Best Graphics Card for DCS A-10C Warthog

[El_Jeffe]

I'm in the market for a new Video Card. I managed to pick up DCS A-10C Warthog (DX9c) for $20 off of Steam, and I can't really play it with my current video card (HD4850). Keep in mind, that I have a TripleHead2Go and I'm running 3 monitors at 3840 x 1024 (or three 1280x1024 monitors.) That's just shy of the 2560 x 1600 resolution but it's still hard to gauge which card would run this game best given the benchmarks used on Tom's Hardware. With that, here's what I have to work with:

Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 Motherboard
Antec BP550 Plus PSU
Intel i5-750
8GB Corsair XMS3 1600MHz Memory

I can't go to a crossfire configuration because putting a video card in the second slot of my motherboard limits me to x4 on both slots. (Trust me I've tried it...it's better to have one card at x16 vs. two at x4/x4). So any suggestion of CX or SLI is out.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone has experience running this game on a single card and what their recommendation would be. I'd like to not have to buy any new components other than a video card (like the PSU). With the TripleHead2Go, it shouldn't make any difference whether I go Radeon or Geforce.

I'm inclined to wait also for Kepler and more of the 7000 series to release since the 28nm GPUs reduce power consumption and helps keep me from having to upgrade my psu.

Also, if Tom's Hardware would include this game in their benchmarks, it would be much appreciated.

 

[cpitts1]

Warthog is not a very demanding game, what is your price range?

 

[El_Jeffe]

Not a very demanding game? Maybe my 4850 is older than I thought. I'd like to see it run with the x16 AF and x8 AA with all the in game settings maxed out at that high of a resolution at around 30 to 60 FPS.

If it's not that demanding, what's the cheapest card I could run it at the above settings on?

I didn't want to spend more than $300.

 

[jasonmac731]

I have an NVIDIA 570 GTX and run nearly all modern games nearly 100% maxed. You should be able to pick one up for around $320 on newegg. If you are dead set staying below $300 then get the NVIDIA GTX 560TI. It is one step below the 570 with great performance. Also, if you get one of those cards, they will remain relevant for the next 3 to 4 years easily.

 

[cpitts1]

Edit: i'm stupid, you can't run that many displays off of an Nvidia card (unless you get a 570 MDT, but that is about $80 out of your price range), go with a 6950, and you won;t be dissapointed.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150530

 

[El_Jeffe]

I can use an NVidia card because, like I said in my original post, I have a TripleHead2Go...so long as the card can run the resolutions I want. Most nVidia cards will run 4megapixels. If I put 3 1080p monitors on it, then that would be a different story. But since I'm not wanting to upgrade my monitors...I can go either way.

 

[cpitts1]

Go with a radeon 6950, better for higher resolutions because of 2GB VRAM

 

[El_Jeffe]

Or a 7850 by the end of February...that's kind of what I was thinking.

 

[inanition02]

6950 will probably be better than a 7850 - now if you were talking about the 7870...that'd be different. I'd say pick up the 6950.

 

[inanition02]

Note where the cards fall vertically - 78XX series is still in the Mainstream/Performance. 69XX is still above it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/AMD-Radeon-HD-7000-Series-Roadmap,0101-324738-0-2-3-1-jpg-.html

 

[El_Jeffe]

I was considering a Zotac GTX-560 - 448 Cores OC. But then I was perusing today and came across this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-560-benchmark-review,3112-10.html

Wow...drops off pretty quick at 4320x900. And my setup would have slightly more pixels at 3840x1024.

I guess it really comes down to how demanding A-10C really is at that resolution. I may have to wander over to one of the A-10 forums and find out what people are using there. But certainly a 6950 or 6970 should be a better bet. I even found a HIS 6970 Turbo Iceq for $300 (back up to $320 today) on newegg/amazon.

 

[cpitts1]

Yeah, the 6970's are dropping in price, and again, bigger frame buffer, go for a 6970.

 

[El_Jeffe]

I thought you all would be interested to know, I picked up an HIS 6970 Iceq Turbo. And I'll tell you...anti-aliasing kills this game at this resolution. Even with it off, over a populated area I get 20-30 fps. (Of course all the other settings are maxed.)

 

[cpitts1]

Well unfortunately, no other card in your price range will offer better preformance, But i wouldn't think AA would be needed at that resolution

 

[El_Jeffe]

AA does improve the visual of the game even at that high resolution.

I had seen that people online were able to use a 6970 (or even 6950's flashed to 6970's) on A-10C. But hadn't seen or heard much of people using a single card with a triple screen setup. Hence leading to me asking here if anyone had tried it. I've seen triple screen setups, with cross fire and sli on youtube (which look pretty amazing). But those were not within the scope of what I wanted to do.

Anyway, I tweeked a few of the settings and managed to get 30fps over busy areas near water. For anyone reading this afterwards here's what I did:

Catalyst control settings:
AA is set to x8 and to override application settings (this was mostly because I have games that don't have an AA setting in them, and I didn't want to fiddle with CCC every time I load a game.) Morphological AA is disabled.

X16 AF
Tesselation off (I have no dx 11 games)
Catalyst A.I. Texture Filtering - High Quality and enabled surface format optimization
Wait for vertical refresh - Always on (I have slow monitors that tear pretty bad otherwise..)
The Anti aliasing mode set to Performance - Multi Sample AA
Triple Buffering enabled.

In game settings are as follows:
Textures -> High
Scenes -> High
Civ Traffic -> High
Water -> Low
Visib Range -> High
Heat Blur -> Off (This to me is a pointless feature)
Shadows -> High
Resolution -> 3840 X 1024
Monitors -> 1 (This one was important...)
Res. of Cockpit Displays (1024 every frame)
MSAA -> 8x (doesn't matter because I over ride it in CCC...but matched it so I know what it's set at)
HDR -> Warm Colors
Shadow Tree -> on
VSYNC -> on (again I set this in CCC to always on so doesn't matter here but to match what I set at in CCC)
Full screen -> on
TSSAA-> OFF (Triple super sampling AA? Really? Why?)
Clutter/Bushes -> 500m
Trees Visibility -> 9000m (The only reason I didn't turn this all the way up is that the game has pretty low res textures further away that get higher res as you get closer. Seeing trees on distant low res textures didn't look as good as leaving it at the default.)

With that I can get 30 fps over busy areas with a single 6970, and it still looks great. About the only thing I think I had to compromise on was the water effect...it still looks great set on Low (it's reflective and looks like water). The manual states this about the Water setting:
Low - Basic water without 3D surface
Medium - Water has 3D surface and shelf
High - Water has 3D surface, shelf and full reflections.

It looked good on low and improved my fps greatly by leaving it on low. The price of not having to spend more on a video card I guess.

The only other bad thing was this card is marketed as a dual slot video card, but it was just big enough to block both the pci slots below my pcie slot that I can't put anything in them. Including my Audigy 2 zs sound card. But, I've got and extra pcie slot below those that's not good for a video card...I guess I can finally abandon Creative like they abandon their products. Time to find a nice sound card...

Anyways, hope this helps anyone else that comes a lookin'.
-El Jeffe

 

[cpitts1]

Sweet, glad you got it to work right!