I'm buying a multi-monitor gaming computer and I need some help! =)

[Ghost_Kage]

Hello,

I've been looking around these forums and there seems to be some very knowledge people on here who know a lot about triple-monitor gaming. I'm looking to purchase a new computer here this month and I want to have the ability to use all three of my monitors for gaming. I'm using cyberpowerpc.com to buy the computer, and heres what I have so far:

CPU: AMD FX-4100 3.60 GHz Quad-Core AM3+ CPU 4MB L2 Cache & Turbo Core Technology
Motherboard: [CrossFireX] GigaByte GA-970A-D3 AMD 970 Socket AM3+ ATX Mainboard w/ On/Off Charge, 7.1 Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, SATA-III RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe X16, 3 PCIe X1 & 2 PCI
Memory: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory
Main Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 16X PCIe Video Card
Secondary Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6450 1GB GDDR3 16X PCIe Video Card
Power Supply: 700 Watts - XtremeGear SLI/CrossFireX Ready Power Supply
Hard Drive: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

I guess my main question is, do I need 2 high end graphics cards to run Eyefinity/SoftTH, or can I get one good graphics card, and then a low end card? I don't want to spend money for something completely unneccesary. I read that SoftTH only uses one card to do all the work and that I can use a low end card for the secondary slot, but I can't find much information on Eyefinity and how it works. Also, how do you think this setup will work for multimonitor gaming? Any other information you guys have to offer would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! =)

-Ghost Kage

[Davros]

1st thing I cant see any reason (apart from price) for going with a amd cpu
2nd why 2 graphics cards what are you wanting the second card for ?
eyefinity requires 1 card the other will be sitting idle
go for 1 amd card 6950 or better i would recommend
ps: eyefinity faq (a bit out of date)
http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/amd-eyefinity-technology/how-to/Pages/faqs.aspx

[Gilly]

If you need a pair of cards or not depends on the resolution and the level of details you will run, and in which games. Playing TF2 on 3 monitors probibly won't require 2 cards, but playing BF3 maxed out will require more than a single card.

[batjohn]

Get one 6950 instead and if you need more video card power later add another is my suggestion. Rest of the system looks ok. Intel CPU's right now beat AMD's but not sure what your price difference would be to switch and personally I like having an SSD as my main harddrive and a big regular drive for my gaming/secondary hard drive.

[c69]

Getting 2 x 6850 is the most bang for the buck in gaming right now, you can get them from newegg for $125 after rebate, and they are highly overclockable.

Overclocked, they benchmark close to $600 cards, with a big caveat. The game has to support and be optimized for crossfire.

I think getting two 6850s with the intent of ebaying them in a year is better than dropping big money on a single gpu.

BTW, you cant crossfire different cards, they need to be the same.