What Graphics Card For New Gaming Rig

[azeem40]

At this point, I am not interested in cheaper.
I want to spend all of my budget as it was a bday and graduation present.

 

[Absolute0]

You want a $550 AMD card, sounds like you are asking for us to tell you to buy a 7970. So go buy one. Mine is pretty sweet.

Part of my reasoning for buying a 7970 and not something like a 6950 or 6870 for less money is the upgrade path... about a year or 18 months when my 7970 doesn't cut it as much, can buy a second 7970 and kick ass again. Now if I had bought a 6950, the upgrade route to crossfire is cheap yes, but not as future proof. And starting out with SLI or crossfire is the worst upgrade route for 18+ months down the road, you will have two GPUs that aren't worth a whole lot.

 

[Arzachel]

You want a $550 AMD card, sounds like you are asking for us to tell you to buy a 7970. So go buy one. Mine is pretty sweet.

Part of my reasoning for buying a 7970 and not something like a 6950 or 6870 for less money is the upgrade path... about a year or 18 months when my 7970 doesn't cut it as much, can buy a second 7970 and kick ass again. Now if I had bought a 6950, the upgrade route to crossfire is cheap yes, but not as future proof. And starting out with SLI or crossfire is the worst upgrade route for 18+ months down the road, you will have two GPUs that aren't worth a whole lot.

Two 7850/70's would fare better with a triple monitor setup.

 

[RavenSEAL]

7870s in xFire would be the way to go IMO. If not, go 7970.

 

[bamaaviator]

OP wanted a card to run 3 monitors. If thats what he is looking for, a 7970 is NOT the answer for Eyefinity until they release the cards with 3 identical ports. I have one and for a single monitor system, the 7970 is superb, for an Eyefinity set up....no way until they release the cards with 3 identical ports.

 

[fixbsod]

I would wait until nVidia drops Kepler in a few weeks mainly because the new comp could change the prices on AMDs cards

 

[lehtv]

You can get some idea by looking at 2560x1600 benches, then extrapolating the fps for 5760x1080 with the ratio of the number of pixels. 2560*1600 / 5760*1080 = 0.658.

For example, 7950 crossfire:

--> 33.4 fps in eyefinity

--> 22.4 fps in eyefinity (note the 4xAA - it'd be significantly higher with just post AA)

--> 36.8 fps in eyefinity

Another way to look at it: if you wanted the same level of performance in eyefinity as 7950 CF gets at 2560x1600 - without sacrificing image quality - you'd need 1/0.658 = 1.52 times the processing power of 7950 CF. That means 7950 tri-fire. Heavily overclocked 7970 CF could come close. Obviously the bottom line is that running games at high framerates on high/ultra settings at a triple 1080p resolution requires a >$1000 GPU setup, just like a single 1080p monitor requires a $300-400 video card at least.

I'd suggest you check out 6970 CF reviews as well (comparable to 7870 crossfire), or 7870 CF reviews if you can find them.

 

[azeem40]

I have decided to get the 7870 CF. Thanks everyone!

 

[BoFox]

Congrats! HD 7950 isn't really much faster, actually losing out in some games, so the 7870 was a pretty good move!

Soon, Windows 8 will come out with DX11.1, enabling native quad-buffered Stereo-3D on all DX11.1 Radeon cards in games that support it (unlike current HD3D with 3rd-party TriDef support)!