PC Recommended Video Card for A18e?
- Thread starter Laz Man
- Start date
If you guys don't mind turning shadows off completely, you can greatly improve your FPS. In my case, its a difference of upwards of 30 frames per second on a 1080ti 2012Mhz, 5930k 4.5Ghz, 32 ddr4 @2666. Same results when I multiseat a second copy of the game with a 970 hosting a second VM, dramatically increasing FPS by just switching off shadows. Of course YRMV, but definitely worth a shot if you guys are having issues with low frames.
Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
Memory Delivered Early 
24GB total now. Definite improvement but still notice that the snow biome seems to have lower FPS when compared to other biomes.
Snow Biome (PREGEN02, 900p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~20 to 25 FPS)
Snow Biome (PREGEN02, 1080p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~15 to 20 FPS)
Forest Biome (PREGEN01, 900p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~70 FPS)
Forest Biome (PREGEN01, 1080p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~52 FPS)
24GB total now. Definite improvement but still notice that the snow biome seems to have lower FPS when compared to other biomes.Snow Biome (PREGEN02, 900p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~20 to 25 FPS)
Snow Biome (PREGEN02, 1080p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~15 to 20 FPS)
Forest Biome (PREGEN01, 900p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~70 FPS)
Forest Biome (PREGEN01, 1080p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~52 FPS)
To be fair, I'm running it on the integrated Intel GPU on my Core i5. It's not fantastic, and I have the settings on low; but it's playable.
Horde night lags a bit; but that just makes me look forward to when my dedicated GPU arrives in the mail.
(Also, a17 was playable on medium settings with the integrated GPU. There are also a lot of people in this thread saying they are getting pretty good performance on $200 video cards.)
I get what you're saying about modern games needing pretty high specs and the cost of top-tier GPUs is crazy. But I feel "unplayable" is a bit overstated.
Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
I can now at least get decent FPS on my $200 video card from 5 years ago. If I can figure why my FPS dips in the snow biome occasionally I plan to bump my settings back to full textures and 1080p.To be fair, I'm running it on the integrated Intel GPU on my Core i5. It's not fantastic, and I have the settings on low; but it's playable.
Horde night lags a bit; but that just makes me look forward to when my dedicated GPU arrives in the mail.
(Also, a17 was playable on medium settings with the integrated GPU. There are also a lot of people in this thread saying they are getting pretty good performance on $200 video cards.)
I get what you're saying about modern games needing pretty high specs and the cost of top-tier GPUs is crazy. But I feel "unplayable" is a bit overstated.
Sam_Neill
New member
Your processor seems to be maxed out too in the last 2 screenshots. What model do you have ?Memory Delivered Early
Snow Biome (PREGEN02, 900p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~20 to 25 FPS)
Snow Biome (PREGEN02, 1080p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~15 to 20 FPS)
Forest Biome (PREGEN01, 900p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~70 FPS)
Forest Biome (PREGEN01, 1080p, medium settings, AF disabled - ~52 FPS)
Honestly a CPU upgrade might be better than a new video card otherwise you might just end up bottlenecking your GPU's performance. One thing you can try is setting the CPU priority to high. You will need to turn off EAC, but I do it with my AMD fx-8350 and it seems to give it a little more "umph".
Sam_Neill
New member
My guess its a 4 core CPU. Only DDR3 too. Yeah, complete new one will solve much problems. If you are getting a better GPU, the CPU will bottleneck afterwards and then you buy another thing too.
Best to make a complete decision and plan it accordingly.
Or do an upgrade with used parts, maybe a better processor fits in your Mainboard. But for further decisions you need all Details of your current machine
And hey, at least your game runs
Best to make a complete decision and plan it accordingly.
Or do an upgrade with used parts, maybe a better processor fits in your Mainboard. But for further decisions you need all Details of your current machine
And hey, at least your game runs
Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
Yeah...not complaining. Happy my potatoe can run med/high with decent frames most of the time.My guess its a 4 core CPU. Only DDR3 too. Yeah, complete new one will solve much problems. If you are getting a better GPU, the CPU will bottleneck afterwards and then you buy another thing too.Best to make a complete decision and plan it accordingly.
Or do an upgrade with used parts, maybe a better processor fits in your Mainboard. But for further decisions you need all Details of your current machine
And hey, at least your game runs
Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
Good GuessMy guess its a 4 core CPU. Only DDR3 too. Yeah, complete new one will solve much problems. If you are getting a better GPU, the CPU will bottleneck afterwards and then you buy another thing too.Best to make a complete decision and plan it accordingly.
Or do an upgrade with used parts, maybe a better processor fits in your Mainboard. But for further decisions you need all Details of your current machine
And hey, at least your game runs
Intel® Core i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
Base speed: 3.30 GHz
Sockets: 1
Cores: 4
Logical processors: 4
Virtualization: Enabled
L1 cache: 256 KB
L2 cache: 1.0 MB
L3 cache: 6.0 MB
Duffmeister77
New member
I'm running a 1060 6GB, which worked fine for A17 at 1080p. But with A18 I'm getting a metric tonne of stuttering and mouse lag. Anyone know if the graphics card is likely to be my bottleneck, or maybe the CPU (Intel i5-7500)? I'm hoping not the latter, because I'll then also need a new motherboard and possibly RAM (of which I have 16GB).
Odetta
Tester
I have almost the same setup as you except the cpu (I5-6600k which is almost the same) and I get 90fps on average at 1080p. Do you have a lot of programs running in the background? Drivers up to date? Not visiting shady sites? Also check if your components aren't getting too hot as this will cause throttling and servery impact performance. Dust?
ZombieSurvivor
Banned
@Laz Man
Did a little further testing in the snow biom. After doing a bunch of combinations of graphic settings, and eventually ending up in turning almost everything off, shadows, reflection, ssao, shadow reflection etc. Regardless of the graphic settings, the drop in frames always happened. The only thing I cannot seem to turn off is whatever the heck governs this effect (sorta looks like lighting and reflections should govern this)see pics. Whatever that specific effect is called, i lack the terminology, might have something to do with the drop in fps. Further testing needed...
Observation note: Did not see any noticeable drop in frames from fog and snow weather effects in my game.
Did a little further testing in the snow biom. After doing a bunch of combinations of graphic settings, and eventually ending up in turning almost everything off, shadows, reflection, ssao, shadow reflection etc. Regardless of the graphic settings, the drop in frames always happened. The only thing I cannot seem to turn off is whatever the heck governs this effect (sorta looks like lighting and reflections should govern this)see pics. Whatever that specific effect is called, i lack the terminology, might have something to do with the drop in fps. Further testing needed...
Observation note: Did not see any noticeable drop in frames from fog and snow weather effects in my game.
ZombieSurvivor
Banned
I have a GTX 960 4GB and I get avg 55 fps with no stuttering dipping to 25-35 in snow biom. Here are my settings for anyone who is curious. Due to limitations of this card texture resolution should be set to half, which does not look bad as long as AF is set to x4 by Nvidia control panel. Reducing the resolution to 1600x900 will have a major gain in FPS.
I'm still tweaking the options to get best fps and better graphics.
Last edited by a moderator:
Duffmeister77
New member
Got to admit, I haven't done a dust check for months. Better have a look. :thumb:
Nothing running in the background except when I'm recording, and this happens regardless. Think it's a bit worse when I'm hosting the game (my partner and I play over the LAN).
Silver Werewolf
New member
The problem is the game, with the inexistent optimization, not your gpu...
To throw in on this; I had to take my GPU out and put it in my sons machine a while back, so I am using an old GTX660 with only 2GB VRAM for A18, all on low settings.
Plus side to this, it runs really smooth, but I also noticed that the snow biome runs at ~40-50 FPS where everything else pretty much bounces around the 60 FPS mark, I messed around a bit but figured that even the low res textures may just need more resources in the snow.
@Laz - Holding off at this point until you can do a new build is absolutely the correct choice IMO, the 2500k was a hell of a chip, my wife's machine still runs one on air at 4.5GHZ, but it is limited to DDR3 and PCIE2.0, which isn't an issue exactly, just not a good platform to upgrade on over waiting for a new build
Also, as there has been some for either side in here; when it comes to a new GPU, dont base it on whether its ATI/AMD or NVidia, both have had some very good cards and some not so good over the years, wait until its time to shop for one and look at the specific cards on offer in your price range from both at that specific time.
Plus side to this, it runs really smooth, but I also noticed that the snow biome runs at ~40-50 FPS where everything else pretty much bounces around the 60 FPS mark, I messed around a bit but figured that even the low res textures may just need more resources in the snow.
@Laz - Holding off at this point until you can do a new build is absolutely the correct choice IMO, the 2500k was a hell of a chip, my wife's machine still runs one on air at 4.5GHZ, but it is limited to DDR3 and PCIE2.0, which isn't an issue exactly, just not a good platform to upgrade on over waiting for a new build
Also, as there has been some for either side in here; when it comes to a new GPU, dont base it on whether its ATI/AMD or NVidia, both have had some very good cards and some not so good over the years, wait until its time to shop for one and look at the specific cards on offer in your price range from both at that specific time.