Best Graphics Card to use?

Hey I am building a gaming PC to use, and am wondering which type of graphics card would run dark souls the best? I want a pretty good one also because I am wanting to play dark souls 2 when it comes out as well.

A bit more information can go a long way with regards to helping.
Approximately what price range are you looking at? Do you care if it's nvidia or ati? Do you intend to SLI/crossfire two cards together? How many monitors do you intend to use? etc

I haven't kept overly up to date on hardware these past few months as I built myself a new machine this past december and haven't really had a need to keep on top of everything (couple months until a friend of mine is going to be upgrading so I've no need to be too attentive until then)

regardless, you could do a bit of reading up here
http://www.tomshardware.com/
one of my favorite websites out there and definitely a useful one

1: Budget?
 2: Do you only want it to run Dark Souls/2? Or more intensive games also?
 3: Preference for Nvidia or AMD? Or no preference?

nVidia, DSFix was designed with an nVidia card so it runs better on it.

I use an AMD 7970 OC and if I had the money I'd get a 680 asap as the CCC is a PoS.

The idle detection on AMD is rubbish and the game will regularly drop it to low power mode which tanks frame rate, and it's been a pain in the a** to fix.


Go nVidia. Not sure what your budget is but I'd recommend 600 series as Durante used a 670 when designing DSFix.

I'd opt for a 670 over a 680, you only get about a 10% performance boost with a 680 and it costs around $100 more iirc and if you go with the cheaper card it should theoretically drop in price either sooner or further than the 680 making it cheaper to pick up a second one down the line and SLI the two

Both of you are a tad wrong though hehe. If he doesn't want to waste money he'd want to go with the 700 series, they perform better for less money. If you got a $250 budget go with a GTX 760, $400 budget GTX 770, $650 budget GTX 780. Although all of these cards are complete overkill for Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 but whatevs xD.

What Gaxe said, go mid range, dark souls and i imagine dark souls 2 won't push a graphics card too much. The only time you might need a highish card is if you're playing on a very high resolution or DS2 unlocks the fps and you like high fps.

Good points Gaxe, I haven't bought a card for a while so I'm a little out of the loop as to whats the best value for money with the nVidias atm.


PS: Laharls your avatar is f**king wicked

StiffNipples wrote:Good points Gaxe, I haven't bought a card for a while so I'm a little out of the loop as to whats the best value for money with the nVidias atm.


PS: Laharls your avatar is f**king wicked

pretty much this, last time I was looking the 700 series wasn't out yet

and thank you very much

Don't really know what the market has to offer right now, but one of the most important things to keep in mind is resolution. If you have a lower res monitor most graphics cards will do, if you want full hd you might want to spend some money.
I have a ati 7850 and it runs dark souls at 1920x1080 with dsfix for more detailed view distance. It runs perfectly. Dark souls II will run at 60 fps though and will probably be more graphic intensive.

Nvidia GTX Titan because YOLO.

KrazykevS10 wrote:Nvidia GTX Titan because YOLO.

 No reason ^.^ GTX 760s in SLI ($500) perform as good/better than a GTX Titan ($1000). A GTX 780 ($650) performs a tad bit worst just by like 3 fps though.

Gaxe wrote:A GTX 780 ($650) performs a tad bit worst just by like 3 fps though.

Haha I heard that a fair few Titan owners were a little annoyed about this

StiffNipples wrote:

Gaxe wrote:A GTX 780 ($650) performs a tad bit worst just by like 3 fps though.

Haha I heard that a fair few Titan owners were a little annoyed about this

 Lol they knew they were paying too much. There is absolutely no reason to EVER pay $1000 for a GPU. Hell my whole PC was $1000 including my GTX 760 xD.

Gaxe wrote:

KrazykevS10 wrote:Nvidia GTX Titan because YOLO.

 No reason ^.^ GTX 760s in SLI ($500) perform as good/better than a GTX Titan ($1000). A GTX 780 ($650) performs a tad bit worst just by like 3 fps though.

 I was joking.The Titan seems like the most useless card ever,what with the marginal gains compared to the steep price.

You could go with a GTX 670 which is what I have or the 660 if you want to spend a little bit less.They'd both run the game well on high settings and aren't too expensive.

Also to give you guys an idea of what Dark Souls takes to run smoothly, I took out my GTX 760 and used my integrated gpu (HD Graphics 4600 from i5-4670k) and it ran Dark Souls at 40 - 50 fps the whole entire time. So yeah lol.