What is a good video card to play starcraft 2

[Guest]

I have a ASUS M4A785-M motherboard and a AMD PhenomII X2 555 processor with a GIGABYTE HD 4550 512mb DDR3 card I was thinking of up grading my card to play starcraft 2 what would be a good card?

 

[Timop]

Sticking with ATI, a 5770 will do fine, though a nice GTS450 would be somewhat better.

 

[bystander]

It all depends on weither you compromise on graphics or not.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/starcraft-ii-radeon-geforce,2728-7.html

At the highest settings, you'd need a CF/SLI setup. Although a 480 might be passable at some resolutions.

 

[benski]

It all depends on weither you compromise on graphics or not.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/starcraft-ii-radeon-geforce,2728-7.html

At the highest settings, you'd need a CF/SLI setup. Although a 480 might be passable at some resolutions.

That benchmark uses a scenario that will rarely happen in the game, and it's a RTS not a FPS so frame rates in the twenties doesn't kill the experience.

 

[bystander]

That benchmark uses a scenario that will rarely happen in the game, and it's a RTS not a FPS so frame rates in the twenties doesn't kill the experience.

Well, as I said, it all depends on weither you are willing to compromise or not and what you are willing to live with on a FPS basis.

He has the benchmarks to see what he finds good enough.

 

[benski]

If you don't crank up AA you can play with everything on ultra with a 4870 or better as long as your CPU can handle it, I played through the campaign with a 3870 with everthing on ultra (but no AA) and there are only a few spots where the framerate drops noticably. In big 8 player battles where everyone has max units you will need something powerfull but I think your proccessor would probably limit you in that situation anyways with anything above a 460. I got a GTX 465 and oc'ed it to 800/1600/3600 and I play with everything on ultra. In nexus wars at the end when everyones units are maxed I'm the only one not getting the "your system is slowing down the game" pop-up and my friend has a 5870 so I think the game does prefer nvidia at this point.

 

[bystander]

If you don't crank up AA you can play with everything on ultra with a 4870 or better as long as your CPU can handle it, I played through the campaign with a 3870 with everthing on ultra (but no AA) and there are only a few spots where the framerate drops noticably. In big 8 player battles where everyone has max units you will need something powerfull but I think your proccessor would probably limit you in that situation anyways with anything above a 460. I got a GTX 465 and oc'ed it to 800/1600/3600 and I play with everything on ultra. In nexus wars at the end when everyones units are maxed I'm the only one not getting the "your system is slowing down the game" pop-up and my friend has a 5870 so I think the game does prefer nvidia at this point.

I'm not sure why are correcting me, as you are only prooving what I wrote. You compromised by not using AA. The link I gave also shows that it does favor Nvidia cards atm.

 

[benski]

Sorry I'm not trying to correct you I'm just trying to be helpful to the OP. I doubt he needs a 480 or a dual card setup to enjoy Starcraft 2, I just wanted to share my experience with the game and maybe keep him from wasting money.

 

[bystander]

I didn't actually recommend a 480 either. It all depends on what is acceptable settings to him.

 

[reccy]

GTX 465 seems fine on an old system i had, running with an AMD Athlon X2 4200+, CPU was the bottleneck, but only slightly..

 

[benski]

^suuuure