Help !! To go or not to go GTX 680 SLI?

Two Gtx 680's in SLI is completely overkill at that resolution!

Sell it and spend the money on something reasonable, remember there is more important things in life than the latest and greatest!

If you really want to run two of these insane beasts, then i would recommend buying a new monitor(or 3 - running in 3d maybe?)

Good luck to you in any case!

If you are trying to take full advantage of 120hz, it's not as overkill as you'd think. If you play a lot of cutting edge games, it will like the power, however, the possible problem is that you also need more CPU power in some of these games, to be able to achieve 120 FPS.

I guess the question is, "what kind of performance do you get with 1?

Still, you would have to play in 3d to push the GTX 680 to anywhere near its limits^^

Performance with one is exceptional, Crysis 2 and BF3 runs @ 60 fps most of the time with adpative vsync enabled max in game settings.

100 FPS in 2D takes about the same power as 60 FPS in 3D Vision. Assuming he wants to play his most demanding games near his monitors refresh rate, two would be needed. Metro 2033 still kicks my 680's ass, so does Crysis, Risen 2, and The Witcher 2. While others are more moderate, like Skyrim won't let me go Ultra and get over 90 FPS, DA  and DA2 keep me at 60 FPS, so I turn down settings to get near 90 FPS.

I realize you are thinking in terms of 60hz gaming, and you might even think there is no benefit to going beyond 60 FPS (which if you use 60hz, there isn't), but I personally experience motion sickness below ~ 80 FPS. Others find it smoother. I actually notice a difference in smoothness now, when I go down to 60hz gaming, but I didn't notice a large difference going up to 120hz except in the form of reduced nausea.

My biggest concern is whether the CPU will bottleneck you from achieving 120 FPS.

SLI GTX 680 will never bottleneck a 4.5Ghz i5 2500k processor, yeah Metro kills this card.

I'm not as confident as you are. C2Duo's and lower end Phenom's bottleneck people at 60 FPS occasionally, but if you are trying for 120 FPS, you need twice the power that 60 FPS needs.

Games like Starcraft II will be bottlenecked for sure, and I wonder about Crysis. We've seen huge leaps in GPU power since Crysis came out, yet we are still seeing only 60 FPS (I see up to 80-90 FPS in short periods), could it be a CPU bottleneck holding us back?

instead of raising performance that you dont need to (one 680 is still very capable @1080p), why not experiences other thing.. maybe 3dvision or three screens or both. in case of performance were not enough when you gone 3dvision or three screens or both, then you definitely need SLI. As for ivybridge, is not an upgrade for sandybridge,,, tiny difference on cpu performance.

I myself am building a new rig, my first, and was having trouble deciding to sli or not to sli, and have finally concluded that for me SLI is worth it. I want to play games at 60 FPS maxed settings in 3D and also i want to future proof. i don't want to have to upgrade end of next year because i can't play games at their max settings!

go get the 2nd one and keep it imo.

if people think getting a gtx680 is not a life, then should getting a sports car for 20k$ then adding up customs make it a life? lol both are the same just people put their life different from others, as getting laid left and right is a life same with gaming, going to mall, playing basketball. no different there, just that most people prefer getting laid left and right ^_^