Advice needed

[jbltecnicspro]

Currently, I'm pushing a GTX-560 2GB. Not bad at all, considering I got it for a good deal here on the forums. But, I'm now running 1600x1200 on a 19-inch CRT. It can't handle Far Cry 3 at that resolution. I have to bump it down to 1280x1024 with mostly Ultra settings. Was wondering what would be a good card to push Far Cry 3 at 1600x1200? AA would be nice too.

I'm thinking either a Radeon HD-7850 or 7870, but I'm a little nervous about the driver situation. I had a Radeon HD-7750 and the drivers on it weren't the greatest. What about a used GTX-580? Would that be decent enough for most games at 1600x1200?

Recommend me a card that's around $200 or so.

 

[evilsofa]

The GTX 660 2GB goes for $200-$220 on newegg at the moment, and is about 50% faster than your GTX 560 2GB.

But going by this review of a bunch of cards, including the GTX 660 (and the GTX 470 which you may consider equal to your GTX 560 to give you an idea of the improvement that would be), I'm not sure you can expect to get Far Cry 3 1600x1200 Ultra settings with AA for anywhere near $200, be it Nvidia or AMD.

 

[cannondale06]

btw 1600x1200 is 4:3 aspect ratio so you should use 1280x960 as 1280x1024 is 5:4 and will distort image, cut off slightly more of your fov or give you bigger black bars depending on the game.

 

[jbltecnicspro]

Right, and it's less pixels too so easier to render. Not by much of course, but still! Haha

 

[jbltecnicspro]

The GTX 660 2GB goes for $200-$220 on newegg at the moment, and is about 50% faster than your GTX 560 2GB.

But going by this review of a bunch of cards, including the GTX 660 (and the GTX 470 which you may consider equal to your GTX 560 to give you an idea of the improvement that would be), I'm not sure you can expect to get Far Cry 3 1600x1200 Ultra settings with AA for anywhere near $200, be it Nvidia or AMD.

Well... The limit can be increased to probably $250. As for AA, I don't really care if I can push it or not. Right now, my 560 can't possibly hope to push AA with ultra settings. The beautiful thing about having a CRT though, is that unlike LCD, you can pretty much run any resolution and it'll look okay. With LCD, anything below native won't really cut it. 1280x960 on my monitor looks pretty good. I really would like to push the maximum of 1600x1200 on this monitor though, as it does look a fair bit better. On my 560, it's borderline playable. At night, the framerate is probably 35-40 fps average if I cut the shadows down to "high." But in the day it's averaging 30-ish, dipping below that on occasions.