What graphics card?

J-blk

Hi folks,

First time posting in this forum... It's been years since I built a PC since I've been a Mac person for ages now and consoles for gaming... However, I needed a powerful PC at this stage to use for a bit of everything (lots of VMs for development, video transcoding for portable devices, etc) and built the following 3 days ago:

Intel Core i7-2700K 3.5GHz LGA1155
Corsair CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9B 16GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance
Arctic Cooling Freezer i30
Asus P8Z68-V/GEN3
OCZ Technology PSU, ModXStream Pro, 600W
Fractal Design Define R3

I'm using a 500GB Seagate HDD I poached out of one of my servers but will be upgrading the system drive to a Crucial M4 soon enough.

Now, I'm currently using onboard graphics (boo) but since I have a fairly powerful machine, I'd like to get back to PC gaming in the near future and plan to add a fairly good graphics card by mid-April.

So my question is, if I'm gaming mostly at 1920x1080 (though I might consider a mad 2560x1440 monitor sooner rather than later) with pretty much all settings maxed out in most games, is the GTX 680 or the HD 7970 a better choice (and will my PSU be ok with both cards)? I know the GTX 680 is hard to find at the moment, but as mentioned above, I can wait it out for a few weeks anyway (3-4 week lead time from Dabs currently).

On another unrelated note, what utility(ies) do people use these days to monitor CPU and system temps in Windows 7? Thanks in advance.

Serephucus

A 680 or 7970 would be your best bet. Nothing much new in the pipeline for three months or so yet.

HWMonitor is great for most things, as well as Afterburner and GPU-Z for anything GPU-related.

Tea_Bag

what games do you play? neither of those cards will max the likes of BF3 on ultra graphics @ 1440p without dropping below 60fps occasionally, but you can turn down a few settings, and it'll still look beautiful.

I use HWmonitor, MSI afterburner, CPU-Z and fraps.

ShadowHearth

680 or even 7970 is your best bet. Reviews are all over the place and by the looks of it 7970 can be better choise if you going higher resolution.
Amy of those 2 cards will be plenty for gaming and the only one game which can give you small bit of hassle at 1440p - bf3. Though why would you want Max AA on 1440p? I doubt you will need any at such resolution.

Your psu will be more then enough m8, new cards are getting very efficient.

I am prety sure there are 680 in stock at scan.co.uk and pixmania.

Tea_Bag

should have been more clear in my post. those cards will Max pretty much anything except BF3 at 1440p.

J-blk

Thanks folks,

I play pretty much anything and do enjoy shooters (which I'm guessing are probably still some of the most taxing games overall) though I'd stick to single player campaigns almost exclusively so BF3 for example isn't even on my radar. Right after the card itself, I'd probably pick up The Witcher 2, Syndicate and Batman:AC for starters.

The 7970 is slightly more appealing at the moment since it's cheaper (though I'm looking out for any price cut news currently) and easily available by comparison to the 680 but I'd hope any card I get keeps me going for this year at least at reasonably high settings in most games.

On another note, can both Nvidia and ATI cards be mixed and matched and is that even a good idea? As in, would it maybe make more sense to buy a cheaper decent card that can handle up to 1920x1080 well now and add a second one down the line?

ShadowHearth

Right all sli and cf setups are very debatable.

If you can go for it, then I would suggest going best single gpu card you can afford. Less stress with drivers and support. Less on power consuption too. Though don't be scared much of multi gpu setups, there are way more doom and gloom screamers out there, then actual problems with multi gpu setups.

If you don't want to splash 500eu on gpu now, then you could get something like 7870, which is way cheaper bet very strong gpu. Plus getting second one in a month or two for 300eu and you got some power house which will do more then 1440p m8.

If you not interested in bf3, then 7970 or 680 will be a total overkill, but very very future proof. 7870 will be more sensible approach and a very good good for future if your mobo supports cf.

ShadowHearth

P.s I had all maxed out witcher 2 on q6600 3gb ram 6870 m8 ( only one filtering down, can't remember the name, which made it look the same, but really hogged the performance ). So with your setup and any of those cards, you will run 1440p witcher like a boss

marco_polo

Was going to say something similar to SH, if you think it is very likely you will upgrade the monitor soon so I'd probably just take a deep breath and get a 7970/680 now. On the other hand if the monitor upgrade is far from certain I'd just go with the 7870 which should give you a good few years of solid 1080p gaming service, and leaves you with the option to crossfire if you do decide to go 1440p later.

J-blk

Thanks ShadowHearth, I'll look at the 7870 too - like I mentioned, for now, it's going to be 1920x1080 all the way anyway, so it might make more sense to go for the cheaper card now and either add a second one down the line or replace it outright. Though I probably will try to stay away from dual card set ups due to noise as well (my set up as is, is remarkably quiet - the Fractal Design case has soundproofed panels but even with the panels off, noise is minimal).