Hi,
What graphics card are you guys using?
I tried a few laps today with the best card I’ve got which is a Intel Sandy Bridge HD. I was much better, but i suspect still under par.
Now its been something like 15 years since i last bought a graphics card (Diamond Monster 3DFX to play Tomb Raider - remember those??!!) and now i’m nearly 40 and find myself considering buying a 3D card to play computer games again! #rewindtheyears
What would you guys get, GTX 750? something like that.
Wow, that’s bringing me back years! I had the Orchid equivalent of your Diamond card back in the day. That nVidia GTX 750 will definitely run Zwift quite nicely!
I will say that I’m seeing a LOT of older on-board video on people’s laptops. CPU power tends to be a little less important than having a good video chip/card for Zwift.
I’m just using the on chip HD3000 (Intell i7-2677 processor) in my 2011 Macbook Air running Windows 8 in Bootcamp. I’ve had no issues once they fixed a bug that kept it from running at all with the on chip graphics.
Have you noticed much difference with the new card?
I’m running a Radeon HD 6450. Nowhere near good enough for today’s games but seems to do fine with Zwift. I’m considering upgrading to something a little beefier but so far it hasn’t been necessary.
I just rode with my new laptop which has a nvidia 860m in it and it ran like a breeze.
I need to try it on my PC which runs an AMD card. The best bang for your buck right now really is cards that were used for cryptocurrency mining (AMD 7970, 280x). You can pick them up used for around $120-130 w/ shipping and they are awesome cards.
I had a gtx 970 but had to return it due to artifacts, there is some issue with that model card and ram allocation. I got a gtx 760 for now from Best Buy, it was maybe $220 and it’s running zwift fine on a 30" monitor with hi res.
If you ever want to see a comparison chart of cards go look at the graphics section at anadtech.com, it’s a great site for hardware reviews.
Here are a few cards I’ve tested with i5(4690 k) and fx-6300 processors with the average fps from the logs + rough cost. These are cheap cards but can have nice results on zwift. As cheap as they are, they still out perform most laptop gpu’s
Radeon R7 240- medium (720p) 30-32fps ($ 50)
Radeon R7 250x medium 58fps( fx6300) 60(i5) $80
Radeon R7 250x high 35 fps(i5&6300)
Radeon R7 360 medium and high 58-60 fps(6300& i5) $100
None of these cards give me the ultra option but I’m guessing the r7-360 could run Ultra at a low but playable fps. Especially with minor oc on the 6300. And with Radeon’s virtual super resolution which kinda works a little. It might be worth un-leashing ultra for the R7 360 users. I’m guessing fps would drop to 28-30?
Tomorrow I’ll try the R9 380x with the Fx-6300, which should give me the Ultra option.
The R7 240 is really the lowest I would want to go while the 250x is definitely better. If you have a cheap computer without a extra 6 Pin connector on your power supply then the 250x is worth it. If the power supply doesn’t have a extra external power connector than 240 isn’t a bad 720p gpu.
The 360 should really get the ultra option as its a much better card than the others. If 250x can push the 1080p to 35 fps without a studder. I’m sure the 360 could push ultra. But it would be a waste of money until they do so. Unless you play other online games.
The 380x works well on both PC’s but defiantly the cheaper computer with the 6300 precursors and the cheaper motherboard bottlenecks somewhere at one of those two points. It averages around 45fps on 1440p ultra setting with that computer but gets as high as 58. With the Intel it stays around 60 the whole time. This is the only graphics cards that showed a real difference in fps between the two computers. I really think it’s the motherboard. The motherboard on the FX-6300 PC is like $40 while the Intel i5 is a $140.
The only other issue I had with the card is it has a hdmi1.4 which doesn’t allow it to connect at 60hz to my 4k TV. Which turns out it doesn’t matter anyways because the computer that can push the card to 60 frames is my home computer not the cheap one I bought for work to ride zwift during lunch. Yes, I bought a 55" 4k TV to keep in my office w,ith a cheap computer to ride zwift at lunch and after work.
It does work fine though on ultra, I just lock the fps to 30 and I can set the TV to 30hz when I’m riding solo. During group rides I put it on high(1080p) get a lot more fps & the TV upscales and up converts it and to be honest, I try and try to tell a difference but can’t. I really should just leave it on 1080p but I’m a tinkerer.
With the i5 computer I put it on ultra & the set the computer to 1440p60 hz because the HDMI 1.4 can push that to the tv, then let the TV up-convert and can’t tell a difference there either. But I am getting 60 fps without the game scaling back and forth. But, honestly cannot tell a difference. The TV does a really,really, really good job up-converting.
Update: I got a new motherboard msi z170a m5 and i5 6600k. Everything is better with the R9 380x. The amd fx6300 processor can run ultra but at a 15-20 frame hit compared to the i5 6600k and the 4690k.
This year Radeon will have HDMI 2.0, hopefully in the 380x so I can cross-fire them.
Just fitted a Ge Force GTX 970 into my i5 yesterday…the difference in graphics quality is simply astounding. I can now run Zwift at 4k UHD 2160 and everything is totally sharp and smooth. Added a few watts to my output, probably!
Hadn’t noticed before but I suddenly found myself cycling towards Orion in the night sky. Didn’t realise that the night time constellations had been modelled. Very nice touch!
hi guys, im running a 3ghz core 2 duo, 6gb ram on a geforce 9500gt 1gb… its absolutely terrible, somewhere between 8 ans 12 fps at best, i have a 500w power supply , do you think i would see a big change if i got the radeon r7 250 or 360 on my system? im linked to a full hd tv and would prefer to view at 1080p but if it meant better performance at 720p i could handle that.
i just dont really wanna push to a gtx 750 that the zwift guys are pushing.
