Video Card Upgrade -> Full speed?

[hellbringer616]

from personal experience.. My stable frames jumped up when i upgraded my card. It is CPU intensive. However it seems to work the GS hard (at 3x scaling i sometimes hit 73% GS with my card)

[Rezard]

For the upgrade I was thinking more of the Nvidia GeForce GT 430 because it's cheap and 3-4x better than my current one...

As for the DDR*, I looked online and it's "256MB GDDR3"

Take a look, my current graphics card is on the right:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8600.html

Thank you for all the help, and I can run Dark Cloud right now but only barely. And I lag like hell when trying to fight a skeleton (probably because of his large amount of BONES! AHHAHA)

All jokes aside, the GeForce GT 430... is that any good?

EDIT: I do have an extra v-card built-in to my mobo remember, but since my computer reads 512mb of memory and the official specs of my v-card is 256mb, I'm guessing they DO work together...

No, not what you see some 8600GT cards are online. I wanna know what your cards data rate actually is. Some 8600GT come in DDR2, which results in nearly half the bandwidth as a DDR3.

Download GPU-Z, and see what data rate yours is. If it's merely a 256mb (additionally allocated v-ram aside), I'd be more inclined to think it's DDR2.

That being said; a GT 430 would be an upgrade over a DDR2. It would actually be a bit better than an 8600GT in DDR3. It would be more of an entry-level GPU, but would be enough for most of PCSX2 (although limited to native at times).

Also, it would certainly be enough for Dark Cloud, as my GT 230M is.

[InnocentSam]

I'm thinking of buying the Radeon HD 6770 or 6790, is that any good?

[Speedy42]

I'm thinking of buying the Radeon HD 6770 or 6790, is that any good?

ATi Radeon HD6970 is better than 6770 but it's all about your budget.
If you have enough currency to buy HD6970 then go for it but if you don't then the HD6770 isn't a bad choice either seeing as they both are the latest the market has yet to offer.

[Rezard]

I'm thinking of buying the Radeon HD 6770 or 6790, is that any good?

Yep.

Both are better than the GT 430.

[recoder]

You can any one out of both of them cause both of them are best(OF ATI's) and high-end cards.

[Ranjak]

The high-end segment of AMD cards are the 6900 series
However I think the 6770 or 6790 should be more than enough for the emulator. But I don't remember you telling us what percentages you get for EE and GS emulation when you get slowdowns... If EE is at 100% but not GS, it means that your CPU, and not your GPU, is the bottleneck. In that case, you could enable some speedhacks, or reduce the audio quality. Or try a newer revision which has the MTVU hack (it's very efficient on my i5 2400).

[recoder]

Ok But none of the cards care bad. i.e they are good for this emulator atleast.

[Squall Leonhart]

everything under a 69xx is a downgrade from the 5xxx series.

[InnocentSam]

I got a Radeon HD 6870 which is AMAZING. It's a definite upgrade from my previous card.

However, Ratchet & Clank 2 seems to lag still, as well as have graphical problems (fuzzy textures at certain angles)

Thanks for your help anyway, I appreciate it