Graphics Card for Ultra Mode.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

nope.

The starting point for Ultra Mode is RadeonHD 4850 :: Geforce 9800 GT / Geforce GTS 250.

The breaking point where "Almost everything will work" is the RadeonHD 5770 / Geforce GTX 260 Core 216.

There are no PCI or AGP cards currently on the market that are capable of running UltraMode. The most Powerful AGP card you can currently buy is the RadeonHD 4650, which is three or four full models down from the starting point, depending on how you count chipset generation.

The Most powerful PCI graphics card you can buy would be the Geforce 9500 GT, which is again, two full models down from the starting point.

If you want Ultra Mode graphics, you'll need a PCI-Express 16x slot, and you will need to spend at least $100 on a graphics card.

You will also need a hefty processor. If you are still using a single core processor such as the Socket 754 / 939 Athlon64s, or a Pentium4, Ultra-Mode won't be happening outside of really low resolutions.

Well, my 8800 GTX allows me to turn on some Ultra Mode stuff, but only on low levels and only a few of the options.

That 8400 GS is approximately half as powerful as my card.

It may be an 8 series card, but it is on the low end of the series. The first number is the generation, the second number is how powerful it is. A "4" is pretty pitiful.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

UltraMode requires OpenGL 3.0 support, which is the RadeonHD lineup and Geforce 8800 onwards. There's a difference between requires support and fast enough to play with.

Trust me, I've been chunking every single graphics card I could lay hands on at Ultra-Mode since (I'm presuming I have Ghost Falcon or Tele to thank) got me into the UM beta.

Now, admittedly, there is some wiggle room on resolution and the processor you have.

For example: a RadeonHD 4850 when coupled with a Phenom 9600 Agena was capable of pushing 1920*1200 with Ultra-Mode options at low, and 1860*1050 with Ultra-Mode options at medium. In 1440*900 / 1280*1024, it could do most in-game content with all ultra-mode options turned on. At 1024*768, I could start cranking Anti-Aliasing effects.

However, when coupling that same graphics card with a Core 2 Duo @ 2.3ghz, well, pretty much everything went down a resolution grade. Low Ultra mode at 1680*1050, Medium Ultra Mode at 1440*900, and all options turned on at 1024*768.

Somebody else coupled that card with a 1.8ghz Athlon64 single core.... http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=741

And well, performance is "bad"

Yes, if you couple a medium-range card with a powerful enough processor... such as the RadeonHD 3870 with a Phenom II 965, you could push Ultra-Mode options in lower resolutions.

Now I honestly didn't bother keeping track of the performance numbers my old 3870 put off when running in Ultra-Mode... because they were bad. Even against the Phenom II 965 I had in hand, 1440*900 was simply out of the 3870's reach with any Ultra-Mode options.

The reason why the developers list the RadeonHD 2000 series, and the Geforce 8000 series as the Recommended options, is because technically, the game is playable on many of those cards, with Ultra-Mode options, in 800*600.

However, given that amount of empirical testing accompanied by the players, the minimum processing requirements to execute the code... are drastically difference from the minimum amount of power required to give you a playable game.