Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'm looking at upgrading my video card and I have triple screen monitor setup (27"). I don't which way to go, Nvidia or AMD. Geforce 670, 680, 690? SLI or single card? AMD 7970? Crossfire or single card? Who's top dog right now?

I'm looking for a good value, but if one video card is significantly better than other one I'd be willing to spend the extra money. I've read that memory doesn't stack in SLI or Crossfire, so is it better to stick with one 4GB or 3GB card? Or get 2 - 2GB cards or 2- 3GB cards?

Both Nvidia and AMD have good offerings at the moment. I believe that HardOCP and Tom's Hardware are both recommending the Geforce 670 or 680 as the best bang for your buck currently. But, the Radeon HD 7970 isn't a bad choice now that the drivers have matured a bit.

You should check to see if your monitors are going to be compatible with both before making a decision. Eyefinity will require that at least one monitor has a DisplayPort connection or you will need to use an active DisplayPort adapter. My Eyefinity setup has a native DisplayPort on the center monitor, so I can't comment too much on adapters. But, I have seen a number of posts from folks having problems with unreliable or failing adapters. On the Nvidia Surround side of things you'll need to make sure all three of your monitors have the same sync polarity. Unfortunately, this can be tricky to verify and you can even have multiple monitors of the same model with different sync polarity. It may not be mentioned in your monitor's manual and you should use a program like MonInfo/Monitor Asset Manager to double-check before making a purchase.

Extra RAM will help with higher resolutions and anti-aliasing, but you're correct that Crossfire and SLI do not stack RAM since each card has to have the same data in RAM. So, if you plan to go higher than 5760x1080 or want to be able to use anti-aliasing, I'd suggest going with a 3 GB or higher card. Crossfire and SLI will help out a lot in games that are properly optimized for them. But, there are problems. Lots of people are sensitive to microstuttering caused by running in SLI or Crossfire. On most motherboards you're going to be placing two cards in Crossfire or SLI so close together that airflow will be severely limited on the top card, causing higher temperatures. I've tried single and dual 5870s and I prefer the extra performance with two, despite the drawbacks. But, I'll probably start with a single card next time I upgrade. You can always add a second card later, if you need more performance.

I would recommend taking a look at these to articles...
Red vs Green vs Blue, A look at how the diffrent technolgies work and the pros and cons of each. http://www.wsgf.org/article/red-vs-green-vs-blue-v2
Our recent review of the GTX670. http://www.wsgf.org/node/23184/

The 670 was a surprsing card that performed very well.

_________________
| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

Thanks for the info guys. My monitors are fairly new as I just bought them last year. They're Asus LED 27" with display ports.

Last year I thought I'd try AMD Eyefinity instead of Nvidia Surround for widescreen gaming. Eyefinity has been pretty good thus far, but they're certain things that I don't like about AMD cards. Drivers don't compare to Nvidias and they're cards are always loud. I've also read they pull more power than Nvidia's. Other than that they're pretty decent.

I was looking at going back to Nvidia this time around. According to reviews the Geforce 690 is the ultimate video card right now, but the lack of VRAM bothers me for the future. Like Bifurk8 said, VRAM doesn't stack, so hence I'm only getting 2GB of VRAM. From what I read some games are nearly using all that VRAM now, especially when going triple monitors; and graphics are only going to get more intense in the future.

I've read tons of reviews online (some of them really vary from one another) and it seems the Geforce 670 in SLI is currently the best bang for $$. From what I read the performance difference between it and the Geforce 680 SLI is only 2% slower while being 20% cheaper. So it seems to me that's the way to go right now.

Techpowerup did some tests with a 4gb card. Might be a nice read. Basically what they found is that with current games even at triple wide resolutions the 4gb has no advantage to the 2gb cards (source). The reason that the conclusion would be different whith lets say a 690 is that if you double the gpu horse power, you can game on higher settings(e.g. aa), which means you need more ram. If you use a single card you have to lower the settings at 5670x1080 to get an acceptable framerate, so you don't need as much ram.

I believe that HardOCP and Tom's Hardware are both recommending the Geforce 670 or 680 as the best bang for your buck currently.

High end cards never have a good price to performance ratio (check these graphs for example). I would look a 660 (Ti) if I was going for that. But us tripple wide gamers need a lot of performance so we don't have a choice really.

_________________
Philips BDM4065UC(3840x2160) Acer Z35(2560x1080@200hz); 980 Ti Hybrid @stock ; 6700K 4.6ghz (1.35v)/D15; 16GB 3200mhz; Asus Maximus Ranger VIII; AX860; 1TB 960 EVO; 750GB 840 EVO; Teufel Concept D 500; Sennheiser HD6XX; Windows 10 (latest build)

Interesting about the memory. So if I go with the 2GB versions and SLI then I'm looking at: Geforce 670 SLI - $800, Geforce 680 SLI -$1000, or Geforce 690 - $1000 I'm looking at about the same price point, unless I go 670. Is it worth the extra $200 to go 680 or 690?

might be worth getting the 4gb GTX670! IF you want to play in higher resolutions than 5760*1080 or with 8xAA or more.

_________________
We gonna send it to outa space!

That was my original idea, but according to Wijkert and Techpowerup.com, anything more than 4GB, even on triple widescreen doesn't give a performance boost. So why waste the money on 4GB.

cuz you might want to use this GPU's in two years. when there are a lot of new engines out there, and a PS4 and Xbox 720 !

But you're right! you don't have any negatives with 2gb Vram atm! So it's not worth the cash right now.

_________________
We gonna send it to outa space!

In 2 years I won't even want those video cards anymore, hehe. At this point I'm at a crossroads. Some say you should go with 4GB cards, some say 2GB cards are plenty. So I'm at a loss at this point.