30inch monitor.. SLI 680's or a 690?

[lehtv]

The things he's bought so far

Intel® Core™ i7-2600K X1 $240
P9X79 Deluxe w/ DDR3 1866, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, CrossFireX / 3- way SLI X1 $320

Sorry to say but that CPU and motherboard are not compatible. Wrong socket. You'll need to switch the motherboard to LGA1155 socket, Z77 chipset. There are high end Z77 boards that support 4-way crossfire at PCIe 3.0 x8 per slot. EVGA Z77 FTW is the cheapest option, you'll have to pay a premium for others like Asus Maximus V Extreme. However to fully benefit from 3-way CF on Z77, you will need PCIe 3.0 compatibility and for that you need a 3770K instead of a 2600K.

The X79 Deluxe is only capable of PCIe 2.0 x16/x8/x8 which also hurts your graphics cards' potential. You would need a board with x16/x16/x16, though I would prefer the Z77 chipset and 3770K with PCIe 3.0 support.

So whether you stick with LGA2011 / X79 or change to LGA1155 / Z77, you will have to change both the CPU and the motherboard to fully benefit from 3-way crossfire

 

[AdamK47]

Sorry to say but that CPU and motherboard are not compatible. Wrong socket. You'll need to switch the motherboard to LGA1155 socket, Z77 chipset. There are high end Z77 boards that support 4-way crossfire at PCIe 3.0 x8 per slot. EVGA Z77 FTW is the cheapest option, you'll have to pay a premium for others like Asus Maximus V Extreme. However to fully benefit from 3-way CF on Z77, you will need PCIe 3.0 compatibility and for that you need a 3770K instead of a 2600K.

The X79 Deluxe is only capable of PCIe 2.0 x16/x8/x8 which also hurts your graphics cards' potential. You would need a board with x16/x16/x16, though I would prefer the Z77 chipset and 3770K with PCIe 3.0 support.

So whether you stick with LGA2011 / X79 or change to LGA1155 / Z77, you will have to change both the CPU and the motherboard to fully benefit from 3-way crossfire

No, it will run PCI-E 3.0. The 7970 runs at PCI-E 3.0 on Asus X79 motherboards by default.

 

[DPOverLord]

You're buddy got some insane deals. I'm running almost the exact same rig. He'll enjoy it. :biggrin:

Wow... $609 for the 30"

SAPPHIRE HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 X3 $269 = $810

What corporate discount are we talking about!