6990 or 6970 cf? OR 580cf or 590?

i would say gtx580 sli can beat single gtx590 or single hd6990 easily.

If you want to play on max settings in BF3 then Nvidia is king. MSAA crushes performance on AMD cards.

+1 another good point!!  

If you decide to go with gtx580 sli get the 3gb version gtx 580s. This will help since you are going to be playing on three monitors.

What is MSAA?

Wow, thats $1400 bucks for two cards with the gtx580 3gb sli.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisample_anti-aliasing

What is your budget?

800 to 900

us dollars, $800 - $900. If I need to spend $1000 I will.

Go for a GTX 590 then IMO.

You cant do 3 monitors with one card with Nvida cards. You need 2.

A 590 can run 3 monitors alone, unlike the 580.

The GTX 590 will be considerably cheaper than the GTX 580's in SLI. According to the Guru3d review of BF3 performance, the GTX 590 is pretty much the sweet spot for a single card solution. Like with the Tom's Hardware review, they reported problems on AMD cards and were unable to play BF3 on the 6990 at all (which is considered by many reviewers to be just too noisy to recommend anyway).
http://www.guru3d.com/article/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu...

My recommendation would be a pair of GTX 570's in SLI for approximately the same price as a GTX 590. If you have the space and motherboard, the SLI dual card option is going to better than the single card, dual-GPU option in terms of heat and acoustics. Having said that, who wouldn't want a GTX 590 in their rig?

Man its such a tough choice, and to make things worse, i know new cards are around the corner and these should drop in price. Then again, will the new ones be good righto out of the box or are we all going all going to have to wait a while to get the drivers working properly for the things we bought the card for in the first place...

Things I ponder????!!!!

Great info hear though. I didnt know the 590 can handle three monitors at once. Going to check it out..

Off newegg (after shipping, before rebates),
cheapest 590 is $758
cheapest 6990 is $709
cheapest 580 is $488
cheapest 6970 is $348
cheapest 570 is $338

CF 6970 or SLI 570 should each give better performance than 6990 or 590. You could save $80 going 2x570 instead of a 590. However, 570s only have 1280MB RAM (keep in mind RAM is not additive in multi-gpu setups, including 590 and 6990) and that's not going to be enough for gaming on 3 monitors, especially in BF3.

I think 2x6970 2GB cards is the best deal for your goal and budget.

I thought the ram came in especially handy with multi monitor set ups.

It does, that's why I would go with 2x6970 (2GB) instead of 2x570 (1280MB) or a 590 (1.5GB). The 590 has 3GB total RAM, but keep in mind each gpu only gets half that. 6990 also has 2GB RAM (it says 4GB on the box, but again, each gpu only gets half), but it's slower than 2x6970 and at least $10 more.

Too bad AMD drivers are having such a hard time with BF3.

Quote:
"AMD Radeon wise well, the cards are just all struggling. Would the R6990 have worked, that dynamic would have changed.

So ATI Radeon users at 19x12 will need to drop MSAA, choose another AA mode or lower image quality settings."

"And last but not least the mac-daddy of single monitor resolutions, on a 30" 2560x1600 pixels monitor, this resolution will require a spicy graphics card. In fact only dual-GPU based solution can really deal with it. On AMDs side the Radeon HD 6990 should manage well here but let's hope the newer drivers will kick in soon. On NVIDIA's side, yeah .. the GTX 590 just hauls ass."
http://www.guru3d.com/article/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu...

I'm running crossfire. Did in beta and haven't had any problems with it in retail. They only experienced issues when they used 4x4GB ram, not 2x4GB, and also said AMD knows about the issue and is working on it. Might be solved with the 11.10 drivers already. Again, can't say because my 2x5850 has always worked in BF3.

I'm really getting tired of the "AMD has bad drivers" reason to not buy AMD cards. Don't buy them if you don't want to, but that's not a good reason, because it's not true. I could point you towards people with 560s not being able to run the game because of a faulty driver, including one of my BF3 friends, but who cares? It got taken care of right away.

To shorten, GTX 590 is capable of running 3 monitors because it's a Dual GPU card and Dual GPU cards are 2 GPUs in CF/SLI mode in one PCB. GTX 580/70/60 you need to SLI them to run 3 monitors.

That said AMD's drivers are laggy, i completed BF3 with my single HD 6950 without any stuttering, just met some game bugs. For CF/SLI configurations, both crashes with BF3.

The reason that one should consider with 3 monitor setup is how smooth the game will run, you do CF/SLI to have higher FPS thus the game won't lag. The higher the resolution the more VRAM should be since textures are loaded, MSAA, AF (those really feed on the VRAM.

590 is out of the question because in fact it's Dual GPUs each has 1.5 GB of VRAM that's add a bonus to the HD 6990.

@ OP, we already discussed the benefits of each 6990, HD 6970s in CF.

590 is out of the question because in fact it's Dual GPUs each has 1.5 GB of VRAM that's add a bonus to the HD 6990.
???

Yes, they say GTX 590 3GB & HD 6990 for marketing. The GTX 590 has 1.5 GB of VRAM mirrored between the GPUs and the HD 6990 has 2 GB of VRAM.

gtx580 3gb sli would give me 6gb mem total? Better for multi monitor displays compare to two 6970 2gb cards right?

The VRAM is not doubled in SLI/CF it's mirrored between the GPUs
GTX 580 3GB + GTX 580 3GB = GTX 580 SLI with total of 3GB of VRAM.

Read the CF/SLI FAQ and take down some notes.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245454-33-crossfire-f...

Again, thank you!!! As you said, my options are crossfired 6970's or 6990 with cooler and possible add another 6970 or 6990 in the future.

What I dont like about the 6990 is the heat isnt directed outside the case. But then again, most models of the 6970 that i've looked at dont either.

I think I might just flip a coin for this one. If you had the choice, my choice, what would you do....????

I would need another motherboard to handle tri-crossfire. But if I recall what you said early on this thread or the other that if I get a 6990 now and add a 6970 later its considered tri-crossfire even though Im only using 2 pci slots? Is that a correct understanding of what I read?

I would read some reviews before you buy either. BF3 is currently unplayable on a 6990, and you have people telling you Crossfired 6990's are the ultimate. Tom's Hardware was unable to recommend the 6990 due to the extreme noise levels. A pair of 6970's won't be far behind and will have their own host of issues to deal with. Think this one through and don't just focus on which setup offers the highest Frames Per Second. At some point, you will want to take into consideration ease of use, game compatibility, aesthetics (noise levels), and the overall ownership experience.

If you are truly looking for the "ultimate" gaming experience, then a pair of GTX 580's w/3gb in SLI is truly the best. Anything above that will be bottlenecked by even the best of the best systems.

Main reason for buying card is to play bf3. tri monitor 24" set up.
It seems that the problems that most people were having are mostly gone. I wish that the article that your mentioning would be updated with the newest drivers that came out by amd on Oct 31, 2011

How do I put my pc's specs on the bottom like you and others have?

@dudeguzman, the artcile i'm talking about reviewed the HD 6990s scaling in CF, it has nothing to do with BF3.

* Go to your profile, navigate to forum options, put your specs in the singature square and press apply signature.

I had 6970 CF. Too many issues with drivers. I exchanged for the EVGA 590 Classified. Best thing I ever did!

i always suggested NVIDIA cards it's expensive but no problem with it's drivers.

Swolern, your dont have a tri monitor set up do you?

No only single 1920x1080 I do a lot of 3d gaming. That's why I needed the extra horsepower. Eventually I would like to do triple screen in 3d, but I would need another 590 for that. I'm very competitive at online multiplayer so I need all my games to be @ 60fps.

My issues with my AMD cards were with BF3 and also 3d compatability.

not only you many people were facing problems especially in BF3 with amd brand maybe AMD will fix this....

But i go on the greens side blogs, boards etc and I hear the same issues.. Seems it dyce not the gpu manufactures on this one.

If you go tripple screene you wished you were back with AMD due to the low mem.

Best article I've found so far on this.. I still dont know what to get...

http://www.behardware.com/articles/829-20/gtx-590-and-h...

A couple more worth checking out:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/amd-e...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/asus-...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/gefor...

Not true. 95% of all games will have same performance in triple screens with 1.5gb of VRAM compared to a higher amount.

Here is a comparison of 1.5gb sli vs 3gb sli, all about the same on triple screen. http://www.behardware.com/articles/844-1/geforce-gtx-58...

If what I read is correct I would agree with you. The key to what you said is 95% of the games... BF3 needs eats up all of that 1.5.

This sums up the article you posted. Thanks!!!

While moving up from 1 to 2 GB can be more easily justified in certain very high-end situations, it has to be said that 1.5 GB of video memory is sufficient and that there isn’t really any point in doubling this quantity of memory with higher density modules, even in SLI and surround.

Either games don’t require this level of memory, or the processing power required of the GPU in addition to memory demands is too high, even for the GeForce GTX 580s, as is the case in Metro 2033. While a Quad SLI system could however get you close to a level of performance in gaming conditions that require 3 GB per GPU, such a platform is both very extreme and for a very reduced number of users and certainly doesn’t justify the proliferation of 3 GB versions of the GeForce GTX 580.

The 580 is one of the only cards thats powerful enough to make use of the full 3gb

This basically sums it up

Its crazy that by having more memory on certain games, its worse to have? Wow

Life would be easy if bf3 was on that chart.

Im curious where did you find that last chart?

Ooh cant remember its from my photobucket account