Kid just wants to play apex what card do I get?

deathhorse

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
1,710
My son is 14 he has an i5 3570 and 8gb ram we have an ancient 285 gtx it’s barely playable

what are some affordable cards in this epidemic they could get at least 30 frames per second in this game?

I looked at somebody trying to play it on a 5770 and that was unplayable as well
 
There are literally no affordable cards. You’d be better off buying a ps4 pro and letting him play on that. It’s cross platform, and you can use kb and mouse. And that will be cheaper than even a 3 year old gpu.
 
There are literally no affordable cards. You’d be better off buying a ps4 pro and letting him play on that. It’s cross platform, and you can use kb and mouse. And that will be cheaper than even a 3 year old gpu.
That is insane bro he has an Xbox one Maybe I’ll just tell him use your Xbox for the next year or two. He does love being able to use a keyboard and mouse hes weird to his keyboard he shifts like sideways almost
 
That is insane bro he has an Xbox one Maybe I’ll just tell him use your Xbox for the next year or two. He does love being able to use a keyboard and mouse hes weird to his keyboard he shifts like sideways almost
Yea there’s no way you’d get more performance for the price of used last gen console, which plays apex just fine, is cross platform and had mouse and on support. This is the worst time I have ever seen to get into pc gaming.
 
Umm... if it's playable on a 285 GTX, then yeah there are probably plenty of cards that you can buy for <100$ that would offer a significant performance improvement. I don't know what your budget is, though.
 
well a GT710 would prob fair worse then that gpu. cosole is best bet for now as people are or have been offloading the old gen once they get a new PS5/XB Series X/S.
 
... Okay so...

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fsrp=1&rt=nc&_nkw=ps4&_sacat=0&LH_Sold=1

Here are sold listings for the PS4. The minimum I even see on this list is $175. Nearly $200 with shipping. To put it in perspective, I got a 960GTX for less than that, shipped, and I probably overpaid. There's some guy selling his 970GTX for 190 in the FS/T forum. How is buying a PS4 better than that, considering his current system has a perfectly serviceable CPU and everything else already? And when we factor in that he would have to repurchase the game for the new platform?
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
It wouldn't really be a GREAT buy, but you could get a used nvidia gtx 970, amd r9 280/290, or something along those lines. Also worth to just try using the XBone with a KB/Mouse since you have the console already!

Definitely check GTX 970s, they were pretty ubiquitous and are still good performers at 1080p in plenty of games depending on the settings.
 
Oh wait, missed the tidbit where you had an Xbox One. Then yeah it just depends on your budget. Personally for overall price vs entertainment value, I would still opt for getting a GPU simply because of Steam sales. But strictly speaking just for playing that game, yeah you could go with the console.
 
... Okay so...

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fsrp=1&rt=nc&_nkw=ps4&_sacat=0&LH_Sold=1

Here are sold listings for the PS4. The minimum I even see on this list is $175. Nearly $200 with shipping. To put it in perspective, I got a 960GTX for less than that, shipped, and I probably overpaid. There's some guy selling his 970GTX for 190 in the FS/T forum. How is buying a PS4 better than that, considering his current system has a perfectly serviceable CPU and everything else already? And when we factor in that he would have to repurchase the game for the new platform?

And to think, I gave my brother my PS4 Pro after I upgraded to the PS5. And he gave his old OG PS4 to my other brother. I should have sold them both!

And I like the idea of a 970 if you can get your hands on one for the right price. Might be able to find one for a decent price if you shop around.

Do consoles play with KB/Mouse now? I had an old Xim4 adapter, but it was never exactly like playing with a KB/Mouse.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
That is insane bro he has an Xbox one Maybe I’ll just tell him use your Xbox for the next year or two. He does love being able to use a keyboard and mouse hes weird to his keyboard he shifts like sideways almost
yep. stick to the console. No sane GPU options right now. Its possible to get a rx 580 or so at near launch price but those are old still. ultimately a waste of money. GPU prices should crash eventually
 
Hopefully in another month or two we start seeing affordable used GPUs, so stick with the console for now.

my 2 pennies..

I'm starting to see more and more GPUs pop up for sale (still at inflated prices). A couple months ago even on [H] they were practically nonexistent.

Semiconductor shortage aside, I think we all know there are millions of GPUs tied up in the coin craze. There are millions of 970,980,980ti, 1070, 1080, 580, etc floating around.. They're just jammed in mining rigs.

Profitability on coin mining has been sinking, my coin mining friends are telling me they only get around <$2/day/card on their coins so now they're just speculating on future gains and contemplating dumping GPUs.

If profitability continues to sink, we'll surely be seeing more and more cards spring up on the forum and other marketplaces, then escape velocity will be reached while people trip over each other to sell their GPUs before their value collapses.

tl;dr hoping for one more bitcoin dump resulting in 500,000,000 RX 580s being listed on ebay at once. Summer time is a good bet for that says my gut.
 
I see PS4 Pro's listed for under 350 here all day on facebook. PS4 regular and slim for udner 200 with controllers. Xbox one is also fine. You'll have a better frame rate than anything $300 can currently get you. Not to mention that CPU is nearly ancient by todays standards. I would have him play it on console with kb and mouse, and wait until this GPu drought is over. In that time you can save up for a decent B450/5600x combo and 16 gb of ram. Pop in a affordable GPU in 6 months and that was money MUCH better spent than buying a generations old GPU now.

9 series cares being mentioned. I had one in 2014? Seriously thats some OLD hardware there man. I wouldnt even consider it if it were my money.

The ONLY "budget" card I ever used to play Apex on was a RX580. If you can pick one up for $125 or less (was the going rate for 2 years before the mining boom happened) then you'd be set for 1080p.
 
Great info we picked up this Xbox one for super cheap. I’m personally think of moving over to ryzen 5 for my own build and maybe kick him down this 4770 setup I have.
My other sons system is old as well but great for his needs he has a 760 gtx and it plays all the games he’s into.
 
Polaris works great for it but they all really pricey right now. If you can get an hd7870 or r9 270x for around $50 to $75 bucks youre looking at 40ish to 50fps on low settings. I was honestly impressed how well my 7870 did in apex.
 
My son is 14 he has an i5 3570 and 8gb ram we have an ancient 285 gtx it’s barely playable

I feel like the highlighted isn't being appreciated enough. A GTX 285 is from 2008, and UHD 750 is on par with a GTX 260 in terms of performance at this point. It's also worth noting that it's kind of amazing Apex Legends runs at all on that card given that it's below the minimum requirements (it says on the box it requires a GT 640 minimum and recommends a 970).

I would say that any card with more than 2GB of VRAM is going to be way overpriced at this point. The only thing you might be able to find affordable is stuff along the lines of a GTX 670, a 960, a 1050, etc... Anything with performance close to a GTX 1060 is going to be around $250+ for old hardware, which is not really a good deal. However, your old GTX 285 only has 1GB of VRAM most likely, so a 2GB card would still be a significant upgrade. In your situation, I would try to find a GTX 770 or 680 for around $120. And if you want to spend less than $100, I think the best you'll get is a GTX 580, which has 1.5GB of VRAM.

EDIT: Didn't see he already solved his problem.
 
Last edited:
I think you would need something around a 970, 1060 or similar for good frame rates. Something older like 780, 7970ghz edition etc. would of course give you a large uplift over what you have, but don't expect amazing framerates. Problem right now is that it is virtually impossible to get a GPU at a decent price, unless buying a complete pre-built system.
 
The guy answers the thread and you guys keep suggesting 5-10 year old gpu’s. A 780gtx? A 7870? At this point a toaster may get better fps than those in Apex. Console was the way to go sadly during this drought.
 
The guy answers the thread and you guys keep suggesting 5-10 year old gpu’s. A 780gtx? A 7870? At this point a toaster may get better fps than those in Apex. Console was the way to go sadly during this drought.

If they didn't already have an Xbox One, "switch to console" would be the worst idea in this thread, easily. Just as a reminder the OP said that his other son's computer had a 760 in it which was performing plenty well enough for their needs. 760s can be found on Ebay for $100 or less. If you found one on here, probably 60-70. A 780 is still plenty competent, probably even today's standards, at 1080p. If it wasn't, a 970 certainly is. 7870 is a far cry from either of those, and they're suitably going to be less expensive than $100. So no. It's not going to get the FPS of a toaster, unless you have a very strange toaster.

I know you're proud of your solution being accepted, but staying off consoles has other merits, namely steam sales and plentiful access to inexpensive titles, as well as more general flexibility. The 3570 is still probably plenty good enough for most titles right now, especially if they're not going to be CPU bottlenecked anyway at their settings. Now if they were running my old i5 750, it would be another case probably (although that thing does surprisingly well today, I was surprised).

Of course part of the issue is that from what I have read, Apex Legends is also terribly optimized. So if this was roughly any other PC game, "buy a console" would be an even worse idea than it is here.
 
Do you have an Xbox One or PS4? It's not ideal, but you can get something like a KeyMander for around $80 and use Mouse/Keyboard on a console.
 
The guy answers the thread and you guys keep suggesting 5-10 year old gpu’s. A 780gtx? A 7870? At this point a toaster may get better fps than those in Apex. Console was the way to go sadly during this drought.
He said he only needed something that could do 30FPS, and that's achievable with older hardware. Sure, it won't do a solid 60, but the game itself recommends a 970 and says the minimum requirement is a GT 640, and his old hardware was basically integrated graphics in terms of capabilities. It's not like the game needs a 1060 to be playable at 30FPS if someone doesn't want to re-buy the game on console. If you have to buy a console version of the game and a new console, you've basically paid for a GPU anyway. That's not saving a whole lot of money. Besides, look what the PS5 and Xbox Series X are selling for, and consider the PS4 Pro isn't exactly cheap, while the original PS4 is 2014 hardware anyway... yeah.

I mean, I don't even disagree with you completely, I went PS4 Pro in 2018 after seeing inflated GPU prices and how buggy/unstable Nier: Automata was on my 670. It was my last PC game purchase ever. But I still kept my old GPUs because I didn't want to have to re-buy my whole Steam library on console.
 
Last edited:
If you have to buy a console version of the game and a new console

Tbf the game is F2P apparently. It's one of those freemium models. I did make the argument of having to rebuy it, but nah it's "f"2p model. I'm sure the OP knows what he's doing, but I also suggesting being very careful with those models...
 
too many peeps to reply too lol.

All the ideas an feedback are helpful we can use the console for now its not the end of the world. We have ps4 as well but this kid hates the ps4 whatever reason. I did see a 980 locally for around 125 might be gone already. But as jmilcher pointed out the current setup is old as heck in general. I may sit on this for a bit an see which miners out there start dumping there cards off. I know a guy at work that says he has a couple cards he would gift me but hes a system admin i dont see him spending alot of time looking through his pile.

heres a guy running a 760
 
Polaris works great for it but they all really pricey right now. If you can get an hd7870 or r9 270x for around $50 to $75 bucks youre looking at 40ish to 50fps on low settings. I was honestly impressed how well my 7870 did in apex.
That card may be the best AMD card ever made. I had two in a crossfire setup for a while. Very long lived. It's glory days are decidedly over though. A 4gb Polaris card would be best bet, they don't work for ether mining anymore.
 
Yea no matter how you slice it, the game is free and the console even if you bought a used one, is cheaper than any video card that could beat a console at 1080p FPS. It just isn’t really possible right now. Really I’d save my money and invest once the miners inevitably dump hardware in the coming months.
 
heres a guy running a 760


It's playing it quite competently, surprisingly.

Yea no matter how you slice it, the game is free and the console even if you bought a used one, is cheaper than any video card that could beat a console at 1080p FPS. It just isn’t really possible right now. Really I’d save my money and invest once the miners inevitably dump hardware in the coming months.

I disagree with this quite wholeheartedly. If he had to actually buy the console, GPU would be hands down a better solution. There's literally a 970 GTX in the FS section of this forum for <200$ (or was if it's not already gone). Under the hood, consoles generally don't run at anywhere near the FPS (or sometimes even resolution) of a PC, they just have various smoothing tricks and optimizations.
 
It's playing it quite competently, surprisingly.



I disagree with this quite wholeheartedly. If he had to actually buy the console, GPU would be hands down a better solution. There's literally a 970 GTX in the FS section of this forum for <200$ (or was if it's not already gone). Under the hood, consoles generally don't run at anywhere near the FPS (or sometimes even resolution) of a PC, they just have various smoothing tricks and optimizations.
30 FPS on a shooter is not ideal either way. And he already has a console and it’s a f2p game. I think OP figured out what he’s going to do. Saving your money for a better time to buy a decent value gpu is the best option.
I played personally on a ps4 Pro at 1080p and always had 60 FPS easily. For a few years I played Apex that way.
 
30 FPS on a shooter is not ideal either way. And he already has a console and it’s a f2p game. I think OP figured out what he’s going to do. Saving your money for a better time to buy a decent value gpu is the best option.
I played personally on a ps4 Pro at 1080p and always had 60 FPS easily. For a few years I played Apex that way.

30 FPS? A 970 gtx can run that game at 60 fps easy.
 
30 FPS on a shooter is not ideal either way. And he already has a console and it’s a f2p game. I think OP figured out what he’s going to do. Saving your money for a better time to buy a decent value gpu is the best option.
I played personally on a ps4 Pro at 1080p and always had 60 FPS easily. For a few years I played Apex that way.
I know this is just kind of a useless discussion at this point, but perhaps if someone is using this thread for future reference, via googling or something...

Did you watch the video? When they set the target framerate to 60 FPS, it did a decent job keeping it, and if they scaled the resolution down, FPS kept going up.

Let’s start with the not-so-good news – if you’re expecting any console to run Apex Legends at native 4k, you’re in for a disappointment. The game’s resolution is highly adaptive, but both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X generally run the game at between 1080p and 1440p, with the Pro tending to drop down to the 1080p range more often than the X. Meanwhile, the base PS4 resolution ranges between 720p and 1080p, and the Xbox One S ranges between 648p and 720p.
...
On the performance front, all consoles target 60fps, with some being more successful than others. Both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X will occasionally drop into the low 50s ... The base PS4 is about the same, dropping into the low 50s, but never below.
- https://wccftech.com/apex-legends-consoles-10m-players/

They also don't even mention/know what settings the game is trying to keep to begin with. So yeah. The cheapest you'll find a used PS4 is $175-200, which puts you in territory to buy at the very least a 770 GTX. A 760GTX can be had for <$100. And I got a 960 (overpriced) for 140 (before shipping/taxes). A 970 is in the FS/T for 190 and can be had for about 200 even on Ebay:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nk...TitleDesc=0&_fsrp=1&rt=nc&_osacat=0&LH_Sold=1

And like someone said, that will run this game with absolutely no issues at 60FPS.

Combine this with Steam accessibility vs a locked down console ecosystem, I just can't see how anyone can think the console is a better idea. His CPU is old...ish, but he should be plenty fine for what he's trying to do either way...
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Concur with others. GTX 970 or equivalent (give or take) are probably your best bets. You're overpaying no doubt, but not as bad as you would be with the newer cards. And at 1080p frankly, these should be fine.
 
Back
Top