GB is probably advised.

I would stick with nVidia if you can for Eve the game makes use of quite a few nVidia technologies (tho mostly for the not very used captains quarters feature) but last fanfest they were talking about widening the use for PhysX within the game to client side simulation of dynamic astroids amongst other things tho these features are probably atleast a year off. The tessellation features they were showing off were also nVidia optimised.

EDIT: I'm mostly playing Eve on a GTX675m (clocked to be pretty much a GTX560ti w/ 2GB VRAM) with 3-4 clients and these days have no problem holding 120fps most of the time with all the settings ramped up at 1920x1080 even with brackets on in larger scale fleet fights.

 

[humbug]

I have just started playing it on a 7870, i have everything maxed with vSync on, so i don't know what my max FPS would be but it never goes below 60.

 

[kissenger]

I can't talk about Eve, but vram was a problem on my 570 at 1440p. It dealt with that resolution fine without MSAA, but with it on, it struggled. I've seen around 2GB vram usage on my 7970.

 

[darknite]

EDIT: I'm mostly playing Eve on a GTX675m (clocked to be pretty much a GTX560ti w/ 2GB VRAM) with 3-4 clients and these days have no problem holding 120fps most of the time with all the settings ramped up at 1920x1080 even with brackets on in larger scale fleet fights.

Thats the bit I forgot to mention, i usually have 4 - 5 clients running. But only ever 1 full screen. Would a GTX 660ti be enough then?

 

[humbug]

Thats the bit I forgot to mention, i usually have 4 - 5 clients running. But only ever 1 full screen. Would a GTX 660ti be enough then?

I have not played it for long, but from what i have seen i would think so yes. the GTX 660ti is a little faster than a GTX 580.

 

[TheRealDeal]

I would forget about physx effects in eve. The main reason is having played it for over 7 years and mainly on amd hardware i don't think eve is the kind of game you will really notice it when playing properly. I am mainly a pvp guy so effects are mainly turned off.

If your gonna go nvidia i would mainly be looking at the gtx670 as the 660ti at the same price as a 7950 is really hard to recommend. I would rather get the more powerful card as in eve after a few days i take no notice of the surrounds and get on with playing the game.

 

[humbug]

Off topic, its a very nice looking game

I do like my space Syfy.

 

[Rroff]

I would forget about physx effects in eve. The main reason is having played it for over 7 years and mainly on amd hardware i don't think eve is the kind of game you will really notice it when playing properly. I am mainly a pvp guy so effects are mainly turned off.

If your gonna go nvidia i would mainly be looking at the gtx670 as the 660ti at the same price as a 7950 is really hard to recommend. I would rather get the more powerful card as in eve after a few days i take no notice of the surrounds and get on with playing the game.

Hard to say at this point how soon if ever and how nVidia orientated the extra stuff will be this is some of the stuff I was talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sko7zkuexuc if it comes to fruition in the game then having an nVidia GPU is going to be somewhat of an advantage tho to what level I can't say at this point. (More from the fact that its nVidia who are doing a lot of the grunt work on it than anything else).

 

[TheRealDeal]

Off topic, its a very nice looking game

I do like my space Syfy.

I have stopped playing for most of the last few years as the game for me was better near when i started playing. I like it better when small fleets and ship setup mattered unlike now where blobs rule.

 

[humbug]

I have stopped playing for most of the last few years as the game for me was better near when i started playing. I like it better when small fleets and ship setup mattered unlike now where blobs rule.

I have all that to learn yet, only just finished training.

 

[Rroff]

I have all that to learn yet, only just finished training.

You never finish training in Eve

I mostly play in and out of wormhole space as PVP when it happens properly there (rather than ganks) is much less blobby usually and people can't just cyno in their capital fleets when the fight turns against them.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Hard to say at this point how soon if ever and how nVidia orientated the extra stuff will be this is some of the stuff I was talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sko7zkuexuc if it comes to fruition in the game then having an nVidia GPU is going to be somewhat of an advantage tho to what level I can't say at this point. (More from the fact that its nVidia who are doing a lot of the grunt work on it than anything else).

You could be right but nvidia have always been involved with eve for as long as i can remember or it seems that way. I don't think ccp can afford to alienate a lot of there gamers being that they are a pay to play game.

On a different note though those effects look really nice. I always love watching eve video's especially the ones put together by ccp as it makes me want to get my account online and get my megathron blasting some poor newb to death lol.

You never finish training in Eve

I mostly play in and out of wormhole space as PVP when it happens properly there (rather than ganks) is much less blobby usually and people can't just cyno in their capital fleets when the fight turns against them.

Yea capital ships in a lot of ways ruined the eve i liked to play. Capital ships are about as common as battleships were when i started playing. My character has 85mil sp all in pvp and i don't have a capital. It should have about 130mil but stopped training it for around 3 years during my play.

 

[darknite]

I have all that to learn yet, only just finished training.

First thing i would do if I was you is to find a none NPC corp that has ZERO tax. A few out there for that sole reason.

I've played since . . . checks evemon . . . 19/12/2009. I stuck to it because of how it looked. And it is possible to play for free!

Right all thanks for your help. Biggest thing seems to needing 2+gb vram, so either 7950 or gtx670. May be based on how much I can ge for my GTX570.

 

[humbug]

Noted guys ^^^^ thanks

 

[Rroff]

Thats the bit I forgot to mention, i usually have 4 - 5 clients running. But only ever 1 full screen. Would a GTX 660ti be enough then?

For me the bottleneck with multiple clients has been more system RAM and CPU than GPU - hence why I'm playing Eve on my laptop (i7 3610QM 4 core/8 thread with 16GB RAM) rather than my gaming PC which has only 4GB of RAM. I never saw any real slowdown from using the GTX470 with its 1.28GB VRAM at 1920x type resolutions but I can imagine needing 2GB at 2560x especially as they are adding new ships with higher detail mesh/textures and overhauling more of the older ships i.e. the new vargur skin is 4 times the memory footprint (twice the resolution) of the old one.

 

[AndyT]

Unfortunately 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 isn't that small a jump in resolution....

You're looking at jumping from 2.3million to 3.68million pixels which is a decent 60% increase. So effectively you're computer has to push around 60% harder to work at native resolution.