What video card for 1360x768 resolution gaming?

[Jeebus Christmas]

AMD's Sempron 145 and EVGA's 9800GT 512mb aren't working too well together for Battlefield: 3. After about two harrowing hours of playing around with settings after several rounds, my highest frame-rate was fourteen.

Naturally, I've decided to revamp my system. A gentlemen on Ebay sold me a hexa-core Phenom II 1035T, of course, I'm going to overclock it if necessary. So, that component is on it's way to the Hoth-err, Minnesota.

Video card's become a separate issue, I'm looking at some of Radeon's older models of the HD 6000 series. I understand Battlefield: 3 is an exceptionally resource-consuming game, but taking into consideration that I'll be enjoying the game at 1360x768 resolution, I'm a bit concerned that it could be an overkill purchase, especially since I'm considering the 6900 line-up.

Here's what I'm looking for: A Radeon video card that will be able to run Battlefield: 3 at sixty frames per-second, at mostly max settings (lowest shadows, no Motion Blur, no Ambient Occlusion). I'd also like it to be powerful enough to accomplish this task, and have a fair deal of headroom just in case my system gets overwhelmed with an unexpectedly intense combat sequence.

My system is also equipped with eight-gigabytes of DDR3 ram, and an Antec HCP-850 power unit.

Thank you guys so much for reading, and, or, replying.

 

[ak47jar3d]

I guess you can achieve that with a 7770/250x with no problem. Make sure you Motherboard supports pcie 16x and a power supply of 450w.
250x:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125513

 

[Kekoh]

I think a 6950 seems like a good fit, but there might be newer options that are better, like a 7770 GHz edition. I don't think it would be overkill for that resolution and mostly-max settings. BF3 is a fairly demanding game and isn't as optimized as BF4 is. Sometimes people get better performance in BF4 using the same hardware.

Unless there's a CPU bottleneck. I don't really follow AMD cpu's anymore so I'm not sure how the Phenom II 1035T will pair up with a 6950.

 

[Jeebus Christmas]

I guess you can achieve that with a 7770/250x with no problem. Make sure you Motherboard supports pcie 16x and a power supply of 450w.
250x:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125513

I'm having difficulty believing that a 250x/7770 can run BF3 at the settings I would like.

 

[photonboy]

My advice is one of these two cards (I prefer the Asus GTX750Ti):

1) http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r7260x2gd5ocv1

2) http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-gtx750tioc2gd5

Summary Benchmark: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_750_Ti_OC/25.html

I don't know why you're looking at OLDER cards, but be aware they are often LESS of a value.

As said, BF3 is very demanding. Even a GTX680/770 and a good CPU won't maintain 60FPS on the highest settings so you'll need to run FRAPS and play around with the quality. (Disable "deferred AA" as it looks muddy).

Of course that's at 1920x1080, so I'm not sure how your CPU/Graphics at 1366x768 will work but I don't think you'll get a rock solid 60FPS without some tweaking.

Tips:
- recommend r7-260X or better for performance
- recommend 2GB of VRAM (not 1GB)
- don't worry about "overkill"; as said BF3 is very demanding

 

[ak47jar3d]

I guess you can achieve that with a 7770/250x with no problem. Make sure you Motherboard supports pcie 16x and a power supply of 450w.
250x:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125513

I'm having difficulty believing that a 250x/7770 can run BF3 at the settings I would like.

Any more than that, it will probably be a waste of money @ 768p. All the cards beyond 7770 are essentially meant for 900p or 1080p gaming, not 768p.

http://www.legitreviews.com/powercolor-radeon-r7-250x-1gb-video-card-review_137172/4

 

[Jeebus Christmas]

Uh, heh. Another gentlemen on ebay sold me a Radeon HD 6850 for sixty-odd dollars. It's a deal I couldn't refuse.

Here's a link to the auction in case you guys don't believe me:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/271449807945?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

 

[Rationale]

For reference, I ran BF3 on high settings (shadows on high, textures on medium, post AA, everything else ultra) at 1080p 40-60fps on a 768MB GTX 460. I had to put my textures on medium just because of the paltry 768MB of VRAM.

A 6850 is a bit stronger than a 460, at least according to GPUboss, so I'm assuming you'll get the settings you want easily at 768p.

Ambient occlusion looks very nice in BF3. I suggest you enable it if you have the performance.

 

[Jeebus Christmas]

For reference, I ran BF3 on high settings (shadows on high, textures on medium, post AA, everything else ultra) at 1080p 40-60fps on a 768MB GTX 460. I had to put my textures on medium just because of the paltry 768MB of VRAM.

A 6850 is a bit stronger than a 460, at least according to GPUboss, so I'm assuming you'll get the settings you want easily at 768p.

Ambient occlusion looks very nice in BF3. I suggest you enable it if you have the performance.

Ah, great card. Even cooks breakfast for you if you put some aluminum foil below the food and turns the fans to ten-percent.

Also, what's the difference between mesh quality, and texture quality?

 

[Rationale]

For reference, I ran BF3 on high settings (shadows on high, textures on medium, post AA, everything else ultra) at 1080p 40-60fps on a 768MB GTX 460. I had to put my textures on medium just because of the paltry 768MB of VRAM.

A 6850 is a bit stronger than a 460, at least according to GPUboss, so I'm assuming you'll get the settings you want easily at 768p.

Ambient occlusion looks very nice in BF3. I suggest you enable it if you have the performance.

Ah, great card. Even cooks breakfast for you if you put some aluminum foil below the food and turns the fans to ten-percent.

Also, what's the difference between mesh quality, and texture quality?

Texture: http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/img/products/dvds/BTS04/stills/02.jpg

Mesh: http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/321/1/9/game_character___ghoul_mesh_by_solidalexei-d32wfwy.jpg

Basically the texture gets wrapped around the mesh and it looks like an object recognizable to humans.
Higher quality textures make stuff sharper, while higher quality meshes make stuff less jagged.