It's official, I decided to upgrade my graphics card.

While I was getting "playable" fps with my overclocked 9800gt at custom high settings at 1600x900, I guess I stressed it too much. It now freezes at the slightest clock increase.

I can still play the game without OC the card, on medium settings, but I don't want to. I wanna play it on high, or ultra.

anyways, I was wondering if any one can report how well can a gtx 260 run the game. I have my eyes set on one, at about $94, I think is a good deal, but if I cant get at least 40+ fps on max settings, (except uber ofcourse), I'll get something else.

my budget is in between $90 - $130

You need to tell us what your cpu is, because it'd be pointless to get a better video card that is simply bottlenecked by the cpu.

That said, since the 260 is the recommended card, I suspect you could play on high just fine.

I imagine you'd be alright with a 260. I actually just bought a PNY GTX 460 a few weeks ago specifically for this game and it runs well with everything on high (minus the uber) and far LOD at consistently 40+ fps. I do have it overclocked a fair amount but I haven't really noticed much FPS change from the stock clock (5 max). I'd think the 260 would do just as well. Just make sure whatever card you decided on has plenty of vram, I was considering the 768MB version of the GTX 460 but I'm glad I didn't get it. The game uses 800-900MB of VRAM easily on higher graphical settings.

Wait for the patch.

Sadly, what they recommend and what actually runs the game at good FPS are two different things. I Think a big amount of frustrated players can testify to that. Call it poor optimization, bad drivers or whatever, it is of no importance. What it is important is real world testing. So if anyone could report their performance, it'd be great.

this is the card in question:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133348&cm_re=gtx_260-_-14-133-348-_-Product

there was a time where, I would have bought this with my eyes closed. with those specs it looks damn sexy.

However looking around on the reviews sites has confused me rather than help me to make a decision. I've seen slower on paper cards outperform cards with better specs, contrary to all expectations.

I guess I have to take a day to read the wiki about the new GPU architectures and its designs.

You still haven't told us what your cpu is, making any video card recommendation pointless. :p

You could do much better than a 260. I just looked on neweeg and you can get a GTX 460 for $99.00 after rebate. A much better card for about the same money.

I'm running it on high settings in 1920x1080 and getting great frame rates on a GTX 260 paired with an i7 processor. The main things for getting better performance from an nvidia card is make sure to get the beta video drivers that were released on the 17th and turn SSAO off in the Witcher 2 Configuration Tool.

That said, I'd shoot for a 4xx card like Revial stated if I was buying a new card, but a GTX 260 will run this just fine if backed by a decent processor.

Can you post a link to that card??

I don't really believe in rebates, it's more of a gambling than anything else

as i posted in another thread, i can run the game perfectly playable (there was some choppiness after a long length of time played or an enormous amount of characters, i'm not sure which) on an old ati 4890. this is ultra with ubersampling off, everything else enabled. over clocked or not doesn't seem to make a difference. i'm not a frame rate junkie; i have no idea what my fps are. i'd guess 25-30ish. i've always made the argument that films move plenty fast enough to seem realistic to me so i don't see how it's different in video games. i guess this is ignorant, tho i'm not sure how -- i can't think of a time where i was killed because the frame rate was not running at 60 or something, & as long as the play is smooth, what's the difference?

anyway, you'll probably be fine with a 260. also, the game looks great at high. i ran it on ultra on a second run just to test after i read about ubersampling.

Until you post your CPU, all your requests are pointless, because if you have an old ass crappy CPU, no matter what card you take, it will be the same.

I've said that at least twice. I'm not sure he should be touching anything on his computer, based on his responses so far. :/

Hehe. Though, even if he does have a good CPU, buying a GTX 260 is a waste of money. He should go for at least GTX 460, or if he has more money GTX 560Ti.

It's not your current video card we care about, but whether or not your cpu will bottleneck whatever card we suggest.

So, I'm not sure I'm the stupid one.

*shrug*