Ultra-mode video card shopping guide

After demoing the Ultra-mode at HeroCon, one of the most frequently asked questions we have been receiving is “what are the video cards you recommend to get the most out of Ultra-mode?” With the holiday season coming up, we asked the programmers in charge of implementing the features of Ultra-mode what they would recommend. We would like to forward this information on to you so you can better work on your holiday shopping lists.

If you are looking to spend under US$100, then an NVidia 9800 GT is your best bet. For AMD (ATI/Radeon), we don’t have enough of these cards at this price point to get you good data. This would be the minimum card for enabling all the features, only at reduced quality settings.

If you are looking to spend between $100 and $200, the Radeon HD 4890 and GeForce GTX 260 will do you well. We don’t have numbers from the Radeon 57xx series yet to verify if that is better or worse though. This would end up somewhere in the middle of Ultra-mode quality.

Finally if you are going to spend over $200, the GeForce GTX 285 is an excellent choice. We don’t have numbers from the Radeon 58xx series yet. This would be able to run Ultra-mode with the quality maxed out (except we have no data on Anti-aliasing, so caveat emptor when it comes to that specific feature).

Note: This is based on our current internal testing and might change by the time Going Rogue is released. Also, a video card is not the ONLY thing you should take into consideration. Your PC having a decent processor and memory will also enhance your performance. As we continue to test and get more information available we will update you. I hope this helps, and happy holidays!

UPDATE 2-10-2010: Spoke with our engineer today, and he said we were seeing excellent performance from the Radeon 5770 card, which is a mid-range card. We have not tested the 5870, but expect the performance on that card to be one of the fastest for Ultra mode. Also noteworthy is that Ultra Mode does not currently support SLI configured cards. We’re working with NVidia and ATI about this, but you all can speed up the process by contacting NVidia and ATI about updating things on their end to get it to work.

Thanks for the info. Off to Newegg.com and 1st after red name!!

*my first one!*

Nice. I should be fine with my eixsting nVidia 280GTX then. w00t!

Boy I hope my job interview goes well today, as I clearly need the moniez. Thanks Posi!

My 7950GT melted down awhile back, and I got a 9800GT as a good drop-in replacement without needing a better power supply. Glad to see that it'll support GR, although 'minimum' is concerning. I don't mind losing some of the finer details like reflections in your shoulderpads and such as long as the basic shadowing and world reflection that make the zones come alive still works fine.

Cheers for the information Posi

Excellent. Now time for some careful panning and budgeting...

Hmmm. Now off to look at the numbers behind the quoted cards. Thanks, Posi! Please update this guide as your datamonkeys come back with more numbers.
Edit:
Posi; what's the rec. VRAM value for any of these cards? 1GB? More? Less? Is OpenGL 3.* unimportant? (all these cards seem to support is 2.1)

Looking at the prices of some those cards and the size of the GTX200 series of cards, I may be stuck with a GT9800. That and my power supply of only 600 watts may not be enough.

REALLY appreciate you getting this out before Black Friday, thank you! This is the perfect excuse to upgrade (well, and Windows 7).

Thanks for this Posi. I plan on building a new PC early next year and it gives me a good starting point when it comes to the video card.

I run two gorgeous Nvidia 9500 SLI, I can't wait to check out how this will run

Sounds like I'll be pretty happy, then. Sweet.

sweet so glad the comp i got back in feb is a quad core with the 285.. looks like i shouldnt have an issue at all with ultra mode... awesomesauce

I plan on just saving all my Christmas and birthday (January 19, baby!) money to build a whole new PC around April. We'll have a better idea of what the most highly recommended specs are then. Plus, the video cards that cost over $200 now will probably have dropped under the $200 range.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Posi, can you have the programmers give us the names of the features they're using? (I doubt it's called 'ultra mode' ) With that info, we can probably track down which cards have that ability. Thanks.

Before I say anything else, I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for getting us this information in time for the $WINTER_HOLIDAY sales. ...

Not that you made it easier for me. I'm not 100% sure I can get a 260 into this case, and a 285 is probably out of my budget even if I could fit it in. I had been looking at going deep into the hole to get a widescreen laptop, but almost all of them use 250s, which you didn't mention, but are probably about comparable to a 9800.

I will say that it's going to be with mild regret that I ditch my now-aging XFX brand 7950 GTX. This thing's been the best graphics card I've ever had, a real work-horse, and I got it cheap the same way that you're recommending to people that they save money: buy the absolute best 2-year-old graphics card. My 7950 is now, what, four years old? and still runs CoH with all settings maxed out even in the middle of a Hamidon raid or a saucer raid.