Dear Mr Data and everyone else,

What's a good 2GB+ graphics card at the moment ?

I'm looking to upgrade mine to play ESO in Spring and am aiming for the recommended specs and above.

This one looks good :

Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 7950 Graphics Card with Boost (3GB, GDDR5, PCI Express 3.0, HDMI, DVI-I, 2x Mini Display Port, 384-Bit, AMD HD3D Technology)

Cheers


Below are the system requirements....


PC RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 8 64-bit
Processor: Quad Core 2.3GHz or equivalent processor
Memory: 4GB System RAM
Hard Disk Space: 60GB free HDD space
Video Card: Direct X 11 compliant video card with 2GB of RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® 560 Ti / ATI Radeon™ 6950 or better)
Sound: DirectX compatible sound card

PC MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Operating System: Windows XP 32-bit
Processor: Dual Core 2.0GHz or equivalent processor
Memory: 2GB System RAM
Hard Disk Space: 60GB free HDD space
Video Card: DirectX 9.0 compliant video card with 512MB of RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 / ATI Radeon™ 2600 or better)
Sound: DirectX compatible sound card

That card looks good, it's 3 GIG and 384 bit, meaning it's roughly 1.5 times the speed of your current 256 bit card.

The 2 GIG cards seem to be 256 bit so I wouldn't bother with them as it wont be much of an up-grade.

Your current card is quite a good one still, I would try the game on it first 

Haven't heard of ESO, it sounds like one of the Oblivion / Skyrim type games but multiplayer. 

I've had a look at this game



It does look like the Skyrim engine that works great on a 1 GIG card and forgive me but it is a long way off AC4 or next gen IMHO. So I really wouldn't up-grade your card just for this game.

Don't miss my post above about graphics cards though.

Yes is't basically Skyrim online. But with an MMO you don't get as good a graphics as a solo game. Still looks pretty good to me though.

OK mate I will wait and see how my current card behaves, thanks 

Just thinking ahead, do you think this would be a good card for next gen games...like the ones we are all waiting for, or should I wait ?

Yeah that's the kind of card we should be looking at for next gen, I honestly think we can get away with the cards we have now for many of the next gen games coming but if you want to max them out in graphics quality and cover all eventualities then this card looks good.

I have been keeping an eye on the 384bit cards, one was on offer on ebuyer for £180 a while back, didn't have the cash at the time, for me any of the 384 bit cards with 3 GIG will do, the lowest model number in the range, just as long as it's one of the better known makes like Sapphire or Gigabyte and a few other too   

Yes I'm going to stick to a Sapphire card I think as they have served me so well.

I did get an invite to the beta run of ESO but I forgot about it, hopefully I will get another one.

I am maximum level on LOTRO and have done it all now, so I'm getting a bit bored.

Tried a game called Vindictus, but found it was all instance based and not open world.

I'm trying out Neverwinter online atm, but I'm not keen on the combat/camera controls.

The landscape looks quite nice in ESO, and the graphics are a notch up from LOTRO, even if they are not as good as single player. What I like about it too is that it's open world and all being run on one mega server. They must have worked some clever stuff to stop lag I guess.

Yeah the Skyrim engine is good just a little dated now.

One of the bets bits or the bit that gave me the most enjoyment about Skyrim is the way you can mod the game play and graphics engine, which I doubt will be available in multi player.

Congrats on maxing out LOTRO 

Yeah I have seen few mods like you mention. It does seem cool.

A good thing about Neverwinter is that they have this thing called The Foundry, which enables players to make their own content and dungeons for other players to play. Not sure if I will spend much time on it though.

Star Trek Online also has a "foundry", which allows community members to create new missions and such. I've played a few of them, and they were rather fun.

Yes that does make the game more interesting and gives it a longer life. Neverwinter Nights was like that and it was a great thing to have.

Mr. Data, this would be even better hey ?

Sapphire Radeon HD7970

Yes a bit faster but as you get up to the top end of things you end up spending a lot more money for a little bit more performance.

The smart money would go on a lower end 384 bit card, that's what I say anyway 

I just posted to see what you thought, I found it elsewhere for a lot less 

Found some more about ESO if anyone else was interested :

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/previews/10975-3-Things-Skyrim-Players-Need-to-Know-About-ESO

I downloaded it last night, took about 8-9 hours in total. The beta weekend starts at 5PM GMT, so half an hour from now I will be seeing if it's any good. I hope it is, I tried so many and have not found one I really like yet.