Guild Wars 2

I currently have a Radeon 4600 series card, I not sure the exact card but I have to run everything on low settings. I’m looking to invest in a new graphics card for the newer games. This card has treated me well but since all my time is going into GW2 I would like to see the beauty of the game.

Currently I am looking at these two cards:
MSI Radeon 6570 1 GB
or
Sapphire Radeon 6570 2 GB

I’m not sure if i should get the extra GB if it’s needed or not, but i’m looking to go the cheaper route, and also looking to MAX my settings or get as close as I can without spending to much on a card. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Bluedot

140 is not particularly great as a budget, but if you are desperate, this is probably your best choice.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150599

It’s the fastest card out of the 7770 series, and the aftermarket cooler on it is always a bonus. But with that said, an extra 70 dollars will get you something that is 2-3 times faster.

Those cards are not designed for gaming, I would suggest 7850 or above. Although GW2 is not a GPU dependent game, the cards you mentioned are not equipped to deal with modern day graphics.

As for 1GB or 2GB, it depends on your screen resolution, if you play at 1920×1080 or above, I would suggest 2GB versions of the card.

Thank you for the quick reply. Would you mind suggesting some cards that would fit my budget? I’m not looking to spend more than $140 tops, so I’d like to get as close to maxing graphics as I can. I only play at 1280×1024

Sorry but you won’t MAX your settings on that budget, just the way it is, you’ll need something higher. As Zelta says it’s recommended to get one of the cards from their newest generation and not the 6xxx gen too (7xxx is newest)

I suggest the EVGA gtx6oo line. I have a gtx670 and I am getting 100+fps with everything maxed . This line of cards is around $5oo . But remember this game also uses quite a bit of CPU power also.

Thank you for the responses, looks like I’ll have to save up a bit more before I upgrade. I dont think I’m to worried about my CPU I have a intel quad core Q6600, i just need a good heatsink for it.

I agree that you probably won’t be able to max out that resolution at your budget.

My monitor is only 1600×900 and I get ~60 on max settings with an HD 6870.

The 7770 is newer, but it’s still a less powerful card than some of the 6xxx and even 5xxx. Even if you have a PCIe 3.0 slot, you won’t see much, if any, difference between 2.0 and 3.0. Here’s an article : http://www.anandtech.com/show/5458/the-radeon-hd-7970-reprise-pcie-bandwidth-overclocking-and-msaa

You should get pretty decent performance from anything on the HD 6870 / GTX 560 and above level. Will you be able to totally max out and retain ~60fps – maybe not, but it should be decent and probably the best you can at your budget.

Also, before you buy anything, check your Power Supply (PSU). What is it right now ? If it’s not a high-quality PSU with enough wattage, you can fry your entire computer – and this might mean you’d be better off waiting until you can upgrade the PSU (since the card you have now has a lower power requirement than any you’re looking at). If it’s not 500W from a good brand, I’d wait.