- Oct 3, 2010
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GTX680 is not really an good enough upgrade from a GTX590, especially not at high resolutions.
I can't see that well from that screenshot, but assuming you have a large enough space on your motherboard between PCIe slots, go for 2x MSI TwinFrozr HD7950 in CF. For $660 or so ($340 + $320 w/rebate), nothing even comes close. The performance drops off dramatically for GTX670/680 series at higher resolutions. 2x 1.1ghz HD7950 in CF would mop the floor with GTX680 @ 1.3ghz at your resolution. In fact, a 1.29ghz GTX680 can't even beat a 1.165ghz HD7970 at 2560x1600, so you can just imagine it's no competition for HD7950 CF with a mild overclock.
At 925mhz HD7950 is within 5% of HD7970. ~ Hexus.net Review
I know overclocking is a crapshoot at times, but even if you have the world's worst overclocking 7950 cards, they'll hit 1000mhz which essentially means you have 2x HD7970 in Cross-fire.
At this level of performance, GTX680 is a distant memory.
2560x1600 4AA
HD7970 CF is 60% faster vs. 680
2560x1600 8AA
HD7970 CF is 81% faster vs. 680
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-nvidia-geforce-gtx-690/4/
It's shocking that right now you can get 60-80% more performance for $660 compared to a $500+ GTX680 at about your resolution. Even if that 680 is overclocked to 1.3ghz, HD7950 CF at 1.1ghz will still beat it by a good 40-60%.
The cheapest setup from NV that even comes close to HD7970 CF performance is $800 GTX670 SLI and those have 2GB of VRAM, which is fine today but if you intend to keep this setup for 2-3 years on that monitor, you may want the 4GB versions, so almost $900-950 at that point....
HD7950 was a horrible buy at $470-490 but at $320-340, it's looking good for CF action.
The insane part is even if CF is totally broken for you, an overclocked 7950 would not be much slower than a 680 at 2560x1440 because a GTX680 is just 1% faster than a stock HD7970 at high resolutions. Whatever performance advantage GTX680 holds over thge 7970 at 1080P/1200P is all gone at 2560x1440/1600.
If you can manage to sell the GTX590 for ~$450, grabbing 2x HD7950 CF for $660 would net you a huge performance upgrade while a $500 GTX680 would do almost nothing in the grand scheme, unless you plan on getting 2!
Whats the best Version with duel Dvi.. i just bought a Perfect pixle cat leap for 260$ going to sell my u2711.. So i need duel dvi to run the catleap.