Hey all
Purchased TW3 early on with intention to purchase a video card upgrade at later date
Im using a system with i5 2500 + hd5670- yes i know its old but ive been happy with it til now and games i play (seems to be ok at lower resolution on Wolfenstein new Order...old blood is another matter). Not sure if existing card with work with TW3 but i need to upgrade as it wont work with WnO (1gb vram min required).
Having not been in the loop for upgrade for a while, what is a decent budget card with at least 1gb vram? (ATI preferred). I don't game at higher than 1440x900 (1280x720 at times) - max on 20inch screen :P. How is an R5 or R7 ati video card compared to TW3 requirements?

When looking for a gpu, you don't really check the amout of vram, but the bandwidth, transistors, rendering units, etc. Or you just check the release date and the numbers of the series. A r9 270x should give you at least 30fps with high settings at 1080p. An r8 280x is a decent card too, and it should give you around 40fps at high settings 1080p. But this game has been optimized for Nvidia cards, a single GTX 970 gives me between 50-60fps at high-ultra (and low shadows) 1080p. Then again, I think your best option is wait until the 300 series are released, because this will surely bring some price drops for the 200 series. Or you could buy yourself a gpu of the 300 series, those will be fully DX 12 compatible.

AMD is debuting a new GPU soon therefore the R9 290x should be dropping in price Radion wise.

I myself use the EVGA 780ti SC Enthusist edition and it easily managed the game on Ultra settings that is with the any of the drivers under 150.0, NVidia is cannabalizing atm and when you read through the read me, "yes I did this" and if you do as well you will see what I mean. I personally decided not to update the drivers at all as it is stated in plain text Nvidia has started removing a lot of the functionality to this series of GPU. Why they are doing this is simple, not much compition from AMD, and they wanna sell there 980 and up series, Though I read a month back that some of the 980s had to be recalled due to unfixable ram problem which is highly out of the ordinary.

Whatever decision you make it would be worth considering your processor/psu/ram/motherboard and cooling including tower choice for optimal airflow into the equation as a whole, as you don't want to end up bottlenecking your machine.

For those who havn't a clue what bottlenecking is I'll give a brief summerization, I'm not trying to imply that you don't know but I have come across the issue before and the card makes no difference if there is a weak link. Like the old saying, "The chain is only as strong as the weakest link.. Thus make sure you have adiquate processor, with a psu capable of meeting not only the needed power of the processor but also enough for the ram/ video card and having a little bit of extra power never hurts. Most people say 750w is ample for a system, this is not always the case especaily when you want performance out of your GPU. Research your components, and compatibility. PSU name does make a difference, a bad one can kill your whole system be warned, and look at customer reviews this is the one department you don't want to try to be thrifty in for your investments sake.

The only other hint of advise I could give you is the R9 290x in first gen was a cooling nightmare, so If by the chance you decide to go with one of those you'd probably be just as well if not better off with 1 or a pair of 7970's. Don't bother with the GTX Titan 6GB card, its a waste of money and really more so made for sceintific applications so It won't do ya much good. In fact the 780ti outperforms the Titan 6GB GTX in gaming applications. The 980s by comparisson are not that much better than the 780ti and it is a bit cheaper.

Good Luck :)

Had no problems, whatsoever running TW3 on release day, full ultra spec at 1080p peaking over 60fp, no bugs, nothing till the release of patches post 1.02. Then Graphics degradation and bugs entered my Witchers world.

AMD 9590 8 core 4.7GHz 5.0GHz Turbo Black edition, Nepton 280L Liquid cooling, 16GB 8X8 1866 overclockable G.Skill Ripjaws X ram, EVGA Nvidia GTX 780ti SC edition GPU, Crosshair V Formula-Z Mobo, 1200watt to 1300 80 gold + Strider PSU.

I am running the game at 1400x900 on a R7 260x with a little OC, and I get a very nice 40+ FPS on high settings

My humble 750ti can handle it fine in high settings. A few slow downs in places like novigrad but nothing that makes the game unplayable

This. Since OP only seems to use "low" resolutions, a GTX 750 ti could be a great match. Others have reported they seem to get decent performance with that GPU, even at 1080p. I used one until recently, and it's probably the overall best budget card around.

I almost have the same gpu, mine is a three year old GTX 560 Ti. This gpu can still take the punishment I tell you. I play Witcher 3 very well in fact finished my second playthrough which in my opinion had the best ending.

I upgraded to a GTX 960 primarily because of Witcher 3. Had somewhat humble expectations, since it's the weakest of the new 900 series. My expectation was along the lines of Med/High settings @ 1080p/30FPS -- turns out I'm running the game at High/Max settings, 1080p and closer to 60FPS rather than 30. Easily outperforms the PS4 version... and let's not mention the Xbone version.

And even the 750ti maxed out nearly all the games I bought here at GOG, including Alan Wake or Witcher 2 ( minus Ubersampling ).

I think the lesson here is, that you don't need to break your bank account in order to get a solid gaming experience. Many low and mid-range graphics cards deliver great performance for their price level.