Video card deciphering!

Is there an easier way to figure out which video card is better than another? I used to figure that ones with the higher numbers would be superior. You know like a 6780 would be better than a 5570 or something.

So CoH has minimum specs for a Radeon 8500.
The recommended specs are for a Radeon 9600.

Ok I get it...higher numbers.

I'm looking at a Gateway PC now with a Radeon HD6770, which is a 1 Gb GDDR5 card, which is supposedly a good card. So how come the smaller number? I have similar problems with nvidia. I have a 9600GT card now in my laptop, but supposedly the new ones are like 260 or 280s or some other small number? :-s

So I guess my questions are:
Will the HD6770 run CoH? and
What's the easy way to figure out which card is better by a casual glance?

Thanks!

Generally, the first digit is just the Series number. The second digit gives a better indication of how powerful the card is. For example, a GeForce 8800 GT is much better than a GeForce 9400 GT, despite 9400 being a higher number than 8800. In this case, the 8 is higher than the 4. To make things more confusing, the 200 series you mentioned (260 280), are actually newer than the 8000 or 9000 series, and the 400 series even better than that. As far as your Radeon issue is concerned, the HD series has it's own series numbers that don't necessarily correspond or compare to the 9000 series or the X-series cards.

Of course, there are several other factors when determining which cards are good for what you need, or which are better than the other. More specific information about the chip specs can be found here:
NVIDIA Chips Comparison Table
AMD ATI Chips Comparison Table

There are also many other threads on the forums where people have discussed which cards to use.

As for your specific question about the Radeon HD 6770, I'd say it should be fine. I use the Radeon HD 5770 on an older computer and I get great performance with mid-Ultra settings.

It gets tricky because marketing departments like to periodically change up numbering schemes. I'm sure that someone with more specific graphics card knowledge could give information about how cards work with City of Heroes.

But, in the meantime, there's a nice chart on Toms Hardware that gives a breakdown:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...70,2935-7.html

AMD/ATI Radeon Naming Conventions

AMD/ATI Radeon Chip Comparisons


nVidia GeForce Naming Conventions

nVidia GeForce Chip Comparisons

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

WRT to Radeon cards: The last three digits tells you how 'advanced' the card is; as in how many bells and whistles and features and speed and power it has. So, a x800 is going to be way better than a x300. An x300 is just enough for watching YouTube videos, while x600 is considered the lowest for high-end gaming and a x900 is considered top of the line.

The x (first digit) tells you the generation. So a 6700 is three generations behind a 9700. A generation is usually about a year. This should make the 9700 a better product than the 6700, but sometimes advances from year to year aren't that significant. For Radeon, the 9000 is the current generation.

The 6770 is an older card, thus, probably why you're looking at it since it's probably dirt cheap. With that card, you can probably get some of the low end features of Ultra Mode running (depending on the heftiness of your CPU and RAM).



The GeForce/NVidia numbering convention used to be similar, but they went past the 9000 generation/series number and instead of going to 10000, they rebranded their 9000 generation as GTX/GTS 100 Series. Thus, the 260/280s you're looking at are the generation after their 9000 generation. The 200 series is from the years 2008-2009. The 300 series is 2009-2010. The 400 from 2010. And the 500 series is brand new.

With the new 3 digit branding, the second number (6 or 8, e.g.) represents how advanced and powerful and feature-filled the card is. For bare minimum in running CoH, the 6 suffices. You can get most of Ultra Mode working with 8.


Radeon naming convention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon

GeForce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geforce

I go here

Yep, it'll play it.
If you have a "common" sized gaming monitor 22" + I'd get a much more powerful card for sure though.
It's paramount to balance your Power supply + CPU + Ram + Video card when considering gaming.
Good luck

Thanks for the replies! It's a lot clearer now! lol.

And I'm currently using my 48 inch Sharp Aquos as my monitor for CoH. Needless to say, I don't have Ultra Mode running. lol. But I am thinking of getting a smaller monitor and a higher end card to be able to play CoH with some more bells and whistles. lol.

So for Radeon I guess I would be looking for a 9800+ card, and nvidia anything with an
x60 or higher?
Edit:
Oh...I see there is some debate about this Radeon 9000 being better than the HD6770.
/Edit

Please tell me you quad-box 4 accounts at full tilt with that rig...

Both ATI and nVidia had a number shift when they after they hit the 9000s.

For ATI they first went with x and x1 with three digits but then simply started over with the prefix HD in front of a four digit number, HD 2xxx series. They are currently up to the HD 6xxx with the HD 7xxx just around the corner.

nVidia dropped a digit and went with three digits with a G, GT, GTS or GTX in front of it. They started with 2xx, skipped 3xx except for some OEM versions, the 4xx series were good and now they are on the 5xx series.

As others have pointed out, the link to Tom's Hardware Graphics Card Hierarchy chart is a good way to find the general ranking across the generations and across brands.

I just go to Tom's Hardware VGA charts (linked off by VTG_Peace) but more specifically I hit HERE so that I can pick several tests to see what's what.

Going off the 3dmark 11 enthusiast link, we see that the ati hd 6990 narrowly beats out the nvidia 590gtx... but the two of them stomp the crap out of everything else.

My current vid card is the ati hd 5870. 27FPS for that compared to the 65FPS for the 6990 is a considerable buff in video processing.

Hop down to the Sanctuary enthusiast test and the 6990 beats the 5870 by a factor of over 4 times.

So, yea... Tom's is a great place for vid card data. I would get all antsy about a ccard being on the market that beats mine so soundly, but... I can currently run two instances of CoH on my rig without nothing more than a negligible hit to my FPS, full screened, alt-tabbing between the two, at 1920X1200 resolution, 4X FSAA, 16X AF, etc, etc.

Now if The Witcher 2 hammers my 5870... I may bite the bullet and throw down some cash.