I recently bought a new desktop, and it's not quite functioning the way I'd hoped. League of Legends, for example, slows down drastically if I so much as turn on shadows. Everything else I can crank up, but shadows are a no.
Other processes slow down if WoW has its graphics above halfway.TF2 also gets a little choppy at times.Here are the specs:1 TB Hard Disk Space6 GB RAMAMD Phenom 6-core, 3.2 GHzWindows 7 Home Premium 6-bitVideo: ATI Radeon HD 5450The processor and RAM are great, so I'm going to assume the problem is in the video card. I can't seem to find the amount of video RAM, but this plays almost as bad as an onboard card. Any recommendations for decent video cards? Cost isn't much of an issue right now. The only thing I don't want is Crossfire/SLI, just because they aren't necessary.Oh, here's another thing. I'm trying to set up a virtual machine to play an older game called Creatures 2. Microsoft VirtualPC is free, but doesn't support Windows 7 Home Premium, just versions above it. I'm trying VMWare Player now (have to find an XP installation now), but if anyone knows anything regarding it, feel free to share.Thanks in advance.
You're not paying extra for it, it's just there.
I thought only certain Nvidia cards had it though, and they cost more. Eh. Guess not lol. Still not worth it, PhysX just slows stuff down apparently.
Any modern card support it fine. It obviously has a performance impact, you're calculating a lot more stuff, but higher end cards have more than enough spare power to run it - and the effects are excellent.
However, a 450 or 60 isn't high end, so doesn't really have much spare power to throw around, both AMD and nVidia are fairly evenly matched in the mid end department.Hm, I don't plan on doing a lot of high-end stuff, but if I'm going to spend money on a new video card, might as well buy something that lasts, right?
What's a good higher-end card you'd recommend?Neither. I'm talking about a card that I won't have to upgrade within the next year just because I find a decent game that requires slightly higher specs.
Example: I'll probably play something with better graphical quality than League of Legends someday. I want to have a graphics card that can handle that, instead of handling only the low-quality games I do now (which my current card can't do).Note the word "handle" means "play at highest settings with no framerate drops."I'm currently sporting an nVidia GTX 260, which, despite being an older card, has more than enough power to do all you describe. You don't need much, just more than you have.
For your needs? So long as you don't plan on getting into battlefield 3, a 450 will do. A 460 isn't significantly more expensive but is significantly more powerful, so if you think you could use the extra power go for that. The problem is, "someday" is a very vague thing - do you mean in 5 years? 6 months? The latter, a 450 will do just perfect, the former? Who knows.
Hardware has advanced quite a bit while gaming graphics have stayed mostly stagnant, you barely need any power to run (most) games at top settings.Eh, I've been able to play anything and everything on my laptop just fine, usually at mid or high graphics. Has ATI Radeon HD 3200…although mine is a single core with a 1.6Ghz CPU, I get stutters like hell.
Never turn on AA unless you wanna dieAA is cheap on a decent card, I never play with less than 4xAA any more. Even at heavy load we're talking 2 or 3fps drops, it's not worth not using it.