Situation For Graphics Cards

[festeringchild]

Hello,
I am building an new system and need a new video card. I am stuck on either a gigabyte gtx 680 or a radeon 7970 ghz. I was wondering what would be better to get if i was eventually going to do crossfire or sli. I will be using on monitor and maybe going a high resolution monitor. Does the built in physx on an nividia card really make a difference??? does it help at all? what about the extra gig of ram i get with a radeon card?? what would be best for me i play skyrim battlefield.. and alot of rpgs likes witcher 2. what should i get? thanks all in advance

 

[ssofiaa]

7970 ghz far away the best choice..
and by my opinion
ASUS Matrix HD7970 P 3GD5
is TOP

 

[festeringchild]

can you give me a reason why?? is there anyone else that wants to give an opinion

 

[hizodge]

Extra gig of VRAM is useful only for above 1080p resolutions and surround setups. It has no other gain apart from that. PhysX is pretty much added eye candy for the select few games that support it, a list of which can be found here: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/physx/pc-games

Asus Matrix HD7970 is a good card with a very powerful cooler, but also a very large one. Taking up 3 PCI-E lanes makes it undesirable for Crossfire setups with most motherboards as even if you manage to fit two of them in your case, the cards will usually end up having contact with each other, critically limiting the airflow to the first card.

 

[festeringchild]

okay lets say i want to play games withh max settings at 2560 by 1600 resolution on one big screen.. will the physx matter or will the extra gig of vram be better. and im not gonna use a matrix card.. probably a gigabyte card with 2 slots.. and this would eventually be in a water cooled sli or crossfire setup. so air cooling wont matter so

 

[hizodge]

Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 7970 3Gb GHz Edition and Gigabyte Windforce 3 Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition are probably the best air cooled cards from AMD. You won't be able to enable PhysX in the games that are listed on the site I linked. Whether this is a big deal is completely up to you. However I'm not sure whether these cards are using custom PCBs which could conflict with GPU waterblocks or if you'd be better off with reference cards instead. Maybe somebody here will know, if not you can try some more watercooling specialized forums for help.

If you want the best of both worlds and money is not the issue, you could go for the slightly overpriced Nvidia's GTX 680 4Gb models or even 2x GTX Titans. Personally I don't think the Nvidia cards are worth the additional cost as 3Gb is plenty of VRAM for 2560x1440 and the Titan's 6Gb is straight up overkill, but if you were the prince of Saudia Arabia you probably wouldn't mind.

Just send me a $10k cheque for all the help if you are. Pocket money right?

 

[festeringchild]

Haha sorry im 15. And the gigabyte card that i have checked is reference pcb ive already got all that stuff covered. actually that sounds like a good idea ive looked at that before and that seems like a good fit for my situation i wish i could go 2 titans.. i might do one if i have the money for it.. but we will see because 2 gtx 680s is still cheaper than a single titan. and yields much more of a preformance boost. thanks for the help and the recommendations