I have used the following, just to give you a range:
Via M10000 Micro-ITX board running a PCI MX 400 card (Hey! the games' fucking old too!)
And I currently run a MSI 7800 GTX.
To give you an idea of the technology scale:
Roughly, my current rig is 800,000x more powerful than that little piece of shit I used to run a second character under the lowest settings to keep an eye on the leech king room during my argus days.
But between this current rig and my last one, there wasn't much difference even though theoretically I ingreased in power about 16x between the two. the old rig was using an ATI all-in-wonder x800(AGP).
This game has too many caps on it, and when you 'uncap' them you unfortunately don't put any load on your video card, you tax your processor (and Ram).
In my opinion, the base line for playable would be first generation PCI-Express cards and matching processor. Anything else you'd have to seriously jump in order to see anything really noticable.
To note, I have always run at 1,600 x 900 with a texture resolution of 2,048 x 2,048 for the most part.
I could provide screenshots of my environment if you wish.
On a more technical note, I use to be a pretty avid nVidia supporter. Their cards were top notch, but one year, they seemed to just make cards for the sake of making cards. Little to no attention was given to the actual design. Think of it like a kid drawing squares to cover an area, and ever square can do so many things. At one point, and another kid decided to use triangles and do the same amount of work more efficiently. ATI kinda got more stable at one point, at the same time nVidia was making hair dryers and leaf blowers, and releasing new drivers on an almost daly rate due to instabilities, and charging 2-3x as much. I snapped. I wasn't going to pay 3x as much for a power hungry loud card that needs a new driver every day.
I followed the trends for a long time and it always came down to: do I spend another 300 bucks for a 2% gain? And if it wasn't 2%, how much of a gain would I need to upgrade? 10%? 20%? And what could I possibly get out of FFXI for the most part? Or is 300 bucks worth the novelty of something new? (Sometimes it really is just nice to buy something).
All-in-all, I stopped watercooling my computer and pissing money into it. I just want a nice stable quiet computer, and I got that now.(30 lbs lighter and 10% the footprint too lol). I only say that because we're in a time right now where the equiptment is all too powerful for the aplications we currently have. So in short, decide with your pocket book.
If you're looking for brand advice:
Asus: Always had memory problems on every piece of Asus gear I bought.
MSI: Pretty rock solid, Can get Gimicky... But still rock solid even if they look like a piniata.
ATI: ATI use to always have extremely strict standards on thier equitment. And the 'in house' brand is the best. They tent to preform about 5% slower than other OEM's but that buys you a ton of security that it's going to work right 100% of the time. I don't see ATI making their own cards these days.
PNY: I use to buy my workstation cards from them, they're the supplier for a lot of OEM system builder like HP and Dell. They make good cards with lifetime warrenties, and build them well in order to garuntee thier production loads and secure those huge contracts.
EVGA? Use to be nVidia's reference fab iirc. They are like nVidia's "House Brand". I could put my trust in them.
Personally I want to get my hands on the next generatoin ATI X2 cards (4890 X2). But that's a still a bit away.
