Graphics card help

I'm running Path of Exile on a Radeon HD 7700 here in the office and it's been all good. However we historically do seem to get a proportionally higher number of GPU tech issues from users with Radeon cards.

While not strictly required I'd recommend 4gb of Ram with a 64-bit OS.
Fyi OP, I could play PoE fine (without shadows though) on a e6600 dualcore processor and a 660gtx on high graphics - but not in a party and with framedrops.

If you're looking to buy anything lower than a 750 gtx (about 100$ I think) and not otherwise upgrade your PC make sure you want to either play on very low graphics settings or not group. And expect laggy situations anyway.
Thank you for everyone's help in this matter. It is not that I can't afford a new 1000+ computer, it is that I don't don't want to buy one yet :)

I'm going to see if a new graphics card will do the trick first.
Better upgrade your CPU and tweak the settings. I run PoE on low ingame settings, except for shadows, which are set to high. Not partying though, especially not with coc'ers ;)

One important setting I just found out recently was going to Windowed Fullscreen mode. That actually helped me getting a quite consistent 60 fps out of my E8400 non oc CPU. Graphics card is bored anyway on those settings.

First get a monitoring tool for your hardware to figure out what the bottleneck in your system is. I recommend http://www.hwinfo.com/download.php

Good luck, exile.
If he goes too high up the GPU chain his CPU is going to bottle neck the GPU hard, I haven't seen a Intel DUO in years!
Last edited by justinmm1988 on Sep 16, 2014, 10:00:45 PM
I'm running a duo: E8400@3.6GHz, but yeah. Your computer is over eight years old, so technology wise it is obsolete. In tech speak, you own a potato.

That said, I encourage you to do a little research and put together a new system based on Intel Haswell (i5/i7) technology, which is mainstream and decent value now (Devil's canyon is the bleeding edge and carries a premium) and get the 750 series from Nvidia (latest gen tech and mid-tier pricing). Seems to be best bang for the buck graphics wise at the moment.

Upgrading to the graphics card you posted will not have an appreciable effect on this game.
"We were going to monitor the situation but it was in the wrong aspect ratio."
Hey Garr0t, I like my potato! :D It has served me well for a long time.
I am going to upgrade it to a better gaming rig...soon.

Having a family, I don't want to dump 1000+ dollars into one just yet when christmas is around the corner. You know... you have to make sure your family gets all the pretty/new/expensive/dreamy stuff first.

Keeping it old school.
Last edited by Raytheater on Sep 17, 2014, 10:34:03 PM
I hear ya, man.

My rig was cutting edge six years ago (E8400 OC@3.6GHz, 8GBDDR2, 9800GTX SLI) and put me back a pretty penny when I put it together. For obvious economic reasons, the longer I can eke out a reasonable PC experience, the lower the cost of ownership.

I learned a long while back incremental upgrades are hardly ever worth the money because the cost far outweighed the actual performance improvement. Since then, I usually wait at least two generations before upgrading, so the performance increase is significant and very visceral. I anticipate I'll probably dive into building a new rig when Devil's canyon hits mainstream, skipping Haswell altogether.

However, I did find that upgrading from a physical HD to an SSD vastly improved loading times and reduced 'freezes' while playing this game, even though my motherboard doesn't support SATA6...

Graphics technology also jumped leaps and bounds. A $500 SLI Top-tier setup that was cutting edge six years ago was absolutely trumped by the acquisition of a single mid-tier current generation card GTX760, which isn't even performing at optimal speed because my motherboard doesn't support PCI3.0...

So, if you're looking at delaying a few more months, you may want to consider these two components specifically, which will transfer over without issue when you have the funds to upgrade the rest of your system next year.

"We were going to monitor the situation but it was in the wrong aspect ratio."
So, I bought this graphics card, just to see what the difference will be.

MSI NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 2GB GDDR3 VGA/DVI/HDMI Low Profile PCI-Express Video Card N610GT-MD2GD3/LP

Holy crap. When I run around, using magic, raise zombies, there will be animations missing before.
Now I can see the zombies raising their arms and attacking. The run is smooth without any lag. I can actually see the fireball conjured and leave my hands. Better yet, I see the explosions! Wow, all these little details that I have missed and this little $35 graphics card restored it.

Also, I went back to fight Merveil. That fight gave me the most lag. I will run around the room and I will vanished for like 5-10 steps.
Now?? No problem. I see all of Merveil's attacks, I see all of her minions, I see all of her spells.

It has been just 1 day of using this graphics card and I am so happy.

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