Need help picking a new card

[Inzen]

Hello all,

My graphics card has died and I have decided to jump into the world of multi-monitor gaming. I'm really not sure what the best route to go is. Crossfire? Single card? Best bang for the buck? How much grfx card power do I really need? Help! Right now I am playing SWTOR most of the time as well as mixing in good amounts of Skyrim and Mass Effect 3. My current set up is...

- Win 7 Professional 64
- G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
- ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard
- OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD3-2AGT120G 3.5" 120GB SSD
- AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz
- 3x ASUS VH236H Black 23" Full HD Widescreen LCD

Any help, recommendations, or guidance is much appreciated!

[Gilly]

A 2GB 6970, or 7950 would be great, you might even be able to use a 2GB 6950.

I would personally avoid crossfire because of microstutter, if you really want a pair of cards, SLI might be a better way to go, although I have no experience with SLI.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Microstutter happens just as much with SLI, it's just that people seem to make much less fuss about it on the nVidia side.

It's weird that it doesn't seem to happen for me in Surround (or if it does I don't notice it) but does in SLI on a single monitor.

edit: I'd just get a single 7950 or similar.

[Inzen]

Thanks for the feedback and recommendation. I think I am going to go with this card...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-102-963&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=2#scrollFullInfo

One more question, does it matter what displays are plugged into specific ports? This card has 1 x HDMI, 2 x Mini DisplayPort, and 1 x DVI..... what is the best configuration out of the 4 outputs for 3 monitors? Again, thanks for the help!

[Thrillhouse]

My reading of this:

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/amd-eyefinity-technology/for-consumers/Pages/what-is-eyefinity.aspx

is that you should be good with that card, provided you have the needed monitor cables, which may be a different set than the ones you have been using. Of course you should read that web page yourself to see if you agree.

Please post in this forum if you do go with this setup to let us know how you like it--I'll be very interested myself since I have an almost identical setup to yours and am considering an upgrade soon.

[Paradigm Shifter]

There isn't really a 'best' I think, unless you've got monitors which allow native connections... but 1x HDMI, 1x DVI and 1x mini-DisPort-to-DVI adaptor should do it.