Will this graphics card do the trick?

[bhavv]

^^

Thats a very good point.

I will be very interested in seeing performance numbers for this game with tessellation turned on with both ATI and Nvidia DX11 cards.

Maybe a GTX 450 would be better then, but I think that one of those will be too slow to run well with tessellation turned on.

Wow, newegg doesnt even have a lot of stuff that OCUK have, no 512 Mb HD 5750s, hardly any 768 Mb GTX 460s, and no GTX 450s!

 

[tokala]

Maybe a GTX 450 would be better then, but I think that one of those will be too slow to run well with tessellation turned on.

This!
Tesselation and GPU accelerated physics are gimmicks at the moment. If those are used in games, it's optional and usually won't look noticably better unless you go full throttle on it, and then most current cards will be not be powerful enough anyway.

 

[bernlin2000]

The 5570 is not good at all. It has a transfer rate of 28.8 GB/s while the Nvidia 9600 GT I posted above gets 57.6 GB/s.

The Nvidia 9600 GT is under the recommended specs, so you're not going to get the "full" experience of the game in all its glory. 5770 is certainly a good value, but if you have the money (it's 200 dollars) I got the HD 5830, it's about the frame rates are about 20% better:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...tml?prod[4342]=on&prod[4348]=on&prod[4322]=on
(5830 is first, then 5770, then the recommended 9800GT)

This is the one I specifically bought a few months back for general gaming, it's very long but it works wonderful: very quiet and fast:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125317&cm_re=5830-_-14-125-317-_-Product

 

[aziantuntija]

Tesselation and GPU accelerated physics are gimmicks at the moment.

What makes tessellation anymore 'just a gimmick' than lets say anti alising or anisotropic filtering? Or even high definition resolution for that matter? They are all 'just gimmicks' if you think it that way.

If those are used in games, it's optional and usually won't look noticably better unless you go full throttle on it, and then most current cards will be not be powerful enough anyway.

Look at the "1920 x 1200, Very High, Tessellation + Adv. Shadows On, 0xAA, 16xAF" -test. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/30321-nvidia-geforce-gtx-470-review-13.html Looks very playable framerate to me.. Even 5830 has a very acceptable frame rate in 1680 x 1050, Very High, Tessellation + Adv. Shadows On, 1xAA, 16xAF, so yes current cards ARE powerful enough to use tessellation.

 

[civ_king]

Currently Nvidia cards have better tessellation performance than ATI cards and civ5 is capable of using tessellation.

I just ordered new GPU (infact i should get it today from mail) couple of days ago and i had two choises to go for: HD 5850 and GTX 470 (i play with 1900x1200 reso). They have almost identical price here in Finland but GTX 470 has slightly or clearly (depending from game) better performance than HD 5850 and the Nvidia cards tessellation performance is clearly better than ATIs. Yes current Nvidia cards heats more than ATI cards but i have good case for cooling and GTX 470 has a 3 years warranty.

So if someone is planning on using tessellation with something like 1600x1200 reso or bigger in their civ game, i would recommend getting Nvidia card for that purpose.

The 5870 is half way between the 470 and 480 in price (actually it's closer to the 470 than 480),

Temperature Charts

Spoiler :

Power charts

Spoiler :

look, at those temps and watts it seems reasonable to claim that the GTX 4XX are a set of crap trying too hard

 

[bhavv]

This!
Tesselation and GPU accelerated physics are gimmicks at the moment.

Not really. The manual confirms that Civ V uses tessellation, and it can be adjusted with variable settings (low, medium, high most likely).

So it would be nice to have a capable card of playing it with tessellation turned on, that would really need a 5770 at least, preferably a GTX 460 because ATI's tessellation performance is pretty poor on the whole HD 5000 range, and doesnt improve with higher up cards.

 

[tokala]

Not really. The manual confirms that Civ V uses tessellation, and it can be adjusted with variable settings (low, medium, high most likely).

So it would be nice to have a capable card of playing it with tessellation turned on, that would really need a 5770 at least, preferably a GTX 460 because ATI's tessellation performance is pretty poor on the whole HD 5000 range, and doesnt improve with higher up cards.

As long as noone has run a benchmark on the tesselation performance in Civ5, we have no clue how much performance it will need and how much better it will look at that.
And compared to a GTX470/480, ANY card, including the 460, has a "poor" tesselation performance
Judging by the (very) few tesselation benchmarks so far, the HD 5000s indeed look pretty weak in that department.

That situation resembles somehow the introduction of 32 bit rendering and hardware T&L: Cards without it went out of fashion almost instantly, but in the beginning almost no card was able to USE those features, as either the games did't support it yet or the cards were to weak to use it anyway
And it took years to change that, at least with T&L (Just loved my Kyro )

 

[aziantuntija]

look, at those temps and watts it seems reasonable to claim that the GTX 4XX are a set of crap trying too hard

Im not personally a fanboi of either of these companies, ATI or Nvidia. I just buy the card that I value the most.

When Nvidia brought its GTX 4xx series to the market it was (imo) overpriced because for example here in Finland the GTX 470 was almost at the same price that HD 5870 was but it didnt have the power to match and also it heated alot more than any ATI card. If my GPU would of broken back then, it would of been ATI card that i would of bought to replace my two and a half years old Nvidia card.

But my card didnt broke 4 months ago, it broked about a week ago and when i looked at the prices now i saw that the GTX 470/480 prices have come down, wich was a good thing because now (imo) the ATI had some good competion.


My budget was about 340€, i game at 1900x1200 and i love extra eye candy


This is how i see it:


Now, the GTX 470 is at the same price that HD 5850 is and ive decided to buy the GTX 470 because it has more power than HD 5850 has and better price/performance rate than the HD 5850 has and not of course forgetting the better Tessellation and Anti aliasing performance a.k.a. eye candy.


I know GTX 470 uses more power and therefore heats more than HD 5850, but it just doesnt really matter to me because it really, REALLY doesnt affect my gaming in any possible way. So i went for the price/performance&tessellation&AA figures. I mean of course it is a great thing that GPU stays cool but what do i REALLY get with 10% cooler GPU temperatures? Instead, a 5% to 25% of minimum framerate performance boost can really be a game saver in current or near future games. Also, the tempertatures between the two cards are pretty much the same when they are not stressed and this is the state that the computer is in most of the time.


I think that the current GPU market are very interesting. If you get ATI you get cooler GPU but also less power and if you get Nvidia you get more power but also more heat. There is almost everything for everyone

 

[jgarrison80]

Hopefully someone can help me out. I want to know if a Visiontek 5670 hd card will run civ 5. Also since i put in the card i noticed that when i scroll across the map of civ 4 it stutters slightly and gets worse if i scroll out to world view.

 

[aziantuntija]

Hopefully someone can help me out. I want to know if a Visiontek 5670 hd card will run civ 5. Also since i put in the card i noticed that when i scroll across the map of civ 4 it stutters slightly and gets worse if i scroll out to world view.

How big is the civ4 map you are talking about? And does it stutter all the time or just in late game?

One thing is for sure, you are certainly not able to play it in DX11 mode! I also honestly think that it may struggle a bit even in DX9 mode.. ..but it should still be playable though.

 

[tokala]

One thing is for sure, you are certainly not able to play it in DX11 mode! I also honestly think that it may struggle a bit even in DX9 mode.. ..but it should still be playable though.

??? The 5670 is pretty close to the performance of a "recommended" 4830
One would expect it to work reasonably well with full eye candy, unless you have a very large monitor. If it would be "struggling" even in DX9 mode, those official requirements would be rather misleading.
Regarding the stuttering in Civ4: might be a driver issue if is wasn't there before you switched the video cards. Did you uninstall the old driver before switching cards?

 

[aziantuntija]

One would expect it to work reasonably well with full eye candy, unless you have a very large monitor.

??? Do you honestly think that 5670 is capable of running civ5 with full eye candy ???

Todays normal sized monitor is something like 1600x1200 then on top of it lets put something like, oh i dont know: DX11, All Settings High, Full Tessellation, 8XAA ???

Would 5670 run civ5 with these settings?

If it would be "struggling" even in DX9 mode, those official requirements would be rather misleading.

Well that wouldnt exactly be the first time this would happen.. even with civ series.

Regarding the stuttering in Civ4: might be a driver issue

Might be.. Altough, if you are encountering stuttering when scrolling the map in civ4, i wouldnt get my hopes up on running civ5 perfectly, especially not with all the eye candy turned on.

 

[tokala]

??? Do you honestly think that 5670 is capable of running civ5 with full eye candy ???
Todays normal sized monitor is something like 1600x1200 then on top of it lets put something like, oh i dont know: DX11, All Settings High, Full Tessellation, 8XAA ???
Would 5670 run civ5 with these settings?

Yepp, i expect it to be perfectly playable on 1680x1050, DX11, High Settings. You don't need 30+fps for a TBS
Tesselation: If only the terrain topography is tesselated, i don't expect a big hit on performance, even on the HD 5000s.
AA/AF: With the notorious "organic" look you won't be able get much of an improvement out of those, so i don't consider high AA levels a component of "full eye candy". And AF is quite "cheap" these days.
Of course you can bring a 5670 to its knees with very high AA, especially if you throw in Supersampling modes

 

[aziantuntija]

Yepp, i expect it to be perfectly playable on 1680x1050, DX11, High Settings. You don't need 30+fps for a TBS
Tesselation: If only the terrain topography is tesselated, i don't expect a big hit on performance, even on the HD 5000s.
AA/AF: With the notorious "organic" look you won't be able get much of an improvement out of those, so i don't consider high AA levels a component of "full eye candy". And AF is quite "cheap" these days.
Of course you can bring a 5670 to its knees with very high AA, especially if you throw in Supersampling modes

A modern, well known and big selling game can be totally maxed out with all the available eye candy with just recommended system requirements GPU? Really?

Moderator Action: *snip*


EDIT: Im willing to bet that HD 5670 is not capable of producing steadily 30 fps or over framerate in civ5 with all settings maxed out.

 

[Zelig]

look, at those temps and watts it seems reasonable to claim that the GTX 4XX are a set of crap trying too hard

Those charts are missing the GTX 460.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

I'd recommend the Radeon 5850 (I'm using this card).

I got the XFX version for less than £200. I was particularly impressed by the specification, price and then how little heat it produces. Less heat produced means I can overclock it in the future should the need arise. Though, there is always the future option of getting a second one.

 

[bhavv]

Yepp, i expect it to be perfectly playable on 1680x1050, DX11, High Settings. You don't need 30+fps for a TBS
Tesselation: If only the terrain topography is tesselated, i don't expect a big hit on performance, even on the HD 5000s.

Actually, one thing to note is that on the HD 5000 series, every card has the same fixed tessellation unit. If the game uses too much tessellation for a 5670 to handle, then it will actually be too much even for a 5870.

You might not want to believe that, but it is true. All of ATI's current DX11 GPUs, from the 5450 to the 5870 have the same tessellation proccessor on them, whereas Nvidias GTX 400 range has much weaker individual tessellation units, but with one per shader block meaning that tessellation performance vastly increases with better GTX 400s.

In DX11 tessellation benchmarks, the GTX 460 is even capable of beating the HD 5870 due to how much the latter struggles to handle tessellation when a lot of it is used.

However, I really doubt that Civ V will use that much tessellation, and even if it does, the tessellation option in the settings is variable, so you can use low / medium / high amounts of it, so even the 5670 will be able to play Civ V with at least low, if not medium tessellation.

I'd recommend the Radeon 5850 (I'm using this card).

I'd recommend a GTX 460 over that for any game that uses Tessellation as it is cheaper and more powerful in DX11. So does Civ V's lead graphics designer:

"The Civilization V team is really excited about the high-end DirectX 11 performance at a mainstream price point that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 delivers. The 460's support for DX11 features such as tessellation and compute shaders allow Civilization V to run faster while looking better than ever."

-- Firaxis Games / Dan Baker / Graphics Lead on Civilization V

Heres a tessellation comparison:

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Tessellation...the Radeon 5850 isn't incapable of it and tessellation is barely used.

It is a gimmick, a selling point for nvidia whose cards will be on fire.

If comparing 460 with the 5850, then the difference on the only thing that the 460 may do better, is 25 to 19. Not particularly significant.

A useful comparison table of the various graphics cards:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-460-radeon-hd-5570-gaming,review-31965-7.html

Note that the 5850 is above the 460 and equal to the 470, but I'd rather a cool GPU that can be overclocked and isn't requiring my fans making much noise.

I will also be abit biased as I have a 5850, my last Nvidia card died and that I got it for a great price.

 

[Zelig]

If comparing 460 with the 5850.

Not a good comparison though, the 460 starts around $170, while the 5850 starts around $255.

Biggest competitor to the 5850 is probably 2x5750. It's almost exactly the same price and gets marginally, but consistently better performance than the 5850.

 

[The_J]

Guys, when talking about graphics cards, please take a look at this thread at the 2K forums. It has a nice list of which card can run it and which not.