Upgrade requirements for Rift and other games

[Mordred478]

Hello:

I have an Area 51 with two, SLI-linked GeForce GTX 260s and have recently begun playing Rift. As some of you may know, the graphics potential of this game is enormous, and for someone like me who wants everything set to Ultra, hardware has now become a consideration.

I never thought that my PC wouldn't be powerful enough to handle the graphics of a game, but of course the software continues to develop and my box is now a couple of years old. One possibility for me, if I wanted to spend the money to allow me the highest level visuals for the various MMOs I play, would be to upgrade my graphics cards. Alienware tells me that my computer can support two GeForce 470s. What I don't know is, even if I wanted to spend the money, how much of an improvement would this upgrade give me? One person in the Rift forums, for example, seemed to think that that game was also very CPU dependent. I simply don't know the answers, and given the expense involved, I would need to have specific knowledge about which I was certain before making any purchases.

Any help would be much appreciated.

M

 

[Yami]

What are the rest of your system's specs? CPU and RAM are the important ones.

 

[Blackmoore]

That's interesting that your two 260's aren't able to play at near max settings. I don't know much about Rift but a friend and I registered for the Beta a while back and played over the weekend. I cranked everything to max on my single GTX 570, Intel Quad Q9550, and 8GB's of DDR2 and there was a slight slowdown in the more busy parts of the game, but nothing really noticeable. I didn't think Rift was a very graphics intensive MMO, but maybe I'm wrong. It was certainly nothing like the horrid Final Fantasy XIV.

Anyway, you never did mention the rest of your specs, but I think you would see a nice improvement with a 470. You should consider the 570 though. It really depends on what CPU your running. I'm sure I'm getting a slight bottleneck on my 570 with my Q9550. Ill be upgrading to the i7 2600k when they are re-released.