£320 GPU

[Katsumoto]

What to get? I'm on the brink of buying my PC at long bloody last but this monitor and gpu stuff i'm struggling on deciding now.

For that money on a GPU I can get:

Crossfire 7850's
One 7970
One 670

Those seem to be the best options but... just wtf on which is the best? All of them fall on the £320 region of pricing.

The other thing to consider is I want a 120hz/3d monitor and i'm torn between Samsung and BenQ. For BenQ I pretty much have to take a 670 for the 3d. As well as that AMD cards come with 3 free games making the whole thing harder to decide upon.

 

[Katsumoto]

erm the 7850 is waaayyyy lower than £320 in fact for not much more you can get 2 atm , but then youd be better of gettign a single mosnster than crossfire

If you read you'll notice a key word. The key word is 'crossfire'.

Anyway based on what i'm hearing:

670/7970 = depends on what you play
7850CF = better outright performance, worse upgradability in the future (unless I get a 2011 board to support tri/quad gpu setups)

So what it's coming down to is monitor choice and longevity of the cards. As I understand it, the 7970 has the most shaders and highest memory bandwidth, whilst also boasting the highest VRAM (yes rusty I know, ignore the VRAM). Does this mean it'll be the longest lasting of the 3 setups, disregarding current game requirements? If so i'll lean towards the 7970... but then I like the BenQ monitors more than Samsung... GRrrr

And then there's the 7950 too. Pesky thing making my decisions harder. Although I still lean more towards the top end because I can.

 

[Katsumoto]

If you say that for arguments sake (stick with me) the 670 and 7970 have the same performance in games. Across the board identical.

Even in a crossfire/SLI set up (2 GPU's - not 3 as the argument is different) you're still going to need a new GPU before you worry about anything else (including VRAM).

So in regards to longevity both cards would fall over at exactly the same time and need upgrading. The cheapest way to stay on the high end GPU curve is not to drag every ounce out of it until it's simply not good enough anymore... it's selling it on while it's worth relatively much and then buying the next generations high end GPU.

Cheaper to do this in the long run rather than selling it when it's worth £30 in 3 years and then upgrading again.

Good point. So based off that i'd be better off with a 670 would you say? Reason being purely my monitor preference.