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if I were to get a new graphics card for my birthday?
jim625
Member Posts: 907 Arc User
which one shall I get the one I have now is a "AMD radeon HD 6450" and would love to have sto at a high graphics settings ^^
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looks good but way overpriced forgot to mention about the budget price ^^
http://www.overclock.net/t/502403/graphics-card-ranking
Take that list, and cross-reference with a decent computer parts website to see prices. I'd say Newegg, but you're in England, so I've no idea what a good option is.
Another thing to consider is if you have enough of a power supply (both enough wattage, and extra power connectors if the card needs them). And space in your case, if it's small.
edit: honestly, you don't need that overpowered a card to get STO to high. Most MMOs don't push the boundaries like regular games do, they want to maximize possible customers. So to pick a card, think about what other games you might want to play (Battlefield, Tomb Raider, Witcher, whatever) and check out their requirements.
cool thanks ^^
I'll check it out but im not sure if this graphics card is compatible with my computer
hmmm think I'll check this one out too still got plenty of time to decide before my birthday :-)
If your budget is 200$ I'd take a close look at newegg, last time I looked I saw an nVidia 960 4g windforce for $190-200. That card will get you exactly what you want and a more.
I agree completely.
Star Trek Online looks nice at max settings, but it's not a game that you need the 'latest and greatest' to max out. A GTX 960 would EASILY do what you're after, you could run STO on max and most new premium games on Med-Hi for a very affordable price.
If you can squeeze out a few more dollars (Pounds) you could try and move up to the GTX 970 which is a really great card, but a 960 is more then enough for STO. A GTX 960 is actually overkill for this game, and it's very affordable.
I actually installed STO on my 'Media Center' PC which has a 2GB GTX 750 Ti in it and even that could max out STO with relative ease. It stutters a bit in massive combat zones like the Badlands, but it still handles the game very well. If STO is the goal, you don't need to spend much money at all.
At 1080p getting 23 fps sitting on Hathon with nothing going on, graphics to max except for workd/terrain/char detail distance to medium, low max physics debris, and medium shadows. CCA when everything is around turns into a slideshow. VBZ fps is low too, so I go minimum, as are some of those delta quadrant missions which spam particles everywhere.
Everything else is acceptable: this isn't an F1 simulator where you need 100+ FPS to make sure those visible 60 fps don't glitch one millisecond or anything in the CPU gets held back or you lose precious milliseconds on your lap times. For online games latency will be the limiting factor anyways.
When my gtx470 fried itself while playing STO (after many years of great service and heavy use despite taking care of it and never OC) used its lifetime warranty to get that equivalent, and the extra bit of performance does show up in game by a few fps, but it is hardly noticeable. One major thing it helps with is renderscale 3 where I don't crash very often anymore, and can actually take screenshots easier than before.
Also, here's the thing: this game is probably worse than many others out there in terms of optimizations. User-interface generated fps-lag is the number one obvious thing. They've worked on it, and it hasn't improved, at least not significantly. At this rate, we'll all be recommending each other personal supercomputers to keep up with the lack of optimized coding, but by all means, don't let me keep anyone from supporting hardware innovation.
Edit to add: a GPU will for sure increase FPS and possibly graphics options (the newest DX is locked to Win10 sadly, maybe someone will port it backwards to 8 some day) but it also relies on what your current PC can handle and if it has any serious bottlenecks or not. Each game will respond differently depending on how well they make use of GPU and how much other resources they draw on (RAM, sufficient watts from a bronze or higher rated PSU, adequate cooling). CPU sometimes isn't that much of a bottleneck either, even one as old (antiquated) as mine apparently can make great use of an nvidia 970 according to my friend's system scoring as high as some faster processors on benchmarks, and achieving some really high FPS in certain racing sims on full where mine dips way below 60 unless graphics get turned down. So by all means, get a really good graphics card.
Wish I had a chance to test STO on my friends' brand new PC we put together - doesn't have anything fancy like RAID SSDs or SLI but it's definitely performance without breaking the bank, and it shows. Some day I'll have a spare copy of STO with me and try it out.
If your budget is up to £200 there are a heap of decent cards you can get for that price, you don't need anything close to a high-end card for STO. Any card from the last couple of years should be fine for max settings.
Beyond the video card something else to take into account is what is the rest of your computer like. 3 top of the line cards at 1200 a pop won’t help if your system stars to bottleneck someplace else. That extra you spend on a 970 could also get you more ram or an ssd. Yes an ssd will not really help fps but outside of that it will just feel so much faster and snappier.
I was dumb enough to get the regular GTX 980, a few month back. And now, playing Return of The Tomb Raider, I can't even max it all out, primarly not do due needing at least 6G VRAM for 'High Quality' textures. And you can forget about SSAA.
STO doesn't have such ridiculous requirements, though. Regular GTX 980 spins like a kitten with it on max everything.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
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I'd recommend this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487155
I see a lot of people saying the GTX 950 and I'd have to agree with them. Just built my first gaming rig and used the 950 because of budget reasons. I was pretty happy with what it was able to do. I saved up a bit and added a second one to run in SLI. The 750ti is also a nice card. Just make sure your motherboard has a PCI express slot to support it.
I recently did a build for someone using that exact card. Great bang for the buck, the card performs very well and it's whisper quiet. One of the better value for the money cards available.
Considering ppl constantly beatching about low FPS from all the visuals, don't underestimate the card needed to do everything smoothly. GTX 970 and up are indeed not needed, though. My old GTX 580 ran everything just fine (maxed, DX11). Personally I wouldn't go much below that; but YMMV.
Of course it's absurd, which is why no one said any such thing.
People have suggested that the 970 is a great card if you can afford the extra money, but no one ever suggested that it's needed for STO. Even the 960 is a mountain of overkill as far as STO is concerned.
Generally speaking, STO is not very demanding on graphics and £200 can get you something pretty good as long as your current PSU can handle the new graphics card (GPU). The following is a link for an Asus GTX 960 for £167, but you should search around for better deals; I don't live in the UK. The GTX 960 is a bit overkill for STO due to the game's low graphics requirements, but if you play games that are a bit demanding like Fallout 4, then the GTX 960 is money well spent.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-Nvidia-PCI-E-Graphics-Card/dp/B00SKWIISQ
If STO is the only game you play then it is possible to drop down to a lower end card like the following GTX 950 for £135. But from a performance point of view the saving of £32 does not justify the relatively large performance gap between the two GPUs.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-GTX-950-DL-DVI-I-Graphics/dp/B013SUP76U
If you prefer to get another Radeon GPU, then the performance equivalent to the GTX 960 would be the Radeon R9 285, but they are more expensive than the GTX 960 which means you get less bang for your buck, or in your case less bang for your quid. The following Sapphire Radeon R9 285 will set you back £205. There could be cheaper ones out there, but I am not sure where to look for deals in the UK.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-Dual-X-Retail-Graphics-GDDR5/dp/B00N8THHQK/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1454424235&sr=1-2&keywords=r9+285
Yeah, kind of pointless to get a fancy card, if it'll either fry your power supply, or won't even connect to it because it doesn't have enough auxiliary 6/8-pin power connectors....